What do you think about this You Tube video of what appears to be Palestinean children?

That’s messed up.

Typical religious indoctrination. It is the same, everywhere.

Ever seen Jesus Camp? Stuff like this is not a rare occurrence.

People will always believe whatever they are taught. The only cure for indoctrination is re-indoctrination.. according to the things we happen to believe is best and right and true. Either way, it’s always other minds pushing their conclusions onto another.

“Should people be justified for teaching children to believe that they would be most useful, and most valued by their culture or their deity, if they elect to become martyrs?”

Teachers only ever teach what they believe is best for their pupil. They are justified to the best of their knowledge. If they knew better they would teach better.

While I deplore it, I agree with others who say it does not seem that different from other religious and or nationaltist indoctrination of children.

Makes you wonder how many centuries-old vendettas would be over within one generation if people would just stop stuffing their children’s heads full of balderdash and hatred from the cradle onwards.

Catchy tune, though.

It’s quite ugly, but it is divorced from the context of years of Israeli occupation and shabby treatment of the Palestinians, including torture, imprisonment and murder for political, revanchist and religious reasons.

Looks like we better go over there and set them straight by bombing their country, killing innocent people, overthrowing their leader, and installing a new government.

I don’t agree with the video either, but this is a different country and a different culture. Other countries in the world probably frown upon our attitude towards power but we see it as normal. We pledge allegiance to our flag in public schools and pray during football games. Palestine is just more blatant about their manipulation. We’re better at masking it by calling it patriotism and humiliating anyone who doesn’t stand for it.

@silverfly
Surely one could condemn this, without supporting a brutal American invasion. There’s no need for reductio ad absurdum. Plenty of middle ground.
Traditional indoctrination is a complicated issue with no simple solution.

Incidentally, I live in a different culture from yours, and while I’m not too happy about some of the values American children grow up with, I say American indoctrination is a lot less heinous than Palestinian indoctrination.
I’d much rather Palestinian children would grow up believing Palestine is the only country in the world that ever does anything important, every political issue can be reduced to the other side hating your freedom, and the Koran is a fair competitor to science, than grow up believing all non-Muslims are sub-human vermin to be converted or exterminated, women are men’s servants, and blowing yourself to bloody shreds in order to murder strangers is an admirable deed.

And I bet it’s a lot easier for an American to choose to defy his or her culture, than it is for a Palestinian to choose to defy his, let alone hers.

I agree with that it is no different than other religious zealots pushing their hardcore ideals and propaganda. Jesus camp indoctrinates the kids but to get even more hardcore one only has to turn to the Westboro Baptist Church and the Phelps family, they are no different than this and that is in our backyard.

@Fyrius Very good points. I have to agree. :)

It is the proper, and natural role of parents, and secondarily all adults, to nurture and protect children until they can begin to make decisions, and fend for, themselves. Any human being who uses a child as an instument to satisfy whatever form of depravity they envision is the lowest form of life indeed. Such poeple are not worthy of any considerations normally given to humanity. I have been in the Middle East and seen this. It is a crime against humanity. And yet, there are those in the West who wonder why we are in conflict with certain elements of Middle Eastern culture. And of course, as you know, it happens here as well, and as we know it is generally ignored, or enabled as well. To not move swiftly to stop this outrage against human innocents is a symptom of moral bankruptcy. Shame on the West for hesitating.

@josie how do you suggest “the west” ought to approach the problem? What should be the west’s first move? Do you suggest we start loading ammunition?

I doubt the kids or the parents had any choice in making this video, if they were asked and refused then as sure as I’m standing here they would be killed. The extremists in that culture have no problems killing the kids or the parents. Look at the Taliban, look at what they do if they find a girl in a classroom getting an education, beheaded or even worse walk into the classroom and just gun her down. If any of us were born and raised there and were told to make a video like this I’m sure we would even if we didn’t want to.

Osama Bin Laden hit the nail on the head when he told a Western journalist, “You in the West are in love with life. We are in love with death.”

@ninjacolin What I would want is not possible because it is too late-I can not change history. But if I could have anything within reason now, it would be the following: I would permit the US and other “western” civilizations to harvest, refine and use our own oil resources, which are plentiful, develop nuclear as a secondary energy source and disengage militarily from the Middle East. We are there because of the oil and because emerging industrial nations want the oil as much as we do. There is clearly global interest in the oil that is greater than it was at the end of World War I and World War II which were, by increments, not only post monarchy European wars, but also oil wars, after Britain switched their navy from coal to oil. We are there because domestic politics prevents us from harvesting and refining our own resources. I would prefer that we could say “Screw your oil, have fun cutting your own throats in the desert and the cold mountains”. But, the tide of history has pushed us there, and we can not leave until the question of who actually will control the oil (us, or India, or China) is settled. Under those circumstances, I would rather that it be us. So the sad truth is, yes load the ammunition. Because if we are stuck there, we can not coexist with a barbaric civilization that has been so insular for the last 500 years that it is now hopelessly behind, and the same civilization shows no real interest in catching up. There are still monarchies there for heaven’s sake. Sadam Hussein was a Bathist, which was nothing more than the Middle Eastern version of the Nazis. Women do not participate in the culture, which means that half the team is on the bench. Hopeless. Spain transates more books into Spanish in one year, than the entire Middle East has translated into Arabic in the last 500 years. Too bad for them, a silly substitute for a rational energy policy for us. But it is what it is. And now, since they know that they are in desperate trouble, they are lashing out at the Western world with suicidal mass murderers. They do this because they will not accept that they have simply not kept up, so they, like many individuals might do, blame their trouble on somebody else. The US is always a favorite target in the post colonial world, so now their problem becomes our problem. Either we become liberal oil producers ourselves (not going to happen in the current Green political environment) or load up.

“we can not coexist with a barbaric civilization that has been so insular for the last 500 years that it is now hopelessly behind, and the same civilization shows no real interest in catching up”

i assume you’re speaking only of those who demonstrate contempt for western ideology.

“And now, since they know that they are in desperate trouble, they are lashing out at the Western world with suicidal mass murderers. They do this because they will not accept that they have simply not kept up, so they, like many individuals might do, blame their trouble on somebody else.”

In bold is a subtle tautology. Could you please clarify: Why don’t they accept that they have not kept up?

@ninjacolin
“i assume you’re speaking only of those who demonstrate contempt for western ideology”.
Whom else would I be speaking of??
For all of it’s faults, the Western World spent blood and treasure to: Recognize the immorality of slavery, recognize the individual as sovereign, to recognize that women are human beings too, to recognize that the state should be secular and free of mystical policies, to recognize that markets are by and large rational and should be left to function on their own, to understand that there is no Satan, only the void that is left when the reasoned good does not act etc. So sorry, but whom else would I be speaking of?
“In bold is a subtle tautology. Could you please clarify: Why don’t they accept that they have not kept up”
Who knows. I cannot count the number of individuals whom I know that refuse to accept responsibility for their own failure. It would take civilization wide psychotherapy to figure out denial on this level, and then nothing would change anyway. Ask a shrink why people find it tough to accept their own failure. It is sort of like gravity. I know it is there, I just don’t know how it actually works. Are you a shrink? You tell me.

It’s just that knowing the reason why someone doesn’t agree with you is crucial for true conflict resolution. For example, so far what you’ve suggested is that we start shooting people in order to coerce them to our views.

Isn’t that the same conversion tactic as shooting a 7 year old female in a school in order to get her to stop attending?

@ninjacolin I beg your pardon. Shooting a 7 year old female? For a while, I thought you were serious.

I was contrasting your suggestion to start loading ammunition with @earthduzt‘s comment earlier: “Look at the Taliban, look at what they do if they find a girl in a classroom getting an education, beheaded or even worse walk into the classroom and just gun her down”

@ninjacolin The Taliban are bronze age animals. Americans, fallible as they are, are children of the enlightenment. Don’t bother making a comparison.

I think what the able world needs is to realize that at the base of all our disagreements is a simple matter of pliable opinion. Some people get tired of talking and they pick up arms, some people are doing such horrible things that there isn’t time to discuss. In such cases you just gotta get tough and defend yourself/others.

The atrocities of an all out war have to be weighed against the atrocities patience would permit. My first guess is that we’ve got 5 mins or so to discuss the matter.

@ninjacolin War IS atrocious. It is also something that comes up frequently in the affairs of humanity . The written history of humanity is not complete, but to the extent that we can come up with repeating themes, war is one of them. So there we go. It is in the nature of the species. So if we are going to do it, we might as well do it for the right reason. Saving people from the likes of the Taliban is not a bad one. Buying time for the Enlightened West, until it can disengage from the Middle Eastern oil is not so bad either. If we go down, the Dark Ages will seem like an historical picnic.

“War sometimes happens, therefore, we should have war over matter X.” isn’t a good argument.

“Because our military is stronger than yours” isn’t a good argument for a paradigm shift either.

People will stop doing something on their own when they can see that it isn’t sensible. Having a big tough bully forcing you to behave how they want doesn’t stop you from wanting to do what you believe is right. It just makes you resent the bully and wait for vulnerabilities to destroy the bully and try again.

@ninjacolin You are imagining that war is not inevitable. How many generations have imagined this, only to discover that it is in fact inevitable. Some people think that they can stop war by disarming. History shows that they become victims of the the inevitabilty of war. The only way to make these quaint statements about resenting bullies and truly believe it, is to not read your history books. In case you have not noticed, the entire world is coming a little bit frayed around the edges. When the shit truly hits the fan, who do you want to dictate the terms? The Taliban, or the “bully” the USA. Take your pick. I know mine.

Fun fact: I had this song playing in my head all day yesterday.
If I could understand Arabic (or whichever language this is) and the lyrics had stuck around too, I would have been walking around with my working memory full of Muslim extremist dogma all the time.

The power of catchy tunes is not to be underestimated.

”You are imagining that war is not inevitable. How many generations have imagined this, only to discover that it is in fact inevitable.”

Yea, but I wasn’t around during those generations. How were they suppose to know there was another way? ;)

“The only way to make these quaint statements about resenting bullies and truly believe it, is to not read your history books.”

I’m not saying USA is a bully. I was simply illustrating how and why Ad Baculum is a logical fallacy. As a general rule, the more fallacies you avoid the better off your future will be.

Nobody seems to be morally above committing Ad Baculum, Ad Populum, Ad Hominem, etc. But I submit that the US is more restrained in these fallacies than other civilizations. That is why they get my vote.

@josie
I know a few people who are more sensible than to commit such fallacies. Notably, they’re not politicians. I’d vote for them any day if they were.

And it might be a stereotype, but among Europeans, America has a reputation for involving ad populum and ad hominem in every presidential campaign.

But more restrained than certain other civilisations? Yes. I should bloody well hope so.
More restrained than Palestine? Quite probably.
On the other hand, the USA are also a heckload more powerful, meaning their bar on rationality ought to be higher, for the good of the world.

But why were you guys talking about this?

@Fyrius, @josie and I have been working on the last question from the original post.

But yea, I’m not opposed to america at all. I agree that they have a role to play too, no debate there. I just don’t want them to kill people prematurely. @josie was suggesting (correct me if I’m wrong) that america has been sitting on it’s ass and not doing enough iraq-like community development in the east. I’m not opposed to a paradigm shift, I just don’t like bullets being the main incentive for the shifters to shift!

Fact from fiction, truth from diction let me 1st put my hip waders on it is about to get real thick in here. Assuming that is a legit clip made in the Middle East could it be said that the makers or supporters of the clip are evil, deplorable people? If you see it from the filter of the West it is. But is it no different than the South less than a century ago? Where young kids were taken out to see another human strung up by the neck or burned on a stake then go out to play ball the rest of the afternoon? To the child it seem all normal “those people” were not really full people so it wasn’t really murder. So, back to the makers of the clip, if you read the words one of the carouses sang over and over was how can childhood have any meaning if they have no country? If any one of us was in their shoes and daily we see what we believe is our home being occupied and family killed with the help of the Free World’s leader coupled with the fact that the god you have faith in commands giving your life in service to get rid of the infidels it could be easy to see why those kids see nothing wrong in it. Take another avenue where clans or tribes were cannibals there children grew up not thinking twice that is was gory, ghoulish, etc to digest human flesh, that is what they knew since they understood their tongue. I can’t get inside the thoughts exactly of how easy they seem to be to let their children (hopefully when they grow up) die as a martyr but I can somewhat see their motivation getting there.

@Hypocrisy_Central
But all the world committing the same misdeed does nothing to make it any less of a misdeed, and everyone being guilty of it doesn’t mean the ones still doing it shouldn’t stop that right now.

Indoctrination is a tricky issue because it’s impossible not to raise a child with ideas of one sort or another, but I think it’s still possible to distinguish, in a way that anyone could agree on, between ideas that are okay and ideas that constitute intellectual child abuse.
And I think this sort of thing would definitely be on the bad side of such a standard.

@Fyrius ” But all the world committing the same misdeed does nothing to make it any less of a misdeed, and everyone being guilty of it doesn’t mean the ones still doing it shouldn’t stop that right now.” That is part of my point exactly. To be guilty of something someone else would have to be able to enforce that fact you were guilty and affect a penalty for that action. The Myans sacrificed people so that the harvest was plentiful and to them it was quite normal, it wasn’t until they were subdued by the Spaniards and others from Europe that they were told their way of life was heinous and wrong. Same if we were both raised on an island were cannibalism was normal, and even expected of whomever thought to be chief one day; you vanquished your enemies and you ate them. Who is to say it is wrong unless you had the power to stop of punish them from that activity? In generic fashion aside from religion right or wrong rest in the might of those who can say if it is or not. If you have the might you can dictate policy.

Fact from conviction, truth from depiction and scope from constriction: you have a point if you say judgement of right and wrong is a subjective thing, although I don’t agree with the way you’re phrasing it here. Power does not define what’s right and wrong, only whose judgements of right and wrong are followed.

But subjective needn’t mean up to anyone to decide. You and I may disagree on whether Texan steak or Beijing duck is tastier, but we will agree that either is tastier than manure, and for all the cultural variation in the world, insisting manure is also tasty won’t get you hired as a cook anywhere. Being human, we all have at least mostly the same mouths.

And we also all have at least mostly the same basic mental machinery. And compassion may be my Beijing duck where justice is your Texan steak, but people you love being violently killed is manure to anyone.

Chauvinism aside – that is to say, if it’s about someone else somewhere else – would any sane human being contest the judgements that war is bad, that by extension filling children’s heads with ideas that sustain war is bad, that reason is good and that raising children to be reasonable people is better for everyone than raising them to be dogmatic extremists full of deeply rooted, indiscriminate hatred and contempt for an entire people?

Oh @Fyrius – I do love you. (Strictly platonically, of course, since I am probably old enough to be your Bubby.)

@janbb
Your strictly platonic affection is reciprocated. :)