The toddler thing wasn’t a red herring at all. It was extreme case reasoning. I didn’t even suggest the toddler was Russian or that the line or reasoning I was using only applies to certain places, so unless you think that I wish to infantilize literally every person in existence, using that example wasn’t that either.
The point I was trying to make with it was simply that societies (as a whole), are fundamentally, definitionally I’d even say, incapable of making choices. This is because societies are not people. They are made up of people, but a society is not a person unto itself.
A society isn’t even really an organization, because it has no mechanism for collective decision making. There are often organizations associated with a society, such as governments, but these do not have perfect overlap as not everyone in a societypeople generally be subject to the one associated with that society, nor do their decisions often align perfectly with those of many of the people within that society, nor do all societies even have one (if you wish to use Russia as the example, there are Russians that live outside the jurisdiction of the Russian state, Russians that disagree with, actively fight against, or simply do not know about that state, and for that matter people from other societies that do live within the jurisdiction of that state.)
What societies are is simply a box to sort people into, because people think in terms of labels. The nature of human psychology is such that we need to put everything, even ourselves and others, into various boxes, to understand who we are and what everyone and everything around us is. I bring up dehumanization though, because humans do not fit perfectly, into any of these, and insisting that the boxes do describe people perfectly dehumanizes them. It strips them of their individual differences and declares that anyone who can be fit in a certain box, is interchangeable with another who does. Insisting that a society can be responsible for something does just this, it ignores what any individual person has or has not done and reduces them to merely what language they speak or what culture they’re associated with or what set of arbitrary lines on a map they were born inside.
If Russia is to be the example, then I can use a personal one: I have a childhood friend from Russia. He hasn’t lived there since around elementary school age, but he was born there, has a mother who grew up there, speaks the language, used to visit family there (for obvious reasons he hasn’t been back in quite a number of years, but still). He considers himself Russian still, and ticks enough of the boxes that I’d imagine most people would accept that. Am I to go to him, ask him “Why did you invade Ukraine?” and then demand he face some kind of penalty? What was he supposed to have done differently? all, he hadn’t any say in the decision to seize Crimea and then invade the rest of Ukraine, he’s never served in Russia’s military or sent them aid, never worked their factories or even any kind of job there.
If 85 percent of Russians have done something worthy of punishment, or Israelis, or Americans, or Chinese or any other group of people you can think of, and you have the means, then by all means, punish that 85 percent. But why does the responsibility of those people transfer onto the other 15 percent? Because it is logistically easier than trying to figure out what each individual person has done?
If I can say “the people invading Ukraine are Russians, therefore Russian society is to blame and every Russian person can be punished” or “the people conducting a genocide in Gaza are Israelis, therefore Israeli society is to blame and every Israeli can be punished” (like the original post was talking about and which I disagreed with), can I also say “The people invading Ukraine are humans, therefore human society is to blame and every human person can be punished”? If not, is it because that box is too big, and includes people who are not involved? And if so, why can I not then say that about the Russian box, and insist on choosing instead the box that contains only the people actually responsible, even if the latter box should the majority of the former? If having the majority of the bigger box
I know that I’m not really very good at getting my points across, the frustration of that is why I tend to take hours responding to things, trying to phrase what I’m trying to say in different ways in the hope that at least one of them is clear to any given person, but this is one of those things that just seems so fundamental and blatantly obvious to me that I honestly struggle to understand how it is even possible to disagree with it, let alone to appear to take offense to it somehow (at least, that is the tone I get from some of your replies).
I appreciate the time you’ve taken to reply and your good faith approach even though we greatly disagree.
Everything I’ve referenced concerns russia, in my OP I mentioned that I have minimal first hand life experience with Israel/Palestine (never lived there, don’t speak local languages) and that makes me a bit more cautious beyond condemning Israel’s immense attrocities against the Palestinians and the low-life, stupid behaviour of Hamas.
You mention labels and human psychology. But what you see as mere labels has enormous real world impact. Would it be wrong to say UK’s society outlook on colonialism has evolved between 1890 and the present day; that in 1890 it was a hardcore imperialist society and this is not true today. Using your manners of thinking, UK was never an imperialist/colonialist society - which is clearly actually false.
For people to make choices, they have to have incentives. If we allow them to identify with only the “good” things in a given culture (hypothetically russian literature) and state that the bad things (genocidal imperialism) are someone else’s fault, you are only incentivizing their worse possible instincts.
The existence of russians opposed to the current regime in of itself is not a silver bullet. Much of the opposition actually supported the annexation of Crimea. Near universal support for imperialism (and very strong support for genocidal imeprilaisn) is a cultural problem with russia, one that individuals need to change.
They are not going to change if you always (in any and all cases) view such issues as “a mere box”. Try speaking Ukrainian in the occupied territories, you won’t think this is a mere box or label.
And you definitely won’t think it is just some individuals who are abusing you and they have nothing to do with prevailing attitudes in russian society.
Imagine if your friend felt a connection to the Austro-Hungarian empire. Are you saying you wouldn’t see an issue with that considering the nature of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (dominance of independent nations by an emiperial family)? “It’s no big deal! He just has good associations with a monarchic empire.”
Now people reflexively refuse to take a critical look at the nature of russia. Some of it is fear of admitting to be on the wrong side of history (no one wants to be seen as an enabler of brutal imperialism). Some of it is ignorance (Have you ever heard of the Komi republic within russia? Do you know how their language is treated and what the dynamics are for Komi language knowledge ? What do you think the result will be of asking a local court to hold proceedings in the Komi language). Some of it is greed, not only among politicians, regular people too (see the lack of real reactions to the occupation of Moldova, genocide in Chechnya, invasion of Georgia, annexation of Crimea and invasion of Donbas).
The 15% are very much responsible for supporting, enabling and legitimising russian genocidal imperialism. Note that the survey results refer to Ukraine. The situation with Chechnya is far worse with many “good russians” openly saying that Ukraine and Chechnya are not comparable and they are in the right for genociding the Chechens (for “opposition minded russians” it is strange that they believe russian gov data that denied that 5% or the civilian population was killed in Chechnya).
Of course I take offense with your approach. On a practical level (outcomes, not necessarily your intentions), you are giving them go ahead for more russian attrocities.
But the real irony is that your approach is actually harming the russians. They are not going to change if you keep white-washing their support imperialism and treating them like children who are incapable of taking responsibility for their actions.
The toddler thing wasn’t a red herring at all. It was extreme case reasoning. I didn’t even suggest the toddler was Russian or that the line or reasoning I was using only applies to certain places, so unless you think that I wish to infantilize literally every person in existence, using that example wasn’t that either.
The point I was trying to make with it was simply that societies (as a whole), are fundamentally, definitionally I’d even say, incapable of making choices. This is because societies are not people. They are made up of people, but a society is not a person unto itself.
A society isn’t even really an organization, because it has no mechanism for collective decision making. There are often organizations associated with a society, such as governments, but these do not have perfect overlap as not everyone in a societypeople generally be subject to the one associated with that society, nor do their decisions often align perfectly with those of many of the people within that society, nor do all societies even have one (if you wish to use Russia as the example, there are Russians that live outside the jurisdiction of the Russian state, Russians that disagree with, actively fight against, or simply do not know about that state, and for that matter people from other societies that do live within the jurisdiction of that state.)
What societies are is simply a box to sort people into, because people think in terms of labels. The nature of human psychology is such that we need to put everything, even ourselves and others, into various boxes, to understand who we are and what everyone and everything around us is. I bring up dehumanization though, because humans do not fit perfectly, into any of these, and insisting that the boxes do describe people perfectly dehumanizes them. It strips them of their individual differences and declares that anyone who can be fit in a certain box, is interchangeable with another who does. Insisting that a society can be responsible for something does just this, it ignores what any individual person has or has not done and reduces them to merely what language they speak or what culture they’re associated with or what set of arbitrary lines on a map they were born inside.
If Russia is to be the example, then I can use a personal one: I have a childhood friend from Russia. He hasn’t lived there since around elementary school age, but he was born there, has a mother who grew up there, speaks the language, used to visit family there (for obvious reasons he hasn’t been back in quite a number of years, but still). He considers himself Russian still, and ticks enough of the boxes that I’d imagine most people would accept that. Am I to go to him, ask him “Why did you invade Ukraine?” and then demand he face some kind of penalty? What was he supposed to have done differently? all, he hadn’t any say in the decision to seize Crimea and then invade the rest of Ukraine, he’s never served in Russia’s military or sent them aid, never worked their factories or even any kind of job there.
If 85 percent of Russians have done something worthy of punishment, or Israelis, or Americans, or Chinese or any other group of people you can think of, and you have the means, then by all means, punish that 85 percent. But why does the responsibility of those people transfer onto the other 15 percent? Because it is logistically easier than trying to figure out what each individual person has done?
If I can say “the people invading Ukraine are Russians, therefore Russian society is to blame and every Russian person can be punished” or “the people conducting a genocide in Gaza are Israelis, therefore Israeli society is to blame and every Israeli can be punished” (like the original post was talking about and which I disagreed with), can I also say “The people invading Ukraine are humans, therefore human society is to blame and every human person can be punished”? If not, is it because that box is too big, and includes people who are not involved? And if so, why can I not then say that about the Russian box, and insist on choosing instead the box that contains only the people actually responsible, even if the latter box should the majority of the former? If having the majority of the bigger box
I know that I’m not really very good at getting my points across, the frustration of that is why I tend to take hours responding to things, trying to phrase what I’m trying to say in different ways in the hope that at least one of them is clear to any given person, but this is one of those things that just seems so fundamental and blatantly obvious to me that I honestly struggle to understand how it is even possible to disagree with it, let alone to appear to take offense to it somehow (at least, that is the tone I get from some of your replies).
I appreciate the time you’ve taken to reply and your good faith approach even though we greatly disagree.
Everything I’ve referenced concerns russia, in my OP I mentioned that I have minimal first hand life experience with Israel/Palestine (never lived there, don’t speak local languages) and that makes me a bit more cautious beyond condemning Israel’s immense attrocities against the Palestinians and the low-life, stupid behaviour of Hamas.
You mention labels and human psychology. But what you see as mere labels has enormous real world impact. Would it be wrong to say UK’s society outlook on colonialism has evolved between 1890 and the present day; that in 1890 it was a hardcore imperialist society and this is not true today. Using your manners of thinking, UK was never an imperialist/colonialist society - which is clearly actually false.
For people to make choices, they have to have incentives. If we allow them to identify with only the “good” things in a given culture (hypothetically russian literature) and state that the bad things (genocidal imperialism) are someone else’s fault, you are only incentivizing their worse possible instincts.
The existence of russians opposed to the current regime in of itself is not a silver bullet. Much of the opposition actually supported the annexation of Crimea. Near universal support for imperialism (and very strong support for genocidal imeprilaisn) is a cultural problem with russia, one that individuals need to change.
They are not going to change if you always (in any and all cases) view such issues as “a mere box”. Try speaking Ukrainian in the occupied territories, you won’t think this is a mere box or label.
And you definitely won’t think it is just some individuals who are abusing you and they have nothing to do with prevailing attitudes in russian society.
Imagine if your friend felt a connection to the Austro-Hungarian empire. Are you saying you wouldn’t see an issue with that considering the nature of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (dominance of independent nations by an emiperial family)? “It’s no big deal! He just has good associations with a monarchic empire.”
Now people reflexively refuse to take a critical look at the nature of russia. Some of it is fear of admitting to be on the wrong side of history (no one wants to be seen as an enabler of brutal imperialism). Some of it is ignorance (Have you ever heard of the Komi republic within russia? Do you know how their language is treated and what the dynamics are for Komi language knowledge ? What do you think the result will be of asking a local court to hold proceedings in the Komi language). Some of it is greed, not only among politicians, regular people too (see the lack of real reactions to the occupation of Moldova, genocide in Chechnya, invasion of Georgia, annexation of Crimea and invasion of Donbas).
The 15% are very much responsible for supporting, enabling and legitimising russian genocidal imperialism. Note that the survey results refer to Ukraine. The situation with Chechnya is far worse with many “good russians” openly saying that Ukraine and Chechnya are not comparable and they are in the right for genociding the Chechens (for “opposition minded russians” it is strange that they believe russian gov data that denied that 5% or the civilian population was killed in Chechnya).
Of course I take offense with your approach. On a practical level (outcomes, not necessarily your intentions), you are giving them go ahead for more russian attrocities.
But the real irony is that your approach is actually harming the russians. They are not going to change if you keep white-washing their support imperialism and treating them like children who are incapable of taking responsibility for their actions.