I can't help it. In the 60's we were taught to "question authority," but I think I was born to question popular opinion. Hence my probably foolish need to wonder how we who aspire to be tolerant and understanding choose to apportion those qualities of mercy.
When someone commits a hateful, despicable act, we usually respond by asking what it was in that person's life that drove him to such desperate measures. Was the school shooter the victim of bullies? Did the man attack his former workplace because he had recently been fired? Was the Islamic terrorist driven over the edge by his country's repressive policies and grinding poverty, or by American bombings, or by Hollywood's aggressive immorality? Was the abuser himself abused as a child? Why do they hate us? Without justifying ill behavior, collectively we seem to feel a need to understand, to mitigate, even to excuse the otherwise inexplicable actions of our fellow human beings.
Except.
I'll admit to have been having far too much fun with our 10 grandchildren to catch more than a few, fleeting references to recent news. What I hear disturbs me almost as much as the events themselves. Suddenly there seems to be a class of actions and ideologies—and a thousand times worse, of people—from whom we are withholding any attempt at understanding.
That the ideologies of white supremacy and Nazism are heinous I will heartily agree. But I will not, I cannot, condemn them more than a hundred other appalling ideologies that our society seems much less anxious to repudiate. It isn't honest, it isn't fair, and it isn't right.
Hello Linda: I'd like to see a list of the other appalling ideologies you have in mind before I say anything.
I think everyone can fill in the blanks well enough for himself, and it will be more meaningful that way.
In case you really are at a loss, Diane, one I can think of (that is basically the same as slavery) is the human trafficking that is widespread even in America today.
Human trafficking is an ideology? I thought it was a product of money-making greed!
All morally-accountable actions are a product of ideology. Human trafficking could not exist without an ideology that views its victims as subhuman, just as the Nazis' ideology did with their victims.
An ideology is anything people use to justify their actions. First comes selfishness, which produces greed, and then comes the act of human trafficking. An ideology is then created to justify the act. Unless you want to say that selfishness is an ideology in itself...
No, I believe the ideology comes first. All our actions spring from the view we have of the world.
