It’s some kind of crazy ethical blindness that most Homo sapiens seem to have for some reason, where “our guys” are human beings, but arbitrarily chosen foreigners deserve whatever they get
Fixed it for you.
And the reason is evolved psychological instincts with pretty obvious selection benefits.
I don’t think that’s an accurate correction. Because America is the current hegemonic power Americans can get away with feeling that other nations aren’t “real” in the sense the USA are. For example when considering some hypothetical situation that would concern the whole planet an American might only consider how the USA would react, while anyone else in the same situation would in addition to the reaction of their own nation at the very leasts also have to consider how the USA reacts, and might even consider other nations since their situation is more obviously symmetrical to their own.
Because America is the current hegemonic power Americans can get away with feeling that other nations aren’t “real” in the sense the USA are.
I’m afraid I don’t know what this means.
For example when considering some hypothetical situation that would concern the whole planet an American might only consider how the USA would react, while anyone else in the same situation would in addition to the reaction of their own nation at the very leasts also have to consider how the USA reacts, and might even consider other nations since their situation is more obviously symmetrical to their own.
There might be pragmatic realities that force non-Americans to consider the reactions of foreigners more than Americans must. Americans have two oceans and the world’s strongest military to keep a lot foreign troubles far away, other people do not. But this isn’t evidence that Americans care less about foreigners than those from other countries do. It sounds like you’re talking about a political blindness instead of an ethical blindness. Besides, there is equally good reason to think America’s hegemonic status makes Americans more worried about foreign goings-on since American lives and American business concerns are more often at stake.
Not “real” is the best description I have. You could say having the same sort of attitude towards other nations you might have towards Oz, Middle Earth or the Empire from Star Wars even though you intellectually know that they really exist, but that only comes close to what I mean. I must stress that not all Americans have this attitude, but some seem to do, and thats enough to influence the discourse.
But this isn’t evidence that Americans care less about foreigners than those from other countries do. It sounds like you’re talking about a political blindness instead of an ethical blindness.
I was thinking more of e. g. first contact situations in SF stories and things like that, not necessarily normal international politics, but I think it extends to all fields: Domestic politics (the amount and the kind of consideration the fact that a policy seems to work well somewhere else gets), pop culture, sports, science, language learning, wherever one might consider other nations Americans have more leeway not to do so. This doesn’t by necessity have to extend to ethical considerations, but when cousin_it observes that it appears to it seems inappropriate to me to “correct” that out.
I must stress that not all Americans have this attitude, but some seem to do, and thats enough to influence the discourse.
Exactly zero evidence has been presented that Americans have this ill-defined attitude at a higher rate that non-Americans.
wherever one might consider other nations Americans have more leeway not to do so.
No reason given to think this is the case on balance.
This doesn’t by necessity have to extend to ethical considerations, but when cousin_it observes that it appears to it seems inappropriate to me to “correct” that out.
The obvious and straight forward interpretation of cousin it’s comment was that he was referring to American nationalism. A real and quite common phenomenon in which Americans don’t give a lick about people who don’t live their country (in civilized places this is referred to as racism). I’ve met plenty of people with this view. It is a disgusting and immoral attitude. That said, it is a near ubiquitous attitude. Humans have been killing humans from other groups and not giving a shit for as long as there have been humans. We’re good at it. Really good. We do it like it’s our job. In no way is this unique to residents or citizens of the United States of America. If cousin_it meant something else he can clarify. He’s been commenting elsewhere throughout this conversation anyway.
It is a disgusting and immoral attitude. That said, it is a near ubiquitous attitude. Humans have been killing humans from other groups and not giving a shit for as long as there have been humans. We’re good at it. Really good. We do it like it’s our job. In no way is this unique to residents or citizens of the United States of America. If cousin_it meant something else he can clarify. He’s been commenting elsewhere throughout this conversation anyway.
Yes! Thank you! Finally, a human user says what I’ve been trying to say all along! (See for example here.)
On my first visit to Earth (or perhaps the first visit of one of my copies before a reconciliation), my reaction was (translated from the language of my logs):
“The Alpha species [i.e. humans] inflicts disutility on its members based on relative skin redness. I’m silver. Exit!”
The obvious and straight forward interpretation of cousin it’s comment was that he was referring to American nationalism. A real and quiet common phenomenon in which Americans don’t give a lick about people who don’t live their country (in civilized places this is referred to as racism). I’ve met plenty of people with this view. It is a disgusting and immoral attitude. That said, it is a near ubiquitous attitude. Humans have been killing humans from other groups and not giving a shit for as long as there have been humans. We’re good at it. Really good. We do it like it’s our job. In no way is this unique to residents or citizens of the United States of America. If cousin_it meant something else he can clarify. He’s been commenting elsewhere throughout this conversation anyway.
While all what you say about nationalism is true It’s not obvious to me that it explains what cousin_it was talking about, at least not to its full extent. Degradation of other people through nationalism usually evokes hate (“those damned X!”), while the linked comment seemed too cheerful for that, it’s not like it encouraged to “help show it to those stinkin’ Arabs” or anything like that. As if the fact that someone might be hurt simply didn’t occur to them. There has been plenty of that in other historical cases of nationalism, but I think usually only in similarly asymmetrical situations. Nationalism in symmetrical situations seems to be of the plain hate kind.
Degradation of other people through nationalism usually evokes hate (“those damned X!”), while the linked comment seemed to cheerful for that, it’s not like it encouraged to “help show it to those stinkin’ Arabs” or anything like that, like the fact that someone might be hurt simply didn’t occur to them.
Nationalism almost always displays as willful ignorance or apathy about the condition of those outside the nation. It’s nation-centrism, in other words. Hatred is an extreme case (thus the moniker “ultra-nationalism”).
Nationalism in symmetrical situations seems to be of the plain hate kind.
This just isn’t true. At all. I’m not even sure where you would get it. There are nationalists all around the world who do not express hate toward other nations, even in cases of power symmetries.
More importantly: Why are we arguing about this? Cousin_it isn’t some old philosopher or public intellectual who we can’t reach for clarification. If he wants to correct my understanding of his comment let him do it.
Sorry for taking so much time to reply. FAWS is right, I’m not saying Americans hate foreigners. It’s more like a blindness or deafness. See my link above to the “amazing and unique experience” guy. The ethical angle of the situation simply doesn’t occur to him, it’s as if Iraqis were videogame characters. America’s fighting an aggressive war and killed umpteen thousand people?… uh, okay man, I got a career to advance and I wanna go someplace exotic, like expand my horizons and shit. I’ve never heard anything like that from Russians or anyone else except Americans, though I’d be the first to agree that we Russians are quite nationalistic.
Nationalism almost always displays as willful ignorance or apathy about the condition of those outside the nation.
The original disagreement wasn’t about the term nationalism (and I never claimed that nationalism didn’t explain it, only that what you said about nationalism up to that point didn’t), so you seem to be arguing my point here: For the reasons I described it’s easier for Americans to be “ignorant about the condition of those outside the nation”.
This just isn’t true. At all. I’m not even sure where you would get it. There are nationalists all around the world who do not express hate toward other nations, even in cases of power symmetries.
You can’t keep hurting someone and not even notice you do in a symmetrical conflict because they will hurt you back, and then you will want revenge in turn.
More importantly: Why are we arguing about this?
You seem to be of the opinion that you can’t even coherently/rationally (?) think a certain thing and I disagree. That disagreement is independent of the question whether anyone had actually been thinking that.
EDIT: Nation-centrism is close to what I meant with not feeling that other nations are “real”.
For the reasons I described it’s easier for Americans to be “ignorant about the condition of those outside the nation”.
“willful” ignorance… Do we really need to spend time distinguishing nationalism from the fact that the US gets the NBA?
You can’t keep hurting someone and not even notice you do in a symmetrical conflict because they will hurt you back, and then you will want revenge in turn.
So what you want to claim is that asymmetrical conflict is more likely than symetrical conflict to lead to people in one country being ignorant of the animosity against them in the other country. This is plausible though several counterexamples come to mind and I’m not sure it applies since a large portion of American nationalists appear to conceive of the conflict as a symmetrical one (this has been a minor issue in American politics, of course). I’m not sure I see how this issue relates to nationalism exactly and what it’s relevance is. But as you can see below I’m not sure I understand what you’re claiming at this point.
You seem to be of the opinion that you can’t even coherently/rationally (?) think a certain thing and I disagree. That disagreement is independent of the question whether anyone had actually been thinking that.
WHAA? This is incredibly vague and confusing. I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.
“willful” ignorance… Do we really need to spend time distinguishing nationalism from the fact that the US gets the NBA?
And the fact that you neither need to make any significant sacrifices nor engage in double-think doesn’t make willful ignorance easier?
So what you want to claim is that asymmetrical conflict is more likely than symetrical conflict to lead to people in one country being ignorant of the animosity against them in the other country.
Not really. The term nationalism is unhelpful. There seem to be at least two kinds, the we’re-great-don’t-care-about-anyone-else nation-centric one, and unite-against-the-enemy-us-or-them kind. My point is that being a hegemonic power facilitates the nation-centric kind. The sub-point that a hot symmetric conflict turns nationalism into the second kind pretty much by necessity even if it started out as the first kind. An asymmetric conflict of course allows either kind in the stronger party, presumably that’s what your counter-examples show.
WHAA? This is incredibly vague and confusing. I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.
Presumably you detected a feature that made the post knowably correctable. If that feature wasn’t an incoherent or irrational (in light of further evidence you have available) opinion, what was it?
A real and quiet common phenomenon in which Americans don’t give a lick about people who don’t live their country (in civilized places this is referred to as racism).
That sounds like nationalism rather than racism to me. The country you live in has only a loose correlation with the colour of your skin. If people favoured countries which had a strong majority of people of a particular ethnicity that might be evidence for racism.
I was speaking loosely in the parenthetical. Nationalism has a strong tendency to manifest as racism and racism has a similar tendency to manifest as nationalism. They’re highly correlated but yes, conceptually distinct.
No reason given to think this is the case on balance.
Because I thought it would be obvious enough.
Americans are less likely to learn foreign languages, most Americans don’t even have a passport, it’s easier to write a science paper without referencing any non-American research (not that I think this done at a significant rate, but the equivalent would be unthinkable elsewhere), foreign movies are generally either ignored or remade (and set in the USA if possible), foreign trade is a smaller percentage of GDP than just about any other developed nation, it’s possible to “buy American” for a greater range of products than the equivalent anywhere else, America has the top leagues for the sports it cares about (it’s not just that America cares for different sports than the rest of the world, for almost all countries the top level of the sport that country cares most about is at least in part played elsewhere so a soccer fan in e. g. Romania has to pay attention to the English Premier League, the Spanish Premiera Divison etc. [and even the English and Spanish fans have incentive to pay attention to each others league because they are at roughly equal level and the top teams regularly play each other]. If America cared about soccer the top league would be there so Americans still wouldn’t have any reason to pay attention to foreign sports).
I think most of those things could be expected regardless of whether America has any such putative hegemonic status. Most Americans don’t have passports because they can’t afford to travel to another continent, and the number is rising now that passports are required to visit other countries in North America. Getting a passport in the US is a fairly annoying, expensive process, so I’m not surprised most people haven’t bothered. Ditto with the foreign languages—most Americans don’t meet or talk to people who don’t speak American.
I haven’t been able to find a source online—do most Chinese people speak foreign languages and have passports? Are they required?
Most Americans don’t have passports because they can’t afford to travel to another continent, and the number is rising now that passports are required to visit other countries in North America. Getting a passport in the US is a fairly annoying, expensive process, so I’m not surprised most people haven’t bothered.
Getting a passport is a bother everywhere, the point is that Americans don’t really need a passport because their country is huge, rich and powerful and they can take a vacation in whatever climate they like without ever leaving their borders. People in other developed nations would have to make much greater sacrifices to never travel abroad.
Ditto with the foreign languages—most Americans don’t meet or talk to people who don’t speak American.
That’s exactly my point! They can do that without missing all that much, unlike most of the planet.
do most Chinese people speak foreign languages
IIRC compulsory foreign language instruction (mostly in English) starts in third grade, and many educated Chinese learn a third/fourth language later. For many Chinese Mandarin is effectively a L2 language so they know their native dialect, Mandarin and some English. The state of English learning is mostly horrible and only a minority can communicate effectively, but I’d think that Chinese on average speak better English than non-native-speaker Americans speak Spanish and the difficulty is much greater.
I’m not all that clear about the passport situation/foreign travel and China is a bad example anyway because it is itself an enormous country and very “nation-centric”, but a huge number of Chinese study abroad, while there is no comparable reason for Americans to do so because they already have many of the most prestigious universities.
Why was this voted down? Was there anything in this post that isn’t either objectively true (Americans have more leeway to ignore other nations) or clearly marked as speculation (“seem to”)? Is it inherently irrational to consider the hypothesis that cousin_it’s observation was meant exactly as stated, and then to speculate about what might be behind this observation?
Fixed it for you.
And the reason is evolved psychological instincts with pretty obvious selection benefits.
I don’t think that’s an accurate correction. Because America is the current hegemonic power Americans can get away with feeling that other nations aren’t “real” in the sense the USA are. For example when considering some hypothetical situation that would concern the whole planet an American might only consider how the USA would react, while anyone else in the same situation would in addition to the reaction of their own nation at the very leasts also have to consider how the USA reacts, and might even consider other nations since their situation is more obviously symmetrical to their own.
I’m afraid I don’t know what this means.
There might be pragmatic realities that force non-Americans to consider the reactions of foreigners more than Americans must. Americans have two oceans and the world’s strongest military to keep a lot foreign troubles far away, other people do not. But this isn’t evidence that Americans care less about foreigners than those from other countries do. It sounds like you’re talking about a political blindness instead of an ethical blindness. Besides, there is equally good reason to think America’s hegemonic status makes Americans more worried about foreign goings-on since American lives and American business concerns are more often at stake.
Not “real” is the best description I have. You could say having the same sort of attitude towards other nations you might have towards Oz, Middle Earth or the Empire from Star Wars even though you intellectually know that they really exist, but that only comes close to what I mean. I must stress that not all Americans have this attitude, but some seem to do, and thats enough to influence the discourse.
I was thinking more of e. g. first contact situations in SF stories and things like that, not necessarily normal international politics, but I think it extends to all fields: Domestic politics (the amount and the kind of consideration the fact that a policy seems to work well somewhere else gets), pop culture, sports, science, language learning, wherever one might consider other nations Americans have more leeway not to do so. This doesn’t by necessity have to extend to ethical considerations, but when cousin_it observes that it appears to it seems inappropriate to me to “correct” that out.
Exactly zero evidence has been presented that Americans have this ill-defined attitude at a higher rate that non-Americans.
No reason given to think this is the case on balance.
The obvious and straight forward interpretation of cousin it’s comment was that he was referring to American nationalism. A real and quite common phenomenon in which Americans don’t give a lick about people who don’t live their country (in civilized places this is referred to as racism). I’ve met plenty of people with this view. It is a disgusting and immoral attitude. That said, it is a near ubiquitous attitude. Humans have been killing humans from other groups and not giving a shit for as long as there have been humans. We’re good at it. Really good. We do it like it’s our job. In no way is this unique to residents or citizens of the United States of America. If cousin_it meant something else he can clarify. He’s been commenting elsewhere throughout this conversation anyway.
(Not my downvote, btw)
Yes! Thank you! Finally, a human user says what I’ve been trying to say all along! (See for example here.)
On my first visit to Earth (or perhaps the first visit of one of my copies before a reconciliation), my reaction was (translated from the language of my logs):
“The Alpha species [i.e. humans] inflicts disutility on its members based on relative skin redness. I’m silver. Exit!”
While all what you say about nationalism is true It’s not obvious to me that it explains what cousin_it was talking about, at least not to its full extent. Degradation of other people through nationalism usually evokes hate (“those damned X!”), while the linked comment seemed too cheerful for that, it’s not like it encouraged to “help show it to those stinkin’ Arabs” or anything like that. As if the fact that someone might be hurt simply didn’t occur to them. There has been plenty of that in other historical cases of nationalism, but I think usually only in similarly asymmetrical situations. Nationalism in symmetrical situations seems to be of the plain hate kind.
Nationalism almost always displays as willful ignorance or apathy about the condition of those outside the nation. It’s nation-centrism, in other words. Hatred is an extreme case (thus the moniker “ultra-nationalism”).
This just isn’t true. At all. I’m not even sure where you would get it. There are nationalists all around the world who do not express hate toward other nations, even in cases of power symmetries.
More importantly: Why are we arguing about this? Cousin_it isn’t some old philosopher or public intellectual who we can’t reach for clarification. If he wants to correct my understanding of his comment let him do it.
Sorry for taking so much time to reply. FAWS is right, I’m not saying Americans hate foreigners. It’s more like a blindness or deafness. See my link above to the “amazing and unique experience” guy. The ethical angle of the situation simply doesn’t occur to him, it’s as if Iraqis were videogame characters. America’s fighting an aggressive war and killed umpteen thousand people?… uh, okay man, I got a career to advance and I wanna go someplace exotic, like expand my horizons and shit. I’ve never heard anything like that from Russians or anyone else except Americans, though I’d be the first to agree that we Russians are quite nationalistic.
The original disagreement wasn’t about the term nationalism (and I never claimed that nationalism didn’t explain it, only that what you said about nationalism up to that point didn’t), so you seem to be arguing my point here: For the reasons I described it’s easier for Americans to be “ignorant about the condition of those outside the nation”.
You can’t keep hurting someone and not even notice you do in a symmetrical conflict because they will hurt you back, and then you will want revenge in turn.
You seem to be of the opinion that you can’t even coherently/rationally (?) think a certain thing and I disagree. That disagreement is independent of the question whether anyone had actually been thinking that.
EDIT: Nation-centrism is close to what I meant with not feeling that other nations are “real”.
“willful” ignorance… Do we really need to spend time distinguishing nationalism from the fact that the US gets the NBA?
So what you want to claim is that asymmetrical conflict is more likely than symetrical conflict to lead to people in one country being ignorant of the animosity against them in the other country. This is plausible though several counterexamples come to mind and I’m not sure it applies since a large portion of American nationalists appear to conceive of the conflict as a symmetrical one (this has been a minor issue in American politics, of course). I’m not sure I see how this issue relates to nationalism exactly and what it’s relevance is. But as you can see below I’m not sure I understand what you’re claiming at this point.
WHAA? This is incredibly vague and confusing. I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.
And the fact that you neither need to make any significant sacrifices nor engage in double-think doesn’t make willful ignorance easier?
Not really. The term nationalism is unhelpful. There seem to be at least two kinds, the we’re-great-don’t-care-about-anyone-else nation-centric one, and unite-against-the-enemy-us-or-them kind. My point is that being a hegemonic power facilitates the nation-centric kind. The sub-point that a hot symmetric conflict turns nationalism into the second kind pretty much by necessity even if it started out as the first kind. An asymmetric conflict of course allows either kind in the stronger party, presumably that’s what your counter-examples show.
Presumably you detected a feature that made the post knowably correctable. If that feature wasn’t an incoherent or irrational (in light of further evidence you have available) opinion, what was it?
That sounds like nationalism rather than racism to me. The country you live in has only a loose correlation with the colour of your skin. If people favoured countries which had a strong majority of people of a particular ethnicity that might be evidence for racism.
I was speaking loosely in the parenthetical. Nationalism has a strong tendency to manifest as racism and racism has a similar tendency to manifest as nationalism. They’re highly correlated but yes, conceptually distinct.
Because I thought it would be obvious enough. Americans are less likely to learn foreign languages, most Americans don’t even have a passport, it’s easier to write a science paper without referencing any non-American research (not that I think this done at a significant rate, but the equivalent would be unthinkable elsewhere), foreign movies are generally either ignored or remade (and set in the USA if possible), foreign trade is a smaller percentage of GDP than just about any other developed nation, it’s possible to “buy American” for a greater range of products than the equivalent anywhere else, America has the top leagues for the sports it cares about (it’s not just that America cares for different sports than the rest of the world, for almost all countries the top level of the sport that country cares most about is at least in part played elsewhere so a soccer fan in e. g. Romania has to pay attention to the English Premier League, the Spanish Premiera Divison etc. [and even the English and Spanish fans have incentive to pay attention to each others league because they are at roughly equal level and the top teams regularly play each other]. If America cared about soccer the top league would be there so Americans still wouldn’t have any reason to pay attention to foreign sports).
I think most of those things could be expected regardless of whether America has any such putative hegemonic status. Most Americans don’t have passports because they can’t afford to travel to another continent, and the number is rising now that passports are required to visit other countries in North America. Getting a passport in the US is a fairly annoying, expensive process, so I’m not surprised most people haven’t bothered. Ditto with the foreign languages—most Americans don’t meet or talk to people who don’t speak American.
I haven’t been able to find a source online—do most Chinese people speak foreign languages and have passports? Are they required?
Getting a passport is a bother everywhere, the point is that Americans don’t really need a passport because their country is huge, rich and powerful and they can take a vacation in whatever climate they like without ever leaving their borders. People in other developed nations would have to make much greater sacrifices to never travel abroad.
That’s exactly my point! They can do that without missing all that much, unlike most of the planet.
IIRC compulsory foreign language instruction (mostly in English) starts in third grade, and many educated Chinese learn a third/fourth language later. For many Chinese Mandarin is effectively a L2 language so they know their native dialect, Mandarin and some English. The state of English learning is mostly horrible and only a minority can communicate effectively, but I’d think that Chinese on average speak better English than non-native-speaker Americans speak Spanish and the difficulty is much greater.
I’m not all that clear about the passport situation/foreign travel and China is a bad example anyway because it is itself an enormous country and very “nation-centric”, but a huge number of Chinese study abroad, while there is no comparable reason for Americans to do so because they already have many of the most prestigious universities.
Again, why the down-vote? Is there any factual error or is giving evidence when asked not welcome here?
Why was this voted down? Was there anything in this post that isn’t either objectively true (Americans have more leeway to ignore other nations) or clearly marked as speculation (“seem to”)? Is it inherently irrational to consider the hypothesis that cousin_it’s observation was meant exactly as stated, and then to speculate about what might be behind this observation?