Archive for July, 2007
Terrorists are not evil, terrorism is
There are many ways of approaching the problem of good and evil philosophically and what they actually are – this very fact can be used as an argument for some of these views. It has been debated back and forth over the years but the vast majority of people still hold a view somewhere in between the most common and less arguable for any length of time views I will now present. Firstly, there is the religious view: there are reasons why debate of this does not last very long. The idea that a divine being superimposes values upon the world that we can choose to follow or not. The other is the simple idea of complete objectivity, rendering moral values just opinions. This makes a lot of sense: people follow their own morals because they wish to remain happy by sticking with what they are used to and what it ingrained into them; it is human nature for the vast majority of people. Morals like this are great when they are rationally defined and developed, but this is often not so. The above mixed view now comes into play, whereby most people seem to think that there are moral aspects that are just there even if they are not religious or do not care about it, giving “well… it’s just wrong“.
Following the objective approach, I have deduced that people cannot normally be applied the description of evil. This is because it is, I believe, *extremely* rare to actually find a truly evil person. By this I mean way beyond what most people would think, when they set aside their moral values about, say, the death penalty for exceptions such as Hitler, which in my opinion is fundamentally wrong. Even a truly evil one I would treat the same, if I actually have the ability to judge. So, here I post the argument of misguidance, that they have made some wrong choices in my view: they are still doing what is right in their mind and thus they are not evil and the idea of punishment remains pointless, so prison should only be for protection and reformation rather than retribution and perhaps deterrence. This argument allows for a great deal of forgiveness and many chances, helping people rather than taking any form of revenge. It flies out of the window when you consider that according to causality we are not going to literally change anything at all because everything will happen in one prescribed way in this universe.
Thus I come onto my main argument for this essay, terrorism and terrorists. I think we can safely assume that most of the time terrorists do honestly believe they are doing the right thing. One should not take everything one reads in the press for granted but based on the research that has been done the fragile human mind can be easily twisted to murderous purposes. This should form part of how we treat the prevention of terrorism and the laws we make around it. Terrorists are not people to be victimised as they have often suffered a great deal too: we must aim for doing away with retribution and making positive changes. Terrorists should be treated as humans in the same way everyone else in the justice system is, as well as this view being encouraged among ordinary people to fight prejudice and the danger of secularisation.
New job
I went to my new job today for the first time at DJ News, Crookes. It’s a newsagent, as you may have guessed – an excellent choice for me as I love newspapers. It’s a very nice environment to work in, even if I am selling cigarettes. The job has a number of differences from Oxfam but otherwise it is mostly the same thing: selling things and being friendly, both of which are important. In terms of the work the main difference is the intensive start up involving organising the delivered papers, and I also have to keep a closer eye on the stock. Once this period is over however it becomes quieter and as normal. The nice thing is that there is a lot greater chance of getting to know regulars in such a small shop. The other differences from Oxfam that I am very happy with are the fact I am allowed to read the papers which is great as I can get different viewpoints from the different prints, the important point being that I keep them uncreased and saleable. Oxfam is very strict about not reading or similar on the till in order to guard against shoplifting which is a serious issue. DJ News is a lot smaller. The idea of all of this is mainly to contribute to University, and have a bit more money myself.
This also means that I have very limited time for Oxfam as it is not open on a Sunday. I have to do it after DJs, so that is finishing at 12, going home for lunch and then arriving at Oxfam at 1. The day is then 6:30 in the morning to 5:45 approx in the evening, which makes for a very long day on a Saturday, and I have no choice unless I give up one to do this all through term time (in the holiday I can move Oxfam to a different day). It seems somehow wrong to give up a voluntary job for work I don’t *need* to do for myself. But, that is the way it goes. I’m sure I’ll get used to it 
I also have a huge e-mail backlog. What a fun day I will have tomorrow.
Busy busy busy
It seems I am embroiled in a lot of different projects and activities at the moment, and this is absolutely fine in the summer holidays. However, it will definitely not be in September when I will have far too many subjects to be able to do the amount of tasks that I am carrying. The problem is that often I find I am not actually doing enough actual work, but I plod through anyway so it isn’t too important. My issue is primarily with my Wikimedia work where I do number of different things – my main jobs at the moment are IRC group contacting, e-mail response team work, press and communications work and mediation on the English Wikipedia. The problem with all this is that increasingly I find that little jobs such as admin work, queries for advice and other non-Wikimedia projects such as working on Heather Gladney’s website are being put aside as I haven’t the time. I’ve also been promoted on freenode staff which means there is more stuff I can be involved in. Doesn’t actually use that much more time, though.
So, the answer is to start dropping jobs. This is unfortunately not that simple because that set of jobs that I actively do are all ones that I really like and thing I’m reasonable at. IRC group contacting is something I cannot stop because I am needed for that; I have brought in changes to speed things up and process cloaks very quickly as a freenode staffer. Answering e-mails on OTRS is important now that I am additionally doing the press queue as part of communications work. It would be reasonable to take a break from answering the general info queues as they have plenty of people on it, but I haven’t been that active on that anyway. Press and communications work is short-staffed and I think I’m pretty good at it, so I want to continue with that one. That leaves mediation… I really like the idea of it and think that is an important part of the community (and am honoured to be involved) but at the same time I’m not actually that great at it. It sucks time in with the reading required and often I’m not sure where to go. I am now weighing this one up.
We played DnD last Sunday, and it went very well. I was able to DM effectively and the players made it very entertaining by coming up with things; it was nice having Jonathan do most of the combat and riding on the airship was fun. The pickled brain prompted me to give brine-related magical abilities to our party leader, who can now do some cool stuff. The party used strategy but quickly bored of combat so the dungeon I made was sorta wasted as it has been before, but it wasn’t a problem. They did the key bit of having the rest of the story explained to them: they are now at a stage to continue the campaign next year fully understanding what their aims are. More here.
Well, I bought the Harry Potter book a lot earlier than I expected to and have consumed it quite happily. I originally decided to wait and get it out of the library, resolving that since the the past two books had been spoilt for me this one would be too. However, the opportunity arose as I am with grandparents at the moment to buy a copy relatively cheaply and so I did. It was definately worthwhile; it was *a lot* better than I expected. The story of the book itself was good and the overall plot, coming together across the series bringing in elements and characters from all the way through, was brilliantly done. I realise Rowling is, as they say, an excellent story teller. The hype that surrounds the release however remains absurd as it isn’t that good.
General prejudice or tribalism?
In Oxfam today I was charged with supervising a new(ish) volunteer on the till, which was needed for my experience with unusual stuff such as Oxfam Unwrapped and he got into a conversation with a regular customer that I was listening to. Apparently she had recognised his accent and they got talking about where they both came from in Durham, sharing memories etc. So far, so good. However, then they moved on to discuss Sheffield where the new volunteer is at University, and at this point things started to go downhill. The customer said that a friend of hers involved in the security services(?) had said that Sheffield was sinking into underground terrorism that the vast majority of people had no idea about. He had told her that the best advice was to “get out now”. While I thought it was probably pointless rumours (I heard “sex gangs” mentioned amongst other things) as terrorist cells are likely to be in every major city by now, I didn’t exactly think anything of it.
However, the conversation then changed. The customer (who had already lowered her voice to begin this section of the conversation about terrorism in Sheffield) then inferred a sweeping generalisation about followers of Islam, noting that ‘they’ had now got a Mosque in the centre of Sheffield (it’s a very impressive building that has been put up recently) and that this was going to make things worse. She moved on to say that this would apparently never happen in Durham, because the locals ‘wouldn’t stand for it’ because Christianity, being a vital part of the community, was important for tourism and that it would kill the area. This conversation was shocking. Terrorism is appaling and it makes sense to be concerned (even if I personally am not really too worried), but suggesting a link with the entiriety of Islam? I was sickened.
This is where I come to the title of this post in an attempt to question the reasons behind this event. This person was, as I said, a regular: she had made provisions to repair some specialised donations (sending some expensive dolls to a dolls’ hospital), really helping Oxfam – this made it more surprising to me. The point I am trying to get at is that based on her comments about Durham I am unsure of whether she is against Islam or Islamic people (bunching together religion and ethinicity) moving to live in Britain. The former would be prejudice or ignorance as she is making the assumption that all or the majority of Muslims support Islam as this is simply not true, and the latter I could excuse as tribalism, simply wanting to maintain the area’s current population and not allow other groups in. I have begun to observe the latter a lot more in recent times, meaning you have people who are totally not racist or religiously intolerant but who want to keep the communities seperate. “Sure, great religion – go live over there, and we can have the occasional visits to each other” would be a summing up of their point of view.
How on earth can we tackle this view? One can understand and accept actual negativity caused by job losses and language barriers, but multiculturalism is important. We must make it work as a society, otherwise war will always rear its head.
On a side note, SilentFlame is donating to charity at last. I forgot to take the £30 I had ready in to Oxfam today though.