Walked out of my Ethics class, trigger warning rape/sexual assault. Bride kidnapping.

[hani]

The topic was ethical relativism. The professor showed us the first part of an AlJazeera English Witness program in 2009 covering bride kidnappings in Krygyzstan.

Click to view

In the beginning several men talked of kidnapping a woman previously and one of the woman's relative told them:

"A girl is like a foal.  She's seen nothing in life... Of course, when

Comments

[big_yellow_moon]

Sometimes I hear that phrase "ethical relativism" used to accuse "liberals" of having no morals. I think, like most things in life, we have thresholds. I think most of us would tolerate such things as Amish insisting their children wear simple clothes and attend Amish schools. No, it's not what we would do but it is "their way" and I wouldn't say that it's "evil." But the level of abuse that happens in many Islamic countries crosses a line for almost all of us who live outside that world. You probably remember the Time magazine cover from last year of the girl whose face had been slashed as a punishment.

I accept that such things happen, much as I hate them. Maybe my interest in war history ties into that. The Nazis did terrible things, but the Allies ultimately destroyed them. That was a time when the line between Good and Evil was clear and the world did the right thing. Nowadays we may be too aware of the consequences of our actions. We saw what happened when the US invaded Iraq-- we got rid of a ruthless dictator but created a real mess. And it's not the fault of the average Iraqi family that the country they live in has a ton of crazy groups who just love to kill everybody they can't oppress... still, that's the reality that they are stuck with.

I like to be aware of the world, but sometimes listening to NPR & reading Time gets pretty depressing and distressing! I think we should be aware of the dark side of the world. We should also be thankful for all the beauty that we have and all the simple pleasures like, I dunno, a grilled cheese sandwich and the next episode of Game of Thrones! I guess the point here is that we need to keep that balance. Don't let the clouds obscure the sun.

Even though we're geographically farther away than ever, I still feel close to you in some ways, Izzy.

[hani]

Yeah, the professor used Nazi Germany as her initial example. Unsurprising, given its common place in Western education and that the university is in Poland...

Thanks. :)