Some things I think - and not to be confused with a thinkpiece
Customarily we construct arguments to justify where we land on issues. We place great value on being seen as rational.
Arguments are indeed sometimes helpful or even persuasive. But often not. Much of the time we feel as we feel and go with our gut.
Some things are never resolved with arguments because they have so long festered and become so ramified and kaleidoscopic that argument only comes down to which information we take in and what we filter out. It's all confirmation bias and motivated reason.
I don't want to play that game.
Having read, watched and listened to so much more information than I can really handle on the historical basis for the conflict in Gaza the idea of confidently opining on who 'ought' to own that area is about as realistic an option as weighing into a discussion on algebraic geometry.
So my thoughts on the matter come from somewhere other than 'evidence' and rational balancing.
So this is a reflective, rather than argumentative, meditation on the subject. A series of statements about personal cognitive conditions in relation to that situation.
It's out of step with bien pensant society, as reflected by orthodox media like the BBC and newswire services.
And it’s interesting to realise how much argument of my own was cut out in this final edit. The first draft was full of insistence about why it's reasonable to land where I do (ie self-justifying rationalisation with cherry-picked supporting evidence).
Old habits die hard.
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Obvious things are obvious
A Palestinian activist in Germany, called Marwa Fatafta, says of the conflict between Hamas, Hezbollah and Israel:
"It's very crystal clear, the situation. It doesn't have any shades of grey to me. All it takes is just an open mind and open eyes to be able to understand and accept the truth."
This is evident "to anyone with two brain cells".
[This is from an audio clip that appears on a benefit album called 'Lebanon Fundraiser']
What captures my attention is that familiar observation about intelligence. The idea that the cleverer someone is the closer they will get to your specific moral intuitions. Which represent 'the truth'.
I'm not mad on the idea that intelligence and moral virtue are significantly entwined. It's obviously narcissistic and one-upping and always gets my Spidey tense tingling.
Fatafta's intelligence is obviously not in question and this is no surprise. Since the most recent attempt to achieve the destruction of Israel on October 7 2023 it has been all the most intelligent people who celebrated the Al-Aqsa Flood invasion and its objectives.
So, it's obviously commonplace to be highly intelligent and to desire the dismantling of someone's nation state.
I've spent some time over the past year wondering whether I'm just not as smart as these people, since I feel quite differently about it all.
At first I tried to keep my feelings about it in check.
Then I tried to be reasonable about my inability to tolerate the pro-Hamas people.
Now I've given up, in favour of ....
Embracing the hate
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