What would be the reason behind recognising that something that is not important to you, is in fact important to someone else? I watch a lot of movies, and in some of them I find moments of great wisdom that I suspect the writer deliberately included, stuff I think we all absorb and consider subconsciously. I tend to dwell on them, maybe I am weird like that, who knows?
I’m watching the film Bone Tomahawk, in the earliest scene one of the two characters is a bit wary of crossing what appears to be a Native American graveyard. His fellow replies that this should be “no concern to a civilized man”, meaning that he immediately dismisses what is clearly important to the people that put their efforts into constructing this funerary scene, those he may describe as “heathen savages”, because it is not important to his historical Caucasian Northern European perspective. My question is… Is he ignorant, or is he right?
Not that easy to make an argument in any direction, one person may say that we should respect what is important to people simply because we recognise that it is important to them and they have the right to expect it so. Another might argue that if we want our important cultural artifacts to be respected then we must afford that same courtesy to others. Another might contend that anything they do not personally hold to be important is simply unimportant. I’ll give you an example, I am not a religious or spiritual guy, to me all that nonsense is clearly man-made, and so I see a church or a mosque as just a building, I see yoga as a good stretch, I see the lighting of a candle as a form of making some situation easier to see. I do recognise that some of these things do mean something to some people. Recognition is not the same as respect however.
To me a corpse is not a person, the person was the living entity, not the remains of it. It may seem harsh but I have not been to the graves of any relatives because for me they are not there, the soil has no meaning. The headstone is a reminder that they had lived, I suppose that gives some people a sort of closure, maybe it helps them to remember. I remember my deceased brother, my grandparents, and my old boss Joe just fine in their absence. I’m perfectly willing to have it said that I am odd in this perspective because it does not matter, what is important is that I am not trying to make anyone else think this way. If it works for you then I have nothing to say about it, because it does no harm for you to find meaning in it.
No matter how hard I try I cannot bring myself to respect a belief that is easily refuted or proven untrue, or where the implications of that belief are at odds with my personal sense of moral right and wrong. For people to hold a belief, even in a thematic sense, where it directly prescribes, or indirectly allows for, a moral injustice, is to me a negating mechanism to my ability to hold any respect in concern of it. I will not allow myself for instance to accept the tenants of any ideology that separates people of colour, sexuality, gender, or ability from each other in the sense of value to, or rights recognised by, society or government. Where an ideology fosters the idea that a woman is lesser in value than a man, that a homosexual is less than a heterosexual, that a person with dark skin is less than a white person, I am compelled to disagree, and that means I will not respect anyone else’s position if it states it as so being.
You may have a less rigid view, but I would contend that maybe you have not thought deeply enough about what your acceptance and respect then enables, since you are, by your acceptance, tacitly complying to the ideas within those ideologies, and therefore allowing them to continue to view the world in that way, absent, in my view, a much warranted scrutiny. I would, if I could, urge you to re-examine your position. Abhorrent ideologies are often less empowered by the fantasists that hold them, than by the larger group that tolerates and refuses to see the harm inherent in their texts. Toleration is an important part of being different, but it is not useful when it comes to harmful implication, we do not tolerate child molesters or rapist or murderers, we do not tolerate theft, we do not tolerate violence. If the western world was to say to the currently most horrific ideologies (the ones whose followers do the most measurable harm), that they can “fuck off with that nonsense”, then those ideologies, if they wanted to survive, would have to radically change.
I am talking of religions and the religious historical artifacts that enable political stances. For a person to formulate a political position they first must believe in a structure of rights that concern both power and duty. First we have to work out as a group what power is available, then we have to position it in the hands of a person or some persons. Power is resource based fundamentally, with people being also a resource. Then we have to work out what each person in the group has the right to have, and what their duty to the group is. Then we have to make rules that restrain the group members based on the rights of the other group members, and a method to correct this when it is not followed. Initially, it is persuasion that forms the legitimacy of power. Then we may form ways of challenging and changing these structural objects (or not if we derive them from a deity). In doing this work we have formed an ideology, a method of quantifying and codifying the actions of people, as expected by the group (or the representatives of the deity).
So if a large group of people consent to being governed in this way then there is little that the small group of persons who may disagree with what is structured, can do. This only applies if there is legitimate tacit compliance coupled with the ability to freely voice this disagreement (some form of democracy). We in the west may agree or disagree with the way that another regime conducts its social and political business, even though we are not within their fabric, but this does not mean that we should respect their actions. Often we do not, and we act to try to correct them using political and economic pressure, but generally only if it is not detrimental to our own needs. This is a problem for some citizens, that we do not do enough in some cases and far too much in others. To say that “Galippia has the right to defend itself” is to respect the fact that their government has the support of their people to engage in conflict with the people of another land, but… and this is a very important but… their political actions toward conflict may be built upon a religious ideology that enables them to act abhorrently and call it righteousness.
Only in thinking, in believing to be true, the postulate that their people have a right to take land that is occupied by another people, a postulate that is in their religious texts, can they describe themselves to each other, and the wider political landscape, as legitimate. I would first have to respect the religious motivations of the ideology, to then be able to respect the legitimacy of the conflict the country then engages in, because one is the justification for the other. The problem is I don’t hold a shred of respect for Judaism, Christianity, Islam, or any other religion. I think them to be no more valid than the Beano (a comic book), so I therefore do not respect the political actions of the Galippian regime when they attempt to cleanse the lands they hold to be their property of a people they think to be occupying it illegitimately and illegally. I would need another reason to think that their actions were morally correct, and anything not morally correct should be argued with.
Now I am no supporter of the free people of Montunga (the enemies of Galippia) either, their actions are arguably the actions of an enslaved and terrorized people, yet may be said to be religiously motivated. That, however, makes no difference to the fact that they wish to be free of the oppression of another group, an occupying force that takes their homes and lands away and controls their lives to the extent that an empire would. The Montungan people have no political capital, therefore they are an oppressed people, and regardless of their religious motivations they are the victims in this conflict. That does not provide legitimacy to their actions, but it does explain them. We must contextualize the actions of an oppressed minority fighting for the cause of emancipation, in that it should be differently viewed to those actions performed by the oppressor. I would argue that very few options, definitely not political ones, are available to any oppressed peoples. In recognising this, if we do, we see that there must be less legitimacy for those that express military power when they are in a position of strength, in comparison with those that do so from a position of weakness.
I do not respect the ideology of middle eastern countries either, and for the same reasons, that they are built upon sand. Political ideology, built upon arguments that are rational and/or practical, and not religiously motivated, are stronger than those built on religious ones simply because they can be debated. They do not draw upon what some body of people cannot justify in fundament outside of what a deity that they claimed to know the will of prescribed to be ever true and unchanging that just so happens to have empowered the very people that claim to have heard it or had it revealed. A prescription that also just so happens to favour their tribe and creates an ever lasting advantage for them in all things going forward, and one that cannot be challenged unless the challenger is willing to sacrifice all to do so. This nonsense would never be acceptable to any peoples who do not directly benefit from it, so it must then require force to keep it so, this is another reason that it cannot be acceptable as a reasoned ideology. Better is the better argument, the justification that most persons can agree with when given a legitimate free choice, that which convinces the majority to be lead by a minority and will remain stable only as long as it works, and revised when it does not.
The work of Dworkin, Nozick, Rawls, Locke, Lenin, Marx, Smith, Plato, Aristotle et al, is far superior to the works of religious thinkers concerning the good society. Our morals in the west are thought by some people to come from the Ten Commandments, yet this is demonstrably not so. Just take a quick look at them, we are not living this way, we are not punishing this way, we have not constructed our laws using the Decalogue. It merely serves some deeply held, but false, need in a pseudo-Christian population, one that has somewhat of a hangover from the preceding centuries of religious oppression, to hold somewhere in their psyche the idea that their religion, the one they do not practice or believe in with any passion, sits at the bedrock of their political system. Again I will remind you, nothing could be less true, our modern laws are the result of political thinking and mass protest. Look to the dark ages for examples of religion ruling the roost, you’ll be disgusted (I hope).
Respect is the wrong term, toleration is the wrong term, for when we describe the situation where we live among people who think differently to us as to how the good city, country, society, should be configured. I am an anarchist, I believe in toppling over everything that cannot be justified, and that would mean that churches would be viewed as businesses and taxed accordingly, charity would be seen as a failure of government, the monarchy would be disbanded and all titles granted by them would be forgotten, and all the land holdings of the wealthy would be redistributed to the state and only through utilising these resources for a wider benefit than to them solely could a person hold temporary dominion over them. This is not a position that many in the UK would hold, but it is mine, and I am allowed to have it because I live in a country where we are allowed to disagree (for now). I do not respect the institutions or the structures that I disagree with, and I do not respect the opinions of people who build their view upon religious prescription or political happenstance. The better way of putting it would be to say that I am aware of, and live according to, the power of these social and political objects, but only in the absence of my power to change them.
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