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The audience are terrible, but as a child I would have taken part in that. We identified as a group, with a set of beliefs our parents had chosen for us, and th
by nailer 3y ago
The audience are terrible, but as a child I would have taken part in that. We identified as a group, with a set of beliefs our parents had chosen for us, and thought anyone that attacked our leader was attacking us.
Years later I grew up and apologised to Sinead O Connor on Twitter for thinking this way. But a lot of people never did grow up, not just Catholics but also people from other conservative religions. People still feel religious ideas are somehow innate, and therefore the criticising religious ideas is wrong. But no idea is innate, people can and do leave and join every religion and every set of spiritual beliefs all the time, so no idea is beyond criticism. A crowd of people booing Sinead O Connor 30 years ago is very similar to people attacking Charlie Hebdo in 2015 and sadly people still make excuses for both.
- robertlagrant 3y ago> A crowd of people booing Sinead O Connor 30 years ago is very similar to people attacking Charlie Hebdo in 2015 Erm. I don't think it's that similar.
- nailer 3y agook
- schoen 3y agoSimilarities: In both cases, people are offended that their religious sensibilities were hurt, and many of them want to lash out angrily against those who offended them. Some of them say that no one should have the right to offend them this way. Some of them try to find a way to retaliate against those who offended them. Differences: In one case, a dozen people are murdered; in the other case, not.
- bryanrasmussen 3y agoright, considering people were murdered we could say that the second case was a worse example of retaliation for feeling offended. They were similar in type but different in outcome.
- robertlagrant 3y agoWhat I mean is you're taking the smaller thing, the partial similarity in motivation, and making that the main thing. The biggest thing is the immense difference in terms of modality. In the same way we don't equate people being shouted down in a government house debate with people being mown down in political violence, even though there is a superficial similarity in underlying reason.
- schoen 3y agoI agree with you, and I thought that making the similarities and differences explicit would show that the differences are starker and more significant overall.