Behind screens and under cover of night, a local government in Japan is tearing down a monument dedicated to remembrance, reflection and friendship between Japan and Korea
Japanese people as a whole are severely lacking when it comes to acknowledging the atrocities committed by their country
And when educating people, we need to change the way the message is delivered to start taking collective responsibility for the bad things, the “bad people” and acknowledge that everybody of every culture or ideology is capable of being evil, and has been before, and will be in the future, that Nazi Germany wasn’t a “them” issue, it’s an “us” issue, and we need to do way less elitist finger wagging from some implicit position of detached moral purity.
When we teach that “X culture did Y thing to Z culture N decades ago”, we need to stop focusing on the X and Z part.
No, we don’t need to seek revenge, we don’t need to “right the wrongs”, because every action has consequences and trying to “undo” one bad thing will make more bad things. Just learn and move on, trying not to make the same mistakes. That’s the best we can do.
Depends what you mean. If you’re talking about reparations I don’t agree. In this world, there are a lot of people materially suffering and we shouldn’t be picking and choosing who gets free gift cards and who doesn’t based on race. Unfortunate things happened in the past that set the current stage. There’s a lot of suffering out there and everyone seems to think they have an inalienable right to reproduce despite the consequences. So reparations to me is scooping water out with a coffee cup from a sinking ship. It’s also the quickest way to lose elections. Nobody will go for it when we’ve all seen our material conditions worsen over our lifetimes, even in the debt-ridden “rich nations”.
That we as humans are living beyond our means in terms of population and resources. Particularly if everybody wants to live above the poverty line. I really didn’t think this was news to anybody at this point.
And when educating people, we need to change the way the message is delivered to start taking collective responsibility for the bad things, the “bad people” and acknowledge that everybody of every culture or ideology is capable of being evil, and has been before, and will be in the future, that Nazi Germany wasn’t a “them” issue, it’s an “us” issue, and we need to do way less elitist finger wagging from some implicit position of detached moral purity.
When we teach that “X culture did Y thing to Z culture N decades ago”, we need to stop focusing on the X and Z part.
No, we don’t need to seek revenge, we don’t need to “right the wrongs”, because every action has consequences and trying to “undo” one bad thing will make more bad things. Just learn and move on, trying not to make the same mistakes. That’s the best we can do.
Id agree except that I think you can and should try to rectify historic wrongs where the descendants of the victims are still materially suffering.
Depends what you mean. If you’re talking about reparations I don’t agree. In this world, there are a lot of people materially suffering and we shouldn’t be picking and choosing who gets free gift cards and who doesn’t based on race. Unfortunate things happened in the past that set the current stage. There’s a lot of suffering out there and everyone seems to think they have an inalienable right to reproduce despite the consequences. So reparations to me is scooping water out with a coffee cup from a sinking ship. It’s also the quickest way to lose elections. Nobody will go for it when we’ve all seen our material conditions worsen over our lifetimes, even in the debt-ridden “rich nations”.
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That we as humans are living beyond our means in terms of population and resources. Particularly if everybody wants to live above the poverty line. I really didn’t think this was news to anybody at this point.