[lit-ideas] Waterboarding Bodies Mattered

John quoted Lakoff: ... the patriarchal family model
typically associated with those of a conservative or reactionary orientation, the application of moral principles is confined to within the family, or the nation state construed as the family writ large. The world outside the family/nation is assumed to be utterly amoral, a competitive war of all against all in which anything goes and acts, however heinous they might be if perpetrated against one of us, the members of the family/nation in question, are forgivable, indeed justified, if they protect us against 
them.
First let us remember that Mother Russia's Gulags. I've read Lakoff and enjoyed his lists of conceptual metaphors, but he has become a big-time political tool.
For example, I'd like to investigate a premise Lakoff links to conservatives, "the world outside the family/nation is assumed to be utterly amoral, a competitive war of all against all in which anything goes ..."
Let's stick to nations. In terms of industrial espionage, military espionage, cyberwarfare, trade agreements, and many other areas ... the world is exactly that, "a competitive war of all against all in which anything goes." Most civilized people wish it otherwise. Yet it is not otherwise. Lakoff is simply serving as a political tool to associate that judgment with "conservative or reactionary orientation(s)." Only here and there are the brilliant exceptions, and these are so easily lost, the small hopeful advances degraded.
Hence the furor over US waterboarding several high-level al-Qaeda, I suppose, and the conflation of those cases with Guantanamo detainees in general. Also the resulting questions about the need for certainty if one is to undertake coercive techniques in general.
I've watched philosopher Shelly Kagan's course on Death at http://oyc.yale.edu/philosophy/death. One of the last lectures is called "Suicide, Part II: Deciding under uncertainty" and it presents the various alternative positions that may or may not be considered rational. All alternatives are vexed by lack of certainty. The point seems to be in the discussion of it. Same with waterboarding as far as I'm concerned. 


------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html

Other related posts: