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Comment by nineplay | Hacker News Reader

There's something very 'woke' - or maybe 'concern trolling' - about the various attempts to chastise the West for caring about Ukraine more than <name your international conflict>.

Look I'm not afraid to own it, I feel more of a kinship with Europoeans than with other global citizens. Ukrainians watch the same superhero movies, they play the same video games. They are all over reddit, not just on the news reddits but also posting to r/shittyfoodporn joking about their war-zone meals.

I don't feel the same kinship with Iraquis or Yeminis. You can call it racism or a double standard, but it’s human nature. You may as well say I have double standards for caring about my family more than yours.

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Also Europeans have not only reacted because they relate to Ukrainians, Russia has become a direct military threat to Europe, and I think is the primary reason why the European reaction has been that strong.

In fact many of the measures taken (providing weapons to Ukraine) will make Ukraine a prolonged war-zone and goes against the life and safety of the Ukrainian citizens. But 1) Putin needs to be stopped, 2) the Ukrainians seem to be willing to pay that price for freedom.

And also this is a classic David Goliath fight, or for more modern example: Star Wars Empire vs Rebels.

> Also Europeans have not only reacted because they relate to Ukrainians, Russia has become a direct military threat to Europe

Not only a direct threat, but also a recent history (Poland 1939, Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968 and others).

Finland, Romania, and pretty much every eastern European country in WW2.

I think the pattern is pointing to hypocrisy and assuming that beats all other arguments.

Consistency is a component of justice and it's something people sometimes aim for, but it's not necessarily more important than other values. You have to make the case for why it's important in a particular situation.

The text is not asking anyone to care about all humans equally.

It is pointing out to a bias in reporting: one can never read "fact X". One can only read "fact X from source Y". Depending on one's alignment with source Y, one is more or less inclined to believe or care about fact X. The text points out examples of multiple Ys and how they choose how to report on X.

Much of what you call "woke" is realizing that human rationality has many biases, and in order to reify what we in the West agreed upon in text back in 1789, we will have to learn what these biases are and learn to actively compensate for them.

Much progress has been done, but much is still left to do.

Of course you care more about your family than anyone else's, and about Ukrainians and Russians more than Iraqis or Yemenis. It's a great starting point to think about that, and what unintended consequences everyone's individual biases can have for the future of our society. This is not an exercise that people go through often enough.

I came to the conclusion about biases back in high school, and IMHO, what people call woke is just the stupidest idea to fight them I've ever heard: forcing counter-biases on everyone, including people who are not initially biased (relatively speaking).

We should have stronger requirements for education in mathematical logic, and perhaps probability theory in schools instead of teaching countless anecdata.

Same principle, different example. We never read "fact X", we read "fact X from source Y".

What if source Y is biased in that its using all facts X to push an anti-bias agenda?

Once you find out they lied, and never retracted false statement, you just stop reading the source, period.

FYI: Arabs also watch Spider-Man.

But that’s beside the point; it’s pretty shallow to base sympathy on superficial things like entertainment choices. Preferring the company of like-minded people is understandable, but extending that to include sympathy for innocent victims of war crimes?

Edit: for the record, fuck Bush (father and son, actually), Obama, Trump, Putin, Saddam, Gaddafi, and Assad.

Edit1: No, I am not a nihilist. But I do despise pretty much every government out there. Don’t ask me for a solution, I don’t know what it is. But yeah, the leaders of Western democracies are less harmful than Putin and the CCP. The politicians themselves might be just as bad, but having to work in a democratic framework limits what they can get away with.

What? Arabs don't play western video games??

Most of us understand the need to employ reason to overcome the worst elements of our nature. After all you could argue it's in our nature to want the benefits of making people work for you without having to pay them. Fighting that was 'wokeness' at one point too.

Modern tribalism has been shit for humanity. It's an impulse we also need to ditch.

Everyone with a brain can see these sorts of double standards.

Only people with a spine are A) willing to accept them as necessary/good/whatever to achieve the desired outcome on an issue by issue basis B) able to have frank discussions about death and destruction and act like an adult while doing it in the absence of a biased selection of the facts. (B is a necessary prerequisite for evaluating whether A is the correct course of action in a given situation or ever and if so to what extent)

And brains are much common than spines.

The events of the last 2yr have brought these selective information issues into the public conscience. The "concern trolling" is just a way to make a buck off of this.

I'm on Ukraine's side in this or a variety of reasons but it would be nice if we didn't have to do the whole double standard song and dance about this sort of thing. Russia is gonna kill a lot of people here. They killed a lot of people in Syria. I wasn't pissed off when they did that because <laundry list of reasons>.

Also, let's talk about various attempts to chastise some countries for not caring about the conflict enough i.e. for not fully aligning with US' point of view.

I assure, you are doing quite a lot of projecting and psychological defense by attributing this to "the woke" or "trolls".

If we don't examine ourselves and take actions to better ourselves we only build another China.

Regards definitely not one with the woke.

or maybe there is an advantage to not cover your own invasions as it makes claiming moral high ground more difficult.

It's also a lot easier to care about a country who doesn't declare on a daily basis how much you should be killed and your country destroyed. Go figure.

That is NOT every Middle East country. Those that cry down with the west etc. are almost always an extreme, vocal, political minority. This idea, essentialisation, is the basis of all bigotry.

Ever tried to be a homosexual in any of those countries?

This is an amazing argument considering what the US is going through right now.

Also, considering how many of these 'conservative' countries were created by US & European regime change policy. Your elected officials shoved these fuckers on us.

Last I checked, gay marriage is legal in the US and homosexuality is punishable by death in the vast majority of Muslim countries.

Don't blame the US and Europe for a religious doctrine that is accepted by the majority of people in those nations.

Except I will because US and Europe are why places like Iran have the IRI.

Maybe try talking to Iranians sometimes :)

And for a time it was punishable in the US too. That they haven't caught up yet is a reflection of their governments more than their people. Or is it our genes that make us enlightened?

And we got __really__ lucky in the US about 2015. This could've gone much worse.

I've known many homosexuals in the Middle East. A government's line does not define a country.

It's not every Middle East country. And it's often not the civilians. And many of those countries have completely legitimate gripes with the US.

However, in a lot of the modern Middle East conflicts (Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, for example) ALL the leaders are hot garbage (even and especially the ones that the US chooses to support), and the world would be better off if they all died in a fire.

And, quite often, when the invaders go home, the sects and tribes go back to killing each other with vigor.

None of this is a recipe for sympathy from the West.

> Ukrainians watch the same superhero movies, they play the same video games.

The people you've "othered" do the same.

This is an absolutely disgusting comment and instead of you taking this as a moment of introspection and an opportunity to humanize and relate to the "others", you just "own" your xenophobic views and then come here to proudly justify them.

The bar to humanize people is reddit and disney apparently.

JFC.

Also, it's spelt Iraqis. Not Iraquis. Literally any spellchecker would've told you, but I guess they're not human enough to care.

Do you sincerely believe that there is no more shared cultural heritage between the US and Ukraine than between the US and Iraq?

Yes. Actually if you go back a few decades, Iraqis would have more in common with Americans.

Ukraine was behind the iron curtain.

FWIW I don't think it matters and you should care about humans because they're humans.

Depends on which timeframe you're talking. But even if so - who cares???

Watch a Ukrainian or Iraqi child die from a mortar and tell me if you feel any difference. If you don't you haven't got a point and if you do you haven't got a soul.

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