Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2022 October 17

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October 17

Is silence consent?

"Silence is consent" especially "White silence is white consent" is one of the main slogans of the Black Lives Matter movement. However, the MeToo movement and sexual consent laws in many American states and other countries do not seem to agree that silence is consent. Which side is correct? StellarHalo (talk) 00:50, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

It's not a binary proposition. The two cases you list are not really comparable. In the BLM example, Whites are generally in a position of more power/privilege so their silence in cases where power/privilege is abused seems to be an acceptance of that abuse. In the cases of rape and sexual abuse, the victim is in the position of weakness. Their silence seems to be more inspired by fear of greater reprisal from their abuser. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 03:28, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

And so these are not two "sides". One can agree with both positions without contradiction. Privileged people who witness oppression are morally wrong if they do not object. But one should not blame a powerless victim for not objecting.  --Lambiam 06:35, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

In certain situations silence is taken to indicate consent. See unanimous consent, silence procedure, and wikt:qui tacet consentire videtur, for example. Note the latter phrase: qui tacet consentire videtur, not qui tacet consentit: i.e., one's silence only implies one's consent. With regard to sexual consent, I understand that it must not only be informed but also enthusiastic and revocable for it to be considered valid (though the legal definition may vary); in this case mere silence is insufficient. Shells-shells (talk) 01:49, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

The Pope's influence on Catholics in the modern era?

I have never been a Catholic or a Christian of other denominations. I have been an atheist for more than a decade. So, I am not that familiar with the spiritual relationship between the Pope and the more than one billion adherents of the Roman Catholic Church. As some of you may already know, Pope Francis has been a vocal proponent of the cause of helping migrants and refugees worldwide ever since he became Pope almost ten years ago. He even went as far as to say that society should not create walls but bridges. Yet, it does not seem that Catholic-majority countries in Europe heed his supposedly holy and sacred words. Instead, the opposite seems to have happened. In the years following the 2015 European migrant crisis, the European Union has become a Fortress Europe where only Ukrainian refugees are allowed in while non-white migrants and refugees are kept out.

• Last year on the border with Belarus, the Polish government pushed back ten of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers by force and refused to process their asylum applications. Poland also recently completed its border wall with Belarus.
• Spain has border walls on its border with Morocco, one in Ceuta and one in Melilla, to stop illegal immigration. In June 2022, around 2000 African migrants attempted to break through the Melilla border fence but were stopped by the Spanish and Moroccan security forces and 37 of them were killed in what became known as the Melilla Massacre.
• Perhaps the most un-Christian and worst violation of human rights is what Italy and the EU have been doing. In response to the increased numbers of people reaching Italian shores, Italy signed an agreement in early 2017 with the government of Libya, from where most migrants started their boat journeys to Italy. In return for Libya making more efforts to prevent migrants from reaching Europe, the European Union provided money and training for the Libyan Coast Guard and for migrant detention centres in northern Libya. These detention centers are actually gulags where migrants are routinely abused, tortured, and enslaved. In fact, the Pope seems to be aware of these EU-funded Libyan gulags since last year.

Why have the millions of devout Catholics in Europe ignored the Pope's impassioned plea for humanity and compassion for fellow human beings? Does the words of the Pope himself mean nothing to them? Has the papacy fallen so far that his temporal power has completely disappeared? Does the Pope still have moral authority over Catholics worldwide? StellarHalo (talk) 07:18, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

There are millions of Catholics in Europe, but how many of them are "devout Catholics"? As of 2014, it was estimated that only roughly 4.5% of Catholics in France attend mass.^[1] In Italy the percentage of Catholics who self-identify as practicing Catholics is higher, more like 30%, but today less than half of Italians consider themselves Catholics.^[2] Even today politics is a male-dominated world, and these percentages are lower among men. Rather in general, people, including Christians, are quite apt in handling cognitive dissonance by ignoring the conflict between their devoutly held beliefs and their day-to-day lifestyle.  --Lambiam 08:34, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Allegedly "modernist" stances of Pope Francis are not necessarily welcome to traditionalist Catholics. In these contexts Liberation theology is considered borderline heresy. There are even fringe extremist theories that, because of these stances and other canonical problems, Bergoglio is actually an Antipope (or worse), go figure! --195.62.160.60 (talk) 08:50, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Do not forget that the states you list are secular regimes and do not base their laws or policies on religion. But even in earlier days, the Pope's word was not law among the Catholic kingdoms of Europe. The Pope's temporal power largely disappeared with Italian Unification that made him a so-called "Prisoner in the Vatican". And in terms of moral authority, some of the extreme right-wing positions of branches of Catholicism in the U.S. are so far removed from the Pope's - including on the question of refugees - that they could well be considered practitioners of a separate religion. Xuxl (talk) 13:50, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Considering the large number of self-professed Christians of all denominations who ignore things that Jesus said, I don't see why you are surprised that many Catholics ignore Francis.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 21:19, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Putin ate sugar/Reductio ad Putinum?

Is this almost-ratioed tweet an example of the association fallacy? Or is Anthony Albanese an ideological ally of Putin? StellarHalo (talk) 08:18, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

As an Australian, all I will contribute here is that Rupert Murdoch hates the Australian Labor Party. Has for the past 50 years. Albanese is the current Australia Prime Minister, from the Labor Party. A negative article about him from news.com.au is pretty much a daily event. HiLo48 (talk) 08:39, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Can you be a bit clearer? Whence the mention of sugar? Why drag in the (IMO) entirely unrelated issue of the response to Albanese? If you agree with Putin that water is wet, this agreement does not make you his ideological ally. If you agree with Putin that Ukraine needs to be liberated in order to protect people from the abuse by the genocide of the Nazi Kyiv regime, then you are his ideological ally. The switch-over is somewhere in-between.  --Lambiam 08:51, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Have there been any other "Nazi regimes" led by Jews? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:06, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

This seems to be the latest in a long line of bullshit that dates back to the "Hitler was a vegetarian" bullshit; which while functionally true, doesn't mean that vegetarians are Nazis. People who make such arguments are general not worth listening to on any topic ever. --Jayron32 18:34, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

I see that argument go the other direction too. There's a local vegan restaurant that displays a big poster showing all sorts of historical luminaries who were vegetarian: Da Vinci, Gandhi, Pythagoras, Einstein, and so on, with selected quotations. The obvious message is "you should follow in the footsteps of geniuses." Naturally, Hitler doesn't appear on that poster. ~Anachronist (talk) 20:45, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Hitler very strongly opposed smoking too. Maybe he worried that it would cause people to die younger than they otherwise would have. HiLo48 (talk) 22:30, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

@Baseball Bugs:: Revisionist Maximalism and Revisionist Zionism#Fascist views within the movement deal with philo-Fascism and philo-Nazism in Zionism. Those movements did not form a regime by themselves, but its descendants are still in Israeli politics. José Ber Gelbard was a minister under Juan Perón. Would you consider Peronism a "Nazi regime"? --Error (talk) 00:52, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

The important question is, would Putin consider them to be "Nazis"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:59, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

The more important question is whether Putin calling them Nazis will help Putin accomplish Putin's goals. --Jayron32 12:12, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

It's a little more subtle. While it might be hard to call Zelensky or the Kyiv government Nazis, there have for many years been issues with actual honest-to-Adolf Nazis achieving some political control in the eastern parts of Ukraine, with Kyiv tolerating them or at most asking them to tone it down a bit. Azov Battalion may or may not say more about this depending on the current state of edit warring in that article. It's an "enemy of my enemy" thing, like the US arming the Taliban against the USSR in the 1980s (which turned around on us later, of course). 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 04:12, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I may be wrong, but the US armed the mujaheddin against the USSR. The Taliban were students of the madrasas, many of them war orphans. Some of their leaders may have been among the mujaheddin armed by the USA (and the Pakistani ISI). --Error (talk) 14:57, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

It is complicated. See Afghan mujahideen#Relationship with the Taliban. While not all members of the Afghan mujahideen became members of the Taliban, and many of the mujahideen leaders opposed the Taliban, nearly all of the early Taliban leadership came from the mujahideen, and much of the early military materiel used by the Taliban was from that given to the mujahideen by the US and Britain, and much of its leadership was trained by MI6 and the CIA. So while it is an oversimplification to say that the west armed the Taliban, it isn't all that wrong in the long run. Much of the materiel provided by Operation Cyclone was used by the Taliban in defense against the 2001 United States invasion of Afghanistan. --Jayron32 21:51, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

relationship.

relationship between subject and state? Grotesquetruth (talk) 13:13, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

I pasted your question into Google (other search engines are available) and the first result was Relations between Individual and State. Please try this approach for yourself. Alansplodge (talk) 13:42, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

That's a HUGE subject. I suggest you begin with learning about the concept of the social contract; which while it is not the oldest political philosophy concept, is certainly one of the most pervasive. That article contains a LOT of threads regarding the relationship between the subject and the state. People spend years studying this stuff. We aren't going to give you a pithy answer in a thread like this. --Jayron32 18:30, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

what is the meaning of the word subject with reference to state exactly? Grotesquetruth (talk) 14:52, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

The hard way. Except as in the above, usually none in fact. Commoners (and even that article will not cover perfectly the subject) do not have any direct relationship with the state. They are in relation with Authorities. Note in this the rejection of political plurality. The subject's position is similar to the relationship an alien has with regard to a foreign country. Nonetheless other intermediaries of (authority) may be accessible in situations where the same individual can be considered a client before being, ultimately only, considered a subject. It depends on a context, and besides, citizenship can turn into a virtual equivalence of it, see subjection as resulting of a moral arguments variability, and Argument from authority --Askedonty (talk) 17:52, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I could gather, 'subjects' of a state in brief could mean the substantial working agencies of the representative government? Grotesquetruth (talk) 19:07, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

If I ever heard that, I'd take it that was in a figurative mode. --Askedonty (talk) 19:12, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

I forgot to mention taxation however. There is also criminal liability in the same fashion, that is as a link which is unidirectional. Other relationships derive only from the other statutes of the individual and they relate to other entities than with the state. --Askedonty (talk) 19:05, 21 October 2022 (UTC)