Shooting in Munich

[Happy Ent]

1 hour ago, Errant Bard said:

What I am saying is that anyone using a "us versus them", using arguments like supposed social essentialism, would belong in the "closed" group you defined.

Correct. I try to avoid that line of in/outgroup thinking (and probably often fail.) In this matter, I’m very far from social essentialism, and I completely and utterly reject identity politics, which (to me) is the clearest and vilest form of social essentialism. 

You correctly identity essentialism as one of the most important aspects of closed-society-thinking.

Instead, I’m an optimist: people can change their minds. For instance, lots of Europeans can support the closed society, in fact Europe has had some of the most instructive historical examples in the 20th century, and even today a good part of modern Western thought is entirely “closed”. There is nothing essentially European to the open society, Europeans are as prone as anybody to the Spell of Plato. But many have changed their minds, and some parts of the West have been able to build very good institutions in those windows of constitutional sanity.

Similarly, muslims can change their mind. (I hope they do. But currently, the evidence does not support this hope. But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.) As can everybody else under the Spell. The regressive left, for instance, for whom I have the same hope as for the followers of islam.

[Happy Ent]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

Well, then, provide your data showing that it's false. You refer to it, but don't provide it. If I'm 'demonstrably' wrong, demonstrate it.

I’ve lost interest in that kind of discourse over the years—I’m learning nothing from it, and I’ve become too old to get anything out of winning debates. It also deflects discourse to an endless bickering about sources.

Ah, sigh.

Muslims seem to be perfectly happy with following muslim values. These values, I hope you and I agree, are entirely vile and despicable and socially regressive. There are plenty of surveys, all pointing in the same direction. The Pew institute has released many of them over the years. For you in the UK, the Gatestone institute is a good source to read up on the UK muslim population. These surveys differ, as do their results, but they are all blood-chilling.

For instance, the 2016 Gatestone poll on British Muslims regarding if homosexuality should be illegal 

50% of Muslims 55+ think that homosexuality should be illegal,

54% of Muslims 45-54,

55% of Muslims 35-44,

65% of Muslims 25-34,

71% of Muslims 16-24.

These are mostly about social issues (treatment of women, sexual deviants, jews), where muslims on average present a value system that is very far from mine, and puts them on the extreme right end of any political spectrum. They are by far the most important source of conservative values in Western countries today. But Muslim values on constitutional issues (free speech, rule of law, etc.) are on a different planet altogether. As I said, I view the evidence from various sources around the world is largely consistent 

I think I can say that I’ve never  seen a signal of the sort “significant numbers of Muslims share the ideals of the open society.” I’d be very eager to see any contrary evidence. (I read people like Maajid Nawaz and would be very happy if the gloomy picture he paints is wrong.)

[Boris the Blade]

16 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

Correct. I try to avoid that line of in/outgroup thinking (and probably often fail.) In this matter, I’m very far from social essentialism, and I completely and utterly reject identity politics, which (to me) is the clearest and vilest form of social essentialism. 

You correctly identity essentialism as one of the most important aspects of closed-society-thinking.

Instead, I’m an optimist: people can change their minds. Lots of Europeans can support the closed society, in fact Europe has had some of the most instructive historical examples in the 20th century, and even today a good part of modern Western thought is entirely “closed”. There is nothing essentially European to the open society, Europeans are as prone as anybody to the Spell of Plato.

Similarly, muslims can change their mind. (I hope they do. But currently, the evidence does not support this hope. But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.) As can everybody else under the Spell. The regressive left, for instance, for whom I have the same hope as for the followers of islam.

"Regressive left." Oh man funny coming from someone like you, even more so with your generalizations of Muslims.

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

27 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

Correct. I try to avoid that line of in/outgroup thinking (and probably often fail.) In this matter, I’m very far from social essentialism, and I completely and utterly reject identity politics, which (to me) is the clearest and vilest form of social essentialism. 

You correctly identity essentialism as one of the most important aspects of closed-society-thinking.

Instead, I’m an optimist: people can change their minds. For instance, lots of Europeans can support the closed society, in fact Europe has had some of the most instructive historical examples in the 20th century, and even today a good part of modern Western thought is entirely “closed”. There is nothing essentially European to the open society, Europeans are as prone as anybody to the Spell of Plato. But many have changed their minds, and some parts of the West have been able to build very good institutions in those windows of constitutional sanity.

Similarly, muslims can change their mind. (I hope they do. But currently, the evidence does not support this hope. But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.) As can everybody else under the Spell. The regressive left, for instance, for whom I have the same hope as for the followers of islam.

You are overgeneralizing Muslims. Muslims in the US, for example, have views on women's rights and homosexuality that are generally in line with mainstream US views.

The difference between US and European Muslims is in large part due to selection effects, but it still demonstrates that your generalizations about Muslims as a whole are incorrect.

[ElizabethB.]

23 minutes ago, White Walker Texas Ranger said:

You are overgeneralizing Muslims. Muslims in the US, for example, have views on women's rights and homosexuality that are generally in line with mainstream US views.

The difference between US and European Muslims is in large part due to selection effects, but it still demonstrates that your generalizations about Muslims as a whole are incorrect.

So even with selection effects how many girls are subjected or in danger of fgm in America? If fgm is in line with mainstream values in the US those values need to be examined.

[Happy Ent]

34 minutes ago, White Walker Texas Ranger said:

You are overgeneralizing Muslims. Muslims in the US, for example, have views on women's rights and homosexuality that are generally in line with mainstream US views.

The difference between US and European Muslims is in large part due to selection effects, but it still demonstrates that your generalizations about Muslims as a whole are incorrect.

I am completely aware of that. US muslims are a beacon of hope, and I think you analysis of the effects is correct. (In particular, there is no indication of any kind of integration policy, which is the unpleasant mirage currently haunting the European discourse. Instead, harmonious co-existence is ensured by utterly heartless selection. We Europeans have a hard time understanding this.)

If in any of the above I have made claims of the type “All muslims think X” or “Muslims essentially think X” I apologise. (I’ve checked what I wrote and find only the opposite – almost comical instance on averages and trends. If you can help me improve some of my formulations I’d be grateful. But communication is a two-player game, and the onus is on me.) It is clear to me that I hold neither of those positions (which are just plain stupid), so I find this caveat trivial and unnecessary.  

[Dr. Pepper]

13 minutes ago, ElizabethB. said:

So even with selection effects how many girls are subjected or in danger of fgm in America? If fgm is in line with mainstream values in the US those values need to be examined.

Well, if any religion that practices FGM is to be kicked out, we should start first with the christians.  

[ElizabethB.]

5 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

I don’t think the EU is particularly tribal. My problems with the EU have more to do with Platonic arrogance of the ruling elite,  the constitutional focus on the wrong question (namely, “who should rule”), latent totalitarianism (value education of the citizenship), and, most damningly, the absence of correction mechanisms (no accountable European government that can be de-elected for its inevitable failures).

Sure but how much would de-electing an accountable European government impact the EU as whole? 

[Errant Bard]

1 hour ago, Happy Ent said:

Similarly, muslims can change their mind. (I hope they do. But currently, the evidence does not support this hope. But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.) As can everybody else under the Spell. The regressive left, for instance, for whom I have the same hope as for the followers of islam.

It's interesting, what you say is reminiscent of an intellectual discourse that is objectively on the rise in my country, whose locutors are called by some "neo-conservatives", by others "reactonaries" (examples would be Michel Onfray or Alain Finkielkraut.) It's like the current trend.

Anyway, for the changing of mind, I sure hope most muslims do NOT change their mind and keep liking our countries (that also happen to be theirs, for a lot of them. 10% of France population is muslim, as I was saying) and more generally other people despite differences in culture (let us remember a lot of copts were living until very recently in Maghreb: the changing of mind that chased them is recent, and from a small subgroup of muslims in those countries.) One man can do a lot one way or another, we just have to look at Recep Tayyip Erdogan or Mohamed Bouazizi.

I hold the same mind-changing hope for the next mass shooter in the US or the next Breyvik copycat. I am not holding my breath. I am envisioning the future as a mix of Huxley, Bilal and Beukes: terror strikes, an indifferent population, a police state and deregulated economy ("growth") as the only horizon and priority. When ISIS will have stopped to scare the good bourgeois like Al-Qaida did, we will move on to the next bogeyman, will it be Russia this time? There is always the great leader Kim if needs be. Maybe some independentist faction will surge again, the way Europe is going. ETA could get their share of the media pie in my region if they did their thing right.

[Jo498]

1 hour ago, Happy Ent said:

Instead, I’m an optimist: people can change their minds. For instance, lots of Europeans can support the closed society, in fact Europe has had some of the most instructive historical examples in the 20th century, and even today a good part of modern Western thought is entirely “closed”. There is nothing essentially European to the open society,

Do you think it is accidental that societies coming close to what one might call "open" historically only arose in the last ca. 150 years in Western Europe and North America? Of course there is nothing "essential" (in the uninteresting strawman sense) involved here. But very probably any "open society" is necessarily fragile (although as we have so little data because it is historically so rare and late, it is hard to tell) and there are fairly deep-rooted historical reasons why it arose when and where it actually did.

To put your other example in perspective: When Popper wrote about the "open society" in the 1940s, (the practice of male) homosexuality was illegal in most Western countries and if not illegal, it was considered a pathology. In most Western countries this stance only changed in the last 3-4 decades. On the surface the attitude seems to have changed incredibly fast, the clichéed portrayals of gays in 1980s movies feel simply embarrassing now, but I guess we really found that funny then. But what can change quickly in one direction might change in another one again.

[Happy Ent]

35 minutes ago, Jo498 said:

Do you think it is accidental that societies coming close to what one might call "open" historically only arose in the last ca. 150 years in Western Europe and North America?

No, I don’t find it accidental. (I don’t quite agree with the number 150, and would include mini-Enlightenments like Athens and the Florence of the Medici. But that’s for a different thread.) A recent book I read about cultural societal trends in the light of population genetics is A Troublesome Inheritance by N. Wade. There will probably be much more data coming from that front that brings evidence from cultural history, genetics, etc. to a table hitherto dominated by somewhat boring just-so stories. Exciting times for intellectual omnivores!

But even though I am fascinated by these explanations, they are no excuse. The (blind) faith in reason must be paired with a blind faith in choice. Societies can choose this model or that. There may be exogenic, economical, geographical, historical, genetic, etc. reasons that explain why these choices are harder or easier for some populations. But that can never be an excuse. Explanations aren’t excuses (though they can inform politics.) Societies have choices. 

In Europe, we have chosen currently to embark in the direction of the dystopia that EB sketches above. Totalitarianism as a reaction to internal strife brought about by a crazy cocktail of neoliberal globalist economic politics and idiotic immigration policies. These were very bad choices. But bad choices are inevitable, every society makes them. It is on us to make sure that we recover from these choices in an orderly, decent fashion. Wir schaffen das!

[Errant Bard]

9 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

But even though I am fascinated by these explanations, they are no excuse. The (blind) faith in reason must be paired with a blind faith in choice. Societies can choose this model or that. There may be exogenic, economical, geographical, historical, genetic, etc. reasons that explain why these choices are harder or easier for some populations. But that can never be an excuse. Explanations aren’t excuses (though they can inform politics.) Societies have choices.

Some choices, considering the evolution of society, will be harder and harder to make, though. Compared to cases in history, we have against peaceful coexistence new factors like mondialisation, overpopulation, resource starvation, and growing micro and macro inequalities.

Let's take Greece and its debt (that Germany insists must be paid in full.) Sure, Greek society has a choice to continue sinking their country into the mire (selling production units to other countries, diminishing salaries, pensions, making promising people leave, seeing debt grow 10% per year, etc), but at one point people, those who actually have the power, will switch from Siriza to Golden Dawn, like they did from Conservatives to Siriza before, because society is composed of people, and those people don't want to choose misery... (this is why neo-con make me laugh sometimes here, when they insist on fiscal righteousness and debt reimbursment: Do they think a people will stay sheepish and do everything they say no matter the pressure. I see those guys as big unconscious proponent of dictature.) Anyway, if their growing misery is also linked to immigration (like it's done in Hungary despite them having very very few migrants staying), then it does not really stays what I would call a choice: society will follow the anti-misery discourse and elect government that will act against immigration, despite what we would call reason and generosity.

[Happy Ent]

36 minutes ago, Errant Bard said:

Some choices, considering the evolution of society, […]

I agree with all of that, but I’m losing track of where this thread is going. 

To get back on track, a Syrian asylum-seeker killed 1 and wounded 5 others with a machete yesterday, and another Syrian (whose application was rejected a year ago) blew himself up outside an open air concert (that he seems to have been unable to enter), wounding 12.

Like others in this thread, I assume that a few week from now we will stop reporting or talking about such incidents and treat them like traffic accidents instead: unpleasant but unavoidable consequences of the way we have chosen to organise our societies. The Israelisation of Europe (in the sense of ubiquitous surveillance and security) is a fact. (I love both Israel and the US, but  used to view their levels of security as an indicator of something being wrong.)

[Errant Bard]

1 minute ago, Happy Ent said:

I agree with all of that, but I’m losing track of where this thread is going.

Right.

I just heard that the shooter had that exchange with a Munich inhabitant prior to the shooting where the man called him out, telling him he belonged in a psychiatric hospital or outside the country, and the shooter replied that he was German, and actually just got out of psychiatry. Should this incident, beside examining the focus given by the media, really be conflated with terror attacks more than with people just blowing a fuse, something that happens everywhere in the world, all the time? (for example)

[Tijgy]

6 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

To get back on track, a Syrian asylum-seeker killed 1 and wounded 5 others with a machete yesterday, and another Syrian (whose application was rejected a year ago) blew himself up outside an open air concert (that he seems to have been unable to enter), wounding 12.

 

He used the same similar bombs as they used during the attacks in the airport of Zaventem (near Brussels) last march, using parts of metal. 

And this is the fourth violent incident in Germany this week. 

6 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

Like others in this thread, I assume that a few week from now we will stop reporting or talking about such incidents and treat them like traffic accidents instead: unpleasant but unavoidable consequences of the way we have chosen to organise our societies. The Israelisation of Europe (in the sense of ubiquitous surveillance and security) is a fact. (I love both Israel and the US, but  used to view their levels of security as an indicator of something being wrong.)

I do not really agree with this completely. It is probably true over accidents where some guy kills some other people with a machete. But if it is about incidents like in Paris or in Brussels where a big number of people died and got wounded, those incidents would not be just pushed aside. 

[Happy Ent]

9 minutes ago, Errant Bard said:

Should this incident, beside examining the focus given by the media, really be conflated with terror attacks more than with people just blowing a fuse, something that happens everywhere in the world, all the time? (for example)

I have no opinion on that. (I also don’t know a good definition of terror attack, for that matter.)

I think one can usefully talk about the effects of such incidents on society, but I have never been very enlightened by the other direction (i.e., which effects society has on such incidents). I would be surprised if the German discourse is not shaken by 4  large-scale murder attempts in one week perpetrated by actors with roots in the middle east. For some people, motivation seems to be important; for me it really isn’t. 

(Or rather: I’m much more worried by those attacks that are not explained by islamic radicalisation. The latter I would have some hope of rooting out with a sufficiently immoral, totalitarian, Stalinesque de-islamisation (which I would oppose) . But attacks that are entirely explained by socio-economical of psychological factors? How do you “solve” those?)

[Jo498]

you don't solve them. At least not easily and as it is probably impossible to provide evidence connecting socio-economical factors (higher pressure, less good jobs etc., online bullying, whatever) clearly with (apparently) far more young people "snapping" and running amok, it is not even clear what one could do.

And as the powers that be usually cannot even think about changing such factors (and it is hard although not impossible) because they believe that this is the only way to keep our Western lifestyle and it is almost unthinkable to question the latter, nothing would really change even if we could be fairly certain about some root causes.

This helplessness seems obvious when politicians now again start with blaming ego shooter games and laws about firearms. He got the gun illegally, how should changing laws help with something that is already illegal but will remain possible even with stricter laws?

That's why the differences are important. It is very different if (as a clear cut case) travels to the middle east to fight along ISIS and then returns for a major bombing in Europe or if a teenager snaps because he has been bullied for years/failed exams/got scorned by a girl.

You can maybe seal up Europe from middle east muslims and you can maybe screen for people with an "ISIS profile", but this will not help at all with school shootings (and the Munich shooting basically was one, just not at a school). Unless one introduces hithero unthinkable levels of violating doctor-patient confidentiality and put thousands of troubled teenagers under surveillance.

And it would be at least thousands because another paradox is that we tend to pathologize fairly minor stuff that was considered normal until not too long ago. It is normal to be sad for a long time after the death of a relative or the end of a relationship; today we tend to treat such stuff as depression and put people in therapy or on meds.

[Happy Ent]

21 minutes ago, Jo498 said:

You can maybe seal up Europe from middle east muslims and you can maybe screen for people with an "ISIS profile", but this will not help at all with school shootings (and the Munich shooting basically was one, just not at a school). Unless one introduces hithero unthinkable levels of violating doctor-patient confidentiality and put thousands of troubled teenagers under surveillance.

But I think even this analysis is useful and optimistic.

School shootings because of X are inevitable consequences of (1) the open society (absence of surveillance), and (2) X (for some perfectly innocuous X such as romantic rejection). We accept these bad consequences and understand them as downsides of (1) and (2), because we think (1) and (2) have very high value for our society. It’s exactly like cars (they have value for us, but they also have downsides). Do note that these are real choices. In the US, there is (3) access to guns, which is also seen as a value. (I reject that choice.) (3) also as known downsides, which the US chooses to balance against the upsides.

Migration from Middle Eastern and North African muslims also has inevitable bad consequences. It is a choice for a society to say, no: we put so much value on Y (say, deontological ethics, or good humous) that we accept the downsides. Society is getting increasingly well informed about these issues; for instance, many Europeans only now understand the downsides of living with many Middle Easterners and North African muslims. (Of these downsides, violence in the public sphere is one, but I am much more worried about the conservative values and the welfare state – I am a leftie and a social progressive more than I am a security-fetishist.) We now need to engage in a constructive debate where we evaluate the many upsides of multiculturalism (I don’t have the time to enumerate them) against these downsides. This is a choice, which we as a society can make. We do that by debating this in the public sphere, just as the US is very good at debating the utility of (3) in the public sphere. We Europeans have to reach that level of discourse. 

[Jo498]

They might be choices in theory. In reality the case of cars (or maybe guns in the US) shows IMO that there is actually far less of a choice. Of course, it depends on how you frame the choices. It is not really feasible to abolish cars and the development for ever heavier, "safer" cars, is only nice for the people within those cars but bad for pedestrians (there have been several fatal accidents becaus people stepped on the wrong pedal and raced into groups of pedestrians). But it would be possible to enforce a lower speed limit (although this is almost as loaded a topic in Autobahn country as guns in NRA country) and reduce some kinds of fatal accidents.

My skepticism about liberalism (in both the US and the European senses) is not only based on the general inertia of society and its institutions, the actual distribution of power (crazy mixture of big bureaucracy and big business/banks) and the frequent failure of technocratic solutions. It's more anthropological. People are tribalist, petty and mean and this can be ameliorated but not really changed. (And if they have become "rootless" wannabe-cosmopolitans they often fall back into tribalism at the first opportunity - see soccer world cup)

There is also (maybe depressing) evidence that ethnically homogeneous societies are happier and do better according to many measures.

Although the tribalism does not stop here: If you read or talk to elderly people about how the other Germans treated the German (Silesian, Prussian, Bohemian etc.) refugees after WW II, the mean-spiritedness is not to be explained completely by the admittedly tough (crowded, some winters near starvation) situation of the late 1940s but there was a lot of tribalism even later on. One of my grandmas (1911-91) who was very probably not meaner than average referred to people as "Flüchtlinge" decades after they had settled and it was apparently worthwhile to mention that "they are also Catholics!" (a catholic, albeit non-refugee daughter-in-law (my aunt) really stressed her tolerance...).

[Happy Ent]

36 minutes ago, Jo498 said:

There is also (maybe depressing) evidence that ethnically homogeneous societies are happier and do better according to many measures.

I assume you refer to Robert D. Putnam’s work? Yes, I was very depressed by this as well.