9:10 Here's the thing that really sticks out to me as incredibly odd. The professor speculates that 200 Israelis will be "Psychically Harmed" per death of an Israeli civilian, but then argues, to make his math work out, that for each Gazan killed it's only 10 other Gazans that will be "Psychically Harmed", plus 5 for each physically injured Gazan. So by the professor's logic, he's basically saying the feelings of Israeli Citizens is worth almost 20x as much as the feelings of Gazan citizens. That seems absolutely insane to me.
Yeah I was thinking something along those lines too. Like how the initial Gazan attack provided psychic horror to all 7 million Israelis but the hypothetical 30,000 deaths would only psychically harm the friends and families of those 30,000. I guess presumably the rest of the population would be chill with it. Those 30,000 people cut ahead of them in traffic or something so whatever. It's just the argument of someone who wants to justify the harm, that's all.
I may have misunderstood, but I thought that this was based on the idea that ALL Gazans will be psychically harmed. So the reason why the ratio is different is because Israel is killing more people. Like, if there are 100 Israelis and 100 Gazans, 1 Israeli killed and 99 psychically harmed = 1:99 ratio. 10 Gazans killed and 90 psychically harmed = 1:9 ratio.
it seems like his argument is is 'they'll be miserable anyway whereas the israelis can otherwise enjoy their lives' which like.... yes that's because they're occupied, by israel
And Palestine has more children. Who have worse emotional regulation so their fear response might be stronger. Also the one they are afraid of is more numerous and better equipped.
His argument has all the hallmarks of a post-hoc framework developed to support a specific belief he already held, rather than a de-novo argument constructed to be a more generalized solution to a question. This is why, as others have rightly pointed out, the natural conclusion of his argument is that it was wrong for the United States to end the practice of chattel slavery, and that anyone who's sexually assaulted should never come forward for fear of the widespread psychic harm it would cause to their attacker's friends, family, and colleagues. Just your run of the mill bad faith, intellectually lazy tripe spun out to justify support for a position that is clearly incorrect on its face.
Yeah, we ought to send this guy back in time so all those weirdos doing unethical psychological experiments to try and figure out how something like the Holocaust could happen can study him.
Sometimes, when people get an education, even going all the way to PhD level, they still never learned one of the most essential things of being a critical thinker: - To find the truth, you follow where the evidence leads. You don't start with a belief that you've already made up your mind to be true, and then bend and twist everything else to try to force that preconceived belief to appear proven, or highlight only the things that appear to support it while dismissing or hiding anything that points to a contrary conclusion.
@@johnwalker1058education and critical thinking don't make people value life. Values are distinct from education. If you have an actual sociopath, education teaches them to take advantage of people and systems
It is obviously a post-hoc rationalization. Wallen never explores the conditions for why October 7th occurred. He concludes that the number of people Israel has and will kill in the course of their war, will be justified if, "Gaza will not only be rebuilt, better than before, but that it will be set free as part of a two-state solution." The natural conclusion to draw from this is that had Israel pursued a two-solution and economic development of Gaza, that Palestinians would have no reason to have committed the atrocities of October 7th. From this perspective, it was the Israeli government themselves who have inflicted the presupposed "psychic harm" upon their own population, not merely Hamas by themselves, because their occupation and blockade sowed the necessary discontent for an event like October 7th to occur. Of course, Wallen cannot mention that Hamas' actions are in response to Israel's occupation and blockade, or that Israel has had the technological superiority to render much of Hamas' previous rocket actions nearly entirely harmless. Wallen's calculus fundamentally relies on math that involves equivocating deaths with "psychic harm". If Wallen had gone into the history prior to October 7th, he would have had to make the exact opposite argument, conceding that Palestinians have experienced a disproportionately higher degree of "psychic harm" prior to October 7th; Thus, he would have had to contend that it was entirely within the interests, and fundamentally proportional, of Hamas to kill Israelis to make up for the "psychic harm" experienced by Palestinians in Gaza because experiencing occupation, economic deprivation, blockade, and unequal treatment is fundamentally more "psychically harming" than living in modern country with first world living standards a la Israel. Naturally, conceding this would have completely undermined his argument.
This is literally just a clear case of this dude not viewing Palestinians as real people, being under the constant threat of bombings all of the time is significantly worse than the fear of a potential attack
@@Violaphobiabeing bombed at the moment is scarier and more real than anticipating a bombing that may or may not happen (because I'm protected in my colony/settlements), hope this helps.
@@itgetsworse601 You do the Palestinian people a disservice by lying like this. Israel's air defense system only lowers the damage, it doesn't eliminate it.
except it isn't. Its a clear case of neighbors threatening Israel with extinction and Israel threatening Palestinians with the "Don't be a Gobshite" stick.
I teach ethics for a living, and this kind of article is living proof that academic ethics is largely mental masturbation and bizarre rationalization. There are exceptions, but this article isn't surprising to me at all.
How? How do you not go insane? How do you live with these people. I work with insane people BUT it isn't part of my work to hear what they think at all.
this is just Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent," except instead of arguing how Israel is using fear to justify their atrocities, the paper is acting like fearmongering is perfectly valid
The refusal to give “psychic harm” of Palestinians the weight it deserves makes perfect sense if you assume that he doesn’t consider Palestinians human
Honestly, it IS kinda accurate that more psychic harm is done to people who are not used to receiving atrocities than to people who are (because it’s a less normal part of life). However, the cost of bringing a population to a point where seeing mass deaths is relatively normal is IMMENSE, and far greater than any psychic harm caused by fear of retaliation. Also, if you harm someone and then fear retaliation, the psychic harm is self inflicted because YOU did the act that caused it.
@@Syzygy_Bliss trauma doesn't work that way. People who have experienced more brutality are not less harmed by it. It may be normalised but not less damaging.
@@reubenmccallum3350I think we’re in agreement. If an event is psychologically normalized, it definitionally causes less psychological harm per occurrence than if it’s not normalized (and thus further outside of the mind’s expected norm). But altering the mind’s expected norm causes disproportionately more physical harm compared to the amount of psychic harm that the act will cause after being normalized. Getting to the normalization IS where the extra harm comes from.
@@Syzygy_BlissSo what you are saying is that with a coddled enough existence it is possible for a person’s Wendy’s order getting mixed up to cause more ‘psychic harm’ pound for pound when compared to actual violence assuming it is inflicted on someone who has experienced enough violence and injustice to become numb to it?
I’m currently in a class where we’ve been critically reading a lot of apologia for the Armenian genocide. I’m convinced that this article will be reading material for a similar class in the future.
I remember stumbling upon a video here on YT that was besically Armenian genocide denial. I didn't watch too much of the videos but I remember being appalled by the comments saying it was a just about quelling down "Armenina gang violence." It was a few years ago, so I dont remember what it was called.
The fact they equate the harm done to a middle class Tel Aviv man who saw the news one day and thought, "oh thats sad", to Gazan children covered in their parents blood, slowly dying under the rubble of their house.
@@ButtersCCookie The premise here being that the psychological harm on Israel people is significantly disproportionate to someone having their family slaughtered in front of them. The Palestinian people aren’t just experiencing trauma, they’re also having their livelihoods, support networks, and families stripped away. That’s in addition to the PTSD they will no doubt also experience
@@ButtersCCookie Sucks for them, though I imagine the average call operator or HR rep would agree that their experiences are incomparable to genocide being actively performed against them
Palestinians equate being told simply share the land with jews to a genocide. Meanwhile they unironically cite the Elder Protocols of Zion in the charter of Hamas and deny the existence of the Jewish identity.
"You destroyed my home, killed my entire family, injured me to the point of ruining my life, but the psychic damage is lesser because you promised to rebuild my home after doing all these things and give my people a state" - Something that would never be said by anyone.
@@tony608 Yeah, right. It is not like they were helped by giant superpower that had giant benefits from ww2, right? It is totaly because they are hard working people, also because they not brown like this unterm... you get the point (also /s)
Tbf Dan read some insane shit so he might be desensitized to the insane logic. Ex the 2 hours worth of fifty shades of gray, anything related to the metaverse or nfts.
let us assume ten of Dan's brain cells will carry that burden for every r/wsb post that was read. let us add to that the number of sentences of fifty shades and those cells that will carry that burden. suppose that number is five times higher than the number of wsb posts. if we add those numbers together we get about half a million. if we offset the number of Dan cells with the claim to avoid a psychic burden by that number the number of brain cells whose psychic burden counts will still be close to 86 billion. I find that I cannot reject that as an unreasonable balance.
Philosopher here. Just wanted to step in to note two things: 1. Whalen’s piece is not really an “article” or a “paper”. It did not go through peer review. Rather it is more like an op ed. 2. This piece was very widely panned by the academic philosophical community for many of the reasons you’ve expressed as well as others.
Thank you! It's lacking a lot of academic criticality, so I hope not too many have been fooled by just the title of the writer. Scholarly ethics are not vibe based ramblings. And this is a good example of gaining popular visibility while having your guard down, muddying the waters for yourself as a professional because of something non-academic you wrote. It's important to understand the difference between an academic doing acedemics and an academic writing from personal standpoint, as themselves as an academic but not strictly academically. The first is methodological, critical and impersonal to a realistic degree, and the latter is outside the standards to which you generally need to hold yourself to in serious practice, but you're still using the professional title to gain weight on your personal arguments.
LMFAOOOO philosophy student of 8 years here, it astounds me how people think just because a “scholar” wrote something it’s bound to be reliable. As if systemic oppression hasn’t happened through academia before.
The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what. This is the quote right after the one calculating the psychic harm on Israelis: "But it could be proportional only if the Israelis aren’t imposing on basically all Gazans a greater psychic burden than the psychic burden that Israelis hope to avoid. But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans? There are currently over two million people living in Gaza, and given the death, destruction, and displacement caused by the war, it would seem crazy to suggest that the war has not caused more psychic harm to those two million people than it might alleviate for Israelis. This would seem to negate the potential for Israelis to appeal to psychic harm to make their war proportional."
@@LordThanatosOfHades and the three paragraphs afterward are as follows: "There is a possible response to this objection, but before getting to it, I want to address two objections to the idea that Israel can cite the psychic harm from the threat of Hamas on its side of the balance. One objection to this argument is that to live in Israel is to live with such threats. Hamas is not the only threat. Hezbollah too would like to wipe Israel from the map. So would various other groups, including the Iranian regime. Israel cannot possibly eliminate these threats, so it should not be allowed to cite the extra threat from Hamas as a reason to kill Gazans. To me the most important response to this objection is this: To live with a neighbor who wants to destroy you is bad enough, but to live with a neighbor who is undeterrable is much worse. For an analogy, consider the difference between living in a city with an ex who you know wants to hurt you, but who you think is also deterred by the threat of criminal punishment from doing anything crazy, and living in a city with an ex who you know is so committed to doing you harm that no threat of punishment will deter him. The other powers all seem, so far at least, deterred by the power of Israel (backed up by the U.S.). For Hamas, this is not the case." He then spends THE ACTUAL REST OF THE PAPER arguing that if Israel destroyed Hamas now and then stopped the war AND rebuilt and liberated Gaza (which is a fantasy that he is indulging in for reasons unbeknownst to me, and a completely worthless statement in an academic ethics paper; yeah man it WOULD be good if the people waging war stopped waging war, thanks for the expert opinion), the genocidal attacks and bombings on Gaza that have occurred as of now WOULD be justified because the short-term of the murder of thousands upon thousands of Palestinian citizens would create less "harm" than the long-term "psychic harm" for the Israelis. "How could the misery the war is inflicting on Gazans not fully offset the psychic gains for the Israelis? The answer is that it could count for less if, for most Gazans, it is much more short-lived psychic pain than that which the Israelis would otherwise suffer. But the only way for it to be much more short-lived is if Israel takes it upon itself, as soon as possible, to reassure the Gazans that Gaza will not only be rebuilt, better than before, but that it will be set free as part of a two-state solution." As if the consequence of Isreal's attacks on Gaza is "psychic pain", instead of thousands upon thousands of deaths, the complete suppression and attempted genocide of an entire culture and the complete devastation of a people's land and infrastructure. As if the amount of harm that has been inflicted on Gaza has not already far surpassed whatever "psychic harm" Israel feels, tenfold. Please read the actual full article instead of cherry picking out-of-context paragraphs. It's not even that long. Edit: I'm going back to edit this really quickly because I realized I've made the mistake of accepting a claim Walen made in order to argue inside its framework. By even accepting the idea that there is a moral calculus to be made, where something arbitrary and irrational like fear can be made proportional to murder and genocide, and simply arguing that Israel's "psychic harm" and the horrors inflicted on Gaza are "not proportional", I've already acquiesced that there is an amount of dead citizens that COULD equate to Israel's "psychic harm", but that this simply doesn't. That's a mistake. Let me make it clear: there is no world where a populous being afraid justifies genocide. There is no moral calculus to be made. Creating a math equation out of human suffering is worthless and immoral.
Not to mention, Hamas used to call for the destruction of Israelis as a hole, dehumanizing, saying Israel shouldn't exist, ring any bells (Russian War with Ukraine) hence why they got their terrorist designation.
@@galaxyproductions2076 Hamas is completely irrelevant in this conflict, there is no reason to keep bringing them up other than to promote israeli propaganda. Its a palestinian israeli conflict.
I've seen Gazan children utterly and uncontrollably traumatized. The kind of trauma that never goes away. Not understanding what is going on around them. Watching their bloody siblings being operated on. Not understanding why half their family was blown up in an airstrike. Being fearful that at any moment a bomb could land on their head. Wondering why they can't simply live in peace. It's the kind of trauma that breeds extremism. Israel is literally breeding the terror they fear in a petri dish. Fighting terror with terror is asinine. It's delusional to think that's a solution to anything. It's antithetical to what they claim to want to achieve. It's mind boggling.
The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what happened. The article is definitely strangely written, but it's pretty clear if you read the whole thing, which Joel has clearly done. This is the quote right after the one calculating the psychic harm on Israelis: "But it could be proportional only if the Israelis aren’t imposing on basically all Gazans a greater psychic burden than the psychic burden that Israelis hope to avoid. But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans? There are currently over two million people living in Gaza, and given the death, destruction, and displacement caused by the war, it would seem crazy to suggest that the war has not caused more psychic harm to those two million people than it might alleviate for Israelis. This would seem to negate the potential for Israelis to appeal to psychic harm to make their war proportional."
@@LordThanatosOfHades I had no plans to read it, but I will after I get some sleep. I'm not really interested in any sort of arguments of proportion. I don't think a military response is the solution. At some point, the killing has to stop and that's when peace and security will begin.
@@tripe2237 I agree entirely. I think the proportionality arguments are quite dangerous, even if in this case my interpretation is that it is not genocide apologia.
"Extremism." I'd say resistance when you're entire family has been killed in the largest extermination campaign of the 21st century isn't extreme at all, in fact its probably the only reasonable response. To frame people fighting back, as their land is literally being invaded as "terrorists" or "extremists" is insane. Why are we using the oppressors langauge and framing? The only terrorists are the IDF, they are the only extremists.
Unfortunately Israel is breeding that extremism on purpose to continue to have excuses to justify their genocidal tendencies. It's a tactic that is really old, to radicalize your opponents to be able to demonize their image and have "reasons" to continue doing horrid stuff
Not just over 3 months, but over years. 2008, 2009, 2012, 2014, 2018, 2021, 2022, and now 2023 of relentless bombardment. Gaza is constantly under siege, they've never taken a breath. In fact, when children are interviewed "What do you want to be when you grow up?" the typical response is "Nothing. Children in Gaza don't grow up".
What about the Jews who grew up under Ottoman apartheid and the lynch mobs of the Mandate period? Oh and don't forget the Neo-nazi ratlines that Egypt and Syria operated.
Honestly, when I first saw the article title, I was like, oh hey, maybe it's like about how the US overreacted on 9/11, then I remembered the video title and out loud said OH NO
That's such a good observation. It seems that when the victims of violence are majority Muslim Arabs, the West and its settler colony Israel are happy to sacrifice.
it has been USA foreign policy for at least 100 years though. 911 just made it more annoying to get in a plane. the usa was droping napalm and nuclear bombs on civilians in other countries since the 40's.
Don't forget that the American Psychological Association (APA) not only endorsed and signed off on torture post-911 when it was being marketed as "enhanced interrogation techniques". Not only that, but prominent APA members developed specific torture techniques for the CIA and the military.
Thanks Dan Olson for alleviating Medium Joel of the legitimate fear that people will take out-of-context clips of himself quoting Israeli war propaganda, as if he's saying it himself. (Not sarcasm)
I had a hard time understanding why one of my favorite, and rational TH-camrs was saying such odd things, then I realized he was just doing a voice over 😂
The fear that the possibility of these out of context clips might exist is causing me enough psychic damage that I honestly think the only option is to cancel Medium Joel and his youtubes off the internet permanently
I could genuinely see this guy saying something like _"The white man was justified in shooting the unarmed black teen who ringed his doorbell because he was scared, so the teen caused him psychic harm"._
The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what happened. The article is definitely strangely written, but it's pretty clear if you read the whole thing, which Joel has clearly done. This is the paragraph right after the one calculating suffering on the Israeli side: "But it could be proportional only if the Israelis aren’t imposing on basically all Gazans a greater psychic burden than the psychic burden that Israelis hope to avoid. But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans? There are currently over two million people living in Gaza, and given the death, destruction, and displacement caused by the war, it would seem crazy to suggest that the war has not caused more psychic harm to those two million people than it might alleviate for Israelis. This would seem to negate the potential for Israelis to appeal to psychic harm to make their war proportional." The overall outcome of the article is that Israeli arguments that the suffering of their people outweigh that of the Palestinians makes no sense and that the only way this might be made somewhat right is that after ousting Hamas, Israel offers sovereignty and cooperation under an entirely new government not composed of genocidal maniacs. It's definitely a strange article, and not one I agree with entirely, but it is not the genocidal puff piece the video seems to frame it as.
@@LordThanatosOfHades Whether or not he ultimately makes the argument that Israel's assault on the Palestinian people is "disproportionate" or not doesn't matter. The entire paper is predicated on ignoring the Israeli occupation up to this point, and minimizing the suffering of the Palestinian people meanwhile his point is philosophically flawed too. The fact that there is any talk of "proportionality" means the writer believes that there is some amount of casualty and bloodshed that would be tolerable for Israel's goals which I vehemently disagree with. Honestly I'd sooner make the point that the Palestinians have not yet reached *their* point of proportionality; having been subjugated on their own homeland and forced to deal with monstrous treatment by the Israeli government for decades should surely qualify them for causing much more harm than they already have. Or maybe "eye for an eye" isn't how we should be acting
I wonder what Alec has to say about the “psychic harm” felt by all those Palestinian children who don’t sleep for weeks in fear of Israeli military strikes, and die from heart attacks.
Ya, I wonder if there's any psychological harm to Palestinian babies and children being demonized and dehumanized as a terrorist for simply being Palestinian? Wonder if there's any psychological harm to being born into an apartheid system where you're forced at birth into poverty and second class citizenship?
What he’s stating is that in the event that a majority group feels threatened by a minority group, their feelings are always justified simply because there are more of them. What an abysmal take
I agree, but can I ask you a question? What if more than 30,000 innocent Israelis died during the attacks? Would it then make sense to take 30,000 innocent Palestinian lives? I assume you disagree, but I don't know so let me know if you think otherwise. If you disagree, then there's obviously something else at stake here rather than the numbers, right? Then what is it?
@@NitzanBueno isreal had already been killing and bombing palestine before that, so no, i don't think so. isreal has and had already taken more than enough lives, and are just acting like the victims at the consequences of their actions.
@@NitzanBuenoI'm not the OP, but I'll bite. Yes, I disagree. It's not just about the body count, it's also about who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed. Israel is the clear and unequivocal oppressor in this situation: they came in, forcibly and murderously stole and settled in other people's houses, took their livelihoods, forced them into a tiny fraction or their land, instituted prison-like conditions with unconscionable surveillance and no freedom of movement, and continue to treat Palestinians as non-human. This was all before October 7. So yes, I support the right of a people to resist oppression, and I reject the right of Israel to "defend itself", much like I would reject the right of American slave-owners to defend themselves from slaves fighting for freedom. Or I guess another way to say it is, it IS the body count, but you have to start counting at the real beginning, a hell of a lot earlier than October.
I’ve only heard this sort of garbage from the rich white population that think we should restrict food from struggling countries because “they’re overpopulating the world”
Yeah this whole thing just justifies genocide. Not like in the specific case of "Israel is doing a genocide in Gaza", but like, the logic of ANY genocide. 200 scared people justifies killing someone. Boy, that kind of minority scapegoating is what genocides thrive on. Like, whats the ratio of Jews to the European population in the 1930s?? Insane that this was written.
@@urgeintheicebox Zionism from its start was always an extremist white nationalist movement, and there really isn't any way around that. They were establishing their own colonialist movement. They didn't even chose Palestine, the British had just acquired the land from the Ottomans with the help of the Palestinians, who thought it would bring their freedom.
Discovering this opinion has inflicted me with 200 points of psychic damage. It is now ethically justified - indeed, it is a moral obligation for me to purchase a private air force and (withheld).
"If you killed my mom, Id be upset." The fact you have to say that out loud is ABSURD. That dude is an ETHICS PROFESSOR. How can he not piece that together?
It feels like such a glaringly obvious double standard to count the psychic harm of the entire nation of Israel but only count the injured and immediate family members of dead Palestinians. Like i get overlooking a lot of traumatic details of life in Gaza both before and after October 7th if the goal is to justify the atrocities, but that inability to even pretend to count Palestinians as equal human beings surely makes this so transparent as to be useless even as a piece of propaganda, no?
maybe low effort bait? Or worse, a deniable asset whose author can say "yes I meant this sincerely" or "no this was obvious satire; see how blatant it is?" depending on how the article is received, only serving to boost his name
So i don't want to be melodramatic? But I'm American, I live in Oregon, I've lived in Oregon for 43 years, and I have woken up screaming more than once in the past few months
75 years of oppression: I sleep October 7: real shit Look, I’m not condoning what happened on Oct 7, but people pretending that they both share same amount of suffering is so ridiculous. Oh wait, probably need to condemn the Hamas first before I speak out against mass murder
Damn, being privileged is great. Whenever I get scared, or I feel like I dont matter, I have Professor Walen's comforting reminder that my feelings are extremely important. So important that they're actually worth more than the lives of 10-20 brown people.
It’s shocking to me that every argument in defense of Israel’s and the IDF’s actions can be countered with “But couldn’t that exact same argument be used against you by the Palestinians?”. The people defending the palistinian genocide have seemingly never even tried to see the situation from the other side
The biggest elephant in the room is that wallen decides to only count if you lose a loved one as psychic harm but does not do the same for Israelis. Despite the fact that Israel has consistently attacked Palestinians over the years, the Palestinians are not considered as having psychic harm because of the existence of Israeli. Of course you could just calculate it away as well but at the end of the day you're just saying "country smaller, therefore doesn't matter."
This is the part that drives me crazy about all discussions of this. Like the whole "there was a ceasefire before Oct 7" as if Hamas started this out of nowhere and there hasn't been Israeli aggression towards Palestine for decades. It denies reality to describe the situation in terms favorable to the west.
For that matter - the rest of us are made pretty damn insecure knowing that the world's effective international powers are unable or unwilling to stop genocide. Israel's direct example and the bystanders' indirect one are doing that psychic harm to some 7 billion of us.
@@DragonNexus - And we should acknowledge the "psychic harm" of Palestinians in the West Bank, who had absolutely nothing to do with the Hamas attack, but are the victims of increased settlement efforts and violence from Israelis who want to "get back" at Gazans. It's another frustrating situation because any mention of it gets brushed aside in bad faith, as if the Hamas attack isn't the exact reason for the increased settler violence.
@@speed0spank I was literally reading titles like "2023 record year for Palestinians murdered by Israel" before Oct 7 and motherfuckers act like Palestinians were treated like kings before and they reacted out of barbaric innate antisemitism
I heard this story when I was a kid. A poor man passes by a restaurant. Outside the chef barbequed some meat. The poor man had a piece of bread and wish he could have some meat with it. But he only had a quarter which was not nearly enough to buy some meat. So, the poor man takes his bread and holds it over the barbeque so that the aroma of the meat might seep into his bread. That way he can atleast imagine he is eating some meat. The chef did not like this and insisted the poor man pay him that quarter for the smell he stole from his grill. The poor man refused. Holding dearly to his quarter. And so they had a back and forth. Then a wise man came along and listened to the argument. He then told the poor man to give him the quarter. The poor man did. Then the wise man flipped the quarter in the air. It tinkled as it fell to the ground. The wise man said to the chef, "He had a smell of your meat, you heard the sound of his money. All is now fair and square." To use this analogy, this guy is suggesting what would be fair is if the chef cut that poor man in pieces and put him on the grill. 😶
As someone who actually LIVES IN ISRAEL, this kind of discourse is the best proof I could get that our feelings are overvalued in the large scheme of things. We have a lot more resources to discuss how WE feel, so the world experiences it more viscerally. And that's not to say that this isn't terrifying or exhausting to go through this as an Israeli (there was one point where I was so exhausted from my position as an Israeli on the Internet, that I tried to get myself HOSPITALIZED IN A PSYCH WARD, then found out that they are already overbooked and overworked because of the war, just for context), just that... This is absolutely not proportional to the amount of people literally being killed, so stop that, okay?
It's heartening to see someone living in Israel who is level headed and speaking for themselves, as someone in New Zealand I'm mostly exposed to everyday Israelis who say the most fvcked up things about Palestinians that echo the words of the various ministers and IDF officers. I imagine you must feel wary about who you share dissenting opinions with in your country.
The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what. This is the quote right after the one calculating the psychic harm on Israelis: "But it could be proportional only if the Israelis aren’t imposing on basically all Gazans a greater psychic burden than the psychic burden that Israelis hope to avoid. But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans? There are currently over two million people living in Gaza, and given the death, destruction, and displacement caused by the war, it would seem crazy to suggest that the war has not caused more psychic harm to those two million people than it might alleviate for Israelis. This would seem to negate the potential for Israelis to appeal to psychic harm to make their war proportional."
I haven’t read the paper so I’ll take your word on its intended stance. The problem then with your quote would be that he already laid out his insane calculus, showing very clearly Israel’s larger population makes any consideration of so-called psychic harm always fall in favor of Israel. No, the true refutation of this argument - the stance that any truly pro-Palestinian piece would take - is that being made to live in fear is simply not a comparable harm to being killed. No amount of psychic harm on one side can justify a murder on the other. That’s the only moral point worth arguing when someone strings the words “psychic harm” together with regard to this conflict
you live in isntreal. you are not israeli, that doesn't exist. "native" israelis are palestinian, and people living in isntreal are jusst american or european transplants
I don't think you need to go back in time I am pretty sure this 1 for 1 one of the arguments slave owners used to justify owning slaves, basically claiming that since a portion of americans benefited economically from slavery removing slavery would equally harm all Americans. No matter what era this kinda argument is insane.
@@plateoshrimp9685Yeah we gotta remember the perversion of liberals since they basically just do everything the far-right does institutionally but pretend to regret it like some kind of display of Catholic guilt.
William Westmoreland, who was the commander of U.S. forces during the Vietnam War, said something very similar about the Vietnamese after the war ended. Of course, he used far less sophisticated language when he said it, but he basically said the same thing this professor said. For those who haven't read the quote, I have it here, "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient. And as the philosophy of the Orient expresses it: Life is not important." This is of course, nakedly amoral and evil. This kind of thinking is what one stoops to when they justify savage and horrific crimes against humanity. It's exactly the same argument this professor made and it should be condemned as such.
Same things nazi propagandists said about russian people during WWII. It's just dehumanising of enemies by western society. Nothing new, nothing changed since
And people still this day wondering why some of us Asian are offended at the term Oriental. It's never been used for anything good. Oriental always clumps us Asian as something exotically... ignorant.
22:12 "But do you condemn Ha.mas", that's the only thing any media outlet asks anyone who stands up for palestinians and never questions the IDF or the cultish gov behind it.
It doesn't make sense to add together human suffering into a total suffering score when every human's subjective experience is of themselves being the only conscious thing in the universe. The sickening absurdity of this paper should be enough to wane people off of this manner of thinking.
Always nice to see you, Patricia. I totally agree, it's deeply disturbing seeing somebody casually boil down human suffering into statistics - especially when they use it to justify further human suffering.
One subtle but insidious point in Wallen's math is that, by comparing 'psychic harm' between two populations and calculating the difference, after smoothing out disparities in the actual harm done to any given individual, one 'psychically harmed' Israeli becomes equivalent to one 'psychically harmed' Palestinian, and this functionally results in the conclusion that one reason Israel should be allowed to terrorize Palestine is simply that they have a larger population, and therefore a higher cap on the number of 'psychically harmed' people they can act on behalf of. Also, the counterpoint at the end contains another subtle bit of mathematical trickery. All of the math required for this equivalency is, of course, made up, and the specific values can be slightly pushed around to support any conclusion, but there is something in that last bit that I don't think showed up anywhere else. By including time when comparing the harm done against Palestine and Hamas with the hypothetical 'psychic pain [...] which the Israeli's would otherwise suffer', Wallen leaves open a clear possibility for Israel to defend its genocide by simply saying that this pain would be infinite, as Hamas will simply exist until they are exterminated. The 'psychic pain' to which Israelis would be subjected can be made unending, and therein infinite, in the hypothetical world where Hamas is allowed to exist indefinitely.
He seems adamant on the fact that the response RIGHT NOW is proportional to the long-term harm that might be done to Israelis, so it's a justified exchange; but then he goes to say it can only be considered proportional IN THE FUTURE if and only if Israelis give Palestinians freedom and good living conditions as soon as Hamas is destroyed, defeating his own argument entirely.
excellent points! yes presumably the utilitarian person argues that you push the fat guy over the bridge, if it blocks the oncoming train and saves five other people. or (as in ordinary warfare) you sacrifice this smaller bunch of guys, if it's "worth it" in terms of some strategic goal that .. yadda yadda yadda .. ultimately saves a bigger bunch of guys. or something.
Also, Israel creates future combatants & sympathizers every time it kills a child’s parent. Israel could use this reality to justify full scale ethnic cleansing, given the asinine arguments. When the ratio of deaths is already 1000:1 it begs the question, does ANY limit exist?
Glad someone else noticed this. He indirectly argued that any larger group can justify violence against a smaller group by virtue of quality-of-life calculations between the two groups.
thanks for pointing out the time bit, I noticed that too, but the population thing is very true and I hadn't figured it out yet (reading this article gave me such a horrible headache, it made me quite sad)
I'm a Rutgers student (not in ethics or political science, but I am a student there), and there were on-campus protests for Palestine, as well as a pro-Israel protest on the main campus. The Rutgers chapter of SJP was banned after saying they "pose a substantial and immediate threat to the safety and well-being of others". Meanwhile the majority of social justice groups on campus are pro-palestine. It's really fucked up to see someone teaching at my school dehumanize tens of thousands of people because of "psychic harm".
holy shit you're there? you're going to show up to his office and demand this genocidal rhetoric be taken back immediately, right??? GO DO SOME DIRECT ACTION oMG i wish i was in your shoes right now you have the ability to actually bring consequences to this monster
@@kylezo This is a terrible idea. A pro-Israel staff member being harassed by pro-Palestinian students is exactly the kind of optics these people want. Direct action is pointless if it's directly harmful to the cause.
@@philipsalama8083 yea man, if you think running interference for genocide is less offensive than being impolite, you have a lot of soul searching to do.
that's where Noura Erakat works too, right? talk about a night-and-day difference in terms of public statements (and amount of exercised compassion and critical thought)
@@kylezo And if you think actively harming the cause is worth it because it makes you feel better, I'd suggest you do some soul searching too. What you've described isn't 'running interference', it's useless, self-absorbed foolishness that actively makes the pro-Palestinian side look like the bad guys. There's a thousand ways to call out this professor for his genocide apologism. Cornering him in his office and shouting at him until he calls campus security is one of the worst.
That’s talmudism for you. Judaism isn’t a religion, it’s a racial supremacist organization. They use the “gods chosen people” argument to justify all sorts of atrocities.
I mean that's the only real way to think about large scale political issues isn't it? If you aren't willing to estimate and compare quantities of harm/benefit what's the point of talking about politics at all? The only alternative I can think of are pure appeals to emotion, but those can be used to justify just about anything (I'm not justifying the paper here. Bullshitting your math to justify genocide is unforgivable)
@@seizoen At least appealing to emotions feels human. Not a cold Adolf Eichmann schider list stuff, where every Jew was just number on a list to be calculated for death, just as how every Gazan is a number for a kill list for a Israeli accountant of death. Emotions, is the lesser of two evils.
extremely wrong take. Just because he does it idiotically doesn’t mean we have a need to be able to talk about genocide with math. Which btw ofc i agree what israel is doing is clearly one-sided genocide
nah this is when you start with a conclusion and shape your morality around it. there is actually math in some moral systems and it isnt always something that i agree with but at least there's a measure of consistency
@@GrayYeonWannabe I don't doubt that there are specific moral systems with "some math" in them, but there's a difference between that and the idea you can boil down all moral questions into abstract numbers and then "solve" them.
You technically can turn it into a mathematical equation, but that would require all parties agreeing to basic axioms, similar to the level of "this is how long a meter is". Stuff like, "how much does one suffer when losing a loved one versus living in low level stress for a long time". Problem is that, to go about it that way not only seems pointless cause we as social animals are far better versed at this than systems of math, but also would be extremely complex. Far more complex than what the article shows. tl;dr: Technically morality can be mathematical; it's still pointless to treat it as such.
@@ScoopMeisterGeneral there is a field of anthropology that specializes in the social after-effects of war, most of the evidence is taken directly from the subjective experience of the survivors. I would love to go into that field.
I find it interesting that Wallen attributes his own calculus to Israel near the end. He says Israel cites this psychic harm to justify its war, but it doesn't. As Wallen points out, Israel is open about its genocidal intent, and makes little to no attempt to provide a real moral justification for that intent. Only Wallen does that.
I've definitely heard this argument before. Hasan Piker went on the H3 podcast to talk with Ethan Klein about Israel, and this argument about the psyche of the people of Israel was mentioned by Klein and it stuck out to me then, so I don't think Wallen invented this argument, it is most definitely Hasbara propaganda. In other words, manufacturing consent.
Its incredible isn't it, how so many in the west are making moral arguments on behalf of Israelis who are openly declaring an entirely different morality.
Its a hypothetical genocide being equated to a literal genocide. The moment you spend a second even thinking about it, you realize that his argument is completely ridiculous. And his bias is clearly laid between the lines, that a hypothetical pain on one group is equivalent and even greater to the literal death and destruction of the other group.
The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what happened. The article is definitely strangely written, but it's pretty clear if you read the whole thing, which Joel has clearly done. This is the paragraph right after the one calculating suffering on the Israeli side: "But it could be proportional only if the Israelis aren’t imposing on basically all Gazans a greater psychic burden than the psychic burden that Israelis hope to avoid. But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans? There are currently over two million people living in Gaza, and given the death, destruction, and displacement caused by the war, it would seem crazy to suggest that the war has not caused more psychic harm to those two million people than it might alleviate for Israelis. This would seem to negate the potential for Israelis to appeal to psychic harm to make their war proportional." The overall outcome of the article is that Israeli arguments that the suffering of their people outweigh that of the Palestinians makes no sense and that the only way this might be made somewhat right is that after ousting Hamas, Israel offers sovereignty and cooperation under an entirely new government not composed of genocidal maniacs. It's definitely a strange article, and not one I agree with entirely, but it is not the genocidal puff piece the video seems to frame it as.
only three minutes in and it’s WILD that he not only wrote these words down but also published them despite the fact that this “psychic harm” he’s saying israelis experience is almost undoubtedly far less than what palestinians have been experiencing for YEARS…like huh ??? did it not occur to him to consider it from both points of view ? considering opposing views and/or potential counter arguments is literally one of the first steps of writing a philosophy paper…
Notably, it could be used to justify a war of extermination against Israel. I'm pretty sure the "psychic harm" suffered by everyone who looks at Palestinians and sees human beings is greater than that suffered by 10 million Israelis. To say nothing of the numerous awful dictatorships who distract their people from revolt by pointing them at Israel (and Jews more generally). Obviously I'm not arguing for any of that. What this means is the entire argument is insane nonsense and the person who shat it out should never be allowed to speak on a public stage ever again.
This paper is so bizarre and obviously bad that it feels like it only exists to give politicians and CEO’s something to point at to explain why they support Israel.
watching this video where 30,000 non-combatants dead was just a hypothetical eight months later with god knows how many (but at *least* 10,000 more than that, as many as over a hundred and fifty thousand more by some estimates if we’re counting those not directly killed by bombings) dead is devastating.
Well, the calculation of the potential psychic harm of one side as balancing out to the continued killing of an involved other side basically says "my feelings are more important than your life". That's a pretty self-centered way to look at the world, to say the least.
If u wanna see a perfect example of this attitude in action watch the interview w/ Krystal Ball & Kyle Kulinski that came out recently with that douchebag who is the only establishment Dem challenging Biden in the primary, he is an AMERICAN Jew and his "I'm the BIGGEST victim!!" tears are absolutely astoundingly out of touch w/ Reality, he all but called KK antisemitic bc Kyle pushed back on this tool as a journalist should... it was WILD (I'm not a huge fan of KB & KK but this video is solid & their pushback on behalf of Palestinians is admirable and satisfyingto watch)
Israeli society is extremely narcissistic. They are only capable of thinking about themselves. Although that’s not surprising considering they’ve built their society on the suffering and dispossession of others.
No but, you see, Wallen has cleverly accounted for that. You see, when an Israeli person lives in fear of Hamas but has not had a family member killed, their psychic damage matters. When a Palestinian person lives in fear of Israeli bombs but has not had a family member killed, their psychic damage does not matter. It's all very straightforward when you think of it like Wallen has! He is so smart and not at all a genocide apologist :)
The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what.
@@CiCodiCadno See my above comment, I'm trying to get the word out to actually read the article in full. Joel has done something odd with the framing of this video.
@@LordThanatosOfHades I disagree that the article is pro-Palestinian, but is instead centrist. The main issue of contention though is his calculations of suffering - especially using psychic harm as only calculable (in this instance) as something a Palestinian can experience when "close" to a fellow Palestinian killed in the war, but something an Israeli can experience when no direct harm had occured yet, where no "close" person has been killed. To then top it off with "The ratio would still be something like one collateral death for every 200 or so Israelis who would otherwise live in a state of profound insecurity. I find that _I cannot reject that as an unreasonable balance._ " is unequivocally anti-Palestinian, if not necessarily pro-Israeli. The article does then say "But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans?" And then "To me the most important response to this objection is this: To live with a neighbor who wants to destroy you is bad enough, but to live with a neighbor who is undeterrable is much worse". It's trying to be centrist, and I think it mostly achieves that... If you destroy his calculations from the article entirely. If you keep the calculation, then it's nothing but a callous ivory-tower genocide apology draped in the guise of enlightened centrism
Here 's the thing: this can justify ANY genocide & any atrocity. Hope this guy feels great knowing that there are a variety of bad actors who will be mire than willing to use his theory to justify all sorts of horror.
My thing with any justification of Isreali atrocities against the Palestinians, is that literally every argument can be turned around to justify the violence on Oct 7th. Unless, of course, your argument is that Isrealis are humanbeings and Palestinians are not.
yeah i've found that there is basically no argument to justify this situation that doesn't require you to view palestinian lives as inherently inferior to israeli lives
@@billkormas3460Beau of the Fifth Column (YT commentator that’s pretty well-versed in foreign policy) helped break this down: “Israel does not have the institutional memory of something like Vietnam. […] They do tend to underestimate low-tech groups. […] If you look at the reporting, it kinda looks like the information went up a couple of levels and then it hit this point where everybody was just like ‘they’re not gonna be able to pull that off!’ And it got disregarded. And that’s where the failure occurred.”
@@billkormas3460 Now they're saying "all in told *1,200* *people* died on Oct 7th" This is because they include in that count all the Hamas members killed and all the hundreds of Israeli citizens that Israel killed out of callousness or incompetence or both.
@@billkormas3460 the army was shelling the kibutz with a tank. Zionism is a cult, not hyperbolically but literally. They are dissuaded from questioning the mandate but people still do and are. At least one Israeli woman was jailed simply for posting.
"Imagine the psychic harm felt by someone who lives close to a group that might kill thousands of them any day." ..... That's Palestinians though. I *genuinely* thought, after the first few sentences Dan read out, that the guy was going to argue that Palestinians are facing that same fear and much more, and so the argument is nonsensical and should be discarded. I'm flabbergasted.
im so horrified. i wonder what kind of harm i can cause this man that he would consider proportional to the psychic harm he's causing me by his genocidal rhetoric
I was completely taken aback by one of the judges for Israeli side was that because the ICJ didn't move to stop the Bosnian Genocide they don't have a precedent to stop what Israel was doing in Gaza essentially admitting that what they are doing does in fact constitute genocide by hiding behind procedural bullshit. Then I find out that another one of the judges on Israel's team represented the Serbs in the ICJ case that said Kosovo didn't have the right to exist back in 2008 and that Israel also provided arms to the Serbs back when they were under arms embargo during the Bosnian Genocide. Israel really is just a geopolitical ball of pure misery.
Actually I'm surprised they didn't make much more of that approach. I expected them to cite the drone war and how many civilians the US killed, and say that if the ICJ didn't act then it was giving tacit consent.
Reminds me of how they also provided arms to Azerbaijan for it's invasion of nagorno-karabakh which then led to nearly it's entire population fleeing or forced out,
One of the most frustrating things to have learned after getting into philosophy, a field one might expect to prize critical thinking, introspection, truth, and understanding, is that far too many self proclaimed "philosophers" are really just apologists in search of a rationalization of their own worldviews filling a social role more fitting of a propagandist. This person is being an apologist (for Israel), not a truth seeker.
That's been something that's kind of left a sour taste in my mouth about the realm of philosophy :-/ I appreciate you and everyone in the field of thought who recognizes this tendency and actively avoids it/embraces the complexities of nuance and introspection!
I was once a Christian and during the time that I attended a Christian university, I was at one point a philosophy major. I originally signed up for the program thinking that I was going to learn how to become good at defending my faith while also learning about cool ideas and ways of thinking while doing so. After a couple of semesters, I switched programs and also wound up de-converting because I kept running into ideas and arguments that were touted as logically ironclad and irrefutable arguments of the faith masterfully constructed and delivered by PhD theologians and Christian scholars that no atheist or skeptic could ever hope to ever topple. And yet these arguments were constantly riddled with the kinds of informal fallacies that freshmen were expected to have acquainted themselves with in a basic English class in the rhetorical studies unit of their composition textbooks. As generally useless as their program turned out to be, I did still learn some important (although unfortunate) lessons from my time spent as a philosophy student (at least at a Christian university). Even highly educated and well-read, well-versed scholars who spend a lifetime of studying an intellectual subject and working in academia can be just as much of an uncritical thinker and biased in their thinking as a high school grad who never set foot on a college campus ever in their life. Sometimes, they are even *worse* at critical thinking because all their time spent studying and all the facts they learned were only applied to developing better skill at rationalizing their own feelings, emotions, or biases. But their feelings, emotions, or biases could be presented with the veneer of intellectual rigor so that while they may have learned to become more eloquent in their speech and composition, more learned in the jargon and technical intricacies of the field in which they studied, the underlying rationale in their thought processes and arguments is still the logical equivalent of plugging their fingers into their ears to ignore any evidence that contradicts their beliefs and affirming to themselves "I'm right, I'm right, I'm right." Even after all their study, while they may have become more factually knowledgeable about their field of study, they may have never actually learned to be earnest and genuine truth seekers, following the evidence wherever it may lead, but instead more clever and technically trained sophists who have mastered the art of mental gymnastics.
Killing and inflicting suffering is not a "psychic gain", for Israelis or anyone. Killing is a karmic debt incurred, it is a burden carried to the grave. These kinds of acts poison the heart and twist the mind. Insanity.
I'd argue it's more of a historic debt incurred. All of us will need to live the rest of our lives with the books that say this was allowed to happen and the world did almost nothing to stop it. Just like we must live with the books that say the same about every other genocide.
The writer admits that Israeli officials are genocidal to Palestinians but doesnt give a thought to the psychic harm living under complate control of such a regime does to Palestinians and how that might impact their actions
Can you imagine if a little old woman managed to argue that she killed several teen boys in her neighborhood because the "psychic harm" of them wearing hoods and running around the neighborhood convinced her that she needed to strike first before they harmed her. She further justified it by saying a friend of hers got robbed by a group of completely different teens in a different neighborhood, but they wore black hoods similar to the ones that the teens wear in her area.
Turns out wrapping the "their fee fees were hurt" argument with academic language doesn't suddenly turn it into a good argument. Maybe next we'll get the academic paper about how the IDF is just a smol bean UwU.
great video little joel, your ending question was chilling and impactful. my fiancé looked over in the earlier portion of this video, when you had the black sweater, and said it looked like you were getting a hair cut. like the sweater was the bib and the mic was the trimmer. thought it was an interesting observation of ur work that was worth sharing
this is so so so upsetting to me because I studied philosophy at Rutgers and it's at Rutgers where I got started in pro-Palestine organizing 15 years ago. this is personal. like I can't describe the rage inside me right now
It's always interesting when "qualified academics" show how much actual qualifications or knowledge they lack. How do people like this end up getting this far into a field like philosophy while failing to understand the basics. If they were to enter this essay as a submission in a philosophy 101 course that talked about fallacies they would probably fail to due the amount of issues with it.
I've been involved with Academic circles for quite a while now, and if there is one thing I learned is that being educated doesn't exempt you from human stupidity. I am often blindsided by the dumb shit I hear. The history of the sciences and philosophy are tainted with bias.
@@kwarra-an in the article it says Professor of law and philosophy either way developing good logical reasoning skills and understanding basic logical fallacies should also be a fundamental part of law.
According to his rate my professor, his crim law lectures are equally lacking in reason or logic. His students even took him to the dean and seems like nothing happened after
The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what happened. The article is definitely strangely written, but it's pretty clearly pro-Palestine if you read the whole thing, which Joel has clearly done and decided to ignore, or let his initial impressions colour the whole article.
claim at 6:30 holds up so strong i had to pause and go "wait...yeah wait thats right" i already completely agreed with you but you somehow put every thought into words so perfectly, i think my mind will actually explode if i try any harder to imagine how someone could possibly disagree. moral of the story thank you little joel for giving me a new line to drop in my local congress's email every 24 hours
20:40 I feel like a more accurate comparison would be “I lost my friend’s keys so they burned my house down with my infant child inside, but they bought me a bigger house and handed me a new baby.” Some things aren’t replaced by money
Also, his estimation that there is no other way to fight Hamas because Israel has tried all the non-genocide options already... ...we sort of know that that's not the case. That the Likud party has considered keeping Hamas in play a priority.
Yep , can't say they've 'tried everything' while still occupying Palestinian territories to prevent the formation of their state - causing the 2014 peace talks to fall apart
@@marts4169 i wonder how much harm OP can inflict on Wallen that he would consider justified for the psychic damage of listening to genocidal rhetoric
Tbh, and I know its selfish, but the most disturbing aspect of all of this for me is that it seems like it can't be stopped, despite many levers of power that could work to end this, and that means that these unimaginable atrocities could be committed against us if the power structure decides to do it. Its making me feel the disastrous future that awaits us from all of the existential threats to our species.
Watching Dan Olson videos all day, and then clicking on this, absolutely broke my brain. I was wondering if I was just going to hear all voice overs in his voice from now on.
I am no activist, and I don't speak out half as much as I should. About this, or any other issue. But like. Come on, man. I'm an idiot and even I can see the holes in this.
@@stoodmuffinpersonal3144 Alec: Well, you HAVE to consider the Israelis, you have to consider the psychic harm- Biden, months ago, in a private speech to his donors: [Israel] is starting to lose [international] support by indiscriminate bombing that takes place. Alec: Alec: Uh-
How insanely tone deaf and completely non self aware do you have to be to not only seriously think like this but to make it public. How can he not realize how this would make you look extremely bad? Just flush your reputation down the toilet with these final solution type equations.
If anyone is curious about Walen's responses to criticisms, the article linked in the description has a comments section! And oh boy was it fun reading /s
It's wild, because the only response that might save him any face is retracting the article and deleting any and all social media. This all seems fun and like an "Academic Exercise" now, while it's a priority for the American consent manufactorum to keep everyone's anti-Muslim bloodlust up so they can use Israel as a tool to destabalize the region. But there will come a day, probably within the decade, where it's gonna be a real bad look for there to be a public record of having done the math and pronounced that genocide was a good idea. It's real "The best time to delete your post was immediately, the second best time is now." stuff.
The only thing I’m looking to hear from him is “I’m so sorry, I’m now going to remove my hands so I can never type anything ever again”, everything else he can keep to himself.
9:10 Here's the thing that really sticks out to me as incredibly odd. The professor speculates that 200 Israelis will be "Psychically Harmed" per death of an Israeli civilian, but then argues, to make his math work out, that for each Gazan killed it's only 10 other Gazans that will be "Psychically Harmed", plus 5 for each physically injured Gazan. So by the professor's logic, he's basically saying the feelings of Israeli Citizens is worth almost 20x as much as the feelings of Gazan citizens. That seems absolutely insane to me.
Yeah I was thinking something along those lines too. Like how the initial Gazan attack provided psychic horror to all 7 million Israelis but the hypothetical 30,000 deaths would only psychically harm the friends and families of those 30,000. I guess presumably the rest of the population would be chill with it. Those 30,000 people cut ahead of them in traffic or something so whatever. It's just the argument of someone who wants to justify the harm, that's all.
I may have misunderstood, but I thought that this was based on the idea that ALL Gazans will be psychically harmed. So the reason why the ratio is different is because Israel is killing more people.
Like, if there are 100 Israelis and 100 Gazans, 1 Israeli killed and 99 psychically harmed = 1:99 ratio. 10 Gazans killed and 90 psychically harmed = 1:9 ratio.
It's because he's a racist bigot.
Cause it is insane. Like. There's no way to logically defend that. It's absurd.
it seems like his argument is is 'they'll be miserable anyway whereas the israelis can otherwise enjoy their lives' which like.... yes that's because they're occupied, by israel
I absolutely love how his whole argument is "Israeli ppl are afraid". it can literally be refuted by a simple "you know, Palestinians are afraid too"
Exactly! and they have been for a good 70~ years.
And Palestine has more children. Who have worse emotional regulation so their fear response might be stronger.
Also the one they are afraid of is more numerous and better equipped.
Yes, but you didn’t factor in the random [inhumane] math equations he dreamed up!!
Israelis think palestinians are the agressors though.
ya but israelis are probably more afraid !! /j
His argument has all the hallmarks of a post-hoc framework developed to support a specific belief he already held, rather than a de-novo argument constructed to be a more generalized solution to a question.
This is why, as others have rightly pointed out, the natural conclusion of his argument is that it was wrong for the United States to end the practice of chattel slavery, and that anyone who's sexually assaulted should never come forward for fear of the widespread psychic harm it would cause to their attacker's friends, family, and colleagues.
Just your run of the mill bad faith, intellectually lazy tripe spun out to justify support for a position that is clearly incorrect on its face.
Yeah, we ought to send this guy back in time so all those weirdos doing unethical psychological experiments to try and figure out how something like the Holocaust could happen can study him.
🗿
Sometimes, when people get an education, even going all the way to PhD level, they still never learned one of the most essential things of being a critical thinker:
- To find the truth, you follow where the evidence leads. You don't start with a belief that you've already made up your mind to be true, and then bend and twist everything else to try to force that preconceived belief to appear proven, or highlight only the things that appear to support it while dismissing or hiding anything that points to a contrary conclusion.
@@johnwalker1058education and critical thinking don't make people value life. Values are distinct from education. If you have an actual sociopath, education teaches them to take advantage of people and systems
It is obviously a post-hoc rationalization. Wallen never explores the conditions for why October 7th occurred. He concludes that the number of people Israel has and will kill in the course of their war, will be justified if, "Gaza will not only be rebuilt, better than before, but that it will be set free as part of a two-state solution." The natural conclusion to draw from this is that had Israel pursued a two-solution and economic development of Gaza, that Palestinians would have no reason to have committed the atrocities of October 7th. From this perspective, it was the Israeli government themselves who have inflicted the presupposed "psychic harm" upon their own population, not merely Hamas by themselves, because their occupation and blockade sowed the necessary discontent for an event like October 7th to occur.
Of course, Wallen cannot mention that Hamas' actions are in response to Israel's occupation and blockade, or that Israel has had the technological superiority to render much of Hamas' previous rocket actions nearly entirely harmless. Wallen's calculus fundamentally relies on math that involves equivocating deaths with "psychic harm". If Wallen had gone into the history prior to October 7th, he would have had to make the exact opposite argument, conceding that Palestinians have experienced a disproportionately higher degree of "psychic harm" prior to October 7th; Thus, he would have had to contend that it was entirely within the interests, and fundamentally proportional, of Hamas to kill Israelis to make up for the "psychic harm" experienced by Palestinians in Gaza because experiencing occupation, economic deprivation, blockade, and unequal treatment is fundamentally more "psychically harming" than living in modern country with first world living standards a la Israel. Naturally, conceding this would have completely undermined his argument.
Didn’t expect “psychic damage” to unironically be used to defend genocide but here we are
imagine if the Germans came up with it during Nuremberg trials: " but but we were so scared of communists and jews, we're just smol beans 🥺"
@@kuman0110 “They were so scawy!!” 😭
“Im sitting here, a veteran, of a 1.000 psychic wars”
- blue oyster cult
Weaponized fragility seems to be the modus operandi for oppressors nowadays.
Getting sent to psychic Hague for my psychic war crimes causing irreparable psychic damage
This is literally just a clear case of this dude not viewing Palestinians as real people, being under the constant threat of bombings all of the time is significantly worse than the fear of a potential attack
How is “threat” different from “potential”?
@@Violaphobiabeing bombed at the moment is scarier and more real than anticipating a bombing that may or may not happen (because I'm protected in my colony/settlements), hope this helps.
@@itgetsworse601 You do the Palestinian people a disservice by lying like this. Israel's air defense system only lowers the damage, it doesn't eliminate it.
except it isn't. Its a clear case of neighbors threatening Israel with extinction and Israel threatening Palestinians with the "Don't be a Gobshite" stick.
@@Free.zen. Saying "do your research" is just admitting you don't know shit.
"Fear is an acceptable justification for murder" is fucking insane logic
And yet we have stand your ground laws in the US too. It's awful but definitely an ideology people believe.
@@gogreen2496 occupying and blockading someone is not just standing your ground
@@MusMasi I mean yeah, it's way more extreme. I'm not a fan of either. I though that was clear by saying "it's awful".
And the gay/trans panic defense.
Basic cop shit tbh.
I teach ethics for a living, and this kind of article is living proof that academic ethics is largely mental masturbation and bizarre rationalization. There are exceptions, but this article isn't surprising to me at all.
the article seems pretty unethical for 'ethics'.
Some people renamed "thinking" to "philosophy" and managed to get paid for it.
How? How do you not go insane? How do you live with these people. I work with insane people BUT it isn't part of my work to hear what they think at all.
this is just Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent," except instead of arguing how Israel is using fear to justify their atrocities, the paper is acting like fearmongering is perfectly valid
@@justcommenting4981 a tip for a happy life is to drink tea and not listen to idiots.
The refusal to give “psychic harm” of Palestinians the weight it deserves makes perfect sense if you assume that he doesn’t consider Palestinians human
Honestly, it IS kinda accurate that more psychic harm is done to people who are not used to receiving atrocities than to people who are (because it’s a less normal part of life).
However, the cost of bringing a population to a point where seeing mass deaths is relatively normal is IMMENSE, and far greater than any psychic harm caused by fear of retaliation.
Also, if you harm someone and then fear retaliation, the psychic harm is self inflicted because YOU did the act that caused it.
@@Syzygy_Bliss trauma doesn't work that way. People who have experienced more brutality are not less harmed by it. It may be normalised but not less damaging.
@@reubenmccallum3350I think we’re in agreement. If an event is psychologically normalized, it definitionally causes less psychological harm per occurrence than if it’s not normalized (and thus further outside of the mind’s expected norm).
But altering the mind’s expected norm causes disproportionately more physical harm compared to the amount of psychic harm that the act will cause after being normalized. Getting to the normalization IS where the extra harm comes from.
@@Syzygy_BlissSo what you are saying is that with a coddled enough existence it is possible for a person’s Wendy’s order getting mixed up to cause more ‘psychic harm’ pound for pound when compared to actual violence assuming it is inflicted on someone who has experienced enough violence and injustice to become numb to it?
this is how you justify atrocities@@Syzygy_Bliss
I’m currently in a class where we’ve been critically reading a lot of apologia for the Armenian genocide. I’m convinced that this article will be reading material for a similar class in the future.
Oh, this is interesting to me-- what kinds of things are you reading? Are there any pieces of Turkish apologia that are really significant?
I hope so
absolutely, this will be talked about for decades to come. lets hope the next gen doesnt repeat history AGAIN
I remember stumbling upon a video here on YT that was besically Armenian genocide denial. I didn't watch too much of the videos but I remember being appalled by the comments saying it was a just about quelling down "Armenina gang violence." It was a few years ago, so I dont remember what it was called.
@@delunimbusto this day the Turkish state and majority of the population still deny that the Armenian genocide ever happened
The fact they equate the harm done to a middle class Tel Aviv man who saw the news one day and thought, "oh thats sad", to Gazan children covered in their parents blood, slowly dying under the rubble of their house.
That's incredibly small and definitely uneducated. Human Resources suffer from PTSD. Hotlines and call centers operators suffer PTSD.
@@ButtersCCookie The premise here being that the psychological harm on Israel people is significantly disproportionate to someone having their family slaughtered in front of them. The Palestinian people aren’t just experiencing trauma, they’re also having their livelihoods, support networks, and families stripped away. That’s in addition to the PTSD they will no doubt also experience
@@ButtersCCookie Sucks for them, though I imagine the average call operator or HR rep would agree that their experiences are incomparable to genocide being actively performed against them
Palestinians equate being told simply share the land with jews to a genocide. Meanwhile they unironically cite the Elder Protocols of Zion in the charter of Hamas and deny the existence of the Jewish identity.
"You destroyed my home, killed my entire family, injured me to the point of ruining my life, but the psychic damage is lesser because you promised to rebuild my home after doing all these things and give my people a state" - Something that would never be said by anyone.
A state on less than 20% of my homeland. A state with no means of self protection or true sovereignty.
So the German and Japan after WW2, could never be what their are today , if they are possessing what you said.
Ooof, when put like that, I'm getting some serious Job vibes which is weird?
@@tony608 Yeah, right. It is not like they were helped by giant superpower that had giant benefits from ww2, right? It is totaly because they are hard working people, also because they not brown like this unterm... you get the point (also /s)
What is this give my people a state nonsense? Israel wasn’t the one to say no to a state the last five times, the Arabs were.
Did you even consider the psychic harm this causes Dan when he reads these awful things?
this video was not proportional
this will require that everyone unsubscribe from little joel, as much as it pains me to say
Tbf Dan read some insane shit so he might be desensitized to the insane logic. Ex the 2 hours worth of fifty shades of gray, anything related to the metaverse or nfts.
let us assume ten of Dan's brain cells will carry that burden for every r/wsb post that was read. let us add to that the number of sentences of fifty shades and those cells that will carry that burden. suppose that number is five times higher than the number of wsb posts. if we add those numbers together we get about half a million. if we offset the number of Dan cells with the claim to avoid a psychic burden by that number the number of brain cells whose psychic burden counts will still be close to 86 billion. I find that I cannot reject that as an unreasonable balance.
he's read 50 shades, I'm sure he'll survive
Philosopher here. Just wanted to step in to note two things:
1. Whalen’s piece is not really an “article” or a “paper”. It did not go through peer review. Rather it is more like an op ed.
2. This piece was very widely panned by the academic philosophical community for many of the reasons you’ve expressed as well as others.
please share links to said panning.
Thank you! It's lacking a lot of academic criticality, so I hope not too many have been fooled by just the title of the writer. Scholarly ethics are not vibe based ramblings. And this is a good example of gaining popular visibility while having your guard down, muddying the waters for yourself as a professional because of something non-academic you wrote. It's important to understand the difference between an academic doing acedemics and an academic writing from personal standpoint, as themselves as an academic but not strictly academically. The first is methodological, critical and impersonal to a realistic degree, and the latter is outside the standards to which you generally need to hold yourself to in serious practice, but you're still using the professional title to gain weight on your personal arguments.
@@macaron3141592653The piece was originally posted on Daily Nous. There are almost 200 comments, most of which are quite critical.
LMFAOOOO philosophy student of 8 years here, it astounds me how people think just because a “scholar” wrote something it’s bound to be reliable. As if systemic oppression hasn’t happened through academia before.
Other reasons such as?
Turns out it's pretty easy to justify atrocities when you don't consider the victims to be human
The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what.
This is the quote right after the one calculating the psychic harm on Israelis:
"But it could be proportional only if the Israelis aren’t imposing on basically all Gazans a greater psychic burden than the psychic burden that Israelis hope to avoid. But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans? There are currently over two million people living in Gaza, and given the death, destruction, and displacement caused by the war, it would seem crazy to suggest that the war has not caused more psychic harm to those two million people than it might alleviate for Israelis. This would seem to negate the potential for Israelis to appeal to psychic harm to make their war proportional."
@@LordThanatosOfHades and the three paragraphs afterward are as follows:
"There is a possible response to this objection, but before getting to it, I want to address two objections to the idea that Israel can cite the psychic harm from the threat of Hamas on its side of the balance.
One objection to this argument is that to live in Israel is to live with such threats. Hamas is not the only threat. Hezbollah too would like to wipe Israel from the map. So would various other groups, including the Iranian regime. Israel cannot possibly eliminate these threats, so it should not be allowed to cite the extra threat from Hamas as a reason to kill Gazans.
To me the most important response to this objection is this: To live with a neighbor who wants to destroy you is bad enough, but to live with a neighbor who is undeterrable is much worse. For an analogy, consider the difference between living in a city with an ex who you know wants to hurt you, but who you think is also deterred by the threat of criminal punishment from doing anything crazy, and living in a city with an ex who you know is so committed to doing you harm that no threat of punishment will deter him. The other powers all seem, so far at least, deterred by the power of Israel (backed up by the U.S.). For Hamas, this is not the case."
He then spends THE ACTUAL REST OF THE PAPER arguing that if Israel destroyed Hamas now and then stopped the war AND rebuilt and liberated Gaza (which is a fantasy that he is indulging in for reasons unbeknownst to me, and a completely worthless statement in an academic ethics paper; yeah man it WOULD be good if the people waging war stopped waging war, thanks for the expert opinion), the genocidal attacks and bombings on Gaza that have occurred as of now WOULD be justified because the short-term of the murder of thousands upon thousands of Palestinian citizens would create less "harm" than the long-term "psychic harm" for the Israelis.
"How could the misery the war is inflicting on Gazans not fully offset the psychic gains for the Israelis? The answer is that it could count for less if, for most Gazans, it is much more short-lived psychic pain than that which the Israelis would otherwise suffer. But the only way for it to be much more short-lived is if Israel takes it upon itself, as soon as possible, to reassure the Gazans that Gaza will not only be rebuilt, better than before, but that it will be set free as part of a two-state solution."
As if the consequence of Isreal's attacks on Gaza is "psychic pain", instead of thousands upon thousands of deaths, the complete suppression and attempted genocide of an entire culture and the complete devastation of a people's land and infrastructure. As if the amount of harm that has been inflicted on Gaza has not already far surpassed whatever "psychic harm" Israel feels, tenfold.
Please read the actual full article instead of cherry picking out-of-context paragraphs. It's not even that long.
Edit: I'm going back to edit this really quickly because I realized I've made the mistake of accepting a claim Walen made in order to argue inside its framework. By even accepting the idea that there is a moral calculus to be made, where something arbitrary and irrational like fear can be made proportional to murder and genocide, and simply arguing that Israel's "psychic harm" and the horrors inflicted on Gaza are "not proportional", I've already acquiesced that there is an amount of dead citizens that COULD equate to Israel's "psychic harm", but that this simply doesn't. That's a mistake.
Let me make it clear: there is no world where a populous being afraid justifies genocide. There is no moral calculus to be made. Creating a math equation out of human suffering is worthless and immoral.
This applies to both sides. I think Palestine should be free, but free from Hamas as well. Their atrocities they've committed are just as bad
Not to mention, Hamas used to call for the destruction of Israelis as a hole, dehumanizing, saying Israel shouldn't exist, ring any bells (Russian War with Ukraine) hence why they got their terrorist designation.
@@galaxyproductions2076 Hamas is completely irrelevant in this conflict, there is no reason to keep bringing them up other than to promote israeli propaganda. Its a palestinian israeli conflict.
I've seen Gazan children utterly and uncontrollably traumatized. The kind of trauma that never goes away. Not understanding what is going on around them. Watching their bloody siblings being operated on. Not understanding why half their family was blown up in an airstrike. Being fearful that at any moment a bomb could land on their head. Wondering why they can't simply live in peace. It's the kind of trauma that breeds extremism. Israel is literally breeding the terror they fear in a petri dish.
Fighting terror with terror is asinine. It's delusional to think that's a solution to anything. It's antithetical to what they claim to want to achieve. It's mind boggling.
The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what happened. The article is definitely strangely written, but it's pretty clear if you read the whole thing, which Joel has clearly done.
This is the quote right after the one calculating the psychic harm on Israelis:
"But it could be proportional only if the Israelis aren’t imposing on basically all Gazans a greater psychic burden than the psychic burden that Israelis hope to avoid. But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans? There are currently over two million people living in Gaza, and given the death, destruction, and displacement caused by the war, it would seem crazy to suggest that the war has not caused more psychic harm to those two million people than it might alleviate for Israelis. This would seem to negate the potential for Israelis to appeal to psychic harm to make their war proportional."
@@LordThanatosOfHades I had no plans to read it, but I will after I get some sleep. I'm not really interested in any sort of arguments of proportion. I don't think a military response is the solution. At some point, the killing has to stop and that's when peace and security will begin.
@@tripe2237 I agree entirely. I think the proportionality arguments are quite dangerous, even if in this case my interpretation is that it is not genocide apologia.
"Extremism." I'd say resistance when you're entire family has been killed in the largest extermination campaign of the 21st century isn't extreme at all, in fact its probably the only reasonable response.
To frame people fighting back, as their land is literally being invaded as "terrorists" or "extremists" is insane. Why are we using the oppressors langauge and framing? The only terrorists are the IDF, they are the only extremists.
Unfortunately Israel is breeding that extremism on purpose to continue to have excuses to justify their genocidal tendencies. It's a tactic that is really old, to radicalize your opponents to be able to demonize their image and have "reasons" to continue doing horrid stuff
"What about the Palestinians who grew up under the constant threat of airstrikes!?!" I screamed at my monitor for 8 minutes.
Not just over 3 months, but over years. 2008, 2009, 2012, 2014, 2018, 2021, 2022, and now 2023 of relentless bombardment. Gaza is constantly under siege, they've never taken a breath. In fact, when children are interviewed "What do you want to be when you grow up?" the typical response is "Nothing. Children in Gaza don't grow up".
seriously what the hell
What about the Jews who grew up under Ottoman apartheid and the lynch mobs of the Mandate period? Oh and don't forget the Neo-nazi ratlines that Egypt and Syria operated.
A lot of this guy's rationality reminds me of how Americans rationalized their reaction to 911.
Honestly, when I first saw the article title, I was like, oh hey, maybe it's like about how the US overreacted on 9/11, then I remembered the video title and out loud said OH NO
That's such a good observation. It seems that when the victims of violence are majority Muslim Arabs, the West and its settler colony Israel are happy to sacrifice.
it has been USA foreign policy for at least 100 years though. 911 just made it more annoying to get in a plane. the usa was droping napalm and nuclear bombs on civilians in other countries since the 40's.
What is the proportion for prisoner exchange? Gilad Shalit had been exchanged for more than 1000 Palestine prisoners , including Sinwar.
Don't forget that the American Psychological Association (APA) not only endorsed and signed off on torture post-911 when it was being marketed as "enhanced interrogation techniques". Not only that, but prominent APA members developed specific torture techniques for the CIA and the military.
Thanks Dan Olson for alleviating Medium Joel of the legitimate fear that people will take out-of-context clips of himself quoting Israeli war propaganda, as if he's saying it himself. (Not sarcasm)
I had a hard time understanding why one of my favorite, and rational TH-camrs was saying such odd things, then I realized he was just doing a voice over 😂
Hope Dan got himself a treat + shower afterwards.
The fear that the possibility of these out of context clips might exist is causing me enough psychic damage that I honestly think the only option is to cancel Medium Joel and his youtubes off the internet permanently
I could genuinely see this guy saying something like _"The white man was justified in shooting the unarmed black teen who ringed his doorbell because he was scared, so the teen caused him psychic harm"._
The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what happened. The article is definitely strangely written, but it's pretty clear if you read the whole thing, which Joel has clearly done.
This is the paragraph right after the one calculating suffering on the Israeli side:
"But it could be proportional only if the Israelis aren’t imposing on basically all Gazans a greater psychic burden than the psychic burden that Israelis hope to avoid. But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans? There are currently over two million people living in Gaza, and given the death, destruction, and displacement caused by the war, it would seem crazy to suggest that the war has not caused more psychic harm to those two million people than it might alleviate for Israelis. This would seem to negate the potential for Israelis to appeal to psychic harm to make their war proportional."
The overall outcome of the article is that Israeli arguments that the suffering of their people outweigh that of the Palestinians makes no sense and that the only way this might be made somewhat right is that after ousting Hamas, Israel offers sovereignty and cooperation under an entirely new government not composed of genocidal maniacs. It's definitely a strange article, and not one I agree with entirely, but it is not the genocidal puff piece the video seems to frame it as.
yes, you're right to notice that this is basically cop logic applied to global conflict.
@@LordThanatosOfHades Whether or not he ultimately makes the argument that Israel's assault on the Palestinian people is "disproportionate" or not doesn't matter. The entire paper is predicated on ignoring the Israeli occupation up to this point, and minimizing the suffering of the Palestinian people meanwhile his point is philosophically flawed too. The fact that there is any talk of "proportionality" means the writer believes that there is some amount of casualty and bloodshed that would be tolerable for Israel's goals which I vehemently disagree with. Honestly I'd sooner make the point that the Palestinians have not yet reached *their* point of proportionality; having been subjugated on their own homeland and forced to deal with monstrous treatment by the Israeli government for decades should surely qualify them for causing much more harm than they already have. Or maybe "eye for an eye" isn't how we should be acting
@@theswagening6439 For real. We’re still operating under the guise that “proportional harm should be dealt” instead of “all harm should be mitigated”
@@LordThanatosOfHadesNo it’s not 👍 you’re just wrong.
Treating the morality of a war like an accounting problem is completely detached.
I wonder what Alec has to say about the “psychic harm” felt by all those Palestinian children who don’t sleep for weeks in fear of Israeli military strikes, and die from heart attacks.
Sounds far too close to "psychic damage" to take seriously
Oh I can answer that!
He doesn’t care
Ya, I wonder if there's any psychological harm to Palestinian babies and children being demonized and dehumanized as a terrorist for simply being Palestinian? Wonder if there's any psychological harm to being born into an apartheid system where you're forced at birth into poverty and second class citizenship?
@@FabulousSquidward Nah. Turns out brains exist.
Full of chemicals n shit.
Influence physiological processes.
Crazy stuff.
There are no Israeli kids having heart attacks from fear. We 100% would have heard about it.
What he’s stating is that in the event that a majority group feels threatened by a minority group, their feelings are always justified simply because there are more of them. What an abysmal take
I agree, but can I ask you a question?
What if more than 30,000 innocent Israelis died during the attacks? Would it then make sense to take 30,000 innocent Palestinian lives?
I assume you disagree, but I don't know so let me know if you think otherwise.
If you disagree, then there's obviously something else at stake here rather than the numbers, right? Then what is it?
That's a good description of far right politics in general
@@NitzanBueno wtf are you talking about?
@@NitzanBueno isreal had already been killing and bombing palestine before that, so no, i don't think so. isreal has and had already taken more than enough lives, and are just acting like the victims at the consequences of their actions.
@@NitzanBuenoI'm not the OP, but I'll bite. Yes, I disagree. It's not just about the body count, it's also about who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed. Israel is the clear and unequivocal oppressor in this situation: they came in, forcibly and murderously stole and settled in other people's houses, took their livelihoods, forced them into a tiny fraction or their land, instituted prison-like conditions with unconscionable surveillance and no freedom of movement, and continue to treat Palestinians as non-human. This was all before October 7. So yes, I support the right of a people to resist oppression, and I reject the right of Israel to "defend itself", much like I would reject the right of American slave-owners to defend themselves from slaves fighting for freedom. Or I guess another way to say it is, it IS the body count, but you have to start counting at the real beginning, a hell of a lot earlier than October.
The calculus and ethics of genocide. Really hoped I would never be confronted with something as racist and vile as this in my lifetime. Yikes.
Real 3/5ths clause shit.
and yet this guy doesnt know when to shut the fuck up.
I’ve only heard this sort of garbage from the rich white population that think we should restrict food from struggling countries because “they’re overpopulating the world”
Yeah this whole thing just justifies genocide. Not like in the specific case of "Israel is doing a genocide in Gaza", but like, the logic of ANY genocide. 200 scared people justifies killing someone. Boy, that kind of minority scapegoating is what genocides thrive on. Like, whats the ratio of Jews to the European population in the 1930s?? Insane that this was written.
@@urgeintheicebox Zionism from its start was always an extremist white nationalist movement, and there really isn't any way around that. They were establishing their own colonialist movement. They didn't even chose Palestine, the British had just acquired the land from the Ottomans with the help of the Palestinians, who thought it would bring their freedom.
This almost reads like satire along the lines of A Modest Proposal. "let's do math to find out if genocide is s good idea"
Discovering this opinion has inflicted me with 200 points of psychic damage. It is now ethically justified - indeed, it is a moral obligation for me to purchase a private air force and (withheld).
"If you killed my mom, Id be upset."
The fact you have to say that out loud is ABSURD. That dude is an ETHICS PROFESSOR. How can he not piece that together?
Academia is primarily about huffing your own farts and gatekeeping a decent standard of living.
@@thagomizer4711Weird take, especially to such an unrelated comment but I like your name.
I wouldn't be upset i would be on trial. They refuse to accept responsibility for it
@@TheModdedwarfare3 the point is that being an ethics issue professor doesn’t indicate an understanding of ethics in the current academic climate
@@TheModdedwarfare3 also thanks!
"If you murdered my mom, I'd be upset. That's a microagression in my culture" - LJ
It feels like such a glaringly obvious double standard to count the psychic harm of the entire nation of Israel but only count the injured and immediate family members of dead Palestinians.
Like i get overlooking a lot of traumatic details of life in Gaza both before and after October 7th if the goal is to justify the atrocities, but that inability to even pretend to count Palestinians as equal human beings surely makes this so transparent as to be useless even as a piece of propaganda, no?
maybe low effort bait? Or worse, a deniable asset whose author can say "yes I meant this sincerely" or "no this was obvious satire; see how blatant it is?" depending on how the article is received, only serving to boost his name
So i don't want to be melodramatic? But I'm American, I live in Oregon, I've lived in Oregon for 43 years, and I have woken up screaming more than once in the past few months
Is that psychic harm or
I will never be able to stop seeing what i have seen
@@no_peace Yeah that sounds like psychic harm. Maybe the kind of thing you should schedule a session with a therapist for, too.
"Killing them is ok because we're scared" has to be the Whitest conjecture I have ever heard...
Palestinians having “psychic harm”: I sleep
Israelis having “psychic harm”: real shit
75 years of oppression: I sleep
October 7: real shit
Look, I’m not condoning what happened on Oct 7, but people pretending that they both share same amount of suffering is so ridiculous. Oh wait, probably need to condemn the Hamas first before I speak out against mass murder
Damn, being privileged is great. Whenever I get scared, or I feel like I dont matter, I have Professor Walen's comforting reminder that my feelings are extremely important. So important that they're actually worth more than the lives of 10-20 brown people.
Reminds me of an Onion Classic: "In international news, the equivalent of 5 Americans died in Afghanistan today."
It’s shocking to me that every argument in defense of Israel’s and the IDF’s actions can be countered with “But couldn’t that exact same argument be used against you by the Palestinians?”. The people defending the palistinian genocide have seemingly never even tried to see the situation from the other side
That's what racism does to your mind.
They can't. If they ever did, they would be forced to recognize that they are basically just Jewish Nazis.
"Israel has the right to defend itself" ✅
"Palestine has the right to defend itself" ❌
300 IQ morality
Because they don't see Palestinians as humans.
@@sealeo5772 What did Netinyahoo call them again? Human animals?
The biggest elephant in the room is that wallen decides to only count if you lose a loved one as psychic harm but does not do the same for Israelis. Despite the fact that Israel has consistently attacked Palestinians over the years, the Palestinians are not considered as having psychic harm because of the existence of Israeli. Of course you could just calculate it away as well but at the end of the day you're just saying "country smaller, therefore doesn't matter."
And erm...Who made the country smaller, Wallen?
This is the part that drives me crazy about all discussions of this. Like the whole "there was a ceasefire before Oct 7" as if Hamas started this out of nowhere and there hasn't been Israeli aggression towards Palestine for decades. It denies reality to describe the situation in terms favorable to the west.
For that matter - the rest of us are made pretty damn insecure knowing that the world's effective international powers are unable or unwilling to stop genocide. Israel's direct example and the bystanders' indirect one are doing that psychic harm to some 7 billion of us.
@@DragonNexus - And we should acknowledge the "psychic harm" of Palestinians in the West Bank, who had absolutely nothing to do with the Hamas attack, but are the victims of increased settlement efforts and violence from Israelis who want to "get back" at Gazans. It's another frustrating situation because any mention of it gets brushed aside in bad faith, as if the Hamas attack isn't the exact reason for the increased settler violence.
@@speed0spank I was literally reading titles like "2023 record year for Palestinians murdered by Israel" before Oct 7 and motherfuckers act like Palestinians were treated like kings before and they reacted out of barbaric innate antisemitism
I heard this story when I was a kid. A poor man passes by a restaurant. Outside the chef barbequed some meat. The poor man had a piece of bread and wish he could have some meat with it. But he only had a quarter which was not nearly enough to buy some meat. So, the poor man takes his bread and holds it over the barbeque so that the aroma of the meat might seep into his bread. That way he can atleast imagine he is eating some meat. The chef did not like this and insisted the poor man pay him that quarter for the smell he stole from his grill. The poor man refused. Holding dearly to his quarter. And so they had a back and forth. Then a wise man came along and listened to the argument. He then told the poor man to give him the quarter. The poor man did. Then the wise man flipped the quarter in the air. It tinkled as it fell to the ground. The wise man said to the chef, "He had a smell of your meat, you heard the sound of his money. All is now fair and square."
To use this analogy, this guy is suggesting what would be fair is if the chef cut that poor man in pieces and put him on the grill. 😶
This is a classic story of Joha, a popular folk figure in Palestine!
As someone who actually LIVES IN ISRAEL, this kind of discourse is the best proof I could get that our feelings are overvalued in the large scheme of things. We have a lot more resources to discuss how WE feel, so the world experiences it more viscerally. And that's not to say that this isn't terrifying or exhausting to go through this as an Israeli (there was one point where I was so exhausted from my position as an Israeli on the Internet, that I tried to get myself HOSPITALIZED IN A PSYCH WARD, then found out that they are already overbooked and overworked because of the war, just for context), just that... This is absolutely not proportional to the amount of people literally being killed, so stop that, okay?
It's heartening to see someone living in Israel who is level headed and speaking for themselves, as someone in New Zealand I'm mostly exposed to everyday Israelis who say the most fvcked up things about Palestinians that echo the words of the various ministers and IDF officers.
I imagine you must feel wary about who you share dissenting opinions with in your country.
The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what.
This is the quote right after the one calculating the psychic harm on Israelis:
"But it could be proportional only if the Israelis aren’t imposing on basically all Gazans a greater psychic burden than the psychic burden that Israelis hope to avoid. But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans? There are currently over two million people living in Gaza, and given the death, destruction, and displacement caused by the war, it would seem crazy to suggest that the war has not caused more psychic harm to those two million people than it might alleviate for Israelis. This would seem to negate the potential for Israelis to appeal to psychic harm to make their war proportional."
I haven’t read the paper so I’ll take your word on its intended stance. The problem then with your quote would be that he already laid out his insane calculus, showing very clearly Israel’s larger population makes any consideration of so-called psychic harm always fall in favor of Israel. No, the true refutation of this argument - the stance that any truly pro-Palestinian piece would take - is that being made to live in fear is simply not a comparable harm to being killed. No amount of psychic harm on one side can justify a murder on the other. That’s the only moral point worth arguing when someone strings the words “psychic harm” together with regard to this conflict
you live in isntreal. you are not israeli, that doesn't exist. "native" israelis are palestinian, and people living in isntreal are jusst american or european transplants
@@jennyc3919 I'm sorry, I just saw this comment, and... I unfortunately don't understand what you are trying to say in response to my point.
his argument can literally be used to go back in time and justify not ending sIavery
I don't think you need to go back in time I am pretty sure this 1 for 1 one of the arguments slave owners used to justify owning slaves, basically claiming that since a portion of americans benefited economically from slavery removing slavery would equally harm all Americans. No matter what era this kinda argument is insane.
And i bet he glefully would
@@lucas10armond That's not fair. He regretfully would.
@@plateoshrimp9685 🤣
@@plateoshrimp9685Yeah we gotta remember the perversion of liberals since they basically just do everything the far-right does institutionally but pretend to regret it like some kind of display of Catholic guilt.
William Westmoreland, who was the commander of U.S. forces during the Vietnam War, said something very similar about the Vietnamese after the war ended. Of course, he used far less sophisticated language when he said it, but he basically said the same thing this professor said. For those who haven't read the quote, I have it here, "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient. And as the philosophy of the Orient expresses it: Life is not important." This is of course, nakedly amoral and evil. This kind of thinking is what one stoops to when they justify savage and horrific crimes against humanity. It's exactly the same argument this professor made and it should be condemned as such.
💯
I'm guessing you realize this but for anyone who doesn't, they say that about all Black and brown people
Like American doctors say this about their patients
Same things nazi propagandists said about russian people during WWII. It's just dehumanising of enemies by western society. Nothing new, nothing changed since
And people still this day wondering why some of us Asian are offended at the term Oriental. It's never been used for anything good. Oriental always clumps us Asian as something exotically... ignorant.
22:12 "But do you condemn Ha.mas", that's the only thing any media outlet asks anyone who stands up for palestinians and never questions the IDF or the cultish gov behind it.
"But...what if i like...feel really bad? Isn't that like worth 100 people dying in terms of psychic damage?"
It doesn't make sense to add together human suffering into a total suffering score when every human's subjective experience is of themselves being the only conscious thing in the universe. The sickening absurdity of this paper should be enough to wane people off of this manner of thinking.
Always nice to see you, Patricia.
I totally agree, it's deeply disturbing seeing somebody casually boil down human suffering into statistics - especially when they use it to justify further human suffering.
One subtle but insidious point in Wallen's math is that, by comparing 'psychic harm' between two populations and calculating the difference, after smoothing out disparities in the actual harm done to any given individual, one 'psychically harmed' Israeli becomes equivalent to one 'psychically harmed' Palestinian, and this functionally results in the conclusion that one reason Israel should be allowed to terrorize Palestine is simply that they have a larger population, and therefore a higher cap on the number of 'psychically harmed' people they can act on behalf of.
Also, the counterpoint at the end contains another subtle bit of mathematical trickery. All of the math required for this equivalency is, of course, made up, and the specific values can be slightly pushed around to support any conclusion, but there is something in that last bit that I don't think showed up anywhere else. By including time when comparing the harm done against Palestine and Hamas with the hypothetical 'psychic pain [...] which the Israeli's would otherwise suffer', Wallen leaves open a clear possibility for Israel to defend its genocide by simply saying that this pain would be infinite, as Hamas will simply exist until they are exterminated. The 'psychic pain' to which Israelis would be subjected can be made unending, and therein infinite, in the hypothetical world where Hamas is allowed to exist indefinitely.
He seems adamant on the fact that the response RIGHT NOW is proportional to the long-term harm that might be done to Israelis, so it's a justified exchange; but then he goes to say it can only be considered proportional IN THE FUTURE if and only if Israelis give Palestinians freedom and good living conditions as soon as Hamas is destroyed, defeating his own argument entirely.
excellent points! yes presumably the utilitarian person argues that you push the fat guy over the bridge, if it blocks the oncoming train and saves five other people. or (as in ordinary warfare) you sacrifice this smaller bunch of guys, if it's "worth it" in terms of some strategic goal that .. yadda yadda yadda .. ultimately saves a bigger bunch of guys. or something.
Also, Israel creates future combatants & sympathizers every time it kills a child’s parent. Israel could use this reality to justify full scale ethnic cleansing, given the asinine arguments.
When the ratio of deaths is already 1000:1 it begs the question, does ANY limit exist?
Glad someone else noticed this. He indirectly argued that any larger group can justify violence against a smaller group by virtue of quality-of-life calculations between the two groups.
thanks for pointing out the time bit, I noticed that too, but the population thing is very true and I hadn't figured it out yet (reading this article gave me such a horrible headache, it made me quite sad)
I'm a Rutgers student (not in ethics or political science, but I am a student there), and there were on-campus protests for Palestine, as well as a pro-Israel protest on the main campus. The Rutgers chapter of SJP was banned after saying they "pose a substantial and immediate threat to the safety and well-being of others". Meanwhile the majority of social justice groups on campus are pro-palestine.
It's really fucked up to see someone teaching at my school dehumanize tens of thousands of people because of "psychic harm".
holy shit you're there? you're going to show up to his office and demand this genocidal rhetoric be taken back immediately, right??? GO DO SOME DIRECT ACTION oMG i wish i was in your shoes right now you have the ability to actually bring consequences to this monster
@@kylezo This is a terrible idea. A pro-Israel staff member being harassed by pro-Palestinian students is exactly the kind of optics these people want.
Direct action is pointless if it's directly harmful to the cause.
@@philipsalama8083 yea man, if you think running interference for genocide is less offensive than being impolite, you have a lot of soul searching to do.
that's where Noura Erakat works too, right? talk about a night-and-day difference in terms of public statements (and amount of exercised compassion and critical thought)
@@kylezo And if you think actively harming the cause is worth it because it makes you feel better, I'd suggest you do some soul searching too. What you've described isn't 'running interference', it's useless, self-absorbed foolishness that actively makes the pro-Palestinian side look like the bad guys.
There's a thousand ways to call out this professor for his genocide apologism. Cornering him in his office and shouting at him until he calls campus security is one of the worst.
Defending the indefensible.
And basically just nazi-level racism/supremacy.
My heart breaks for the Palestinians.Thank you for discussing this.
Why are you framing this with Nazism? Can you process morality sans the Nazis?
@@keemstarkreamstar7069
Bro Israel government officials themselves are the ones comparing that they want to do to Gaza to Auschwitz.
Walen's paper reminds me of the Voltaire quote: "those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities".
Hearing him make equations out of human suffering might be the most evil thing i've heard in a long while
Exactly. Human suffering isn't something that should be equally distributed it is something that should be minimised.
That’s talmudism for you. Judaism isn’t a religion, it’s a racial supremacist organization. They use the “gods chosen people” argument to justify all sorts of atrocities.
I mean that's the only real way to think about large scale political issues isn't it? If you aren't willing to estimate and compare quantities of harm/benefit what's the point of talking about politics at all? The only alternative I can think of are pure appeals to emotion, but those can be used to justify just about anything
(I'm not justifying the paper here. Bullshitting your math to justify genocide is unforgivable)
@@seizoen
At least appealing to emotions feels human.
Not a cold Adolf Eichmann schider list stuff, where every Jew was just number on a list to be calculated for death, just as how every Gazan is a number for a kill list for a Israeli accountant of death.
Emotions, is the lesser of two evils.
extremely wrong take. Just because he does it idiotically doesn’t mean we have a need to be able to talk about genocide with math. Which btw ofc i agree what israel is doing is clearly one-sided genocide
This is what happens when you try to turn morality into some sort of mathematical equation. You end up sounding like a lunatic.
nah this is when you start with a conclusion and shape your morality around it. there is actually math in some moral systems and it isnt always something that i agree with but at least there's a measure of consistency
@@GrayYeonWannabe I don't doubt that there are specific moral systems with "some math" in them, but there's a difference between that and the idea you can boil down all moral questions into abstract numbers and then "solve" them.
You technically can turn it into a mathematical equation, but that would require all parties agreeing to basic axioms, similar to the level of "this is how long a meter is". Stuff like, "how much does one suffer when losing a loved one versus living in low level stress for a long time".
Problem is that, to go about it that way not only seems pointless cause we as social animals are far better versed at this than systems of math, but also would be extremely complex. Far more complex than what the article shows.
tl;dr: Technically morality can be mathematical; it's still pointless to treat it as such.
@@norsehorse84 I'm not convinced it's even possible to quantify the pain of losing a loved one in the same way you can something like length.
@@ScoopMeisterGeneral there is a field of anthropology that specializes in the social after-effects of war, most of the evidence is taken directly from the subjective experience of the survivors. I would love to go into that field.
I find it interesting that Wallen attributes his own calculus to Israel near the end. He says Israel cites this psychic harm to justify its war, but it doesn't. As Wallen points out, Israel is open about its genocidal intent, and makes little to no attempt to provide a real moral justification for that intent. Only Wallen does that.
That's a bingo
I've definitely heard this argument before. Hasan Piker went on the H3 podcast to talk with Ethan Klein about Israel, and this argument about the psyche of the people of Israel was mentioned by Klein and it stuck out to me then, so I don't think Wallen invented this argument, it is most definitely Hasbara propaganda. In other words, manufacturing consent.
Its incredible isn't it, how so many in the west are making moral arguments on behalf of Israelis who are openly declaring an entirely different morality.
Fascists rarely hide their intent towards the objects of their hatred. It's one of the only things they don't lie about.
The only appropriate usages of the term 'psychic damage' are as a chapoesque expression of bewilderment & annoyance, and a video game stat
Its a hypothetical genocide being equated to a literal genocide.
The moment you spend a second even thinking about it, you realize that his argument is completely ridiculous. And his bias is clearly laid between the lines, that a hypothetical pain on one group is equivalent and even greater to the literal death and destruction of the other group.
The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what happened. The article is definitely strangely written, but it's pretty clear if you read the whole thing, which Joel has clearly done.
This is the paragraph right after the one calculating suffering on the Israeli side:
"But it could be proportional only if the Israelis aren’t imposing on basically all Gazans a greater psychic burden than the psychic burden that Israelis hope to avoid. But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans? There are currently over two million people living in Gaza, and given the death, destruction, and displacement caused by the war, it would seem crazy to suggest that the war has not caused more psychic harm to those two million people than it might alleviate for Israelis. This would seem to negate the potential for Israelis to appeal to psychic harm to make their war proportional."
The overall outcome of the article is that Israeli arguments that the suffering of their people outweigh that of the Palestinians makes no sense and that the only way this might be made somewhat right is that after ousting Hamas, Israel offers sovereignty and cooperation under an entirely new government not composed of genocidal maniacs. It's definitely a strange article, and not one I agree with entirely, but it is not the genocidal puff piece the video seems to frame it as.
only three minutes in and it’s WILD that he not only wrote these words down but also published them despite the fact that this “psychic harm” he’s saying israelis experience is almost undoubtedly far less than what palestinians have been experiencing for YEARS…like huh ??? did it not occur to him to consider it from both points of view ? considering opposing views and/or potential counter arguments is literally one of the first steps of writing a philosophy paper…
The professor's reasoning is insane. His framework could be used to justify any war no matter how costly it ends up being.
Notably, it could be used to justify a war of extermination against Israel. I'm pretty sure the "psychic harm" suffered by everyone who looks at Palestinians and sees human beings is greater than that suffered by 10 million Israelis. To say nothing of the numerous awful dictatorships who distract their people from revolt by pointing them at Israel (and Jews more generally).
Obviously I'm not arguing for any of that. What this means is the entire argument is insane nonsense and the person who shat it out should never be allowed to speak on a public stage ever again.
One might assume that's a description of a job he is applying for with the article.
His reasoning can probably be used to justify every atrocity that has been committed against a group of people.
This paper is so bizarre and obviously bad that it feels like it only exists to give politicians and CEO’s something to point at to explain why they support Israel.
Is anyone actually genuinely citing this paper?
@@FluffyBunniesOnFire I hope not. But I could definitely see it happening
watching this video where 30,000 non-combatants dead was just a hypothetical eight months later with god knows how many (but at *least* 10,000 more than that, as many as over a hundred and fifty thousand more by some estimates if we’re counting those not directly killed by bombings) dead is devastating.
It's like if they can say enough words, it will somehow drown out the screams of the dying.
Well, the calculation of the potential psychic harm of one side as balancing out to the continued killing of an involved other side basically says "my feelings are more important than your life". That's a pretty self-centered way to look at the world, to say the least.
If u wanna see a perfect example of this attitude in action watch the interview w/ Krystal Ball & Kyle Kulinski that came out recently with that douchebag who is the only establishment Dem challenging Biden in the primary, he is an AMERICAN Jew and his "I'm the BIGGEST victim!!" tears are absolutely astoundingly out of touch w/ Reality, he all but called KK antisemitic bc Kyle pushed back on this tool as a journalist should... it was WILD
(I'm not a huge fan of KB & KK but this video is solid & their pushback on behalf of Palestinians is admirable and satisfyingto watch)
Israeli society is extremely narcissistic. They are only capable of thinking about themselves. Although that’s not surprising considering they’ve built their society on the suffering and dispossession of others.
We must ensure history does not remember these sorts of papers fondly.
It took me all of 30 seconds to say “what about the psychic harm to Palestinians?” And immediately shatter this argument
No but, you see, Wallen has cleverly accounted for that. You see, when an Israeli person lives in fear of Hamas but has not had a family member killed, their psychic damage matters. When a Palestinian person lives in fear of Israeli bombs but has not had a family member killed, their psychic damage does not matter.
It's all very straightforward when you think of it like Wallen has! He is so smart and not at all a genocide apologist :)
The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what.
@@CiCodiCadno See my above comment, I'm trying to get the word out to actually read the article in full. Joel has done something odd with the framing of this video.
@@LordThanatosOfHades I disagree that the article is pro-Palestinian, but is instead centrist. The main issue of contention though is his calculations of suffering - especially using psychic harm as only calculable (in this instance) as something a Palestinian can experience when "close" to a fellow Palestinian killed in the war, but something an Israeli can experience when no direct harm had occured yet, where no "close" person has been killed.
To then top it off with "The ratio would still be something like one collateral death for every 200 or so Israelis who would otherwise live in a state of profound insecurity. I find that _I cannot reject that as an unreasonable balance._ " is unequivocally anti-Palestinian, if not necessarily pro-Israeli.
The article does then say "But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans?"
And then "To me the most important response to this objection is this: To live with a neighbor who wants to destroy you is bad enough, but to live with a neighbor who is undeterrable is much worse".
It's trying to be centrist, and I think it mostly achieves that... If you destroy his calculations from the article entirely. If you keep the calculation, then it's nothing but a callous ivory-tower genocide apology draped in the guise of enlightened centrism
Here 's the thing: this can justify ANY genocide & any atrocity.
Hope this guy feels great knowing that there are a variety of bad actors who will be mire than willing to use his theory to justify all sorts of horror.
My thing with any justification of Isreali atrocities against the Palestinians, is that literally every argument can be turned around to justify the violence on Oct 7th. Unless, of course, your argument is that Isrealis are humanbeings and Palestinians are not.
This is precisely the argument, it's just a bad look to say it directly
yeah i've found that there is basically no argument to justify this situation that doesn't require you to view palestinian lives as inherently inferior to israeli lives
@@billkormas3460Beau of the Fifth Column (YT commentator that’s pretty well-versed in foreign policy) helped break this down:
“Israel does not have the institutional memory of something like Vietnam. […] They do tend to underestimate low-tech groups. […] If you look at the reporting, it kinda looks like the information went up a couple of levels and then it hit this point where everybody was just like ‘they’re not gonna be able to pull that off!’ And it got disregarded. And that’s where the failure occurred.”
@@billkormas3460 Now they're saying "all in told *1,200* *people* died on Oct 7th" This is because they include in that count all the Hamas members killed and all the hundreds of Israeli citizens that Israel killed out of callousness or incompetence or both.
@@billkormas3460 the army was shelling the kibutz with a tank. Zionism is a cult, not hyperbolically but literally. They are dissuaded from questioning the mandate but people still do and are. At least one Israeli woman was jailed simply for posting.
It's a strange sort of medium who can perceive invisible psychic trauma, but can't see ghosts.
this is, i think, the most poignant way of putting it, in a comment section full of excellent points
damn,, well-put
It is quite disturbing to hear such maniacal genocidal thoughts coming out of Dan Olson’s mouth…
Yeah I am 47% through cancelling him right now.
@@TheModdedwarfare3 but is 47% enough to justify the psychic damage that cancelling Dan would cause to him???
"Imagine the psychic harm felt by someone who lives close to a group that might kill thousands of them any day."
..... That's Palestinians though.
I *genuinely* thought, after the first few sentences Dan read out, that the guy was going to argue that Palestinians are facing that same fear and much more, and so the argument is nonsensical and should be discarded. I'm flabbergasted.
I just want to say, I have depression and so everyone on this planet owes me their lives.
Narcissistic people be like
im so horrified. i wonder what kind of harm i can cause this man that he would consider proportional to the psychic harm he's causing me by his genocidal rhetoric
I was completely taken aback by one of the judges for Israeli side was that because the ICJ didn't move to stop the Bosnian Genocide they don't have a precedent to stop what Israel was doing in Gaza essentially admitting that what they are doing does in fact constitute genocide by hiding behind procedural bullshit. Then I find out that another one of the judges on Israel's team represented the Serbs in the ICJ case that said Kosovo didn't have the right to exist back in 2008 and that Israel also provided arms to the Serbs back when they were under arms embargo during the Bosnian Genocide. Israel really is just a geopolitical ball of pure misery.
Actually I'm surprised they didn't make much more of that approach. I expected them to cite the drone war and how many civilians the US killed, and say that if the ICJ didn't act then it was giving tacit consent.
Absolute ghouls. I'm so proud of my country for taking them to the ICJ.
@@garethmartin6522you think they'll bite the hand of daddy usa when they're consrantly begging daddy for money
@@rusi6219 Who are you referring to?
Reminds me of how they also provided arms to Azerbaijan for it's invasion of nagorno-karabakh which then led to nearly it's entire population fleeing or forced out,
Dan's pleasant voice lulls me into a false sense of security, making the utter bullshit he's reading that much more jarring
Incredibly disconcerting indeed. Especially bc I view Dan as one of the most trusted voices on this damn website.
Appreciate the content you’re putting out!keep going
great vid. i'm just now discovering this side channel and it's really good
One of the most frustrating things to have learned after getting into philosophy, a field one might expect to prize critical thinking, introspection, truth, and understanding, is that far too many self proclaimed "philosophers" are really just apologists in search of a rationalization of their own worldviews filling a social role more fitting of a propagandist. This person is being an apologist (for Israel), not a truth seeker.
Unfortunately a lot of tenured professors are so far up their own ass and are completely out of touch weirdos.
That's been something that's kind of left a sour taste in my mouth about the realm of philosophy :-/ I appreciate you and everyone in the field of thought who recognizes this tendency and actively avoids it/embraces the complexities of nuance and introspection!
I was once a Christian and during the time that I attended a Christian university, I was at one point a philosophy major. I originally signed up for the program thinking that I was going to learn how to become good at defending my faith while also learning about cool ideas and ways of thinking while doing so. After a couple of semesters, I switched programs and also wound up de-converting because I kept running into ideas and arguments that were touted as logically ironclad and irrefutable arguments of the faith masterfully constructed and delivered by PhD theologians and Christian scholars that no atheist or skeptic could ever hope to ever topple. And yet these arguments were constantly riddled with the kinds of informal fallacies that freshmen were expected to have acquainted themselves with in a basic English class in the rhetorical studies unit of their composition textbooks.
As generally useless as their program turned out to be, I did still learn some important (although unfortunate) lessons from my time spent as a philosophy student (at least at a Christian university). Even highly educated and well-read, well-versed scholars who spend a lifetime of studying an intellectual subject and working in academia can be just as much of an uncritical thinker and biased in their thinking as a high school grad who never set foot on a college campus ever in their life. Sometimes, they are even *worse* at critical thinking because all their time spent studying and all the facts they learned were only applied to developing better skill at rationalizing their own feelings, emotions, or biases. But their feelings, emotions, or biases could be presented with the veneer of intellectual rigor so that while they may have learned to become more eloquent in their speech and composition, more learned in the jargon and technical intricacies of the field in which they studied, the underlying rationale in their thought processes and arguments is still the logical equivalent of plugging their fingers into their ears to ignore any evidence that contradicts their beliefs and affirming to themselves "I'm right, I'm right, I'm right." Even after all their study, while they may have become more factually knowledgeable about their field of study, they may have never actually learned to be earnest and genuine truth seekers, following the evidence wherever it may lead, but instead more clever and technically trained sophists who have mastered the art of mental gymnastics.
@@ernie39 You can hold a college degree and still be a complete idiot, just look at Jordan Peterson.
Sophists are almost as old as philosophy itself
Killing and inflicting suffering is not a "psychic gain", for Israelis or anyone. Killing is a karmic debt incurred, it is a burden carried to the grave. These kinds of acts poison the heart and twist the mind. Insanity.
I'd argue it's more of a historic debt incurred. All of us will need to live the rest of our lives with the books that say this was allowed to happen and the world did almost nothing to stop it. Just like we must live with the books that say the same about every other genocide.
The writer admits that Israeli officials are genocidal to Palestinians but doesnt give a thought to the psychic harm living under complate control of such a regime does to Palestinians and how that might impact their actions
The fears of the Chosen, like their dreams and desires, are on an order far above the same of others. The lives of others mean little.
Can you imagine if a little old woman managed to argue that she killed several teen boys in her neighborhood because the "psychic harm" of them wearing hoods and running around the neighborhood convinced her that she needed to strike first before they harmed her. She further justified it by saying a friend of hers got robbed by a group of completely different teens in a different neighborhood, but they wore black hoods similar to the ones that the teens wear in her area.
Turns out wrapping the "their fee fees were hurt" argument with academic language doesn't suddenly turn it into a good argument. Maybe next we'll get the academic paper about how the IDF is just a smol bean UwU.
For a government that's so afraid of Hamas, they sure are making more of tomorrow's Hamas members with astonishing efficiency
the final boss of the trolley problem : genocide edition
great video little joel, your ending question was chilling and impactful. my fiancé looked over in the earlier portion of this video, when you had the black sweater, and said it looked like you were getting a hair cut. like the sweater was the bib and the mic was the trimmer. thought it was an interesting observation of ur work that was worth sharing
I like this meta. He's just in the barber's ranting about this
this is so so so upsetting to me because I studied philosophy at Rutgers and it's at Rutgers where I got started in pro-Palestine organizing 15 years ago. this is personal. like I can't describe the rage inside me right now
Bro essentially wrote a b-movie villain speech, looked at it, and went "yeah that's a compelling argument"
It's always interesting when "qualified academics" show how much actual qualifications or knowledge they lack. How do people like this end up getting this far into a field like philosophy while failing to understand the basics. If they were to enter this essay as a submission in a philosophy 101 course that talked about fallacies they would probably fail to due the amount of issues with it.
I've been involved with Academic circles for quite a while now, and if there is one thing I learned is that being educated doesn't exempt you from human stupidity. I am often blindsided by the dumb shit I hear.
The history of the sciences and philosophy are tainted with bias.
He's not a philosopher, he's a law professor
@@kwarra-an in the article it says Professor of law and philosophy either way developing good logical reasoning skills and understanding basic logical fallacies should also be a fundamental part of law.
@@404maxnotfoundexcellent point
According to his rate my professor, his crim law lectures are equally lacking in reason or logic. His students even took him to the dean and seems like nothing happened after
Poor Dan probably had to wash his mouth out with soap after reading out that garbage
this is pretty high effort for a lil joel video.
welcome back, medium joel!
The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what happened. The article is definitely strangely written, but it's pretty clearly pro-Palestine if you read the whole thing, which Joel has clearly done and decided to ignore, or let his initial impressions colour the whole article.
claim at 6:30 holds up so strong i had to pause and go "wait...yeah wait thats right"
i already completely agreed with you but you somehow put every thought into words so perfectly, i think my mind will actually explode if i try any harder to imagine how someone could possibly disagree. moral of the story thank you little joel for giving me a new line to drop in my local congress's email every 24 hours
Little Joel has officially hit the point where he puts in as much effort on his side channel as he does on his main channel... More or less.
Psychic harm is literally a joke people make. "This post gave me 2d6 psychic damage.".
and this is why you're one of like two youtubers i subscribe to on patreon. you killed this.
20:40 I feel like a more accurate comparison would be “I lost my friend’s keys so they burned my house down with my infant child inside, but they bought me a bigger house and handed me a new baby.” Some things aren’t replaced by money
one day this paper will be referenced in a text on philosophical justifications for genocide, right next to heidegger's black books
Also, his estimation that there is no other way to fight Hamas because Israel has tried all the non-genocide options already...
...we sort of know that that's not the case. That the Likud party has considered keeping Hamas in play a priority.
Yep , can't say they've 'tried everything' while still occupying Palestinian territories to prevent the formation of their state - causing the 2014 peace talks to fall apart
This is literally the most depressing word problem on a zionist themed math test.
I laughed, but it was a hollow one
"How many golems do you need to sustain a million dollar a year lifestyle? Show your work."
"If you killed my mom or whatever, I'd be pretty upset about that."
-Little Joel, 2024
A way to tell a philosophical argument is awful is when you can just grant wild claims in several steps of the argument, and it still falls apart.
Your analysis is thorough and well-thought out. Thank you for breaking it down in these terms.
6:22 This is what the Hannibal Protocol is for but don’t tell settlers that or they might get a little psychically damaged
I feel myself losing brain cells the more I listen to wallen’s arguments
Would you say, you´re receiving "psychic harm"? Can you say, to how many lives would it be proportional to?
@@marts4169 i wonder how much harm OP can inflict on Wallen that he would consider justified for the psychic damage of listening to genocidal rhetoric
That guy gave me 'psychic harm' with his skullduggery!
Tbh, and I know its selfish, but the most disturbing aspect of all of this for me is that it seems like it can't be stopped, despite many levers of power that could work to end this, and that means that these unimaginable atrocities could be committed against us if the power structure decides to do it. Its making me feel the disastrous future that awaits us from all of the existential threats to our species.
Watching Dan Olson videos all day, and then clicking on this, absolutely broke my brain. I was wondering if I was just going to hear all voice overs in his voice from now on.
Sounds like you had a pretty good day
But the Psychic damage of an attempted genocide doesn't count?
I am no activist, and I don't speak out half as much as I should. About this, or any other issue.
But like. Come on, man. I'm an idiot and even I can see the holes in this.
Not to them, because they fundamentally don't consider Palestinians as human beings.
@@stoodmuffinpersonal3144
Alec: Well, you HAVE to consider the Israelis, you have to consider the psychic harm-
Biden, months ago, in a private speech to his donors: [Israel] is starting to lose [international] support by indiscriminate bombing that takes place.
Alec:
Alec: Uh-
How insanely tone deaf and completely non self aware do you have to be to not only seriously think like this but to make it public. How can he not realize how this would make you look extremely bad? Just flush your reputation down the toilet with these final solution type equations.
If anyone is curious about Walen's responses to criticisms, the article linked in the description has a comments section! And oh boy was it fun reading /s
It's wild, because the only response that might save him any face is retracting the article and deleting any and all social media.
This all seems fun and like an "Academic Exercise" now, while it's a priority for the American consent manufactorum to keep everyone's anti-Muslim bloodlust up so they can use Israel as a tool to destabalize the region.
But there will come a day, probably within the decade, where it's gonna be a real bad look for there to be a public record of having done the math and pronounced that genocide was a good idea.
It's real "The best time to delete your post was immediately, the second best time is now." stuff.
The only thing I’m looking to hear from him is “I’m so sorry, I’m now going to remove my hands so I can never type anything ever again”, everything else he can keep to himself.