Reply #42: No doubt money helps, but what if he truly *believes* he's doing good? [View All]

[Tin Man]

Haven't we all done something at one time, or held some belief, that we later realized was wrong? We're all naive, every moment of our lives - we just never learn it until later. What I know could fill a book, but what I don't yet know could fill a library. It's the continuum of naivite and revelation.

My objection to this thread, was the belief of some posters that the 647 dead contractors were all mercenaries who deserved what they got: "And I do not mourn them. They are representative of the WORST in human nature, and the world is a better place without them". Well, that's an awfully binary viewpoint - evidently, every one of these people was without any redeeming qualities, and their deaths were appropriate.

Well, as I see it, that's a rather simplistic view, a false dichotomy, that doesn't apply well within a relativistic world. I chose to illustrate the same, by selecting a real-world example of someone in Iraq who does not conform to the poster's stereotypical assumptions and hyperbole, and make the poster apply his own binary standard to my example: is my neighbor "the WORST in human nature, and the world is a better place without (him)"... So, what's it gonna be Romans, thumbs-up or thumbs-down? Should he live or die? No, it wasn't hypocracy, it was illustration: the world can't be reduced into just black or white, good or evil, and every American in Iraq doesn't deserve to die.