Saturday, November 11, 2023

Ethical Topography

There’s a mysterious ethical gap between a call for an immediate ceasefire and a desire for peace, or at least a lasting end to violence in both word and deed, across all aspects of a conflict. 

I’m sure many Ukrainians have become a litt more more aware of this than the rest of us. 

Today the media and ‘citizen journalists’ of various kinds captured this disconnect as it manifested in a public space. 

One big march, with some of the participants desirous for peace, some for a ceasefire, unilateral even, and others stoking up an expansion of atavistic bloodlust, though it is perhaps unclear if that would occur in the absence of a settlement or ceasefire, or attendant on it. 

The same demonstration thus featured both the moral low ground and the moral high ground in a bizarre ethical topography, with a whole load of people haplessly lost halfway up (or down) the slopes. 

Are these polarities just ignoring each other in order to get their points across within the best vehicle Britain currently affords, or is there something uglier, more like denial in play here? 


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