Training in Saudia Arabia

[Dave J]

This is pretty interesting about not trying to actually hit each other. How does all this fit with blowing up large numbers of seemingly innocent bystanders with car bombs and suicide vests? My guess is its OK since all affected would probably deemed lower life forms by not being a member of the True Belief Way, or acceptable collateral damage and given a pass to heaven since they were of the correct True Belief Way.

Completely different dynamics, IMHO.

Somewhat similar to what Wayne described, I recall an incident where an argument between Iraqi Police and Iraqi Army at a checkpoint turned into a sudden and massive expenditure of 7.62x39mm, but no one was hit. It wasn't until later that I realized that it was essentially just posturing on both sides. (if they'd been shooting with intent to hit, it might not have produced much different results, but the misses would have been closer . In my experience, there is a very strong cultural obligation towards revenge with Iraqis and other Arabs...if offended or wronged, they are obligated to do something in retribution...whether or not it produces any meaningful effect is not really the main concern.

Suicide bombers, on the other hand, are comparatively rare, and not really representative of the general population. They're either extreme religious fanatics, or often persons of diminished mental capacity that have been duped into doing the deed. Where I was, AQI had to import fanatics from outside of Iraq, because they couldn't supply themselves with enough locally. So IMHO, blowing oneself up isn't really part of the mainstream culture, at least in the places where I was.

[john c]

Agreed. We think of the dynamic as fight or flight. Grossman expands this to include posture of submit. The point of the non-hit gunfights is to show that you're not intimidated by the other side shooting at you. But there's a tacit understanding that although it's risky, it's not dangerous. If you actually killed the other guy, you would be looked down upon by your own side, since the death was unnecessary and would provoke retribution unnecessarily. The whole gunfight serves everyone's purpose of proving they're macho men unafraid of gunfire.

This is very different than the Western ethos which has moved away from honor, to ethics. Our locus of self is internal rather than external. We avoid confrontation until legally justified, and then we use deadly force. We look like pussies to macho culture, because we don't stand up to disrespect. Throughout history this has lead to war because macho cultures perceive us as paper tigers.

I see this playing out now in the South China Sea and in the Philippines. I'm pretty sure this is going to end in tears.

[john c]

This is pretty interesting about not trying to actually hit each other. How does all this fit with blowing up large numbers of seemingly innocent bystanders with car bombs and suicide vests? My guess is its OK since all affected would probably deemed lower life forms by not being a member of the True Belief Way, or acceptable collateral damage and given a pass to heaven since they were of the correct True Belief Way.

I don't think car bombs and suicide bombs fit into the rubric of honor. The point isn't to show that you're a man, unafraid of the other side. There's no signalling.

[Dave J]

FWIW, I agree very much with John C's take on tribal dynamics. Unfortunately, some traditional behaviors don't mesh well with modern technology. For example, in the part of Africa I'm in right now, there's a local ethnic group where it's customary for a boy to prove he's reached manhood by stealing a goat from an adjacent tribe. That was all good fun back when getting caught meant being beaten with a stick. Trouble is, the goat herders have AK's now, so the kid may well end up dead, and then the revenge cycle starts rolling, and before you know it, it's pretty much a war zone.

[Malamute]

Thanks for responding to my question guys. Very interesting.

[john c]

FWIW, I agree very much with John C's take on tribal dynamics. Unfortunately, some traditional behaviors don't mesh well with modern technology. For example, in the part of Africa I'm in right now, there's a local ethnic group where it's customary for a boy to prove he's reached manhood by stealing a goat from an adjacent tribe. That was all good fun back when getting caught meant being beaten with a stick. Trouble is, the goat herders have AK's now, so the kid may well end up dead, and then the revenge cycle starts rolling, and before you know it, it's pretty much a war zone.

Yep, technology changes everything. It'll probably take a thousand years or so to adapt.

If you think about it, stealing goats was a perfect, zero sum game. My kid steals a goat from you to prove he's a man, and your kid steals one from me to prove he's a man. Like you said, all in good fun. Over the long term, everybody proves we're all men, and it likely works out. Honor is bestowed and maintained. If you catch a kid and beat his ass, it just incentivizes him to be more careful next time. I'm sure those beatings were largely harmless, as well. No broken bones, TBIs, or long term effects.

One thing I haven't touched on, that fascinates me, is the role of the loud report of a gunshot in these battles or street violence. It lets the other side know you're "serious". Probably 99% of the gunshot victims I've seen on the street were psychological stops. Typically superficial wounds from .22s or similar. It's the talisman we talk about here on the forum. The hardcore killings I've seen where "stopping" power would have been a factor were all knife or bludgeon weapons. The killers were so enraged that you'd need some serious COM hits to stop the attack. In these cases, it was all very personal, so not a factor in most folks' lives. As long as you're not a battered wife/gf, tapping someone's old lady, or the suspect is 5150, you're probably fine with a five shot snubby revolver or .380 pistol. BBI's data appears to somewhat support this.

Basically, shooting at someone without the intention to kill signals to them "I'm serious.....don't get closer". I am NOT advocating this in any way, just remarking on the phenomena in tribal cultures (including "honor cultures" in the US).

[Wondering Beard]

This is very different than the Western ethos which has moved away from honor, to ethics. Our locus of self is internal rather than external. We avoid confrontation until legally justified, and then we use deadly force.

That may be a recent development but back when honor played a huge part on Western society (less than 100 years ago), we did a bunch of killing with very little attention to avoid death to the other guy. Corsican and Sicilian vendettas, dueling (descendant of trial by combat and which got outlawed because it was killing so many young men), the various little wars between Germanic tribes and later feudal lords (which led the Church to force these lords to go to war only on certain days), examples are countless. Go back to antiquity and you find the Iliad (Homer's poem is very much about honor); no posturing there and plenty of killing. Folks in the west, even in honor societies, didn't posture much and killed aplenty, even when their populations were small.

I think to assign a difference between west and east in terms of honor rituals and reluctance to kill is at best oversimplistic.

[Poconnor]

I heard many Kosovo Albanians (Muslim) talk about blood feuds. I Never heard that in Iraq but I heard Inshallah everyday. I assumed that's why they missed. They left it up to allah but I agree about the tribal and clan society. I know a guy takes on a whole new meaning there. Plus police in Iraq are not the same as in the US. I remember giving out soccer balls to little kids and Iraqi police stealing them just down the street right in front of us. Literally stealing from 6 years olds. They operate more like a gang

[john c]

That may be a recent development but back when honor played a huge part on Western society (less than 100 years ago), we did a bunch of killing with very little attention to avoid death to the other guy. Corsican and Sicilian vendettas, dueling (descendant of trial by combat and which got outlawed because it was killing so many young men), the various little wars between Germanic tribes and later feudal lords (which led the Church to force these lords to go to war only on certain days), examples are countless. Go back to antiquity and you find the Iliad (Homer's poem is very much about honor); no posturing there and plenty of killing. Folks in the west, even in honor societies, didn't posture much and killed aplenty, even when their populations were small.

I think to assign a difference between west and east in terms of honor rituals and reluctance to kill is at best oversimplistic.

I respectfully disagree; I think the fundamental difference between the West and other cultures is fundamentally about ethics vs honor. It's not that honor has been done away with; it's a gradual shift from about the 15th century to where we are today. It's by no means uniform or longstanding. But our English legal and constitutional heritage clearly delineates this from about the 16th century; before that you'll see it in the Hanseatic League. I agree; there are European backwaters that are holdovers; but even today, Sicily isn't anywhere near what it was 200 years ago. And, even then, it's not like Afghanistan today.

[Wondering Beard]

I respectfully disagree; I think the fundamental difference between the West and other cultures is fundamentally about ethics vs honor. It's not that honor has been done away with; it's a gradual shift from about the 15th century to where we are today. It's by no means uniform or longstanding. But our English legal and constitutional heritage clearly delineates this from about the 16th century; before that you'll see it in the Hanseatic League. I agree; there are European backwaters that are holdovers; but even today, Sicily isn't anywhere near what it was 200 years ago. And, even then, it's not like Afghanistan today.

While I can't speak to the Arab cultures mix of ethics and honor (had the Mu'tazila school of thought -whose likely absorption of Hellenic thought spread back to the West- lasted, easier parallels could have been drawn), what I am speaking to is not so much which system of thought (honor vs ethics) ultimately won out but rather that in Western affairs of honor (throughout the centuries), people had no hesitation in killing one another unlike what has been described about Arab (and Afghan culture -I have no idea how it works in Mongolia or in Uzbekistan or anywhere in Africa) in the preceding posts.

for the tl:dr: the following says that the historical lines aren't that clear.
In the West, ethics and honor are parallel tracks (well, more like entangled tracks) that reach much further back than the 15th century and whose effects upon each other can be quite murky. Sicily and Corsica may have been backwaters (from the medieval times to roughly 60 years ago) but New Orleans (and its dueling oaks) wasn't; nor was New York in the beginning of the 19th Century (as Hamilton and Burr can attest), nor was Rome (where the Colonna/Orsini feud, while officialy stopped by papal bull, continues today -imagine that, a 1000 year old feud where the killing only truly stopped about 100 years ago). It was at the height of the Renaissance that the dueling (and street defense) sword, the rapier, got perfected in Italy (and its techniques in Spain); the Paris Champs de Mars was used for (illegal) dueling until about the 1870s. Yet, the schools of thoughts that promoted ethics versus honor where truly begun by the great Greek philosophers (whose work is at the foundation of the change that took place in the 1500s) and truly established in the West by Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s (200 years before the Renaissance gets going). The lines aren't neat, nor is the progression. The principles found in English legal thought (and as you mention in Hanseatic league commercial and legal thought) were certainly primary in the development of a lot of Western culture but nonetheless quite intertwined with honor systems.

Have you read the The Bourgeois Virtues trilogy (I only linked to the first book)? I only bring it up because it more truly addresses (and supports) your point yet finds a different ethic as the primary influence.

In any case,I don't believe we're that far off from each other in our thinking :-).

P.S. I wonder how Congress would behave if "affairs of honor" were brought into its proceedings ;-)