[Mr. Nerfect]

Originally Posted by Cool King It's kinda like: Media: Saudi Arabia are doing all these bad things. Simple Fan: I don't believe it. The media is not trustworthy enough. ---------- Media: Saudi Arabia are doing all these good things. Simple Fan: Cool. What a progressive country.

This is it. It's absolutely unbelievable to me. He doesn't believe that a fake wrestling company accepting millions of dollars, millions of dollars from someone would spread a false message, but journalists trying to earn a reputation by reflecting the world are likely to be spreading "fake news."

It used to be cool to check a report's sources and be critical of the media. But it's now be degraded to putting your fingers in your ears and hummng hymns while things literally explode in front of your eyes. There's a difference between being critical of your sources and checking to see how valid they are and just writing things off as "fake news" because they question the fucking President.

Originally Posted by #1-wwf-fan Maybe. If you're intent on setting yourself apart and only caring about the group you set yourself apart with. Many people would say the biggest thing that sets us apart is not where we're born but our race. And instead of caring about everyone they only care about their race. Those people are assholes.

I've never gotten nationalism at all. You don't get a choice of where you're born. You're lucky. You can appreciate the benefits of your country, like the right to security, education and healthcare, but you don't do anything to achieve those. It's not something to thump your chest over and high-five your friends about.

There's also no good reason to ignore the suffering of people who live in places that don't have even parodies of those things, just because they weren't as lucky as you.

Of course you can't worry about all the things in the world all the time. Humans are really good at cognitive dissonance, and that's not even a bad thing, otherwise our heads would explode. But it doesn't mean you can't focus on an issue and say "that's fucking awful." Just like I can look at North Korea and say "that's fucking awful." Why is that even a point being brought up?

Originally Posted by Simple Fan Is it trivial though? Where one's from forms what's of importance to them. If someone thinks race is what sets us apart I'd have to disagree with them but I wouldn't call it trivial.

Not true. Environment helps form, but a lot of other factors are going to go into that too. Sometimes people reject where they are from. Some people recognize it as arbitrary. The idea that you have to chain yourself to your point of origin is a decision you've made, possibly head drummed into your head since you were a kid and all that, but that you say it as if being in a geographical spot is the overriding factor in how you conduct yourself as a human being does get the root of the issue a lot quicker than your dancing around #1-wwf-fan's questions.

Originally Posted by Pit Barrel King My favorite thing is when someone tells me their sociology professor told them all cultures are equal. I wonder how many people who think this also have a problem with WWE going to Saudi Arabia. I bet it's a high number.

You're talking about cultural relativism, and you've completely taken it out of context and should consider taking a sociology course yourself (I'm sure you can find free lectures online). Cultural relativism is simply a framework for looking at cultures that doesn't place significance on the western way of living as superior. It stops looking at hunter-gatherer tribes as "primitive" because they don't see their purpose in life to accumulate wealth or own a PlayStation (although they might think PlayStations are great).

It's a useful tool for not placing different cultures on a scale of "bad" to "good" based on inherent bias towards your own culture. It's nowhere near the same thing as criticizing a dictator dealing with US money to abuse human rights and oppress a culture.

There's a difference between watching your drink beer and thinking my scotch is better and smashing you over the head with my glass and waterboarding you with scotch.