Wednesday, April 23, 2008

SHOULD WE COMPARE STUFF?

As you say Keane that "We will not know for a long time however because not enough time has past to successfully compare the two."

I was just wondering when would be a sufficient passage of time for us to compare Iraq to the conflict such that of Vietnam. From TV ads, TV documentaries, newspaper articles after newspaper articles, to publish articles on the web, many of these resources establishes that the conflict in Iraq should be perplexed next to the conflict in Vietnam. I’m not vouching for these two events of similarity to be compared with each other, but I was just wondering if they should ever, in any light, be compared to each other. To put it straight what I’m asking is that is it logically or ethically invalid to compare events that share any sort of similarity. For the answer to be no, is to regard and acknowledge that no two events of the similar likelihood ever should be logically be compared with each other, which in consequence would create for us, the human race, an inability to formulate any basis for future occurrences, which would be problematic when applied to mathematical or scientific situations (i.e. if “blank” than “this”)

1 comment:

Magister P said...

Good point. Another question is to what end someone makes a comparison. A comparison of modern American morality with the morality of ancient Rome could be simply to point out similarities for purposes of understanding. It has hard to understand the culture one is in, so we compare it with another to give us better perspective.

On the other hand, when someone compares a modern dictator with Hitler, it is usually as a means of attack, not to gain better understanding.