Genocide Schemnocide

I have in a blog post weeks ago mentioned my disdain for our tendencies towards labels, broad categorization, and name-calling. I know that in our busy lives we want to absorb as much information as quickly as possible, but efforts along these lines seem to backfire more often than any efficient mechanism should.

Whilst in a profession in which how we define terms and set up the environment is critical to the conclusions drawn, I am still annoyed as hell whenever I see arguments coming down to definitions and semantics. It's one thing for academics to engage in such circular, never-ending, and probably irrelevant (to anyone outside their immediate field anyway) debates -- how else are we going to get published, after all? -- it's a completely different story when it comes to policy makers, legislators, and politicians (broadly defined) going down this extremely counter-productive route.

People are dying each and every minute that you waste time dwelling on the "but well, according to my definition of XXX", for f's sake.

It is this same bs that's slowing efforts to end the violence in Darfur, or that Congress is obsessing over re: Turkey & Armenia right now. Genocide schemnocide, who gives a crap whether it has or has not happened?

Oh wait, everyone cares. It's just that everyone have their own variant for the definition of genocide.

Look, I do think what happened in the Ottoman Empire around 1915 represents a very dark page in human history, and I believe the facts should be brought to light and (ideally) those responsible should step up and acknowledge what has happened.

I just think that putting the label "genocide" over it isn't the be-all and end-all of things, nor is it fair to simply clump what had happened in Armenia with its supposed counterparts in Nazi-Germany, Rwanda, or Kosovo.

Forget about whether or not "genocide" (in its many definitions used) occured. What I want to know is:

(1) How many people were killed as a direct consequence of the event in question?

(2) Who were killed and who were the killers? (these groups more often than not overlap)

(3) What were the root causes of the killings?

(4) Was the violence justified / in proportion given the situation?

(5) Is there a way we can stop all this now or avoid it in the future?

I know the different sides will invariably disagree on at least some of the answers to these questions, but at least it's a step forward from "is it or is it not genocide."

In my area of work we talk about information as partitions of the true state of the world, meaning that the finer the (or the more the no. of) partitions, the better the information we have. I actually think that the finer the partitions, the larger the percentage of facts the relevant parties will agree on.

And the more common ground all sides can gain on an issue, the less likely they'll be in conflict. See why we should try to avoid broad categorization as much as possible now? It really ain't rocket science.