Bad Philosophy

The Armed Liberal looks at something he calls “Bad Philosophy” and how it relates to terrorism and other isms.  It’s very interesting.

When thinking about other people’s thinking on terrorists and the events of 9/11, he notes:

These are all positions that come from a kind of spiritual hole, and seek to fill it with strong - even violent - action, as the purest expression of a self that is somehow battened down by the world.

I've believed for a while that the violent strains in Islamism come more from an infection with this Western disease than from intrinsic issues within Islam - although those issues may provide a fertile ground for the infection.

I don't think - and have never thought - that it is limited to Islam, though. I think there is a strong strain of it in the West as well. And recent events have brought that to mind.

Think about that.  The crazy attitude that exists in the mind of a suicide bomber exists in many people all over the world. 

So there's a process visible here that's worth looking at with some interest, and she's a handy example. In my view, it starts here:

The USA is a sick, diseased, cancer, blight on the earth. This is a fact. You guys are in denial about it and hate the fact that I've got the chutzpah to hang here and tell it like it is.

OK, I'll disagree about the U.S. - but the interesting thing to me is this. If this how you feel about where you live - if your life is dependent on this blight, and you're inextricably a part of it - what's the logical reaction?

I've got to believe that it's rage, and a rage that really, really wants to pierce the banality of things with violent, orgasmic action. And it's a rage of the privileged, because it is the more bitter rage of the child against the parent; rage against that which made you, which comforted you, and which you know you owe a debt to, but somehow can't seem to agree to pay.

Note that many top level terrorists come from less than humble backgrounds.  And then take note that this attitude occurs here in the United States with regularity, except you see it in the middle class kid that walks into a high school and opens fire, or perhaps in the suicide of a person who prefers the unknown of death to what they’ve been dealing with emotionally in this life.

So I don’t think we should be truly surprised at the attitude of the garden variety suicide terrorist, or non-suicide terrorist.  Islamists have just institutionalized a psychological attitude that exists everywhere.