On being a soggy liberal

[perlmonger]

This posting is a relocated answer to lproven here on the subject of spraying pigs' blood at Muslim terrorists.

Liam said: They want to kill us and in return you want to /understand their motivations and cultural context?/ I sit amazed.

"They" are people. Just like you and I. The idea that "terrorists" and "rapists" and "cabinet ministers" and all other identifiable subgroups of humanity that do evil and (apparently) incomprehensible things are somehow different from "us"; that we, living through similar events, placed in equivalent situations wouldn't react in a similar way is a nice, comfortable illusion. It's "them" that are bad'n'wrong, not "us". "We" would never behave that way.

Sorry.

Yes "we" would.

I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't protect ourselves against attack from anyone and anywhere that attacks us: what I am suggesting is that we maybe look at longer term preventive measures by seeing why some people feel so (otherwise) powerless and angry that they want to attack us and maybe, just maybe, see if it's at least partially because we've backed them into a corner after a couple of millenia of political, military and commercial (to the extent that those three things can be separated) violence.

In what way is using someone's own insane beliefs to prevent them from committing a crime a "lynch mob mindset"?

By dismissing another world-view as "insane", you implicitly dismiss those who hold that world-view which, in turn, renders them "other" and safe to insult, abuse, incarcerate and kill as a collective group. That sounds to me very like the state in which black people were (and to an extent still are) in parts of the US; the state in which gay people are to a significant (but I hope) minority of people in this country; the state in which, increasingly, anyone of a Semitic (or, indeed, Brazillian) appearance is in this country.

Oh, and leaving aside for a moment the spraying of pigs' blood, it would also be nice if the measures taken by our government purportedly to counter the "threat of terrorism" (1) did so, rather than increasing that threat and (2) weren't just more steps to screw down the rest of the population and, as far as they can get away with it, abolish the rule of law using external threat (enemies are necessary to government) as a handy covering excuse.

Comments

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

...not to mention a waste of what could be perfectly decent black pudding.

In all seriousness, though, the common factor in what makes someone turn into a terrorist isn't a fanatical belief in religious dogma, but a sense of being oppressed and downtrodden. Arming the population with pigs' blood will increase the feelings of opression in the Muslim community. Creating more terrorists and so on.

[ixwin.livejournal.com]

Amen to all that.

[lproven.livejournal.com]

I've read it, I've re-read it, I've read the comments, and I still don't understand.

But you're right. We won't agree.

This comment seems to me as utterly barking as the idea of strapping explosives onto yourself and going off and murdering a bunch of innocent strangers.

Religious people are irrational. It is pointless to try to treat them rationally; it is futile to try to reason with people who have no sense of reason.

If they want to kill me, I want to stop them. If I can stop them without killing them, that, to me, seems like a better bet than killing them, because I am not a bloodthirsty killer; I am a rather pacifistic peacable vegetarian.

But if that doesn't work, then no, kill them. If that means a policeman holding them down on the floor of a Tube train and shooting them in the back of the head, then sobeit. It is of course tragic if this gets done to the wrong person by mistake, but people die all the time. Human life is not precious. Human life is very cheap; there are over six billion humans on our overcrowded planet. If killing a small number of people prevents them from killing a large number, that is worth it. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

But doubtless you will be horrified by this and consider it distasteful to the point of disgust. Sadly, your mindset currently prevails in much of the west and the developed world, which is why we are nearly overrun with a spectrum of ills from illiterate schoolchildren to violent crime at home and rising terrorism and religious fundamentalism around the world.

Unless the rational fight back, to protect rationality, the irrational and the stupid will win. And unless they are taught, most people are irrational and stupid; it is the natural state of man.

In reason, logic, culture, religion, we will be overwhelmed by the forces of ignorant fundamentalists, and in commerce and trade we will be overwhelmed by vigorous far-Eastern economies unfettered by unions and workers' rights legislation.

The upshot is that your cuddly fluffy worldview will bring about its own destruction.

This may well be a natural trend.

It's a shame, though.