Syniks
02-12-2005, 18:15
Comment: Excellent article, well worth the time.
Only a couple of snips, for flavor, because the article prints out to 7 pages at 10pt. :eek:
http://www.signandsight.com/features/493.html
Hans Magnus Enzensberger looks at the kind of ideological trigger required to ignite the radical loser - whether amok killer, murderer or terrorist - and make him explode
I. The isolated individual
It is difficult to talk about the loser, and it is stupid not to. Stupid because there can be no definitive winner and because each of us, from the megalomaniac Bonaparte to the last beggar on the streets of Calcutta, will meet the same fate. Difficult because to content oneself with this metaphysical banality is to take an easy way out, as it ignores the truly explosive dimension of the problem, the political dimension.
snip
Since before the attack on the World Trade Center, political scientists, sociologists and psychologists have been searching in vain for a reliable pattern. Neither poverty nor the experience of political repression alone seem to provide a satisfactory explanation for why young people actively seek out death in a grand bloody finale and aim to take as many people with them as possible. Is there a phenotype that displays the same characteristics down the ages and across all classes and cultures?
No one pays any mind to the radical loser if they do not have to. And the feeling is mutual. As long as he is alone – and he is very much alone – he does not hit out. He appears unobtrusive, silent: a sleeper. But when he does draw attention to himself and enter the statistics, then he sparks consternation bordering on shock. For his very existence reminds the others of how little it would take to put them in his position. One might even assist the loser if only he would give just up. But he has no intention of doing so, and it does not look as if he would be partial to any assistance.
snip
The logic of the radical loser cannot be grasped in terms of common sense. Common sense cites the instinct of self-preservation as if it were an unquestionable fact of nature, to be taken for granted. Whereas in fact, it is a fragile notion, quite young in historical terms. Self-preservation is referred to by the Greeks, by Hobbes and Spinoza, but it is not considered as a purely natural drive. Instead, according to Immanuel Kant, "the... first duty of the human individual towards himself in the quality of his animalness is self-preservation in his animal nature." Only in the nineteenth century did this duty become an inviolable fact of natural science. Few deviated from this view. Nietzsche objected that physiologists should avoid, "fixing the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being." But among those who would always rather survive, his words have always fallen on deaf ears.
The history of ideas aside, humanity never seems to have expected individual lives to be treated as the supreme good. All early religions set great store by human sacrifice. Later, martyrs were highly valued. (According to Blaise Pascal's fatal maxim, one should "only believe witnesses who allow themselves to be killed.") In most cultures, heroes acquired fame and honour for their fearlessness in the face of death. Until the mass slaughter of World War I, secondary school pupils had to learn the notorious verse from Horace according to which is sweet and honourable to die for one's fatherland. Others claimed that shipping was necessary, but not staying alive; during the Cold War there were those who shouted "Better dead than red!" And what, under perfectly civilian conditions, are we to think of tightrope walkers, extreme sports, motor racing, polar exploration and other forms of potential suicide?
Clearly, the instinct of self-preservation is not up to much. The remarkable fondness of the human species for suicide, down the ages and across all cultures, is proof enough of this. No taboo and no threat of punishment have been able keep people from taking their own lives. This tendency cannot be quantified. Any attempt to grasp it by means of statistics will fail due to the huge number of unrecorded cases....
snip
The Islamists can consider all this a success. But it makes no difference to the actual power relations. Even the spectacular attack on the World Trade Center was not able to shake the supremacy of the United States. The New York Stock Exchange reopened the Monday after the attacks, and the long-term impact on the international financial system and world trade was minimal.
The consequences for Arab societies, on the other hand, are fatal. For the most devastating long-term effects will be born not by the West, but by the religion in whose name the Islamists act. Not just refugees, asylum seekers and migrants will suffer as a result. Beyond any sense of justice, entire peoples will have to pay a huge price for the actions of their self-appointed representatives. The idea that their prospects, which are bad enough as it is, could be improved through terrorism is absurd. History offers no example of a regressive society that stifled its own productive potential being capable of survival in the long term.
The project of the radical loser, as currently seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, consists of organizing the suicide of an entire civilisation. But the likelihood of their succeeding in an unlimited generalization of their death cult is negligible. Their attacks represent a permanent background risk, like ordinary everyday deaths by accident on the streets, to which we have become accustomed.
In a global society that constantly produces new losers, this is something we will have to live with.
Take the time to read it all, for it is good.
Only a couple of snips, for flavor, because the article prints out to 7 pages at 10pt. :eek:
http://www.signandsight.com/features/493.html
Hans Magnus Enzensberger looks at the kind of ideological trigger required to ignite the radical loser - whether amok killer, murderer or terrorist - and make him explode
I. The isolated individual
It is difficult to talk about the loser, and it is stupid not to. Stupid because there can be no definitive winner and because each of us, from the megalomaniac Bonaparte to the last beggar on the streets of Calcutta, will meet the same fate. Difficult because to content oneself with this metaphysical banality is to take an easy way out, as it ignores the truly explosive dimension of the problem, the political dimension.
snip
Since before the attack on the World Trade Center, political scientists, sociologists and psychologists have been searching in vain for a reliable pattern. Neither poverty nor the experience of political repression alone seem to provide a satisfactory explanation for why young people actively seek out death in a grand bloody finale and aim to take as many people with them as possible. Is there a phenotype that displays the same characteristics down the ages and across all classes and cultures?
No one pays any mind to the radical loser if they do not have to. And the feeling is mutual. As long as he is alone – and he is very much alone – he does not hit out. He appears unobtrusive, silent: a sleeper. But when he does draw attention to himself and enter the statistics, then he sparks consternation bordering on shock. For his very existence reminds the others of how little it would take to put them in his position. One might even assist the loser if only he would give just up. But he has no intention of doing so, and it does not look as if he would be partial to any assistance.
snip
The logic of the radical loser cannot be grasped in terms of common sense. Common sense cites the instinct of self-preservation as if it were an unquestionable fact of nature, to be taken for granted. Whereas in fact, it is a fragile notion, quite young in historical terms. Self-preservation is referred to by the Greeks, by Hobbes and Spinoza, but it is not considered as a purely natural drive. Instead, according to Immanuel Kant, "the... first duty of the human individual towards himself in the quality of his animalness is self-preservation in his animal nature." Only in the nineteenth century did this duty become an inviolable fact of natural science. Few deviated from this view. Nietzsche objected that physiologists should avoid, "fixing the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being." But among those who would always rather survive, his words have always fallen on deaf ears.
The history of ideas aside, humanity never seems to have expected individual lives to be treated as the supreme good. All early religions set great store by human sacrifice. Later, martyrs were highly valued. (According to Blaise Pascal's fatal maxim, one should "only believe witnesses who allow themselves to be killed.") In most cultures, heroes acquired fame and honour for their fearlessness in the face of death. Until the mass slaughter of World War I, secondary school pupils had to learn the notorious verse from Horace according to which is sweet and honourable to die for one's fatherland. Others claimed that shipping was necessary, but not staying alive; during the Cold War there were those who shouted "Better dead than red!" And what, under perfectly civilian conditions, are we to think of tightrope walkers, extreme sports, motor racing, polar exploration and other forms of potential suicide?
Clearly, the instinct of self-preservation is not up to much. The remarkable fondness of the human species for suicide, down the ages and across all cultures, is proof enough of this. No taboo and no threat of punishment have been able keep people from taking their own lives. This tendency cannot be quantified. Any attempt to grasp it by means of statistics will fail due to the huge number of unrecorded cases....
snip
The Islamists can consider all this a success. But it makes no difference to the actual power relations. Even the spectacular attack on the World Trade Center was not able to shake the supremacy of the United States. The New York Stock Exchange reopened the Monday after the attacks, and the long-term impact on the international financial system and world trade was minimal.
The consequences for Arab societies, on the other hand, are fatal. For the most devastating long-term effects will be born not by the West, but by the religion in whose name the Islamists act. Not just refugees, asylum seekers and migrants will suffer as a result. Beyond any sense of justice, entire peoples will have to pay a huge price for the actions of their self-appointed representatives. The idea that their prospects, which are bad enough as it is, could be improved through terrorism is absurd. History offers no example of a regressive society that stifled its own productive potential being capable of survival in the long term.
The project of the radical loser, as currently seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, consists of organizing the suicide of an entire civilisation. But the likelihood of their succeeding in an unlimited generalization of their death cult is negligible. Their attacks represent a permanent background risk, like ordinary everyday deaths by accident on the streets, to which we have become accustomed.
In a global society that constantly produces new losers, this is something we will have to live with.
Take the time to read it all, for it is good.