Logical Discussion of the Terrorist Mind
I just wanted to clarify a little about one of my comments on my previous post. I will attempt to explain my argument for these statements more thoroughly in order to answer misgivings in the previous post. I urge you to please PLEASE!! suggest more explanations that what I have listed, for my own benefit.
"How is a sane person persuaded that killing themselves and innocent people is justified?"
My two ways of explaining this: 1) They believe they are benifiting themselves and their victims 2) They do not believe they hurting the people they kill.
Now when I talk about being persuaded I mean an idea is put in the person's head. If we assume that a person is moral then the idea has to take either of these forms. Either they have to believe what they are doing is moral (i.e. they benifiting their victims and themselves) or they have to believe that they aren't hurting anyone ( so they are still acting morally).
Statement (2) implies that they don't understand they are hurting people which would imply they don't fully grasp reality and therefore are not sane. Thus we can tentatively throw statement (2) out.
We are left with statement (1) which is formulated thusly:
"Killing myself and innocent people is benificial to both myself and them"
I cannot believe this statement. It would take some reason for me to believe it. If say we were all suffering from some horrible disease, then maybe i'd believe it was true. But just within myself without any outside information or stimulus I must say it is false. Therefore from this we conclude that an outside source is necessary to believe in it.
If this idea were to appear naturally in the human mind then we'd see mass murders by individuals everywhere. Instead we see them focused in one area. You may argue that governments perform mass murder constantly, but remember I am talking about individual minds. I am talking about a suicide bomber or terrorist mind.
So we can deduce that there must be some implanted idea that tells them "Killing myself and innocent people is benificial to both myself and them." Where did this idea come from? Who taught them this? Who implanted these thoughts in their head?
Possible sources:
(a) Themselves
(b) Their Parents
(c) Media
(d) Government
(e) Religion
(f) Teachers
(g) Life situation
(a) is ruled out because of the argument already stated earlier.
(b) parents could definately instill this idea into their children, but where would they get it from?
(c) Media could be used to promote such ideas. I've heard about anti jew songs and songs glorifying suicide bombing being played on the raidios. Where did the idea come from in the first place? Who told the media to play such things originally?
(d) Government is a likely candidate. What better way to enrage a people towards your own end than to convince them killing themselves is beneficial. What better way to make people into living weapons. The very fact that the bombers are supplied with explosives and weapons means they must have some outside influence from a governing body.
(e) Religion to my knowledge usually tells people hurting others is bad for them. However, It is possible that killing them could be cleansing them of evil...or something like that...if its concievable its possible. As Ron stated there are sections in the Koran that speak of killing infidels...I'll have to look it up myself. I've also heard they are promised 100 virgins in heaven and also a free ticket to heaven for them and their victims. I do not believe greed is a means for changing a persons view of moral reality. Often leaders misconstrue religious texs to accomplish their own agenda.
(f) teachers are very influential on a person's ideas. I could easily see one influential teacher having this idea and spreading it. Their religious community is very tightly knit so spreading such ideas would be fast and effective.
(g) A life situation cannot put an idea in a persons head. It can however make people suceptible to them. Like Tony said to me they've seen their children killed by other countries. They see their families living in poverty. I definately believe that such a situation could aid a person in believing "Killing myself and innocent people is benificial to both myself and them", but it still wouldn't put the idea in their heads. If you remember the germans after WWI weren't immediately gasing jews. They had to have them made scape goats first to make them no longer human. Once they were no longer human it was an easy jump to trimming off a little of the herd. But notice in that case it was political leaders who influenced the masses to the ends. The people themselves wouldn't have made the jump to building gassing rooms.
So in conclusions I believe government coupled with religious teachers are the influencing factor. Unfortunately the idea is already in many heads and won't go away just by killing every governement official and religious leader.
Solutions? If you want a fire to burn less brightly take away the wood. Kill their media to stop propoganda. Get religious leaders to speak out against the false ideas. Help rebuild their lost lives. Umm play movies of mickey mouse for the children ^^
***Please if you dissagree with one of my points tell me specifically about that point. If you feel you have more points to make or better initial statements, please list them and discuss them. I really want to know exactly what you guys think, and also I want to know if there are better points than the ones I've made. I always look at an argument between bright minds as an opportunity to learn. ***
"How is a sane person persuaded that killing themselves and innocent people is justified?"
My two ways of explaining this: 1) They believe they are benifiting themselves and their victims 2) They do not believe they hurting the people they kill.
Now when I talk about being persuaded I mean an idea is put in the person's head. If we assume that a person is moral then the idea has to take either of these forms. Either they have to believe what they are doing is moral (i.e. they benifiting their victims and themselves) or they have to believe that they aren't hurting anyone ( so they are still acting morally).
Statement (2) implies that they don't understand they are hurting people which would imply they don't fully grasp reality and therefore are not sane. Thus we can tentatively throw statement (2) out.
We are left with statement (1) which is formulated thusly:
"Killing myself and innocent people is benificial to both myself and them"
I cannot believe this statement. It would take some reason for me to believe it. If say we were all suffering from some horrible disease, then maybe i'd believe it was true. But just within myself without any outside information or stimulus I must say it is false. Therefore from this we conclude that an outside source is necessary to believe in it.
If this idea were to appear naturally in the human mind then we'd see mass murders by individuals everywhere. Instead we see them focused in one area. You may argue that governments perform mass murder constantly, but remember I am talking about individual minds. I am talking about a suicide bomber or terrorist mind.
So we can deduce that there must be some implanted idea that tells them "Killing myself and innocent people is benificial to both myself and them." Where did this idea come from? Who taught them this? Who implanted these thoughts in their head?
Possible sources:
(a) Themselves
(b) Their Parents
(c) Media
(d) Government
(e) Religion
(f) Teachers
(g) Life situation
(a) is ruled out because of the argument already stated earlier.
(b) parents could definately instill this idea into their children, but where would they get it from?
(c) Media could be used to promote such ideas. I've heard about anti jew songs and songs glorifying suicide bombing being played on the raidios. Where did the idea come from in the first place? Who told the media to play such things originally?
(d) Government is a likely candidate. What better way to enrage a people towards your own end than to convince them killing themselves is beneficial. What better way to make people into living weapons. The very fact that the bombers are supplied with explosives and weapons means they must have some outside influence from a governing body.
(e) Religion to my knowledge usually tells people hurting others is bad for them. However, It is possible that killing them could be cleansing them of evil...or something like that...if its concievable its possible. As Ron stated there are sections in the Koran that speak of killing infidels...I'll have to look it up myself. I've also heard they are promised 100 virgins in heaven and also a free ticket to heaven for them and their victims. I do not believe greed is a means for changing a persons view of moral reality. Often leaders misconstrue religious texs to accomplish their own agenda.
(f) teachers are very influential on a person's ideas. I could easily see one influential teacher having this idea and spreading it. Their religious community is very tightly knit so spreading such ideas would be fast and effective.
(g) A life situation cannot put an idea in a persons head. It can however make people suceptible to them. Like Tony said to me they've seen their children killed by other countries. They see their families living in poverty. I definately believe that such a situation could aid a person in believing "Killing myself and innocent people is benificial to both myself and them", but it still wouldn't put the idea in their heads. If you remember the germans after WWI weren't immediately gasing jews. They had to have them made scape goats first to make them no longer human. Once they were no longer human it was an easy jump to trimming off a little of the herd. But notice in that case it was political leaders who influenced the masses to the ends. The people themselves wouldn't have made the jump to building gassing rooms.
So in conclusions I believe government coupled with religious teachers are the influencing factor. Unfortunately the idea is already in many heads and won't go away just by killing every governement official and religious leader.
Solutions? If you want a fire to burn less brightly take away the wood. Kill their media to stop propoganda. Get religious leaders to speak out against the false ideas. Help rebuild their lost lives. Umm play movies of mickey mouse for the children ^^
***Please if you dissagree with one of my points tell me specifically about that point. If you feel you have more points to make or better initial statements, please list them and discuss them. I really want to know exactly what you guys think, and also I want to know if there are better points than the ones I've made. I always look at an argument between bright minds as an opportunity to learn. ***
4 Comments:
frankly, i disagree with your breakdown of points. People really can't be broken down into such simple a) b) c) d) e) f) g) points.
Why are you an engineer? Let's see:
a) Themselves -- you already wanted to be one. No, you can't be like that.
b) Your parents. Where did your parents instill that idea in you?
c) the Media. Who in the media is trying to make you an engineer?
d) Government. What better way to train your own civilians to become good resources for your country. Maybe it's the government.
e) Religion. No, not really.
f) Teachers. Yeah, maybe you had a good teacher that made you want to be an engineer.
g) A life idea can't be put into your head.
By
Tony, at 3/22/2006 1:29 AM
Basically I think you're a bit shortsighted in trying to understand them like this. So you're trying to say that government coupled with religious teachers are to blame? Let's exterminate the vermin!
As I commented right above, becoming something like an engineer isn't something that's broken down into points. It's just what happens. Sure, being an engineer isn't being a bloodthirsty killer, but take a step back and look at the situation.
THE SITUATION:
We have people killing innocent civilians, that needs to stop.
THE SOLUTION:
My proposed solution is to understand them and try to appease them. There is no way that "exterminating vermin" is going to do anything about it.
That's why we have movies like Munich out to try and allow two cultures to blend together. They don't understand our culture, and we don't understand theirs.
By reading your points, I get the impression that you don't fully understand the things they're going through. They're not 21st century Americans. That's why you don't see 21st century Americans killing innocent civilians.
Just because they grow up in a society, culture, and technology completely different than ours, does not give us the right to judge them by our society, culture, and technology.
Which is why movies like Syriana help put ourselves in their shoes. Ignorant message? Nonsense!
We need to better understand their culture to see what's wrong with it and try and diplomatically, religiously, whateverly, to get them to change.
Like I stated earlier, by you trying to break down how they get their ideas religiously and educationally and from the government, you're doing what Munich was kind of doing.
WATCH SYRIANA!!!!!1!11oneoneeleven
Politically, it's like 42(!!)x better at explaining what we've been trying to say. Movies have the capability to show the other side, and that it's not bad, just misunderstood or different from the way we live.
By looking at the other point of view, we can then better judge whether what they're doing is right or wrong. Sometimes actions they do have basis, sometimes they don't.
You can't immediately say that every single action that terrorists do have no basis, and that they need to be exterminated like vermin. Please take their point into consideration, then judge.
By
Tony, at 3/22/2006 1:46 AM
Also, this post is much different than your last post. Your last post was basically saying that Hollywood movies made that try to explain the other side are ignorant because terrorists deserve to die without second thought.
I took offense to that. I think jumping to the gun is not the right way to go about things. I said think first, then decide whether they should die.
In this post, you're breaking their reasons down, like what I believe we should all do, and suggesting solutions to stop this. Good.
However, I don't think that you can say "they deserve to die, because I've thought it out along a-g points". Life is more complicated than that, and each individual situation is going to be slightly different. I think maybe one person had 60% b, and 20% c, and 20% f (i'm making these up). Maybe another person is 50% b, 15% c, and 35% f.
Maybe another person is 100% A and is crazy and deserves to die.
What needs to be done is to consider each individual's point of view. Maybe you chose being an engineer because of a certain reason. A bum off the street chose his way of life because of reason A. Another bum chose reason B.
Does that mean we should leave behind all bums who chose reason C? (as minute of a percentage as it may be)
If so, you're left with many bums, and you're left with many terrorists that didn't fit into your (d) (e) (f) personality.
By
Tony, at 3/22/2006 1:54 AM
Let me end with this.
What if the terrorists are mad at us because the United States bullies them around and wages war on their countries, without the United Nations' consent?
What if the terrorists are mad because the only thing we seem to be interested in is their resources, our oil? And our money is corrupting their formerly pure way of life, the way of the Koran and Allah.
By
Tony, at 3/22/2006 1:56 AM
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