Not Prince Hamlet, Nor Meant to Be
All right, why did they do it? That’s the question people keep asking or rather answering. They did it because of rage, because of a sense of grievance, because of injustice, because all those people marched and no one listened, because of Fallujah, because of Afghanistan (but not because of Bosnia or Kosovo), because of exclusion and marginalization, because of the violence perpetrated on Muslims. But hey – maybe they didn’t. Maybe even apart from the fact that those are all contemptible ‘reasons’ – maybe they’re not reasons anyway. Maybe they’re only pseudo-reasons, like the ‘reasons’ people protest the G8 summit or the ‘reasons’ people toss a brick through Starbucks’ window and then run away. Maybe all that is bullshit and rationalization and above all camouflage.
Maybe the reasons were way more stupid and trivial and self-oriented than even the bogus reasons the Grievance-polishers have been trotting out. Maybe in fact rage at injustice doesn’t have a god damn thing to do with it except as window dressing. Maybe the real reasons are to do with wanting to make a mark, with fantasies about fame and glory and being Somebody. Maybe the whole thing is like that conversation in the back of the cab between Terry Malloy and his mobbed-up older brother in the expensive coat. ‘I coulda been somebody, I coulda had class.’
Maybe the guff about injustice and Grievance is merely an ingredient in a narrative of self in which the hero is a freedom fighter, a rebel, a guerilla warrior, another Che or Osama or Tupac. Maybe anything would have done – any ‘injustice,’ any ‘grievance’. Maybe it’s all just a combination of testosterone and a feeling of insignificance and stupid fantasizing. Maybe four guys just wanted to feel Special, and at this particular moment for those particular guys, the way to do that was to strike a blow for their ‘community.’ At another particular moment for another group of insignificant guys, the way to do that was to strike a blow for a different ‘community’ – by shooting Archduke Franz-Ferdinand and triggering The Great War. A few overexcited boys commit a murder, and tens of millions of people wind up dead.
Maybe there was a monstrous disproportion between the enormity of what they did and their own personal stature. Maybe all this handwaving about injustice is partly because we can’t stand the thought that it was all actually very petty and childish and narcissistic and stupid. Because what they actually did was so horrible, caused such wretched misery to so many people – we want to think there was something at least grand and significant – at least interesting – about the people who did it. A touch of Macbeth, a bit of Clytemnestra; a little tragic and operatic. But maybe there wasn’t. Maybe they were just about as grand and significant as some pimpled youth who gets drunk and drives a car at ninety miles an hour into another car, killing six people. Maybe they were just about as grand and significant as the non-entities who killed Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Rabin. Just four creeps who wanted to be a big deal, and had too little imagination to prevent them from going for it.
Of course there is a monstrous disproportion. I think your speculation pretty well hits the mark. Our pre-university educational system in the UK completely fails to address any aspect of epistemology or philosophy and leaves any young person unfortunate enough to have been brought up in a philosophical vacuum, or perhaps worse, a philosophical contradiction, to cast about for answers. Throw in a little naivete and some sophisticated fanatics and monstrous disproportion is what we get. There are abundant historical examples of the subversion of poorly educated young people, from the Hashishan of the crusades through the Janissaries, Hitler Youth and IRA to these unfortunate young men. One can only hope that such tragedies will decline in number if humanity is destined to become wiser, and act as if one could contribute to this objective.
Maybe. Could be.
Maybe Bush just wants to show he has the biggest dick on the block.
Maybe Blair just wants to loved.
After all, this second-guessing of true motives can be applied to all the actors in this great historical play. Why just doubt the bad guys?
Why just doubt the bad guys – what a good question. Dang, how silly of me. Why did all those people get themselves blown up? Islamophobia, probably. Why did the driver of the 30 bus rush to help injured passengers instead of trying to find a reporter to interview him? Oppositional Defiant Disorder, probably. Why did countless people in Leeds and Luton not help the Fatuous Four with their mission? They all had blisters on their heels that day, probably.
What a ridiculous question. Because there is a standing question about why the ‘bad guys’ did what they did, that’s why! Not doing what they did is in less urgent need of explanation, because less peculiar. Not sitting or standing next to people you’re about to murder is not as mystifying as doing so.
“…poorly educated young people”, Mike S.?
Many of “these people” are not so poorly educated at all. From the nutjobs who flew the planes on Sept 11th to these four. Not ALL were naive and poor and uneducated. Some were, some not.
I’ve often wondered what it’d be like suddenly to find oneself living in an occupied country, people dying brutal, horrific deaths daily. I’d like to think of myself as someone who would take up arms, maybe join a guerrilla movement, maybe become a lone sniper or something (romantic, huh?)…but I cannot for the life of me imagine wasting my life in a suicide attack.
Of course, the boys of London didn’t live through the scenario I just described, they lived fairly nicely in England…what about them? Is there a certain amount of brainwashing happening under our noses? I mean serious, brutal, unremitting, cultish, pain-inflicted-til-it-feels-like-ecstasy brainwashing?
Maybe they had no real grievances, no imagination. Nothing but a desparate reach for everlasting glory. Maybe. But what if not?
The thing about the occupied country and being a sniper – depends on who is doing the occupying and who is being displaced by the occupiers, doesn’t it. Too bad Rwanda wasn’t an ‘occupied country’ for awhile ten years ago. Too bad nobody ‘occupied’ Srebrenica.
“Not doing what they did is in less urgent need of explanation, because less peculiar.”
I guess if “less peculiar” works for you…
Invading a country on shifting pretexts is “less peculiar” and, so,in less urgent need of explanation. Well as long as it’s “normal” it’s OK, right?
>Our pre-university educational system in the UK completely fails to address any aspect of epistemology or philosophy and leaves any young person unfortunate enough to have been brought up in a philosophical vacuum, or perhaps worse, a philosophical contradiction, to cast about for answers.< Last time I looked the philosophers were still looking for answers. Except for those who thought they had it all worked out, only to find that most other philosophers disagreed with them. Somehow I don’t think that lessons in epistemology and philosophy at school would make much difference to most kids. (“Would you please shut UP when I’m trying to tell you about Kant’s categorical imperative.”) Most young Muslims are more likely to be attracted to the idea of experiencing righteous anger on behalf of their oppressed and persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world. Especially, as David Goodhart wrote, “if you are constantly being told by even moderate Muslim leaders that Britain is a cesspit of Islamophobia and is running a colonial anti-Muslim foreign policy”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1528953,00.html
“Maybe the real reasons are to do with wanting to make a mark, with fantasies about fame and glory and being Somebody.”
Maybe they have more in common with Thomas Hamilton than either they, or their apologists, would care to admit.
Oh, I see, Fryslan – you think the invasion of Iraq caused the fatuous four to do what they did. You misled me with the phrase ‘the bad guys.’ So you think it’s all part of the same historical play. Well I don’t, so that’s why I’m not talking about Bush, although I’ve certainly done that at other times.
Makes plenty of sense to me (the narcissistic motive). They didn’t care how many people died (obviously the more the better) but they did care about their act getting maximum headlines, which is why they did it as spectacularly as they could. That means that for as long as they’d been involved in planning this they assumed they were going to die as perpetrators of a deed that was intended to shake the world. Of all the things they could have been thinking about, my guess would be that their victims were at the bottom of the list. Somewhere in there, there may well have been thoughts about Paradise or the causes all the apologists are trotting out, but can they themselves not have been at the top of the list? Come to think of it, though, I’ve just remembered Durkheim and his four main categories of suicide, including the altruistic who is excessively integrated to the point that he loses importance to himself. There is something problematic about a bunch of people who wouldn’t do that trying to understand what went through the mind of someone who did. Let’s not forget that this goes way, way beyond self-sacrifice in battle or in immediate defence of a home or city under physical attack. Not just beyond, it’s something completely different in nature.
I think the narcissism is key. It all boils down to thinking I matter enormously and everyone else matters not at all.
OB: “It all boils down to thinking I matter enormously and everyone else matters not at all.”
Like many, I have, over the past several days, read numerous opinions on why the four did what they did.
The gap between what they did, and how they appeared to friends and family — supposedly the ones who knew them best — is, however, so vast that I doubt the accuracy second-hand interpretations (let alone, third, fourth , fifth…).
Glib explanations (poorly-educated, marginilised, indoctrinated, motivated by revenge or reprisal) simply don’t fit the available facts.
These atrocities are pointless, purposeless and, ultimately, self-defeating. The urge to explain (in whatever terms) comes, I think, from a desire to understand because that provides a way to deal with them (and possibly prevent them?).
The possible motives of these individuals are, to me, so incomprehsible that I can’t begin to deal with them: I can only respond to their actions. I tend to think that the best reponse is to report the facts, support the victims, locate those aiding and abetting AND SAY LITTLE ELSE. I suspect that the media furore only encourages others to commit similar outrages.
And what is the engine of institutional narcissism? Perhaps we should look even harder at the media. We see how they act as force multipliers of terrorism, just doing what they do.
But the media show they know direct harms come from reporting, and put guidelines in place to redice it – for suicides only.
For terrorism there are lots of ways to reduce the payback in the criminal mind, by small slights and disrespects of the sexually-unattractive deviants who try to add significance to their pathetic, misused lives; by remarking negatively about the planners instead of calling them masterminds and spiritual leaders.
I suggest a penalty of being pilloried in a pub yard, splashed in cat pee for journalists that quote terrorists words correctly. Even pathetic stuff like putting farting noises on behind Osama speeches would be collossally helpful.
Just to clarify my earlier comment, when I wrote ‘poorly educated’ I did not mean illiterate or inumerate or lacking in knowledge of the material sciences or humanities. I meant without an understanding of the uses and limits of inductive and deductive arguments or of the importance of a ‘moderate scepticism’.
Inductive and deductive arguments!? The problem is not that people can’t reason but that they don’t feel that it”s necessary to pay attention to the plain old ordinary experiential reality they are swimming in: the world where if someone blows up your bus you are lying on the ground in a pool of blood and a haze of unimaginable pain.
The best way to divert people’s attention from that ordinary real world and make them focus on “eternal principles” instead is to hire them.
I think we’re overlooking the money. High explosives cost money, and planning an operation like this must require hundreds of man-hours, which very few men can afford to donate unless someone is at least *feeding* them. The planners and executors were PAID to do this. They were protected, nurtured, encouraged, and FUNDED.
And why do the imams and ayatollas (and bishops and cardinals) hire people to kill other people? Well, someone pays them. It’s their job.
I agree with CrisPer that the language with which we describe these people and their activities has to change. Why are the chief boo-hoos of organized terrorism still called “clerics”? Do we really think they have an iota of spiritual authority (even putting aside the fact that there’s no such thing)? We should call them shills, dons, or con artists — and the people who do their bidding psychos, lunatics, or losers.