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Staysopen.com January 2007 Find things to do late at night! I began this as a fun side project. It still needs a bunch of work, but the nuts and the bolts work. |
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NACBA.org January 2005 I have been doing consulting work for NACBA for quite some time now. I am responsible for just about everthing web-based, but my main tasks relate to membership management. |
Philosophy Links
| Death for the sake of death |
| Posted : 2008-12-01 17:59:32 |
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Since I spend time on news sites nearly daily trying to keep up with worldly events, I have inattentively been following the recent news from Mumbai. It is hard not to notice the attacks as the pictures and gruesome details are mercilessly plastered across the front page of most major news organizations. Such portrayals are inherently emotive, eliciting strong opinions from nearly everyone following, regardless of whether or not those opinions are vocalized. I have an opinion of the events that have transpired. And since I am sick and unable to sleep, I shall go out on a limb and share my opinion. The supposed Pakistani aggressors attacked the wrong group of people. Do I mean that they should have attacked Chinese or Peruvian or Polish tourists instead? No, that could not be further away from what I mean. What I mean is that the group of people that are most likely to be sympathetic and understanding of the beliefs to which the attackers subscribe are the very people that they targeted and killed. Hear me out on this. Tourists are people that, in large part, travel for pleasure. The inference here is simple. As a tourist, you do not travel to a place you would not want to visit. For such a large personal financial investment, you do not travel half way across the world unless you are connected in some way to the place you are visiting. That connection might be intrigue, family, or one of a multitude of other possibilities. In most cases, the connection is positive and the interest is real. These are people that do not exemplify the stereotypical evil American; the evil American that the attackers should want to eliminate. So where does that leave us? It leaves us wondering, why were these people attacked in the first place? Objectively, I think that question can reasonably be answered without much effort. The first part of the equation is a misconception on the attacker's part. They view America as a symbol, a cohesive whole. The concern is less about the actual views of large segments of Americans and more about a simple characterization that easily summarizes a potential set of beliefs that are contrary to their own beliefs. This is not such a terrible thing to do. Everyone is guilty of this type of behavior. It is easy to find at least one thing to hate and then vilify about any given thing we come across in the world. Sadly, getting the hate is trivial. They attack us because they hate us. Cannot say I really blame them. The second part is the location of the attacks. The motivation here is practical and resource limited. It is too hard to attack the real thing, so attacking a substitute instead suffices. This is not to say that America is fabulously secure and impervious to attack. The contrary is likely true. What it really comes down to is making due with a very fixed set of resources. Hence, regionally based tourist hot spots are the prime locations regardless of how relevant they are. The mentality always amazes me. In essence, to think, "we are going to stick it to them by mutilating a negligible quantity of them." Any death is an occasion for sorrow, but the unavoidable truth is that even a few hundred deaths are the smallest of a fraction of a percent of the total population. Realistically, a couple hundred deaths abroad are unnoticed by the larger population. In whole, the methodology is fundamentally flawed. The reason is that a people are changed through the careful erosion of deep seated ideals by slowly and progressively disseminated propaganda. Confrontation works largely to reinforce a stubborn bolstering of the same ideals that the confrontation is working to undercut. All said and done, have the attackers accomplished anything meaningful? Well sure, they left a scar on India that could take some real time to heal. Aside from the obvious financial woes from repairs, this ordeal has the potential of putting political strain on the region, especially with Pakistan. Did they actually do any damage to America? No, they really did not. Their actions populate the headlines of our news media for a short while, but the memory will not be lasting as the vast majority cannot be bothered for any extended period of time when far more important events like Christmas and American Idol are just around the bend. They erred by attacking us in a place that most Americans could not care less about. And so the title is fitting: death for the sake of death. Because really, from an American perspective, death is about all that was accomplished. |
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