Reason Can Trump Fear

I was awake late at night when the first reports emerged of a mass killing in Paris. As disheartening as the scale of the deaths was I felt a particular sense of dread for what I knew was bound to happen over the next few days. This sense of dread centred around two anticipated outcomes.

The first of these outcomes was the reaction of the French government and other world leaders to this latest attack. The second was the cavalcade of knee jerk reactions from the media and social commentators to a problem which is not new, unprecedented or simple.

Actions speak louder than words. The actions of world leaders show that they do not understand the nature of the problem. Their reactions to those who are using violence to advance their ideology simply miss the mark. In many cases it advances the cause of those who challenge our ideology. To best explain this we first need to understand the nature of the problem.

There are those in the world who do not accept certain views and human rights which the majority of the world’s population hold as self-evident. This has ever been the case. There have always been renegades. I expect their always will be. Sometimes one era’s renegades become the next era’s orthodoxy.

The most well-known renegades of our era subscribe to a fairly specific interpretation of the Islamic religion. It would be wrong to assume though that all renegades believe in Islam. It invites catastrophe to assume that all Muslim’s subscribe to the same specific interpretation of their holy book. They clearly do not.

These people are introducing their ideology to the existing world ideologies which prize individual liberty and equality in roughly equal measure. They would replace this with a social structure devoid of reason which would be deeply unpleasant for many and for women in particular.  

These people are stateless and it does not actually advance their goals to have a state. To say that Islamic State is the enemy only shows that you do not understand the nature of the problem. Islamic State is just a vehicle, a shell, just as Al Qaeda was before it and perhaps the Taliban was before Al Qaeda.

As they are stateless there is no physical battleground as such. Rather the battlefield is one of ideas. These renegades have taken the principals used when waging a guerrilla war against an occupying nation state. They have morphed them into a strategy which resembles a guerrilla war of ideas waged on a global scale.

Like a physical guerrilla war the guerrillas do not seek to engage in structured combat. Rather, they infiltrate key areas, winning over the population and melting away when confronted with force. They have two key weapons in their arsenal. Fear inspired by violence, and the seductive lure of an imagined paradise. It’s a potent combination.  

The latest mass killing is an example of inspiring fear with violence. The goal is to make us all so terrified that we will change the way we live and the tenants which we live by. They hope we will become so terrified that we will submit to the kind of government surveillance which erodes the very liberty which we all now enjoy. 

With every new security measure, every new power granted to security agencies by governments at the demands of a terrified population, we move further away from the ideologies which have made us what we are. We move further towards the rigid structure that these people would impose upon us.

The only way we can fight this is to accept that the world is not perfect largely because the people in it are not perfect. There will always be those who resort to violence. We should not exchange freedom for security. If I am to die for that then so be it. I will not live afraid. I will not seek the comfort of the cage.

More insidious than the weapon of fear inspired by violence is the ‘carrot’ in the renegade’s ideology. Imagine the young, poor male teen. His job prospects are poor. He is not particularly well educated. He grapples with the depressing life ahead of him. Even if he gets a job it seems more like slavery than an opportunity. He’d like to meet a nice girl but the laughter of the women he courts rings in his ears.

But there is an option. He is special. He has been chosen. He can join the fight against an unfair order, one that has failed him. He can wield death and he’ll even receive a wife to do whatever he pleases with. More if he is successful. No more laughing women. He has a purpose. If the worst should happen and he dies, paradise beckons.

Imagine the young poor woman. Just walking through the door leads to objectification. She must be slim, but she can’t have an eating disorder. Sexy is the ideal, but you can’t be a slut. You should raise kids but you should also have a high powered career. You can indeed have everything. You’re somehow less if you don’t. It’s your fault. To the disaffected young women they would offer the safety of a cage. Its silken black confines hide all. Thus neatly obscured from the judgemental they can simply go about their business.

Many simply do not understand the lure to join organisations like IS yet we must. If we are to fight this we must accept that it is our responsibility to offer our young people a better option than one offered by IS. It is our responsibility to educate them on the fairly obvious flaws of their ideology.

There are so many flaws. Belief in an imagined immortal despite the absence of proof is no reason to die. Men should not treat women like property. Women should not be property. Women shouldn’t be buried up to their neck and stoned to death. No one should be sentenced to death for sorcery.

Prior to the Second World War some military strategists believed that the strategic bombing of civilian populations could lessen a peoples will to fight. That view was absolutely categorically disproven. All the evidence showed that the bombing actually hardened the populations resolve against the people bombing them.   

When western jets bombard targets in the Middle East they will hit militants and innocents. When they hit the militants its will only harden their resolve. Remember, these people believe that paradise awaits them if they die.

What’s worse is that every time a jet hits an innocent there is a cost. Can you imagine the rage of a father, holding his broken child in his arms? Or the rage of the sons and daughters of parents killed by errant guided missiles. Baptised by their tears, a terrorist is born with every innocent death. Despite what the hawks in the military would have us believe NOTHING worthwhile is resulting from our military involvement in the Middle East.

Our world leaders must accept that they cannot tackle this problem using conventional military force. All western forces should immediately leave the middle-east. This is not a problem which can be solved with violence. It must be solved with reason. To try and retaliate with violence only exacerbates the problem

Remember that reason has been largely responsible for building the world we live in today. The scientific method has delivered to us living standards undreamed of even a hundred years ago. My car can talk to me! I can own a watch like Dick Tracy. Science fiction is morphing into reality right in front of us. Amortality beckons.

Resist the knee jerk. Resist the call to hate. Resist the urge to dehumanise. The renegades of today’s world are still human. They are not lost to us. It is up to us to prove to them, through our actions, that our ideology is the better one. To convince these people that our imagined future is superior to an imagined god.