How responsible is the US for the rise of ISIS?

[Obvious Leo]

The dichotomy is not between "civilised" or not, but whether or not you think a social contract is applicable, or if it can reasonably said to apply to members of a different nation.

This is an interesting point. Obviously the notion of a social contract is a rather culturally specific one but in the way Hobbes elaborated the concept he seemed to insist that such a thing could not be applicable to a theocracy. This would therefore also rule out the US, which is a theocracy in all but name, although rapidly becoming less and less so. If the US could be said to have such a thing as a social contract it certainly seems to be one which is heavily skewed in favour of an established elite. Regrettably a 21st century version of a peasant revolt seems improbable but history shows us that such societies inevitably find some original way to implode. The next few years will be interesting for the US but I find it fascinating that the US has effectively vacated the field in the middle east and left the door wide open for Putin to strut the stage. Russians don't need a social contract because they always manage to make a virtue out of misery, rather like the Jews.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Now that you've got off the subject of evil you're making a bit more sense. The difference between ISIS and western inner-urban gangsta culture is just a matter of degree. An age-old narrative of rebellion and "us" versus "them". Young blokes will always fight because they like the sense of belonging and the camaraderie which derives from it, and the old farts in pursuit of their own wealth and power agenda always stand willing to urge them on from the sidelines by offering them some faux ideology to fight and die for. It's a story as old as human history.

I've been learning a bit about myself by watching a TV programme called "The Secret Life of Five Year Olds" and "... Four..". In which the behaviour of groups of age specific children meet for the first time, and are given a series of tasks and challenges. And analyseed by a team of psychologists, hidden Big Brother style in a booth. By comparing my own remembered reaction to social situations at a similar age I learned that I too am not a "team player", and prefer to act and work independently, despite being friendly and gregarious. I shared the reaction to little Tommy, as at an early age I found group activities especially dancing odd and unfathomable. I never liked sport, and found taking orders hard, unless they were good ideas.
Being from two cultures US and UK, I also found it hard to think patriotically.
Thankfully this has given me a particular perspective on the tribal sheep-like activity of the human race and from my objective stance can see the instinct to gather as the most dangerous and challenging behaviour of humanity.
My rejection of tribalism is not absolute enough to have never followed a football team which I did as a older child/early teen - to 'join in", but I found it easy to reject the practice as irrational.
Sometimes I favour the UK when in the US, and the US when in the UK, but I can only act with utter revulsion at any one with a 'my country right or wrong" attitude, and cringe when (especially Americans), say "the US is the best country in the world"; many of whom have never had a passport and on questioning are woefully ignorant about basic geography, and own a series of false prejudices about other countries in terms of personal freedoms ad nauseam.
This persons are ISIS with different clothes, willing to lay waste cities to satisfy their own sense of vengeance, and in the spirit of hanging tough. They are the danger for being so populous, ISIS is just a handful of sheep.

The human race is not going to make it, whilst this tribalism persists. One has to presume that in times gone by such violence was not allowed to persist due to periodic wars in which the most patriotic, and the most tribal sheep were thankfully led to slaughter. Sadly in the last 70 years their numbers have been building up again. So what we need is for the moron sheep in our society to dance, dance dance off a tall building before they start shooting more innocent civilians,

Where is a Pied Piper when you need one.

Query - to what degree was the Pied Piper if Hamlyn an allegory of all the morons that were led to the slaughter of the Crusades.

This is an interesting point. Obviously the notion of a social contract is a rather culturally specific one but in the way Hobbes elaborated the concept he seemed to insist that such a thing could not be applicable to a theocracy. This would therefore also rule out the US, which is a theocracy in all but name, although rapidly becoming less and less so. If the US could be said to have such a thing as a social contract it certainly seems to be one which is heavily skewed in favour of an established elite. Regrettably a 21st century version of a peasant revolt seems improbable but history shows us that such societies inevitably find some original way to implode. The next few years will be interesting for the US but I find it fascinating that the US has effectively vacated the field in the middle east and left the door wide open for Putin to strut the stage. Russians don't need a social contract because they always manage to make a virtue out of misery, rather like the Jews.

You wrote this as I typed the above.
It deserves a response, But I was just about to use the door.
But I always loved Gore Vidal;"Socialism for the Rich, Capitalism for the Poor". Western society, not just the US has accelerated inequality by this means markedly in the last 35 years. In the US the reaction is "take my gun over my dead body"; in the UK it's more of swallowing the naturalisation of inequalities, and oddly at the same time buying into the myth of equal opportunity, which the Americans love to swallow the most.
The biggest myth is that of 'democracy' which mechanism seems best designed to prevent the peasant's revolt, and as my text above mentions- the patriot/ tribalism tendency is strong in a culture whose manhood has not been weeded out of this disease.

As for the Russians, I see little difference.

[Necromancer]

For the orderliness and incredibly enough, CIA in Syria by Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Syria. Not a very rosy story.

[Obvious Leo]

Hobbes. I enjoyed your last post because it's a subject I spent a lot of time researching and writing on as a younger man. My angle has always been that of a biologist who examines such tribalism from an evolutionary standpoint, particularly that of evolutionary anthropology. It was agriculture that fucked it for for homo sapiens which essentially means we outsmarted ourselves by learning how to build fences. We never evolved to live together in groups much larger than 150 individuals, a number known as Dunbar's number for humans. All social mammals have a Dunbar's number and if the group size extends beyond this ceiling the group develops social stresses which cause it to fragment into two groups. The number varies from species to species but the fact that this occurs is universal and easily understood in evolutionary biology.

We ain't designed to live this way.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Hobbes. I enjoyed your last post because it's a subject I spent a lot of time researching and writing on as a younger man. My angle has always been that of a biologist who examines such tribalism from an evolutionary standpoint, particularly that of evolutionary anthropology. It was agriculture that fucked it for for homo sapiens which essentially means we outsmarted ourselves by learning how to build fences. We never evolved to live together in groups much larger than 150 individuals, a number known as Dunbar's number for humans. All social mammals have a Dunbar's number and if the group size extends beyond this ceiling the group develops social stresses which cause it to fragment into two groups. The number varies from species to species but the fact that this occurs is universal and easily understood in evolutionary biology.

We ain't designed to live this way.

Yes I did a good bit of anthropology myself, as an archaeologist. I did some work on the !Kung San, and South African Rock Art. The ideas behind 'magic numbers" are pretty convincing, and the 10k years we've been agro-culturalists (I'm sure there is a joke about agro being about aggravation), is precious little time to have evolved peaceful strategies, - certainly not genetically.
Worse still, our more immediate history: the advent of mega-cities and dense populations has led to odd behaviours.
When I did my degree (as a mature student) I was quite a primitivist, and considered the planting of the first seed the greatest act for good and for evil ever done by humans. It had far more lasting and devastating, implications than splitting the atom, or circumnavigating the world.

[Obvious Leo]

Not only has this quirk in our evolutionary trajectory led to obvious social disharmony it has also led to a vast array of cognitive disorders in individuals which tend to be lumped into a generalised category of "mental illness". This disease model for what are merely normal variations in cognitive function is a flawed paradigm because such natural variations are amplified in a social environment for which minds are not satisfactorily adapted. Prior to the European invasion the indigenous hunter-gatherer tribes of Australia did not acknowledge the existence of any such thing as mental illness and yet by the way we assess such things in the modern era it is vastly more prevalent in the remnants of this population than it is in the wider community. A scientist eschews the notion of coincidence.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Not only has this quirk in our evolutionary trajectory led to obvious social disharmony it has also led to a vast array of cognitive disorders in individuals which tend to be lumped into a generalised category of "mental illness". This disease model for what are merely normal variations in cognitive function is a flawed paradigm because such natural variations are amplified in a social environment for which minds are not satisfactorily adapted. Prior to the European invasion the indigenous hunter-gatherer tribes of Australia did not acknowledge the existence of any such thing as mental illness and yet by the way we assess such things in the modern era it is vastly more prevalent in the remnants of this population than it is in the wider community. A scientist eschews the notion of coincidence.

Science is not aware of the history, let alone actively eschewing. But the problem here is that we have no way of telling what were the numbers of naturally occurring mental disorders before the advent of civilisation. I've heard some suggestions that they were accommodated rather than medicalised. Shamans, Seers and prophets are likely to have been what we would have termed to the mentally ill.
I seem to remember Stanley Diamond writing an essay: Civilisation and schizophrenia, in which he demonstrates the dangers of civilisation which separates us from our independence and subsistence forcing upon us specialisations which divide us from the "primitive" ideal of being a generalist, part of what Marx called alienation in economic terms happens mode profoundly in social and hence mental terms.
Modern Pharma, and science has a tragic tendency to impose the "NORM" and everything outside certain parameters is medicalised. Before they export the drugs to new markets, pharma has to export the categories of "disease" too. India, never before recognising "stress", or "depression" has learned about these must-have bourgeois aliments, and valium has become as common as papadoms in the new middle classes.
Whether science and civilisation is creating the mentality of disease or just making convenient categories is unknowable.

[Obvious Leo]

Whether science and civilisation is creating the mentality of disease or just making convenient categories is unknowable.

Agreed. As a biologist I'm certainly not claiming that there's no such thing as a mental illness for which the disease model is not appropriate, and schizophrenia would be an obvious example, but what's happened in the modern world is that all manner of psychological stresses have emerged in individuals which simply cannot be accommodated in such a catch-all basket. The Japanese language doesn't even have a word for "depression" and until about 40 years ago the medical profession in Japan flatly refused to acknowledge its existence. Today the Japanese are amongst the highest per capita users of anti-depressant drugs in the world. Go figure.

[Obvious Leo]

We seem to have wandered a mile off topic and this discussion might be better conducted in a new thread. However it has a relevant context to this topic in the sense that alienated and unhappy young men can find relief for their symptoms of psychological stress in the "band of brothers" mentality, which is a sort of return to their tribal roots. It makes them feel they belong somewhere and it's probably a lot more effective than selective seratonin re-uptake inhibitors.

[Hobbes' Choice]

We seem to have wandered a mile off topic and this discussion might be better conducted in a new thread. However it has a relevant context to this topic in the sense that alienated and unhappy young men can find relief for their symptoms of psychological stress in the "band of brothers" mentality, which is a sort of return to their tribal roots. It makes them feel they belong somewhere and it's probably a lot more effective than selective seratonin re-uptake inhibitors.

Well yes, camaraderie is feted as a great thing when it's "our boys" protecting each other in the field, yet it's a disease when disaffected Muslim youth want to do something 'noble', and give their lives meaning. Religion is permissive of this in culturally logical terms, in the same way that patriotism considers it heroism.

[Obvious Leo]

Well yes, camaraderie is feted as a great thing when it's "our boys" protecting each other in the field, yet it's a disease when disaffected Muslim youth want to do something 'noble', and give their lives meaning. Religion is permissive of this in culturally logical terms, in the same way that patriotism considers it heroism.

We're all consenting adults here, mate, so let's not mince words. That's why illusory concepts such as religion and patriotism were invented in the first place. They're a valuable tool of the oppressor in his pursuit of wealth and power because they enslave the minds of those who get sucked in by it.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Well yes, camaraderie is feted as a great thing when it's "our boys" protecting each other in the field, yet it's a disease when disaffected Muslim youth want to do something 'noble', and give their lives meaning. Religion is permissive of this in culturally logical terms, in the same way that patriotism considers it heroism.

We're all consenting adults here, mate, so let's not mince words. That's why illusory concepts such as religion and patriotism were invented in the first place. They're a valuable tool of the oppressor in his pursuit of wealth and power because they enslave the minds of those who get sucked in by it.

Indeed.

[Necromancer]

We're all consenting adults here, mate, so let's not mince words. That's why illusory concepts such as religion and patriotism were invented in the first place. They're a valuable tool of the oppressor in his pursuit of wealth and power because they enslave the minds of those who get sucked in by it.

Certainly not. It's all about description and utility to such ends that Zuckerberg now is a billionaire and Bill Gates started from scratch too. Let's make use and dump Critical theory that's more suspicion and words over words than reflection of reality.

[Hobbes' Choice]

We're all consenting adults here, mate, so let's not mince words. That's why illusory concepts such as religion and patriotism were invented in the first place. They're a valuable tool of the oppressor in his pursuit of wealth and power because they enslave the minds of those who get sucked in by it.

Certainly not. It's all about description and utility to such ends that Zuckerberg now is a billionaire and Bill Gates started from scratch too. Let's make use and dump Critical theory that's more suspicion and words over words than reflection of reality.

What an odd outburst!
How more irrelevant could you get?
Sentence 1: "not" what?
Sentence 2: what is the 'it' in the "it's all about..." Statements that start with "it" are often evidence that the writer is unclear about his objective.
Sentence 3: I'd suspect it was a total non sequitur, were it not so ungrammatical.

[Necromancer]

"That's why illusory concepts such as religion and patriotism were invented in the first place. They're a valuable tool of the oppressor in his pursuit of wealth and power because they enslave the minds of those who get sucked in by it."

What an odd outburst!
How more irrelevant could you get?
Sentence 1: "not" what?
Sentence 2: what is the 'it' in the "it's all about..." Statements that start with "it" are often evidence that the writer is unclear about his objective.
Sentence 3: I'd suspect it was a total non sequitur, were it not so ungrammatical.

Is this an "outburst"? Why illusory concepts? Are they illusory? Truly? Why tool "of the oppressor"? Who are "sucked in by it"? "Pursuit of wealth and power", WHAT!? No, not irrelevant, just responsive to "criticism" that seems more like the usual lines from Critical theorists. Just like the "religion is the opium for the people". "Enslaved"! Hah-hah-hah! Aren't you the father for us all? BTW, I'm not "ungrammatical", that's only unfounded "shouting" when the head isn't that smart afterall. "Now whose head"? "Huh?"

After [Edit], it's not so much the "critical theory", more that some or many fail to say Human Rights with a straight face! In making ISIS rich in buying oil from them, they aren't necessarily buying their ideology. No, they are poor and facing winter and situation is all chaos!