Obvious Leo wrote: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.