From The Archive: Community Service

From The Archive is a special Friday feature. It features posts from my earlier (now-deleted) blog: Stuff & Nonsense and a few items from previous versions of A Tangled Rope that I feel deserve reprinting here, mainly as a way of archiving them. The dates are only approximate, I’m afraid, and there is a possibility that some links may no longer work (although, I will try to remember to test the links before republishing the piece).

Community Service – 14-07-2005

A few thoughts inspired by all the discussion around the 'reasons for' the recent London bombings.

There is a lot of talk about the 'Muslim community' as if it is some kind of homogeneous mass. Of course, it should go without saying, that the overwhelming majority of Muslims are decent folk who just want a good, safe life for themselves and their families. The attacks, however, will probably cause a backlash, making these 'good' Muslims retreat further into their communities for protection - which, on the face of it, seems eminently sensible for them.

However, this is just what the radicals want.

The radicals exploit the naivety, the fervour, the 'wanting to be someone', 'wanting to make a difference', the youthful naïve idealism of those who they use - exploit - as suicide bombers, glorifying them as martyrs and other romantic images. There is an irony in the notion of the romantic hero - which is a staple of western popular culture - the western, maybe becoming an 'eastern' one too, where these 'outsiders' see themselves as a sort of Muslim Eastwood, Willis, Schwarzenegger or suchlike.

The radicals operate in the gap between the 'Us and Them' that this increasing polarization of even more 'communities' - which is the result of multiculturalism fragmenting societies into more and more (mostly mythical) 'Communities'. Not only that, each community is encouraged to see itself as a victim of some or other - real or imagined - slight or exclusion or conspiracy or vendetta or pogrom.

In order to get to grips with this problem it would probably be more fruitful to look at things like the Columbine shootings, European 'terrorism' of the 70s and the many other examples of young (almost invariably) men taking arms against society. Usually this is for reasons of self-identity rather than any real political stance, despite the justifications - if any - they themselves claim for their actions. Quite possibly, too, there is a link back through the drunken fights outside pubs, clubs and bars at closing time and football hooliganism too.

By turning their backs on Enlightenment values, the western democracies have squandered all the tools that can counter this nihilistic self-pity, leaving the field open to any quasi-religion or pseudo-philosophy, any half-baked notion. Turing our backs on the search for truth, on meaning, means that anyone can claim to speak 'the truth' from the established religions or anything else right down to the nuttiest conspiracy theory. They can all make their claims to be the 'truth' and cannot be countered in any meaningful way if 'all is relative'.

People desperate to find meaning will look for it - and often find it - anywhere. Without the tools for distinguishing what is good, what is real, what is true, it is hardly any wonder that so often so many fall into believing what they want to believe, or what seems to fit their unexamined assumptions and prejudices.