Look inward for solutions

Fire of Liberty

While I've combed through the various articles and commentaries on the recent terrorist attacks in London, I seem to have found one of the best pieces so far in The Times by the wonderful Roger Scruton. The basic thesis of Scruton's Op/Ed is that the terrorists who launched the attacks did not set of these bombs because of a some past grievance or even socio-economic deficit but launched the it out of pure jealously of the advances in the Western world. As with all of Scruton's masterly works, one is always presented with a philosophical observation which is best told in his own unique way. So without further adieu, here's a taste of Scruton's work:

Success breeds resentment, and resentment breeds hate. This simple observation was made into the root of his political psychology by Nietzsche, who identified ressentiment, as he called it, as the distinguishing social emotion of modern societies: an emotion once ordered and managed by Christianity, now let loose across the world. I donÂ’t say that NietzscheÂ’s analysis is correct. But surely he was right to identify this peculiar motive in human beings, right to emphasise its overwhelming importance, and right to point out that it lies deeper than the springs of rational discussion.

In dealing with terrorism you are confronting a resentment that is not concerned to improve the lot of anyone, but only to destroy the thing it hates. That is what appeals in terrorism, since hatred is a much easier and less demanding emotion to live by than love, and is much more effective in recruiting a following. And when the object of hatred is a group, a race, a class or a nation, we can furnish from our hatred a comprehensive stance towards the world. That way hatred brings order out of chaos, and decision out of uncertainty — the perfect solution to the alienated Muslim, lost in a world that denies his religion, and which his religion in turn denies.

Of course hatred has other causes besides resentment. Someone who has suffered an injustice may very well hate the person who committed it. However, such hatred is precisely targeted, and cannot be satisfied by attacking some innocent substitute. Hatred born of resentment is not like that. It is a passion bound up with the very identity of the one who feels it, and rejoices in damaging others purely by virtue of their membership of the targeted group. Resentment will always prefer indiscriminate mass murder to a carefully targeted punishment. Indeed, the more innocent the victim, the more satisfying the act. For this is the proof of holiness, that you are able to condemn people to death purely for being bourgeois, rich, Jewish, or whatever, and without examining their moral record.

As you can see, the societies that allow such ideologies to fester and spur the actions of these deadly attacks in the Underground of London, need to take a more introspective look at how they could allow their society to reach such a dearth. It really amazing that a society that was the birthplace of advanced science and mathmatics, philosophy, as well as the the three monotheistictic faiths, can decline to the semi-archiac world that most people in the West generally think of when the hear the words "The Middle East." Though the Bush administration has played its part in removing such hot-beds of Islamic fundalmentalism by setting off a democratic tidalwave in various states in the region with the removal of Saddam and his regime in Iraq, it will still take the deep soul-searching of the peoples of the societies in the Islamic world to finally say enough is enough. Lets hope they take the word of Roger Scruton as well as the great Bernard Lewis about looking inward and not outward about their condition and cast aside the hatred so common to the region.