Of Terrorism and Violence.

Dream Weaver's Allusions
1

Two headlines that caught a click of this mouse button.

People are violent because their morality demands it.

Yes, Charleston was terrorism. Denying that isn’t just wrong, it’s offensive.

 

Admittedly, the captions drew the eye and aroused the curiosity. On both articles, the focus and interest diminished quickly.

 

For morality demanding violence, the opening quip was:

‘When I was 14 years old, this guy beat me down in the streets. And my stepfather took his life right in front of me. And I felt good about it, really.’

 

Skipping to the closing sentence:

Once everyone, everywhere, truly believes that violence is wrong, it will end.

 

Lots of intrinsicism in between, probably seasoned with some subjectivism. Believing that violence, in and of itself is wrong, is wrong. Physical force is sometimes necessary. If you don’t believe me, try to use persuasion on a rock to relocate itself. If you think that violence can be countered with persuasion, were the nine victims in the Charleston incident just not persuasive enough?

 

What about Charleston? Does the opening paragraph offer any leads?

What “counts” as an act of terrorism? It’s a question that is both easy and ‘difficult’ to answer, and one that many Americans are now debating with regards to the mass murder in Charleston, South Carolina.

 

That this question has grown so urgent should tell you there is much more at stake here than a matter of terminology.

 

The first thought that comes to mind is one of the banners often floated in the media: “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

 

Just how does one distinguish between terrorism and freedom fighting? In this article, as well as others posited, it drops the context of what is being fought for. Terrorism, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, was a government use of fear to intimidate. Freedom, on the other hand, referred to a government policy to be left free to act providing that such action did not violate an-others freedom to do the same.

 

To this point in time, it has not been shown that M. Roof was working within the context of any organization  to use fear to intimidate others into compliance with any goals of any group. He is actually being painted as a loner at this point in the investigation.

 

Misuse and abuse of language on this level may not be intentional, but it certainly undermines its objectivity.

 

On some level, failure to take an intellectually militant response here is likely to result in a required physically militant response later on.

2

Every Mass Shooting Shares One Thing In Common & It’s NOT Weapons

 

On a more objective note, a common thread to these incidents going back to one of the first I heard about Thomas McIlvane, M. Roof, rather than being a terrorist, is the latest individual to be added to a growing list of incidents that all have SSRI’s in common.

3

Misuse and abuse of language on this level may not be intentional, but it certainly undermines its objectivity.

People can somewhat understand the motive behind some murders: they understand how a person may feel anger, fear, jealousy, etc. Even though they think it is wrong to murder someone on this basis, they at least empathize with the emotional motivation. Other murders – like those labelled “hate crimes” – are judged more harshly because people have less empathy with the motivation of the criminal.

The term “hate crime”, and now the term “terrorism”, is their way of saying that this is not just any run of the mill murder, but something worse.

This process is like inflation. The more things we label “terrorism”, the more referents the concept starts to include, the more it dilutes the original meaning. The mis-labeling is an attempt to make the incident seem worse than just “murder”. Over the long term, the word takes on the meaning of its referents. So, over time, the word means something less serious than its original conception.

4

The process is like inflation! What an apt analogy.
 
I’ve seen inflation described as an insidious process that fewer than 1 in 10,000 can diagnose. The deterioration of language over time with this sort of cognitive dissonance is an insidious process that few have honed an ability to detect.
 

The term “hate crime”, and now the term “terrorism”, is their way of saying that this is not just any run of the mill murder, but something worse.

This “I kinda sorta know what it means” is part of the mechanism that helps it to propagate.

 

The vague sense that “there is something wrong with the world” doesn’t necessarily think it includes this aspect of language. They just keep buying the ever decreasing size candy bars until the full size bars are returned to the shelf with the new price.

5

The process is like inflation! What an apt analogy.

I’m not sure where I first heard that analogy, but this page actually discusses the idea.

6

The parallel is still analogous.

 

To continue the semantic theme of my last post, today I want to look at inflation. Linguistic inflation is analogous to economic inflation, but it concerns a devaluation in meaning rather than price.

 

From the standpoint of inflation, it is the increase of the money supply, where each dollar is worth less reflected in the price that it takes more of the worth less dollars to make the purchase.

 

In discussing unit-economy, the example of crow epistemology was introduced to help illustrate the limitations dealing with cognitive matters. Language condenses the perceptual similarity and difference into economical units. These units are used to communicate ideas. When the language gets watered down, it is reflected in the price. It takes more explanation to communicate the idea with the watered down terms.

 

It irks me when I run across this. Before I hit my teens, an adult cousin of mine berated upbraided me for using the term “bet”. It was something silly like “I’ll bet you that isn’t so”, meaning “I don’t really think it’s so”, but she had countered with “How much?” It caught me off guard at the time, so I replied with the ever elegant “Huh?”.

 

She explained that she wanted to know how much money I wanted to bet. When I explained I didn’t want to bet money, and that I didn’t realize that’s what it meant, she imparted the valuable lesson that words have meaning, that you shouldn’t use them unless you know what they mean.

 

Edited: Before, after. (She wasn’t angry)

7

That first article is really horrible. For one thing, it describes Ray Rice’s claim that his wife attacked him first as an “excuse” when it’s actually a legitimate justification that he was acting in self-defense. And it completely invalidates any distinction between punishing a murderer, and terrorists staging suicide bombings.

8

As I mentioned, I quickly lost interest, and had not really read the article, using primary for the thoughts directed to the sloppy use of language. I did look up and found the video from the elevator. As a martial artist, it is learned and taught that the response should be only what is necessary to neutralize the situation. You see her smack at him just before they get on the elevator.Ray Rice, at 5’8", 206 pounds, and athletic, should have easily been able to just put his arms around her and stop her from flailing out at him once they got into such a confined space.

 

The quote right after the paragraph describing Ray Rice was:

if dangerous people can be motivated by genuine moral beliefs, we face a troubling dimension to morality

 

Ayn Rand’s outlining of morality and moral beliefs is not likely how it is being referred to here. It counts on the reader to import how they define morality as to evaluate the article.

 

The opening line of the article, I was thinking “Sure, I’d feel good if I perceived that as an instance of justice being served”,

Whereas the last line, it more like hearing a bleeding heart liberal whining “Why can’t we just all get along?”.

9

I think an argument about whether to call it terrorism or something else, would piss-off Ms. Rand. She would likely say that’s not the issue.  Ms. Rand realized in the latter half of her life that the fundamental support for her ideas in ethics and politics was based in ideas in epistemology and metaphysics. 

 

What’s right and wrong has nothing to do with what happened to and by people who are now dead (exception might be a clear direct link to value gained by force/fraud and passed on) .  Your goal is happiness - you cannot find it in a negative judgment of a bad circumstance in history before your birth that consumes your ability to live and be happy in YOUR LIFE NOW.   

 

So much violence today is based on an earlier generation’s bad experience.  We should never deny bad behavior, or unreasonable attitudes, in the recent or distant past.  But we should also not absorb them into our current culture.

 

The fundamental basis of this view is rooted in the idea that each person alive right now (not their ancestors) is responsible for the choices that they make.  No newborn human being owes anything to anyone because their life is a new unit unaffiliated with previous humans.  That’s the nature of the biology and the ethics -  and the silly racist sociology that has been imposed on this truth in the past, is a yoke on all of us, black and white.  The erasure of this terrible and non-reasonable way of thinking has been held up by the liberal government idea that the descendants of historically privileged people alive today owe something to the descendants of historically screwed people. 

 

The answer is - stop it now.  Love the people who share your values and get on with happiness - you’ll be dead soon.

10

Dr. Hurd’s antidote to Dylann Roof’s racism [Facebook Edition].

 

Roof, like everyone, has been raised to define racism as hatred of black people — or hatred of a minority. But that’s not what racism is. Racism is — as he himself mentioned in his crude manifesto — seeing everything through a racial lens.

 

He was critical of black people — as he sees them — for viewing everything through a racial lens. His solution? For white people to start doing the same. His violent outburst was evidently a way to bring things back into “balance,” on the premises of collective group identity. If the war is blacks versus whites, then (he felt) it was time for whites to have a victory.

 

In other words, Roof’s solution was to fight group identity with group identity. Wrong — deadly wrong, in Dylann Roof’s case.

 

The answer isn’t for anyone (of any race or background) to view themselves in terms of group identity. The only antidote to Dylann Roof’s racism, or any racism, is individualism.

 

The moment you stop thinking of yourself or others in terms of group or other racial identity is the moment you stop racism in its tracks. [Full article.]

11

That first article is really horrible. For one thing, it describes Ray Rice’s claim that his wife attacked him first as an “excuse” when it’s actually a legitimate justification that he was acting in self-defense. And it completely invalidates any distinction between punishing a murderer, and terrorists staging suicide bombings.

Ray Rice is the football player who knocked out his fiance and dragged her out of the elevator unconscious, right?

12

 

I did look up and found the video from the elevator. As a martial artist, it is learned and taught that the response should be only what is necessary to neutralize the situation. You see her smack at him just before they get on the elevator.Ray Rice, at 5’8", 206 pounds, and athletic, should have easily been able to just put his arms around her and stop her from flailing out at him once they got into such a confined space.

 

Was Rice actually trained in martial arts, though? He was of course stronger than her, but that doesn’t mean he would have the skills to stop her from attacking him without knocking her out. The other thing to consider is whether or not she was continuing to attack him after the initial altercation, or if she just lost her temper and had thrown one blow at him. If it was the latter, he could probably have talked her down after pinning her down. If it was the latter, then he had a right to continue defending himself, by knocking her out if necessary.

 

The worst-case scenario is that he over-reacted unnecessarily, in which case his actions were immoral. But that does not change the fact that she was the aggressor, and the author’s dismissal of that fact as an “excuse” is disingenuous.

13

It would have been clearer to have said: as a martial artist, I had learned and taught.

 

This article is also missing the aspect of how violence is addressed from a teaching perspective. It took a stab at why it is resorted to from a social standpoint, but ideas of when is it proper for an individual to use it, and how much is not really covered in life unless it is persued separately, such as in the martial arts.

 

So when people view an scene such as the Rice incident, it is viewed from a perspective which often does not include such understandings.

 

You mentioned the article was horrible, and it would seem to be so from multiple aspects.

14

 

This article is also missing the aspect of how violence is addressed from a teaching perspective. It took a stab at why it is resorted to from a social standpoint, but ideas of when is it proper for an individual to use it, and how much is not really covered in life unless it is persued separately, such as in the martial arts.

 

Yes, I agree that there should be more room for discussion about appropriate uses of violence, and the extent to which using violence is appropriate in self-defense. But this first means accepting that pacifism is not the answer. If someone attacks you, you have a right to fight back and do what you have to do to neutralize the threat.

 

I’d even take this beyond the realm of physical force and apply to abusive behavior in social interactions. Always stand up for yourself, even if it means making a scene. (Although if you’re in a work environment, it might be more appropriate to talk to your manager.)

 

 

So when people view an scene such as the Rice incident, it is viewed from a perspective which often does not include such understandings.

 

I think part of it also has to do with double-standards between men and women. People tend to view violence committed against women differently than violence committed against men.

15

Pacifism can probably be set aside pretty easy, after all, what is the pacifist going to do to stop or deter the initiation of physical force?

 

An individual that respects the rights of others shouldn’t have any concerns about a pacifist initiating for against them, nor the pacifist from such an individual, whether he carries a weapon for personal protection, or uses what skills he may carry with him.

 

Pacifism in terms of a government formulated to uphold and defend individual rights is simply a contradiction in terms.

 

Many situations are simply diffused by you being in the right and appearing confident to handle things.

 

In a fight between two sisters where I was present when it started, it was easy to determine who was the aggressor. Since I could not just pull her off of her sister, I applied two fingers just above where the collar bones come together, pushed inward and downward until she let go. Releasing that technique, I just held her down until she stopped struggling. Then we escorted her from the premises.

 

Absent knowledge of such a techniques, (somewhat in Ray Rice’s defense), the situation may have turned out different. Arguing how we should all be pacifists does not examine effective means of deterrence in order to acquire such knowledge for when or if you may have to use it.

 

 

Built into viewing violence committed against women and children is the sense of injustice it raises (i.e., picking on the defenseless). Most women and nearly all children are generally ill-equipped to deal with an aggressor intent on doing harm. A woman with a gun, or proficient at martial arts is less likely to become a victim. A woman with martial arts training is less likely to be an aggressor.

 

Related: Force vs Retaliatory Force, Fighting a girl