| Thinking Green
Once upon a time, in US intelligence circles, to "think red" meant to think from the point of view of the enemy. Publicly, we seem to be doing little of that.
There are alot of people who are quick to ascribe attributes like "crazy", or "psychotic" to people who they are utterly unable to understand. They're wrong. Getting real here for a moment, "crazy", "Psychotic", "Delusional" are medical conditions. A Psychotic person does not trust or understand the input of his own senses. He thinks his lunbox is a space alien. The 9-11 terrorists were not psychotic. They fully understood that to cause maximum impact to the buildings, the jets would have to be steered in just the right manner- from the pit. A psychotic person, on the other hand, might well have imagined that the buildings could be destroyed by throwing cherry pits at them, or by sitting in his closet chanting, or perhaps that the buildings had already fallen, but the CIA was using Mind-Waves to hide this fact. In short, the psychotic neither trusts nor understands the input of his senses, and these terrorists were not psychotic. Calling them crazy is wrong.
So how is it they came to the idea that destroying an office complex with 50,000 people inside is a good thing?
Any system of thought, whether mathematical, legal, philosophical, etc, rests on a few assumptions- axioms- all the way at the bottom. Change axioms, and you can build an entirely self-consistent logic structure, flawless, yet diametrically opposed to everyone else's. And they have an axiom, and it goes like this: "Our religion is the one, perfect, exclusive truth".
Bush was wrong when declared that the 9-11 terrorists were jealous of our freedoms. Our freedom is irrelevant to them. Their motives were the logical conclusion of a thought structure built on the assumption of "Our religion is the one, perfect, exclusive truth". To begin to see why, it is necessary to learn to think from that assumption. Look at the world from the angle of that assumption, and try to explain the world in terms of that assumption, without contradicting it.
To begin with, its pretty obvious that the West is a world of incredible wealth, knowledge, opportunity and prosperity, while the Islamic world is not. Yet, the Book says it should be. It can't be wrong! So, what can we see, consistent with this logic structure:
First, every religion has to deal with the question of why Bad things happen to Good people. It is one of the great endless theological debates. Why does a bad person become prosperous, while the good suffer?
In Judeo-Christian philosophy, the answer is a sort of dodge- wealth doesn't really count, you see. Christian philosophy has been to go a step further and assume wealth is actually a hindrance to spirituality. Islam COULD have used that escape- Mohamed COULD have written a disregard for wealth into his sermons- but he didn't. Prosperity is an explicit promise of islam.
So we go back to the problem: From the Islamic point of view, Where is Our prosperity? We cannot say that the west is doing something right while we are doing something wrong- that contradicts our root assumption. We MUST be doing right. So, therefore, SOMEONE else is messing up God's system.
This path leads to the conclusions- we are poor and miserable because the Americans, Israelis, our own corrupt leaders, whatever the Enemy of the Day is, are TAKING OUR PROSPERITY. All of this is built on logic, and all the logic is built on just one assumption.
Part of America's "PR" problem in the muslim world is that, from this point of view, even the BEST elements of our culture are regarded as weaknesses. In fact, our adoption of an element of culture is regarded as proof of its evil.
Follow the logic:
Observation: Americans (really, westerners, but the fact is, we are the focal point of the west) have adopted cultural element A. (What it is, exactly, is not relevant. It could be bowling. Or having skyscrapers). Muslims have not.
Base assumption: Muslims are followers of the one and perfect truth.
Following the one and perfect truth has not lead the Muslims to cultural element A.
Not following the truth has lead the Americans to Cultural element A.
Therefore, element A is a sign of not following the truth. As such, it is wrong in an of itself, and should be resisted.
Where do you go from here? How do you reconcile with a system of logic built around an axiom you do not accept?
Something you cannot do: Debate the axiom. Since the Muslim accepts the Axiom as true, and builds his logic structure from there, you get nowhere. All things prove the axiom, to one using the logic system constructed from the Axiom. If the Koran said that fish could speak, and you argued with a Muslim that since fish cannot speak, the Koran must be wrong, he would respond by telling you that of course fish can speak, the Koran says so, so now |
