Paul's closing remarks remind me of a bit that the late Bill Hicks used to sign off with:
“The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly colored, and it's very loud, and it's fun for a while. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, "Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, "Hey, don't worry; don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride." And we … kill those people. "Shut him up! I've got a lot invested in this ride, shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real." It's just a ride. But we always kill the good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok … But it doesn't matter, because it's just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.”
The comic is actually drawn by the artist of zenpencils, Gavin Aung Than (in a clever imitation of Bill's style, and with Bill's words, so it's an easy mix-up!)
I don't think a cartoon has challenged my thinking this much since an old Calvin and Hobbes snippet from my childhood. Damn, I might need to check out of the game for a while! Good link~
I always considered this a fairly cheap sentiment. Sorry, even if the 'ride' is an illusion I still need to clothe, feed, protect, etc myself. At the end of the day everyone does and there are limited resources in the world - thus competition. We tried communism, and it led to even more massive inequality than capitalism but also somehow put millions into deathcamps and gulags.
>Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world
Drop your military spending and Putin will take more of your lands. Or North Korea will finally invade as they keep promising. Or ISIS will march in and smash up your museums and rape your women. Its childish to dismiss game theory when it comes to the taking of land.
>and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.
Space is like rapture for geeks. What space exactly? Terraform a planet? Good, now you have the exact same problems you have here except less natural resources, so expect even more competition for scarce resources. You won't escape your problems, you'll just make them worse. The first space colony won't be utopia, it'll be a wild-west nightmare of lawlessness and conflict.
>Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world
The reality for now is someone has to protect the pacifists. It is hard to believe that ISIS exists in the modern world. They are so depraved that they make the Nazis look like good guys.
The reality for now is someone has to protect the pacifists.
ISIS was born amongst the chaos of the failed state of Iraq, and covert support and funding of rebel groups to topple Assad in Syria, out of warfare, not ex-nihilo.
A far more conservative attitude to when to fight and when to supply arms might do the west no harm at all, and allow them to spend a lot of that money on something more productive.
You have to see ISIS for what it is. They are teenagers in tin shacks and caves with yesterdays cell phones. If you legitimately fear them you are misguided. They exist to push you, you make you buy into the current status quo. Who are they up against? The most powerful and technologically advanced military ever in the history of the world. That military spends more than the next 5 largest ones combined. Its like Urkel vs Bruce Lee. They don't stand a chance. Sure they might blow up a shopping center or two, but the fact is law enforcement kills more people in than ISIS ever did.
You want to end ISIS? Sorry there isn't a quick way to do so. Build a school for women in one of the countries they inhabit, protect it with drones and soldiers, build power plants, and give them internet connections. Change the culture, not at the end of a gun but with sandwiches for their hungry, water for their thirsty, and knowledge for their curious. Do this everywhere we are invited, and then do it in the places we are not. Then in a few generations took a look the world you have created, I promise you it will be a better one.
> You have to see ISIS for what it is. They are teenagers in tin shacks and caves with yesterdays cell phones.
Similar things were said about the Viet Cong, except for the cellphones. The Mijahideen defeated the Soviet Union and arguably lead to it's demise. The US got kicked out of Lebanon and Somalia. I happen to think that won't happen with ISIS, mainly due to the oil but also because the West has allies nearby in the region, or at least people we can work with such as the Kurds, Shia Iraqis and Turkey. Still, being high tech and spending big doesn't guarantee victory.
ISIS may not be an existential threat to the USA, sure, but they're doing a lot of damage to a lot of people and it looks like they will continue to do so for quite some time to come.
The VC were defending their homes, as were the Mujahideen for the most part. They work because they have some popular support. Women of the village make them dinner and clean their clothes. You have to put them in a untenable position. Make them attack solders around the UN truck handing out bottled water and medical care to children, then the power plant supplying the village, then the school. Be the good guy. Eventually the villagers supporting them will want a better life for their daughters and sons and will no longer do so. You will win their hearts and minds. A military or diplomatic victory isn't required, a cultural one is.
Are there any examples of that actually working? We have plenty of examples of utter brutality and backing complete bastards working, see Taiwan and South Korea, or earlier military campaigns in Afghanistan where people actually won instead of declaring victory and going home.
Winning them over with kindness doesn't have a great track record unless there's some other bastard to be the iron fist.
They are teenagers in tin shacks and caves with yesterdays cell phones.
I imagine what would happen if you dropped high end cellphones and tablets in these parts of the world; mobile phones equipped with super fast free internet connection, and a library of great videos, content, knowledge. Both fun and educational obviously.
My point is that once a man is learned and cultured, it becomes harder to get him to hate another regardless of their differences.
I really wonder how this got to be the explanation behind IS and similar groups. They always reference the Qu'ran, the hadiths and the sunnah in everything they do. The US foreign policy was used as a convenient excuse and certainly wasn't helping at times, but the drive does not come from how they've been treated. The drive comes directly from the religious commands found in the Qu'ran, the hadiths and the sunnah.
It's the teachings combined with the knowledge of them combined with a desire to follow them that is creating the current situation with IS and other groups.
> I really wonder how this got to be the explanation behind IS and similar groups.
Because its not that hard to observe the conditions in the world, historically, in which people are attracted, and not attracted, to violent groups like IS, of varying sources of ideological propaganda.
> They always reference the Qu'ran, the hadiths and the sunnah in everything they do.
Yes, that's their source of ideological propaganda, and its obviously a source that makes a lot of sense when you are recruiting in a place where people are previously socialized to favor those sources.
But there are plenty of people in the same regions that aren't violent extremists that also reference the Qu'ran, hadiths, and sunnah in everything they do.
> The US foreign policy was used as a convenient excuse
The US foreign policy is one of the major factors creating the conditions which lead to their particular application of the Qu'ran, hadiths, and sunnah being as successful as it is in appealing to people in the region.
There are something like a billion Muslims who treat the Qur'an and the sunnah with equal reverence but somehow manage to get through their lives without beheading anyone or pillaging any cities.
And there are plenty of people who have been screwed over by US foreign policy but who, again, somehow manage to refrain from committing atrocities.
Terrorism generally seems to spring up where there is both a big political grievance and some kind of ideological foundation to hook it onto. That's not an absolute requirement (e.g., I don't believe the Tamil Tigers had any ideology beyond their nationalism; on a much smaller scale, the occasional cases of Christians blowing up abortion clinics aren't very political) but generally that partnership is what does it.
And when that's the case, it's misleading to blame the terrorism exclusively on the ideology or exclusively on the political grievance.
Groups like IS and al Qaeda, so far as I can tell, really truly do believe that what they are doing is justified by Islam; and they really truly do believe that what they are doing is a necessary response to US intervention in the Middle East.
All the non violent muslims have access to the same book and teachings, so why are they non violent?
Any religion can be distorted. There's a buddhist army and two buddhist terrorist groups currently operating, yet most people would rate buddhism as one of the most pacifist religions.
If that was true all Muslims would support ISIS but they don't. The ones that do largely come from and are based in the section of Iraq that got most massively screwed over in the US lead invasion. You're telling me that's purely a co-incidence?
There's no excuse for what ISIS does. No reason is strong enough for the kind of barbarity they practice, but characterising it as purely senseless and ignoring the actual reasons behind it doesn't help either. The actual reasons they do what they do may not be sufficient or reasonable relative to their actions, and may not actually align well with their rhetoric, but they do exist.
> If that was true all Muslims would support ISIS but they don't.
Different people react to things differently, interpret things differently, take ideas more or less seriously, and so on.
I think the reasoning: "if ISIS was about religion, then all muslims would support ISIS", would approximately equally support: "if ISIS was about foreign policy, then all Iraqis would support ISIS".
I don't think either of those if-thens holds as an if-then, regardless of the truth value of the "if" part.
> but the drive does not come from how they've been treated
> It's the teachings combined with...a desire to follow them
where do you think that desire comes from?
Saying "US foreign policy" created these groups isn't a great short hand for talking about the creation of the conditions that foment these groups. In reality it's an incredibly complicated situation where almost any action will have downsides that entail a lot of human suffering, but US foreign policy is an outsized input into that situation, so it's right to hold it responsible in turn for whatever those consequences are.
Think about it from a historical perspective: religion has always been a tool used by the powerful to motivate the masses and mask their own agendas. Think about the Roman emperor Constantine, who converted his empire to Christianity. Most would argue it was an attempt to preserve the integrity of the empire so he could maintain power. How different is this from a radical group in the Middle East using religion to motivate other to join their cause? Or using Islam to cover up their actual political motivations?
The US foreign policy can destroy the well-being of entire nations, and therefore the lives of millions of people. When you come to the conclusion that your life and the lives of everyone you've known have been fucked over by a nation half way around the world, I image that can get you pretty mad.
Humans do two things unnaturally well: make communities and separate into tribes. ISIS hasn't done much the Japanese haven't done to China, the Hutsis haven't done to the Tutsis (or was it the other way around).
...and these misguided, kill-or-be-killed beliefs are precisely what he was talking about.
Turn off the news. It's just a ride, man. ISIS is irrelevant, like Goldstein. It's nothing but a farce to get you to start sentences with "The reality is for now..."
First I wasn't talking about the UK. Did you even read TFA? It's about what the US did, it just happens to be on Guardian, a UK newspaper.
Now, he who helped create ISIS, funded its operations, and enabled it to reign and kill people, in order to sell weapons and destabilize a region, is worse than ISIS.
What exactly is controversial about this?
That said, since you mentioned the UK: the UK had a billion people in Africa and Asia as slaves in its colonies just until 50 years ago. This, besides enslavement and resource-grabbing included countless executions, rapes, torture, aggression, war etc. ISIS has a lot of work to do to match up the numbers.
Don't make the mistake that the villain with the suit and the clean shave is much better than the crude foreign-looking fundamendalist villain.
Paul's closing remarks remind me of a bit that the late Bill Hicks used to sign off with:
“The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly colored, and it's very loud, and it's fun for a while. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, "Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, "Hey, don't worry; don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride." And we … kill those people. "Shut him up! I've got a lot invested in this ride, shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real." It's just a ride. But we always kill the good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok … But it doesn't matter, because it's just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.”