If you absolutely believe something, then no matter how implausible it may seem to others with other beliefs, to you, in your mind, it is evident truth, and that therefore is your reality, and anyone who thinks otherwise will often be irritatingly stupid to you.
People with absolute beliefs that just require faith can pretty much rationalise anything to fit them, and are amazingly good at ignoring obvious flaws in their beliefs, and at seeing any, even tiny, counter argument, as being ‘evil’ and taking the other side, they can seem, and often are, a bit of a threat to those of us with a little more rational.
That’s actually OK if that’s as far as it goes, or if the ‘war’ is fought with words or posturing, but when people with absolute beliefs decide to make others conform to those beliefs through force, that’s when you start getting the problems that lead to wars and terrorism.
As a general world view of when differing people try to ‘police’ the others (and not counting direct threat and the need to defend yourself), I believe those who try to enforce their belief upon others through force and threat we can call the bad guys, and those who try to do it through wordy persuasion and their own example that it works, without feeling the need to try to directly enforce it upon others, essentially presenting a counter choice and giving them it as a choice, we can call the good guys, because THAT really works, just a really persuasive argument or excellent proposition or compromise can completely change your perception of others and your particular reality in relation to them, and as such, everyones behaviour, forever! Thinking ‘they’re too stupid/corrupted to think like us so we’ll just have to use force to get what we want’ is when you lose (think of the whole IRA terrorist affair as a good example).
Think of it as the difference between teaching your dog to behave because he wants to because he likes you and believes in you as a good and respectable alpha, or teaching it to behave by pure punishment, like taking away it’s food then smacking him on the nose with a newspaper whenever he jumps up on the kitchen table looking for scraps, the latter may work while you’re about, but the moment you stop directly enforcing these punishments for misbehaviour, that dog will jump on the table anyway, probably with unbridled joy that he now has the freedom to!
I personally can’t see that anyone in the whole ‘War Against Terror’ are particularly blame free, and I include pretty much all that got involved in it in that statement, and I think there was and is too much stereotyping and meddling in others affairs in the world by the super powers, using too much stick and not enough carrot, and using threat and force to try and make other far away people conform to your personal reality rarely ends well, and frankly, it p*sses people off, and all your really doing is creating the ‘they’ll only behave for as long as you can control them’ scenario as set out above, eventually something bad is going to happen when your back is turned, or one day you get too weak to keep a firm grip on that newspaper!
As an aside, on the subject of ‘evil wrongdoers’ in history and how we decide who was really ‘the bad guys’ when we review it through our contemporary eyes, I can’t help but notice they very often carry a ‘good book’ and an agenda to use it to qualify their actions, though...
To me, it simply comes down to one thing: belief.
If you absolutely believe something, then no matter how implausible it may seem to others with other beliefs, to you, in your mind, it is evident truth, and that therefore is your reality, and anyone who thinks otherwise will often be irritatingly stupid to you.
People with absolute beliefs that just require faith can pretty much rationalise anything to fit them, and are amazingly good at ignoring obvious flaws in their beliefs, and at seeing any, even tiny, counter argument, as being ‘evil’ and taking the other side, they can seem, and often are, a bit of a threat to those of us with a little more rational.
That’s actually OK if that’s as far as it goes, or if the ‘war’ is fought with words or posturing, but when people with absolute beliefs decide to make others conform to those beliefs through force, that’s when you start getting the problems that lead to wars and terrorism.
As a general world view of when differing people try to ‘police’ the others (and not counting direct threat and the need to defend yourself), I believe those who try to enforce their belief upon others through force and threat we can call the bad guys, and those who try to do it through wordy persuasion and their own example that it works, without feeling the need to try to directly enforce it upon others, essentially presenting a counter choice and giving them it as a choice, we can call the good guys, because THAT really works, just a really persuasive argument or excellent proposition or compromise can completely change your perception of others and your particular reality in relation to them, and as such, everyones behaviour, forever! Thinking ‘they’re too stupid/corrupted to think like us so we’ll just have to use force to get what we want’ is when you lose (think of the whole IRA terrorist affair as a good example).
Think of it as the difference between teaching your dog to behave because he wants to because he likes you and believes in you as a good and respectable alpha, or teaching it to behave by pure punishment, like taking away it’s food then smacking him on the nose with a newspaper whenever he jumps up on the kitchen table looking for scraps, the latter may work while you’re about, but the moment you stop directly enforcing these punishments for misbehaviour, that dog will jump on the table anyway, probably with unbridled joy that he now has the freedom to!
I personally can’t see that anyone in the whole ‘War Against Terror’ are particularly blame free, and I include pretty much all that got involved in it in that statement, and I think there was and is too much stereotyping and meddling in others affairs in the world by the super powers, using too much stick and not enough carrot, and using threat and force to try and make other far away people conform to your personal reality rarely ends well, and frankly, it p*sses people off, and all your really doing is creating the ‘they’ll only behave for as long as you can control them’ scenario as set out above, eventually something bad is going to happen when your back is turned, or one day you get too weak to keep a firm grip on that newspaper!
As an aside, on the subject of ‘evil wrongdoers’ in history and how we decide who was really ‘the bad guys’ when we review it through our contemporary eyes, I can’t help but notice they very often carry a ‘good book’ and an agenda to use it to qualify their actions, though...