There has always been this suspect to ideological violence. The willingness to see and believe that our select group with answers is justified in killing those who don't agree. So much real injustice in the world only exacerbates the tendency. Plus we now have more and better technology to expedite the proselytizing and the killing.
Religion is not the opiate of the masses; it is their bath salts.
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When you refuse to think, you end up in a cult - ISIS, Branch Davidians, Jonestown, the Manson Family, it's all the same.
When you are taught to avoid thinking, as our public schools teach today, the end result is the same.
When the shining light of the Fourth Estate, printing all the news that's fit to print, hosts pundits who tell you to avoid thinking, the end result is the same.
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We've always had to this susceptibility to ideological violence. This willingness to believe that our select group with the answers is justified in killing those who don't agree. So much real injustice in the world only exacerbates the tendency. Plus we now have more and better technology to expedite the proselytizing and the killing.
I would also agree with some of the comments that the armies of the world should not get a free pass. Uniformed soldiers shoot missiles at distant targets without regard for innocence. I don't think that is equivalent with terrorists who deliberately kill innocents, but the moral difference is not as much as we'd like to think.
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Teach us: That Landspace needs to be monitored by Law Enforcement much more heavily than it is currently "watched-over". Is the technology there to "grid everything". Yes, I think so. This is good news, since people are looking for jobs, and the cost of crime is much more expensive than these new law enforcement jobs would be. Honestly, these violent people who "never became mature, intelligent adults" should never have been let out of School with High School Diplomas (if they ever went to School in the first place). They should not have been let out "on the Street" with Adult privileges.
Isn't the real problem that these young men believe in heaven? Skepticism about the claims of religion is what they need to be taught from an early age.
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The killer at the Texas Church was quite strident in his atheism...He ended up killing himself, possibly the only good thing he had done in his entire life.
This makes me think about the reality distortion that occurred in the late 1800s when the last resisting Native American tribes were being rounded up and wiped out. The ghost warriors of the Lakota Sioux began to believe that they were impervious to bullets and that the dead would rise up to throw off the invaders. It makes me think of the futile gestures of Palestinian youths who wore suicide vests during the Intifada. Perhaps there is something deep in our psychological makeup that distorts our thinking when faced with a sense of annihilation. Sad to think that so many share this nihilism.
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Saudi arab has manual of death . They have perfected the art of destroying nations and tribes and cultures.
They convert your poor and fools to islam giving them dream to have lot of sex now and in future after death . All who Die get unlimited sex after killing who do not follow Islam . Can our world stop these teaching if not 1.3 billions converts are ready to destroy this world, in last 8 yrs middle east is not inhabitable . now our foolish leaders have put them next to our houses to make their killing easy . .
Onc ether get hold of our Atom bomb they will do impossible things .
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Nothing fails like religion.
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Not sure what the moral difference is between a "doomsday cult" and a State (even a Western state) that sends indoctrinated young men out to slaughter innocents and be killed in places like Iraq.
Except that in the case of IS the cult might have a morally superior "rationalization" than those pursuing geopolitical objectives or oil riches.
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Expect to see more, not fewer, disaffected me joining radical movements in the coming decades. Automation is going to devastate employment prospects for many, many men who would have otherwise have found work and started families. With no work, and no meaning in their lives they probably turn to violence, as they have throughout human history. This time will be no different. I fully expect to see extremism return, not just in the peripheral, developing world, like those countries where ISIS operates, but in the core, developed world. Just wait until the Neo-Fascist parties make their bids for power in 20 years. When the Ubers and the Amazons of the world are done destroying waged labor the far-right will have their army.
I remember how optimistic people were in the 1990s about the 21st century. That seems laughable today. The 21st century will definitely not turn out to be the utopia that many people though it was going to be.
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