[lit-ideas] Re: 21. century European anti-Semitism
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 06:16:25 -0700 (PDT)
--- JulieReneB@xxxxxxx wrote:
> But isn't there a difference between individual
> violence and collective
> violence? I mean, individuals who behave violently
> on behalf of a violent
> community are not acting out of the subsuming rush
> you describe. Crusaders killing
> those who would not convert, Al Qaeda members flying
> planes into towers,
> Palestinians blowing themselves up on buses -- they
> are not acting out of a momentary
> rage or an immediacy -- fight or flight. Collective
> violence is not as ....
> immediate, as instintct-driven. Help me out here,
> someone...
> Julie
I believe that even the individual violence is not
completely instinct-driven, though it may be
convenient to present it as such later (for example if
it comes to a court procedure). Less so is the
violence of terrorist organizations, especially at top
levels which engage in political calculations etc. And
then you have modern nation-states where violence is
institutionalized in the form of largely professional
or specialist services, while the political objectives
are formulated by groups far removed from the actual
fighting. I suspect that this will be the most
rationalized form of violence overall. (With
allowances made for individual mistakes born out of
incompetence, anger, fear, etc.) One mistake here is
that we often take 'rational' to mean morally
justified, which it does not. Another is that we often
tend to overestimate the ability of reason unaided by
personal experience to predict the consequences of
actions.
O.K.
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