[Right so, I shouldn't be posting this since I wrote it while half asleep and entirely pissed. But since now I am equally tired and feeling wretched.. I don't care enough]
But now it's finally over. Two days and 250 lives later, there are 20 less terrorists trolling the streets. The statistics seem just a bit off. If 20 can take down three iconic buildings, bring an entire city to a standstill and scare witless a nation, then what of a hundred? Nevertheless, I'll go out on a limb here and take the role of the naive optimist and say that things will change after this. Our government will do something. Anything to keep this from happening again. And no, adopting a couple of sniff dogs won't be adequate. We need initiative. We will take it. But will any of it work?
Ishmeet earlier asked how one can deal with people who don't value their own lives. Somebody said education. It seems like a logical thought- spread education, keep people from getting brainwashed into thinking blowing themselves up somehow gets them closer to that invisible omniscient being up among the clouds. But frankly, how well do you reckon that will work? Our most recent and potent terrorists have been well educated people who managed to convince themselves of the altruism of murder.
Never mind illiteracy, religion is the culprit. The root cause of fundamentalism is the religion. If you don't get worked up because some poor fellow happen to believe in a different all-powerful egomaniacal man than you, then you don't slit his throat. So there you have it, a solution. End the age old farce, end the new age violence.
Now if you were to apply similar logic to the solution, you'll realize even that wont make an iota of difference. Because humans are congenitally oriented to destroy, create havoc, kill. The ancients went to war over territory. Then we had religious wars like the Crusades, the French Wars of Religion, the Muslim Conquests and the Reconquista. We have fought battles over honour, for love and respect. In high schools, kids initially fight over pencils then over girls and often over nothing at all. I was bored, I picked a fight. Anthropoid brilliance.
Maybe, just maybe, the reason is that we just fucking love to fight. A war, regardless of how it came about or how it manifests itself, satisfies a need for blood. The Romans had gladiators, we have wrestlers, cock fights, terrorists and wars over the pretext of democracy. So why not cut the charade? We like to kill. Accept that.
The interminable bloodshed makes me prefer the company of Count Dracula to most humans. Besides the fact that it would be incredibly cool, vampires are more benevolent. Sublime oxymoron- vampire more humane than human. Thing is, in either situation there is a high probability that I'll be killed. At least Dracula will make nutritional use my blood, won't pleasantly let it drain into the earth.
In brief, either we go extinct because of self inflicted global warming or self incurred WWIII. I like mankind, I'm also a fan of sadomasochism.
There might be one little solution tucked away in the nooks of grey matter- work. Find yourself a passion and as long as it doesn't involve decapitation and evisceration of strangers, pursue it. Then magically, you might even become productive. So my advice to you: shut up and calculate (or make anthropological flow charts).
