Your Momma

The visceral reaction of muslims to insulting depictions of the Prophet Muhammed is enough to scare the pants off people who are committed to free speech and peace.   How can we hope to get along with those who believe that death is a fair sentence for an act of expression or intellectual inquiry?  Either we place free speech on the alter and sacrifice its most sacred part-the right to dissent-; or we reassert our values, speak our minds, and continue to challenge that which does not like being challenged.  The choice seems clear.  We simply cannot tolerate the actions of those who cannot tolerate our actions.

And this is how the worst kinds of wars are conceived.  In the absence of tolerance, in the presence of complete misunderstanding, nations are given the green light to seek the destruction of those who would threaten their core beliefs and values.  Differences are emphasized and expanded.

Presently, people who are pro-free speech are unfairly seen as anti-Muhammad. Those who are seen as anti-Muhammad in such a volatile environment are seen as anti-muslim; and thus, a threat to a muslim's very existence.  People who are upset when their beloved prophet is insulted are seen as potential violent extremists who are anti-free speech.

Those who oppose free speech are viewed as enemies of liberty, and enemies of liberty are a believed to be a threat to our nation.  With each modification, with each escalation of offense, more and more people find a reason to involve themselves in violence.

Problems and differences can easily be blown out of proportion, and each side progresses quickly towards one conclusion:  We cannot tolerate each other.  ...or so the offended will believe that such a conclusion is inevitable.  All that is needed then is the spark of violence and killing to fan the flames of full blown war and genocide.

While it would seem that war begins with a first deadly incident, we should not forget that a first "offense" (an insult that is seen as a kind of offensive action, an attack, by some) is expressed before violence ensues.  For example, a cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban was the offense that precipitated an angry outcry by muslims, and death threats against the author.  There are at least two ways we could have nipped the offense in the bud. The cartoon could have not been published; or, if we could somehow go back in history and affect change, those reactionary muslims could have been taught something akin to "sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never (physically) hurt me."  (The refrain may literally be wrong-words CAN hurt you emotionally-but the understood message, that we should be strong enough to ultimately rise above insults and take responsibility for our own feelings and actions, is one of the greatest lessons that can be taught)

To expect of everyone perfect passive restraint in the face of insult is wishful thinking, of course, and certainly not completely fair to those muslims who feel their particular passions are not a matter of choice.  But this is precisely the mission we should embrace; to encourage and nurture within societies a high degree of tolerance so that in the future freedom of speech and peace are not held hostage to anyone's particular sensitivities.

If you don't believe that minds can be changed before a potential violent outbreak or war; if you don't believe societies should be given a guiding hand towards peace and harmony, then you should welcome the emergence and proliferation of any evil this world experiences in the future.  Those of us who are not resigned to fate, those of us who believe reactionism is the poorer strategy, have every right to study evil as an academic problem (that no God is responsible for, nor able to change) and strive to unearth its roots.  

Numerous atrocities have emerged out of religious teachings and as a result of religion's separatism, but religion does not have a monopoly on violence.  Killing happens in the name of ethnic, national, and political identification.  It can explode on the scene in nearly any conceivable social arrangement.  Due to the pervasiveness of violence, due to its ability to infect the hearts and minds of people anywhere at any time, we need to look a bit deeper than religion or surface identity to discover the hair trigger of violent action.  We need to look at what lies at the heart of offense itself and determine whether it can be defused.  And we should ask ourselves whether it should be.

Certain muslims are not the only ones who react violently to offensive words.  Many people are highly offended by insults to their mothers, wives, or girlfriends.  These days, the phrase "your momma"is usually used in jest; but once upon a time, in the not too distant past, uttering those words to the wrong person was one of the quickest ways to start a fight. There are people we love so dearly that we tend to think or react violently towards those who insult them.  In related fashion, some sports fans can become irate if their team or star players are belittled.  And most of us don't take kindly to insults of our personal heros or favorite artists (though you'd be hard pressed to find examples of violence resulting from such offense).  Finally, there are verbal insults directed squarely at us.  It's a big enough topic on its own, this sensitivity towards personal insults, so in this blog I'll focus primarily on the specific problem of the emotional bombs that are triggered by attacks upon the various alliances as listed above.

Let's think for a moment about the kinds of emotional attachments that we feel the need to protect from insult.

I think that in some instances, we react as passionate defenders.  We see ourselves as "soldiers in God's army", to quote a t-shirt I once owned (and wore ironically, of course).  We feel as though there is an actual physical threat to something or someone we love.  The anger we feel and our readiness to fight are precisely the reactions we'd need to affectively protect our loved ones from violence.  Thoughtful restraint would only get our ancestors killed.  We could hypothesis that for hundreds of thousands of years, verbal insult ONLY existed in tandem with physical insult.  Within the large family and small tribal groups of our ancestors; dissent and negative free expression towards individuals was completely absent.  How could insult arise within groups that were so tightly knit due to close relation, and how could it possibly help a family so vulnerable to a harsh environment and external threats?  So our minds have had little reason to distinguish verbal insults from actual threats.  Or we may have learned that the two always coincide.  Violence surely existed within groups, as individuals competed for mates and resources (as Jared Diamond has witnessed in New Guinea tribes).  Expression with no actual physical consequence attached may be a relatively new phenomenon.

This explains why we developed such visceral reactions to insults, but it doesn't completely explain how we came to view ourselves as protectors of our nations, religions, sports teams, etc.  And it would be interesting to study the case of Islam in particular, as it houses one of the most acute, pure, and strict examples of the phenomenon we're discussing.

Could it be as simple as the selective culling of dissenters?  There could be two forces at work here.  A group that is violent enough towards "infidels" living within or on the periphery of its territory will naturally rid the area of dissenting personalities, which we can hypothesis have genetic and cultural bases.  Second, any group that has significant active enemies will benefit from great internal cohesiveness.  External threats increase fear as well as the tendency to rally around what is perceived as the great strength within that society; be it a leader, a document, a religion, an idol, superstition, or any combination thereof.  Rallying around a leader can have a direct utility, but whatever is being rallied around need not be anything real or of any real value.  Its the act of coming together that serves its own purpose, to protect the nation's physical survival and particular ways of life.  In this way, war is the mother of conformity.  What happens when a nation is constantly in a state of conflict over the span of several hundred years; thanks in part to its geological location and environmental vulnerability, and thanks in part to a dogma that explicitly curses disbelievers?  Its adherents become particularly defensive, reactionary, and loyal to its central figure; in Islam's case, Muhammad.

But it's more than this.  A cultural discussion of memes would fit right into this blog.  And I feel as though I've left plenty of other non-selective forces out of the analysis.   I'll attempt to round out the subject in the next installment.