Fwd: [lbo-talk] London Bombers

Jim Devine jdevine03 at gmail.com
Thu Jul 14 08:44:40 PDT 2005


yesterday, I wrote to James Heartfield and lbo-talk:
> "it's a mistake to seek a single cause of an empirical event in human
> history. ...There's the psychological dimension of some individuals being
> pushed over the edge. There's the sociological dimension of the relationship
> between "Asians" and the rest of British society ...There's the political
> dimension of the US/UK war against Iraq. There's an ideological dimension...
> Etc."

he responded:
> But despite the exhaustive list, Jim forgets the most important of all, the
> will of the bombers themselves. ...

In an individual note to James, I answered: I think of "individual will" as part of psychology.

seeing no response from James, now I say: Again, a lot of silly arguments would be avoided if people eschewed single-cause explanations (e.g., people "going postal" [*] or "it's simply a result of the the US/UK war against Iraq") and realized that both (or many) of these explanations can be part of the truth.

As far as that old question "what is to be done?" is concerned, if these two explanations are true (as I think they are), then we need to deal with the fact that some people are "on the edge" psychologically -- and about to "snap" -- AND also pull the invading troops out of Iraq. With a more complete list of causes, we'd get a more complete list of what should be done. Maybe a more coherent and unified program would result.

[*] I'm told that shock-jock Howard Stern coined this phrase, replacing "going ballistic."

-- Jim Devine "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.



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