Lifestyles of the Wretched & Depraved

Continuing with yesterday's post, it seems that it's not just the content of the terrorist mind that is different, but the container. This is well understood in cases of severe mental illness on an individual basis, but what is going on in a collective "terror culture" like Gaza?

Conveniently, the next subsection in this chapter is called Metaphysical Hatred, and it seems to me that anti-Semitism is the metaphysical hatred of hatreds. Such hatred "can never be satisfied. It feeds on itself."

So overwhelming is the hatred of Hamas that it easily overwhelms any practical concerns, including, of course, for their own people. Similarly,

For a true Leninist, nothing could be sweeter than hate-filled revenge. "When hatred motivated terrorists, the 'people' did not matter."

 These terrorists were hopeless idealists:

In this way of thinking, goals pollute the sacrifice by making it utilitarian and therefore impure. 

A pure sacrifice... where have I heard that before? "Even those who did not seek a martyr's death found self-sacrifice appealing." Anything less than total commitment "would not have satisfied us."

For Bakhunin, "the attraction of all messianic socialism was that it invested the inner dialectic of the personality with apocalyptic significance." In effect, he advanced "a mystical theory of self-realization through revolutionary action."

As with the Islamists, "The process of radicalization, once started, repeats and the terrorists grow ever more terrible."

From killing specific people only when necessary, they rapidly advanced to killing random people whenever possible. Soon enough, sheer sadism became common. "The need to inflict pain was transformed from an abnormal compulsion experienced only by unbalanced personalities into a formally verbalized obligation for all committed revolutionaries."

But again, "what explains this dynamic," which is "repeated in the history of other revolutionary organizations," including Hamas? One motive seems to be

the craving of lonely and alienated young people for an especially tightly knit community, a family bound together by the imminence of death.

Very much like the dynamic that motivates normal military cohesion, only turned diabolical, partly because it is for its own sake, not for any rational or achievable goal:

For those addicted to the thrill of danger and the intensity of the moment, familiar violence soon becomes routine and ceases to have the desired effect. As with addictive drugs, larger and larger doses are needed. The war on boredom grows boring: repeated violence soon seems almost peaceful... 

Hence the incredible barbarism of October 7, which, if one is attracted to such things, must furnish an intense dopamine high (or something like it). 

In fact, in a recent newsletter, Rob Henderson reviewed a book called Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty by psychologist Roy Baumeister. He writes that

Under intense stress, the body releases soothing and pleasant chemicals to return to normal (homeostasis). Over time, this feeling becomes addictive. 

This is how people come to enjoy bungee jumping or skydiving. I’ve done both. The act itself is both terrifying and thrilling, but the feeling of coming back down from the rush is enjoyable.... 

Baumeister suggests this happens with repeated acts of inflicting harm.... At first, people feel a sense of terror, anxiety, or disgust. The body then counteracts such feelings to restore itself to baseline. People gradually become addicted to this feeling. 

In this view, the pleasure of harming someone comes mostly from the restorative process, not the initial act. You pay the cost up front, and enjoy the benefit after. 

As the book puts it, “The thrill of killing may be closer to the thrill of parachute jumping than to the thrill of taking drugs.”

Another motive is the joy of victimhood: 

research in the book documents how, for perpetrators of genocide and ethnic violence, “The ones who carry out the massacres perceive themselves as victims of mistreatment and injustice.”

Hitler and the Nazis famously cast the Germans as victims of “nefarious” Jewish people.

Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and other communist leaders carried out horrific acts resulting in bloodbaths by demonizing anyone deemed to be a “class enemy,” i.e., an oppressor.

Henderson also highlights the danger of evil motivated by "idealism," beginning with an observation by a psychologist Jonathan Haidt that "The major atrocities of the 20th century were carried out largely by men who thought they were creating a Utopia.”

Henderson continues:

In a twisted way, idealism uses people’s moral intuitions against them. If you harm someone to take their money, you might feel guilty, even if you needed the cash. But if you harm someone because you believe they are an obstacle to the gates of paradise, then any guilt is quelled. 

This helps to explain how ordinary people became murderous in the regimes of the twentieth century. They believed themselves to be moral. And the more evil acts they committed, the more moral they believed themselves to be.... 

Committing mass murder might be unpleasant, but if in the end it’s for a good cause, then people will fulfill their duties....  

Idealistic perpetrators, full of self-righteous conviction, believe they have a license, or even a duty, to hate.

That's about it for today...