, ஏனெனில் இரு கருத்தியல்களும் (ideologies) சமத்துவம் என்ற ஒரு முலாமைப் பூசிக் கொண்டு உலக ஏகாதிபத்தியத்தைத் தாம் மட்டுமே அடைய வேண்டும் என்ற பேராசை கொண்டு நிற்பவை. இரண்டும் உலக அமைதியைத் தாம் நாடுவதாகத் தொடர்ந்து பிரச்சாரம் செய்வதில் மிகவுமே திறமை மிக்கவை. இரண்டுமே தம் கட்சி சார்ந்தவர்கள் தவிர மற்றவர்களெல்லாம் சித்தப் பிரமை பிடித்தவர் அல்லது முட்டாள்கள் அல்லது நரகத்துக்குத்தான் போகப் போகிறார்கள் என்று மற்றவரின் அறிவு, திறன், சிந்தனை, தேர்வு ஆகிய எதையும் உண்மையில் சிறிதும் மதிக்காத ஒரு ஆழ்ந்த வெறுப்பு கொண்டவர்கள். இரண்டு பார்வையிலும் அவர்கள் ஆண்டால் மற்றவர்கள் கீழே எந்த அதிகாரமும் இல்லாத சாதாரண மக்களாக, ஆளப்படும் தகுதி மட்டுமே உள்ளவர்களாக, basically slaves without any citizenship rights, இருக்க விடுவோம், எங்களைப் போல சகிப்புத்தன்மை யாருக்கும் உலகிலேயே கிடையாது என்று மார் தட்டுபவை.
இரண்டுக்கும் மாற்றுக் கருத்து கொள்பவர்களை எதிரி என்றுதான் பார்க்கத் தெரியும், ஒரு வேளை அவர்களுக்கும் நம் அளவு திறமை, தரிசனம், தொலை நோக்கு, ஆழ்சிந்தனை, மனிதாபிமானம், பகுத்தறிவு, மேலும் இதர மனித சாதனைத் திறன்கள் இருக்குமோ என்பது குறித்து எந்த சந்தேகமும் கிடையாது, அப்படி இருப்பதே சாத்தியமல்ல என்றுதான் முடிவு. அதற்கு மேல் போய நம்மவரே மனிதர், மற்றவர் மனிதரே அல்ல என்பது இரண்டு குழுக்களின் அறுதியான தீர்மானம்.
இந்த இரு குழுக்களும் பரஸ்பரம் என்ன நினைக்கிறார்கள் என்பதுதான் எனக்குப் புரியாத ஒன்று. இருவருக்கும் மற்ற குழுவின் அறிவு மீது, தேர்வுகள் மீது, கூட வாழ முடியாத சகிப்பற்ற தன்மை மீது சிறிதும் நம்பிக்கை கிடையாது. பின்னெப்படி இவர்கள் கை கோர்த்து நிற்கிறார்கள் என்றால் அது ஒரு வரலாற்று விபத்து என்றுதான் கொள்ள முடியும். சந்தர்ப்பவாதம் சரி, தற்காலிக நட்பும், முதுகில் குத்துவதும் சரி என்பன இவர்களுடைய அடிப்படை நெறிகள் கூட. எனவே எனக்கு இந்தக் கூட்டணி மீது எந்த வியப்பும் எழக் கூடாது. இஸ்லாமிசமும், மார்க்சியமும் உலகின் இரண்டு பெரும் நோய்கள். இரண்டுக்கும் ஒன்றை ஒன்று பிடித்திருப்பதில் வியப்பு ஏன் எழ வேண்டும்? மனித குலத்துக்கே சமாதி கட்டி விட்டுத்தான் இரண்டும் ஓயும். நாம் இவற்றை ஓய வைத்தாலொழிய இவற்றில் இருந்து நமக்கு விடுதலை சுலபத்தில் கிட்டாது.
கீழே உள்ள கட்டுரை இஸ்லாமிஸ்டுகள் அதுவும் வசதி ஓரளவு நன்றாகவே உள்ள மேலை நாடுகளில் வாழும் புலம்பெயர்ந்த மக்களான முஸ்லிம்கள் நடுவே இளைஞர்கள் ஏன் வன்முறையைத் தேர்ந்தெடுக்கிறார்கள், ஏன் மேலுயர்ந்து வருவதை, உதா: யூதர்களைப் போல, இந்தியர்களைப் போல, தேர்ந்தெடுப்பதில்லை என்ற ஒரு எளிய கேள்விக்குப் பதில் தேட முயல்கிறது.
படித்து விட்டு விமர்சனத்தை எழுதுங்கள். என் கருத்தை அடுத்த பதிவில் தெரிவிக்கிறேன்.
சூ.கா
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| From the issue dated October 5, 2007 |
The Targets of Aggression
"Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd. He served a dark and an angry god." Thus begins Stephen Sondheim's masterpiece, Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a darkly comic tale of multiple murders and unwitting cannibalism. Who is this dark, angry god? And why did Todd serve him?
Set in Dickensian London, Sweeney Todd is the tale of a man whose lovely wife had the misfortune to catch the eye of a lecherous judge. To facilitate his evil designs, the judge has Sweeney transported to Australia, where he spends the next 15 years at hard labor. But the wronged fellow eventually escapes and returns to London, bereft of his wife, his daughter, and his reason for living. Not surprisingly, Todd vows revenge, and is about to get it just as Act I concludes. Facing lethal retribution from the enraged barber, the judge narrowly escapes, whereupon Todd slits someone else's throat instead, and then quite a few others. Sweeney Todd "takes it out" on the innocent citizens of London, butchering his clients (who then are baked into meat pies and sold to unsuspecting folk).
But this "god" is universal, and Todd is hardly alone in behaving this way. For as long as there have been human beings on earth — stretching back to our animal inheritance — we have been bedeviled by a peculiar need, as insistent as it has been tragic: Making others suffer for the pain we feel, often choosing as our victim someone who wasn't even the original perpetrator. Biologists call it "displaced" or "redirected" aggression. It operates through the transfer of pain, sometimes physical, sometimes psychological. And it has been going on for a very long time.
Consider The Iliad, which tells of many wrongs and their tragic consequencesin particular, the anger of Achilles as he reacts to the pain inflicted on him by Agamemnon, who took his woman, Briseis. With Achilles famously sulking in his tent, and the Greeks losing to the Trojans, Agamemnon attempts, unsuccessfully, to get the great warrior to fight. What finally moves Achilles to action is when he suffers additional pain — the loss of his friend/lover Patrocles — after which he vows, "I will not give you burial, Patrocles, until I carry back the gear and head of him who killed you, noble friend." But that's not all. Achilles is not satisfied with mere revenge (a behavior intimately linked to redirected aggression, as we'll see). He demands more, swearing that others — innocents — shall also suffer for his pain: "Before your funeral pyre I'll cut the throats of twelve resplendent children of the Trojans."
This story speaks passionately to us from the injured heart of redirected aggression: nearly always vengeful and brutal, and all too often tragically indifferent in its choice of victim, as well as insensitive to his or her suffering. Like Sweeney Todd, Achilles had been wronged, and, like Sweeney Todd, he "took it out" on innocent victims. Homer was certainly unaware of redirected aggression as scientists understand it today, as was Stephen Sondheim, in all likelihood. Both, however, were well versed in human nature.
Only one of Sweeney Todd's victims turns out to be the evil judge, and that only toward the end of the play, by which time dozens of innocent Londoners are dead. Moreover, Sweeney was not delusional: He was fully aware that his various "customers" had never harmed him, his wife, or his daughter. By the same token, Hector alone killed Patrocles, yet we are told that Achilles became a veritable killing machine, until the river Xanthus, choked with bodies of the Trojan dead, asked the gods to call him off.
Both cases involve a motivation more interesting, more complicated, and more irrational than mere revenge: When an individual suffers pain, he most often responds by passing it on to someone else. When possible, that "someone else" is the perpetrator, the original source of the pain. But if this cannot be achieved, then others are liable to be victimized, regardless of innocence.
Usually the wheels of mayhem are set in motion when someone is wronged, and typically the deeper the wrong, the more bloody the response. It is noteworthy that even here, in works of the imagination (where, one might think, anything goes), only rarely are bad guys presented as doing evil for evil's sake: the mustache-twirling villain who gleefully ties the heroine to the railroad tracks because he is simply cruel, and that's that. Almost inevitably, for a bad character to be believable, he or she must be shown to have suffered some injury. Then it all makes sense.
Redirected aggression — the passing of pain from one victim to another — is not merely the stuff of literature and drama. Art reflects our world, and sadly, the urge to pass along pain lurks behind modern warfare no less than it did behind medieval pageantry, leaving its mark in the genocidal wars of the 20th century as well as those that threaten to overwhelm the 21st. It underlies many of the most prominent, enduring themes of literature, history, anthropology, psychology, and religion. It haunts our criminal courts, our streets, our battlefields, our homes, our hearts. There is nothing new about the phenomenon. Much is new, on the other hand, in our ability to understand it.
Place a rat in a cage with an electrified floor and subject it to repeated shocks. Not surprisingly, the poor animal will show many signs of stress, at first flinging itself against the walls with each shock. But after a while, it just sits there apathetically, showing no inclination to escape from its painful prison. When autopsied, the animal will be found to have oversized adrenal glands and, frequently, stomach ulcers, both indicating serious stress.
Now repeat the experiment, but with a wooden stick in the cage alongside the rat. When shocked, the rat chews on the stick, and as a result, it can endure its experience much longer without burnout. Moreover, at autopsy, its adrenal glands are smaller, stomach ulcers fewer. The rat buffered itself against the stress merely by chewing on the stick, even though doing so does nothing to get it out of its predicament.
Finally, put two rats in the electrified cage. Shock them both. They snarl and fight. Do it again, and keep doing it; they keep fighting. Yet at autopsy, their adrenal glands are normal, and, moreover, even though they have experienced numerous shocks, they have no ulcers. When animals respond to stress and pain by redirecting their aggression outside themselves, whether biting a stick or, better yet, another individual, it appears that they are protecting themselves from stress. By passing their pain along, such animals minister to their own needs. Although a far cry from being ethically "good," it is definitely "natural."
Redirected aggression does not simply derive from irrationality or human nastiness, but — along with retaliation and revenge — is entrenched in the very fabric of the natural world, part of a continuum involving nature's response to pain. The biology of redirected aggression goes a long way toward explaining not only its apparent senselessness but its universality as well. It shows up across the ages, as we've seen, across cultures, and across social units, from individuals to communities to nations.
The journalist Lawrence Weschler, writing in The New Yorker, described the effect of redirected aggression on an entire community, the Bosnian town of Banja Luka. Although it used to consist of a majority of Muslims, when Weschler arrived, nearly all of them had just been murdered or driven out ("cleansed") by their Serb neighbors:
"As I was standing alongside the rubble-strewn parking lot on the site of what had until recently been one of the most splendid ancient mosques west of Istanbul, I asked a passing Serb student by what justification this and all the other mosques in town had been leveled. 'Because of what the Ustasha did to us during the Second World Warthey leveled our Orthodox churches,' he replied without the slightest hesitation. But the Ustasha were Croats. I somehow felt transported into a Three Stooges movie: Moe wallops Larry, who then feels entirely justified in turning around and smashing Curly."
Weschler's description offers a perfect summary of redirected aggression, comic if it weren't often so tragic. And although it might be tempting to relegate such actions to other cultures, more violent or perhaps less sophisticated than our own, 21st-century Americans are not immune to redirected aggression. Consider Iraq.
It is clear that Saddam Hussein was in no way connected with the events of September 11, 2001, but in the mind of the American people, the agony of that attack demanded that something be done — preferably something violent — and, moreover, that someone be held accountable and made to suffer. Afghanistan's Taliban had been trounced, but America's pain demanded more.
Thomas Friedman, writing in The New York Times in June 2003, noted that "the 'real reason' for this war, which was never stated, was that after 9/11 America needed to stick it to someone in the Arab-Muslim world. ... Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we attacked Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it, and because he was right in the heart of that world." According to the U.N.'s former chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, in his recent book, Disarming Iraq, "It is clear that the U.S. determination to take on Iraq was not triggered by anything Iraq did, but by the wounds inflicted by al-Qaeda."
Not coincidentally, here is a little ditty that made its way around the Internet in the late winter of 2003, just before the invasion of Iraq (to the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands"):
If you cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq.
If the market's hurt your Momma, bomb Iraq.
If the terrorists are Saudi, and they've repossessed your Audi,
And you're feeling kinda rowdy, bomb Iraq!
The bombing and subsequent invasion of Iraq was an immense blunder, but — at its initiation, at least — a success insofar as it accurately gauged and responded to the eagerness (even, perhaps, the need) of many Americans to redirect their post-9/11 pain. It feels bad to be a victim, but the pain can often be somewhat assuaged by victimizing someone else in turn.
Recently physiologists have uncovered the hormonal basis for such behavior. Animals and people subjected to attack or threat experience "subordination stress," as a result of which their adrenal hormones go up, along with blood pressure and the probability of developing ulcers. But — and this is crucial — when given the opportunity to "take it out" on someone else, victims show no sign of stress. By passing along their pain, they modulate their own internal distress while generating trouble for the next ones down the line. Think, the biologist Robert Sapolsky suggests, of the fellow who doesn't get ulcers but causes them!
As to the evolutionary advantage of such a system, it seems clear that individuals who respond to painful situations by striking out at someone else have been more successful than those who sit back and "take it," because such individuals are less likely to be victimized the next time around. In social species, including our own, individuals are exquisitely sensitive to a variant of Lenin's dictum "who, whom?" The cost of being victimized includes a loss of reputation; that is, being seen as exploitable: Who did what to whom, and what happened as a result? Evolution would most likely reward victims who — even if unable to retaliate against the actual perpetrator — conspicuously "take it out" on someone else.
To understand how and why people engage in redirected aggression is to gain insight into seemingly disconnected events. For example, the power and ubiquity of scapegoating are revealed afresh: from Old Testament accounts in which the transgressions and sins of the people were placed upon the head of a goat, which was then slaughtered or driven away, to current psychological theory whereby families often establish a "designated transgressor" who is blamed for any dysfunction. At the societal level, African-Americans have undoubtedly been the foremost recipients of that dubious honor: In a now-classic study, the psychologists Carl Hovland and Robert Sears found that they could predict the number of Southern lynchings occurring during any given year between 1882 and 1930 simply by knowing the price of cotton. When cotton went down, the frequency of lynchings went up. Not that white Southern racists literally blamed African-Americans every time cotton prices declined; rather, a bad economy led to an outpouring of anger, resentment, and frustration, which was then turned against a conspicuous and powerless minority. The economic and social pain of poor whites was passed on to blacks, without any conscious awareness of the scapegoating involved. The situation was clearly cultural, the process all too "natural."
We might also want to reconsider "justice" and ask what is really going on when victims demand punishment, nearly always claiming, of course, that they are not out for revenge. But, in fact, aren't they insisting — although not in so many words — that their pain be offloaded onto someone else? Once the wheels of pain have begun to spin, what really seems to matter is that someone — anyone — must suffer, must be made to "pay." By the same token, consider the fact that crime victims typically resent the presence of exculpatory evidence, which is likely to lead to an acquittal: If their interest were simply in seeing justice done, shouldn't they applaud any information that makes it less likely that an innocent person might be punished, and thus more likely that the criminal-justice system will instead spend its energy on finding the real culprit? It appears that the accumulated burden of physiology, evolution, and cultural expectation is so great that redirected aggression typically feels better than no response at all. Revealingly, there is a deep insistence on the part of victims and their families that — by virtue of their suffering — they are entitled to a defendant's punishment, almost without regard to the matter of guilt. Moreover, the urge among victims to redirect their aggression is so strong that society steps in to make sure that this powerful impulse is handled decorously.
Modern science may even owe its existence to scapegoating, or, rather, to those who were able to overcome the urge to redirect their anger and pain. The argument, in brief, is that when bad things have happened to innocent people, there has been a powerful tendency for those people to seek someone, or some group, to blame. And so Jews were slaughtered during the Great Plague, and accused witches were especially likely to be burned whenever times were hard. By taking out their pain on such supposed transgressors, a burden was lifted from the suffering survivors. Today, of course, we know that people get sick because of disease organisms, not the "evil eye." The point is that in order for science as we now understand it to have developed, it may well have been necessary for people to stop looking for the causes of disasters — and thus of their pain — in scapegoats and to begin searching in the natural world. In short, we didn't so much stop burning witches because we had developed science, but ra-ther, we developed science only when we were able to get beyond burning witches.
Denying this impulse has been harder than one might think, since it not only invites physiological and evolutionary distress but also opens other vulnerabilities. ("To err is human," quipped S.J. Perelman, "to forgive, supine.") Thus it is one thing to espouse compassion and nonviolence, but we live in the real world, which contains threatening, dangerous, and hurtful individuals, requiring that we ask some hard questions. Such as: What should be done about violent transgressors, notably sociopaths and other perpetrators of evil, those with "poisonous personalities" who act upon their venom? If it is not acceptable to pass along our pain, how should we respond? What will provide order, security, and personal satisfaction, as well as minimizing subordination stress, without simply passing along the pain of the victimized? And without creating new victims?
That leads to another difficult question: If people who seek to hurt others are doing so because they have themselves been hurt, does that diminish their responsibility or guilt? Should we pity the poor perpetrator? Are all victimizers themselves previous victims? And what if they are? Does that let them off the hook? When does passing the pain become passing the buck?
Fortunately, there are ways out of the pain-passing trap. Redirected aggression — and to some extent, violence generally — isn't inevitable, even though, because of our deeper inclinations, forgiveness is difficult. The world's great ethical systems have long struggled to define an acceptable defense of victims that preserves personal and collective security without falling into excess. That challenge is particularly appropriate at a time when the word "evil" is bandied about by politicians and extremists to condone war and terrorism, no less than wars against terrorism. Hence we might all be well advised to explore not only how pain and aggression are typically misplaced or displaced, but also how they should be placedwhich is to say, the same way that porcupines are reputed to make love: very carefully.
The world's oldest wisdom traditions have long been concerned with just that. Pain is prominent in Buddhism, which is founded upon the recognition that suffering is ubiquitous and unavoidable, yet can be minimized. The first of Buddhism's "Four Noble Truths," that life inevitably entails pain, is followed immediately by specific methods to reduce suffering, called the "the Eightfold Path." In addition, among the fundamental teachings of Mahayana Buddhism is the kshanti paramita: "the capacity to receive, bear, and transform the pain inflicted on you by your enemies and also by those who love you."
Christian tradition, too, venerates and validates the role of pain. Christ's agony is widely taken as crucially related to God's redemption of humanity. Hidden within dense layers of theology is this equation, one that is, however, rarely made explicit: the more pain (the more suffering on the part of Jesus), the more redemption for the rest of us. But why? Perhaps because the crucifixion of Christ, who is considered the epitome of innocence, provides an especially potent example of scapegoating as a route to social cleansing. Insofar as Christ suffered ("for our sins"), does that suffering enhance the social, personal, and even biochemical status of the rest of us, helping to overcome subordination stress among his followers?
In a masterpiece of painfully accurate revelation, G.K. Chesterton once wrote that Christianity hasn't been tried and found wanting; rather, it has been found difficult and left untried. Never has that been more true than in cases of personal pain and our reaction to it. Thus, Jesus urged us to love our enemies, and, if slapped, to turn the other cheek. But for millennia — before Jesus and after — hu-man beings and their animal brethren have been far more likely to respond to pain and injury with a retaliating barrage of the same sort, generating yet more injury, more pain.
Perhaps Jesus did not entirely appreciate the magnitude of the demand he was making upon Homo sapiens, because in asking his followers to refrain from retaliation — to absorb pain without passing it on to someone else — he was asking people to inhibit one of their most widely shared, deep-seated inclinations. Nonetheless, potential solutions are all based on an equally deep, equally shared truth: that human beings, perhaps unique among animals, are capable, at least on occasion, and once the issues are made clear, of acting against the promptings of their often troublesome bio-logic.
David P. Barash's most recent book, Natural Selections: Selfish Altruists, Honest Liars, and Other Realities of Evolution, based largely on his collected Chronicle pieces, will be published this month by Bellevue Literary Press. He is working on a book about redirected aggression.
