notes from a lecture on “the Islamic terrorist in the age of you tube”
Professor Nebert I Treben, holder of the Sator Jonson chair of
Psychology, Tuttles University.
In progress
“and in the same way that we see young teenagers taking
inappropriate ‘selfies’ to share with their significant others, we
find that the self styling of the internet gives the Islamic
fundamentalist the ability to show without filter the immediacy of
their belief structure in the most graphic and heinous way”
-‘Professor, are you comparing a 15 year old girl taking a boob shot
for her boyfriend to a Muslim radical cutting the head off an
American prisoner?’
“Actually, they are identical in the thought process, or lack of it,
and the immediate gratification that occurs.
Impulse is a very strong motivator for activity, and it’s a good
bet that most activities we regret fall into that area that is
‘impulse driven’. For the mature adult many times our ‘guard’ is
let down by mind altering stimulants and the impulse is not
mitigated by ‘our good sense’. For the juvenile, mitigation does
not occur do to an absence of life experience that includes the
essence of long term consequences. For the Islamic fundamentalist,
at any age, the impulse driver is the concern that others are not
as conceptually idealized as he/she is, and the true way must be
shown at all costs.
Taking a video and having the immediacy of putting the activity on
the internet for all to see substantially reinforces the immediate
feelings of not superiority, but of moral correctness, and the act does not occur because the subject (of the beheading) is being de-humanized, but because they are human. The act is one of the moment, as an immediate lesson to be shared with everyone. That is what the internet provides. If this was something that would be filmed, and seen with somewhat limited distribution 2 months later, most of the times this would not be happening.”
-‘Hearst said “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war”, is the
New Fundamentalist knowingly more technologically savvy, or is this new phenomenon incidental to the terrorist behavior?’
“The illiterate who has studied and memorized the Koran in a madras is not going to videotape a beheading for popular consumption because philosophically he cannot existentially visualize the impact of the action, this illiterate WILL blow himself up to be a martyr. To be simple in the explanation, if you can’t understand the presence of billions of people in the world,
the overwhelming humanity of being, then you won’t cut off someone’s head for object idealism on the internet. You will though, internalize the feeling and attempt to show your faithfulness through an act of personal purification.”
-‘So, as more radicals become ‘tech savvy’, more of this will occur?’
“No, as more radicals integrate from mainstream western type societies, or Asian modern type societies, more of this will occur. It’s part of an inherent belief system: if I KNOW that when I stand in front of that little video camera, do something, and plug it into my laptop, and that hundreds of millions of people will or may see it, then I can acknowledge the benefit.
Simple suspension of disbelief is not enough to allow, except in the presence of pathology as the main precursor, a person to will themselves to believe that videotaping an activity such as a beheading is allowable or fundamentally sound. The same humanizing activation that would allow them to do it if millions were watching would prevent the believer from doing it as morally wasteful and wrong.’
thank you Professor.