Blog
25.July 2003 - 00:00
The Delusion of Fallacious Revenge
A few years ago, I was in India where we aliens were given strange advice about how to behave in traffic. If you are caught up in an accident or see one, flee at once. Don't try to sort things out or help. The advice seemed outrageous.
But the reasoning was indisputable. Our guide told us that quite recently a child had been run over by a bus. A crowd, wild with rage, wanted immediate revenge and carried it out by burning the next seven busses with their drivers who happened to appear. Because you cannot know whether your make of car, skin colour or the direction you come from will prove fatal, it’s best to run for your life.
Behind that is a worldview whereby injustice happens on a cosmic stage, as it were. The culprits, not to mention the reasons for the incident, are in themselves side issues. The most important thing is that amends are made for the crime. It is as if somewhere there was a scale that has swung to the wrong position and has to be corrected by sacrifice.
We can perhaps only congratulate ourselves that as a society we have created the Social Contract which means, for example, that punishment is postponed until it's given due consideration. In a culture freed from immediate vindictiveness, it is possible to think rationally about who did what and who should be punished. This means protection of the law for each and everyone.
In the world of terrorism, there is the obvious danger of returning to that spiritual state where instinctive and immediate revenge is demanded. It is usually directed against innocent people, be the perpetrators terrorists, or super powers acting in response. Unless the perpetrator is found, arbitrary revenge will not do as a political solution. I see no other constructive solution than the boring old ones: the democratic processes of politics.
There is one dilemma that’s difficult to avoid. A peacemaker who gives up his weapons has to be rewarded; but not terrorism. But where is the borderline? How do you prevent those who enter into political processes together with factions that resort to terrorism from inadvertently nullifying zero tolerance? If the world learns that a terrorist can rise to be a noteworthy figure and be rewarded with political responsibility, is that not a cue that terrorism works?
Last year, after the Norwegian election, I flew from Oslo to Brussels. The man next to me who had voted for the populist Progressive Party was scanning a paper and prattled on: "These politicians don't do anything, it’s just a lot of blah." I confessed to being one of them.
Having arrived in Brussels, the working day was interrupted when the European Parliament was emptied because of a terrorist alert. Back at home, I followed the news and was relieved that, although Secretary of State Powell assured us that the US would bring the evildoers to book, at the same time he warned against a mindset of immediate revenge.
I thought that hopefully the democratic ways and means will be preserved in the world even at the risk of someone hearing only blah-blah.
Written on 11.9.2001, Originally published in Uutislehti 100, 13.9.2001
A few years ago, I was in India where we aliens were given strange advice about how to behave in traffic. If you are caught up in an accident or see one, flee at once. Don't try to sort things out or help. The advice seemed outrageous.
But the reasoning was indisputable. Our guide told us that quite recently a child had been run over by a bus. A crowd, wild with rage, wanted immediate revenge and carried it out by burning the next seven busses with their drivers who happened to appear. Because you cannot know whether your make of car, skin colour or the direction you come from will prove fatal, it’s best to run for your life.
Behind that is a worldview whereby injustice happens on a cosmic stage, as it were. The culprits, not to mention the reasons for the incident, are in themselves side issues. The most important thing is that amends are made for the crime. It is as if somewhere there was a scale that has swung to the wrong position and has to be corrected by sacrifice.
We can perhaps only congratulate ourselves that as a society we have created the Social Contract which means, for example, that punishment is postponed until it's given due consideration. In a culture freed from immediate vindictiveness, it is possible to think rationally about who did what and who should be punished. This means protection of the law for each and everyone.
In the world of terrorism, there is the obvious danger of returning to that spiritual state where instinctive and immediate revenge is demanded. It is usually directed against innocent people, be the perpetrators terrorists, or super powers acting in response. Unless the perpetrator is found, arbitrary revenge will not do as a political solution. I see no other constructive solution than the boring old ones: the democratic processes of politics.
There is one dilemma that’s difficult to avoid. A peacemaker who gives up his weapons has to be rewarded; but not terrorism. But where is the borderline? How do you prevent those who enter into political processes together with factions that resort to terrorism from inadvertently nullifying zero tolerance? If the world learns that a terrorist can rise to be a noteworthy figure and be rewarded with political responsibility, is that not a cue that terrorism works?
Last year, after the Norwegian election, I flew from Oslo to Brussels. The man next to me who had voted for the populist Progressive Party was scanning a paper and prattled on: "These politicians don't do anything, it’s just a lot of blah." I confessed to being one of them.
Having arrived in Brussels, the working day was interrupted when the European Parliament was emptied because of a terrorist alert. Back at home, I followed the news and was relieved that, although Secretary of State Powell assured us that the US would bring the evildoers to book, at the same time he warned against a mindset of immediate revenge.
I thought that hopefully the democratic ways and means will be preserved in the world even at the risk of someone hearing only blah-blah.
Written on 11.9.2001, Originally published in Uutislehti 100, 13.9.2001