Adventures in My Mind
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Sep 25, 2001
The biggest problem we have in waging a war against terrorism is the chasm between Western, i.e., American, culture and Islamic culture. We are not fighting a war of politics and ideologies. We are fighting a war of culture, and cultural wars can only be won when one meme is replaced with another. This is a task that is much harder than any millitary campaign. How do we possibly convince those of a terrorist bent that the U.S. is not the Great Satan? Even if we were to support the Palestinians, and not the Israelis, and eliminate our millitary presence in the Middle East, we would still be anathema to a large portion of the Islamic world.
Our meme is that of capitalism and free markets; theirs is of religion and tradition. Our decisions are made from a cost/benefit ratio; theirs from duty derived from their sacred texts. Even without the unfortunate hijinks of our foreign policy, our lifestyle is a threat. We represent change. We represent transition. We abandon the comfort of the old knowns for the excitement of the new unknowns.
We have been very careful to show that we are waging war on those who would pervert Islam and not Islam itself, but this may be a bit disingenuous - even to ourselves. Consider this passage from Michael Wilson's Memetic Engineering PsyOps and Viruses for the Wetware:
Culture is, in fact, simply a statistical aggregate of the reinforced signals available in a body of people. European and Asian cultures, with considerable tradition and what could be termed 'cultural inertia,' are harder to manipulate 'against the grain.' Aberrations such as Nazism are not influences that run contrary to a cultural bias--they are, in fact, a tight feedback loop of the primitive cultural identity symbols transmitted back into the culture continually, much like feedback in a sound system.
Replace Nazism in the previous paragraph with Radical Islam and we see that the enemy is, indeed, Islam itself. Therefore, to win this war, we must declare war on the culture itself. A war, however, that is not based on the perceivable gains and losses of a millitary campaign, but a war fought in the "hearts and minds" of the so-called enemy. We must replace one meme with another. Even if we can never be their freinds, we must attempt to not be their enemy. Success in this type of war means fewer and fewer devout adherents to the Islamic faith, even though these casualties will not and should not be counted in body bags.
The harder we drop the hammer on them, the more isolated and devoted they will become. We must bridge the gap between radicalism and capitalism. This is the new warfare.
0 Comments | Link to this post posted by Teddy 2:38 PM
