Paris and the Aftermath

It is difficult to find the right words that would accurately portray the dismay, the fear, the anger, and  the sadness that much of the western world feels as it reflects upon the events in Paris. It is difficult because there are no words that can portray our collective horror. The range of responses in the last twenty-four hours has been interesting.

There are of course, those yahoos who lurk on the fringes of various social medias who are already pontificating that the attack proves that Canada should not allow any immigrants into our country.  I am sure that there are, in every European language, similar comments on other Facebook pages. There are, thankfully, an even larger number of those (although that might be because of who my Facebook "friends" are) who have combined their picture with the tri-colours of the French flag or who have used some other neat app to show their solidarity with the French people. Political commentators, depending upon which network is paying them, dance that careful two step of wanting to look politically correct while at the same time acknowledging that there is some legitimacy to being afraid.  I suspect however, that future historians will not spend any time looking at our emotional and frequently short responses but instead will study our political responses. For it is by those responses that we will be judged by the future.

Part of the political response must be to examine who the suicide bombers were. Were they always radicalized? Had they been taught by their fathers that violence was the only way to convince people to listen to you? Were they "soldiers" who hid in the great waves of refugees streaming  into Europe as a result of the Syrian war? Were they French citizens, or had the at least been offered the opportunity of citizenship? Had they had access to a reasonably useful education and at least knew that there was a possibility of employment that was meaningful and sustainable? Were they young people who felt engaged in their society and who felt that that society was evolving and changing to meet the needs of its members? I, Of course, don't know who profoundly those misguided terrorists were. In the upcoming weeks we will hear little bits of pieces about their lives - but we will never truly know who they were. And that is a shame because it is only by understanding what led them to this outrageous act, will we prevent others from doing the same thing.

Everything I know and believe about society says that people act in a deviant fashion when the bonds to that society are weakened. That people act in ways that are destructive to themselves and their world around them when they have no allegiance to that world. And that the degree of destruction is directly related to the degree of alienation. No one destroys something that they are willingly part of.  It needs to be clearly stated that no rational person could ever justify the random killing of a hundred plus French citizens.  But these terrorist were not rational - the fundamental question must be what made them irrational. What made them so vulnerable to this doctrine of hate and destruction? If we can't understand that - then we are doomed to having to find words to accurately portray the dismay, the fear, the anger, and the sadness again and again and again.

 It should be noted that our collective horror is restricted to this sort of thing happening in the "West". Such events, while perhaps in not quite these numbers, are a far more common event in other parts of the world - we, in the west, are just less inclined to notice them.