What ISIS Really Wants

I think what drives these movements at their fundamental and deepest level is a perversion of one of humanity's greatest traits -- our ability to channel metaphysical discontent into long-ranging visionary ambition.

If -- to give one example -- humanity manages to build a self-sustaining settlement on Mars in the next century or so and "make life multi-planetary," this will be powered by the same psychological machinery that drives ISIS. Huge numbers of initial settlers will die. The task of carving out a life in a barren lifeless radiation-soaked desert will demand the same level of fanatical, all-encompassing zeal. It will be, in short, a crusade, only the adversary will be the environment rather than another group of people. It would even have an "apocalyptic" character. I can imagine the settlers' picturing a future blue Mars -- the eschatological promised land -- and resolving that it will be this, or death.

We create because we are not content. Our perpetual discontent is the source of pretty much everything admirable about us. But when we can't create? When no positive avenue is available?

Picture yourself as an ambitious visionary personality in a failed client state like Iraq. What realistically can you do? Labor for your puppet state? Pay protection money to gangsters? You hear tales of torture, then learn some of them are true. If a drone pilot screws up and kills your family, it will be written off as an acceptable loss... assuming it's acknowledged at all. The message you receive from the world is clear. You have no value. Your death is acceptable. You are worthless.

We are not domesticated animals. People are not content to be worthless. You cannot humiliate and grind down human beings without consequence. If no other avenues are available they won't go quietly. They will go mad.

If I were uneducated, had no opportunity, and lived in a hellhole like post-war Iraq, I could easily see being drawn to an apocalyptic death cult. To die to bring about the end times would be far more appealing than the alternatives.

I totally get it. I mean, go look up America's interrogation programs and "rectal feeding." What the hell did we expect to happen?

At this point I don't even know what we can do about it. This same thing happened in post-WWI Germany after the post-war reparations and punitive treaties wrecked the German economy and helped Hitler rise to power. After WWII we got a clue and implemented the Marshal Plan and the result was a peaceful sane Europe that has endured to this day, but we apparently un-learned that historical lesson... either that or we don't think it applies to people who aren't white.