Why that hate us -– Part 34,954 in a series.

In a culture where avoidance of shame is a primary function, it is much harder to know thyself. Everyone else's success can only [exacerbate] one's own failures and humiliations. In other types of cultures (e.g., a guilt culture),when one feels shame, huge efforts are made to correct and improve behavior. But in the Arab world, pride can be regained not by excelling or achieving; or by making amends; but only by destroying that which is more successful. Only then will the humiliation no longer exist.^[1]

Remove painful truth (kill Westerners), deny evidence of superior explanation of events (earth is too flat), and deny need to explain events (Allah moves every molecule in the universe every second of existence) and you're safe. A life as a terrorist, a religious fanatic, or a man forever on the run (did I hear the words "Osama bin Laden"?) can be yours. What could be more fun than slitting throats for no discernable purpose? Or hanging out with guys like this?

Fanatics and the deranged left are cut from the same cloth. They must reject 10 tons of truth or decency to hang on to the kernel of truth that fits their worldview. Sayyid Qutb couldn't stand it that those 1940s Colorado women had no interest in offering their thirsty lips and round breasts to a dweeb such as he. If only one of those Greeley women had come across, we could have been spared a half century of terror and destruction. Since Sayyid had to hang on to his sense of worth as a man, he had to reject all in the U.S. that gave women the accursed freedom, the bloody cheek, to ignore him. The economic system, boxing, poor haircuts, jazz ("created by Negroes to satisfy their love of noise and to whet their sexual desires"), and materialism – all sure signs of Western evility.^[2]

For the leftist, it's vital to overlook that one has failed to take responsibility for one's life or that other humans will, with the exception of Mom, do all they can to prove this truth, that "No one loves you for your baby blue eyes." A nation that long ago partially sustained the institution of slavery, that inadequately responds to a hurricane, or that fails to recognize what a lovable and worthwhile person you are as is is a nation that is fundamentally rotten. Every bit of it.

Solution? Fundamental, radical, across the board change. Change, in short, that irretrievably screws up everything.

To what extent these manifestations of intellectual pathology in either shame cultures or guilt cultures are aberrant or mainstream it is not necessary to decide. I tend to the view, which will surprise some, that Islamic culture in fundamentally flawed. Dr. Sanity wonders whether "Americans [are] taking over the number one spot as the most paranoid and delusional people in the world." We'll leave it there.

Suffice it to say, combating the aberrations that appear, for whatever reason, is a difficult thing to do on the merits of the objections voiced. By definition, you're dealing with people who have long since abandoned the process of objective analysis.

Since we won't succeed in resolving the deep inner emotional and psychological defects in such aberrant people, about all that can be done is harp endlessly on their intellectual failings. At some point, guys who publicly maintain the world is flat or that there is such a thing as significant anthropogenic global warming are going to be laughed at. Which is sort of a hint there that we could be doing more in the ideological wars. All the more reason to be clear about how important it is for the imams and ayatollahs to go deliberately berserk over the Motoons and films by Theo van Gogh, Hirsi Ali, and Geert Wilders.

Notes
^[1] "Beyond Parody." Dr. Sanity, 2/20/08.
^[2] And if Sayyid Qutb's unhappiness did not spring from his unconscious belief in his own personal inadequacies as a man, consider what Dr. Sanity has to say about the poisonous dysfunctionality of Islamic culture itself and what it inculcated in a man whom any number of women might have found satisfactory (absent possession by the ideals of the death cult): "A culture that is so viciously misogynistic gives rise to both men and women who are severely dysfunctional in almost every sphere of human activity." "Islam's Vicious Misogyny." Dr. Sanity, 2/15/08.