EXISTENTIAL INSECURITY AND PARIS 9/1 ATTACK

http://www.dsalert.org/dialogue/2015/01/existential-insecurity-and-paris-91-attack/

A

fter Paris 9/1 attack a huge solidarity rally of nearly one million people was held in Paris on January 11, 2015 to reiterate Western world’s resolve to fight against terrorism and protect principles of freedom, liberty and fraternity, enshrined in the concept of democracy. Many world leaders, including from Palestine and Israel, attended it. The solidarity rally may be an attempt to reconfirm its faith in fraternity and liberty but it indirectly not only underlines the inherent ‘existential insecurity’ embedded in the ‘unbridled liberty’ practiced by Western Societies / Democracies as well as it also displays a wide gap between ‘idealism’ of this thought and ‘pragmatism’ of its execution. The basic fault lies with the social system, where a child is allowed to go on his own after his adolescent age. There are no checks and no parental restrictions. Such an uncontrolled growth from adolescence to adulthood is vulnerable to promises of ‘existential security’. Religious preachers and hawks exploit this very vulnerability of the human being.

As an aftermath of ‘Charlie Hebdo’ attack in Paris, questions are being asked in France and the Western world as to how come modern educated man / woman, fond of ‘Beaches and Bikinis’, turn into hard-core Islamist terrorists? Eyebrows are raised on the fact that thousands of young men from Western Europe have gone to war zone in Syria and Iraq to fight for Islamic State (IS). This is a stunning news though not surprising. Everyone is particularly surprised at the behaviour of a white woman, Hayat Boumeddiene, the partner of Paris kosher supermarket gunman Amedy Coulibaly, an African man from Mali. What brought the transformation in her from an ‘easy going woman’ to be a hard-core extremist?

Was it because of the company of the people she kept or was it because of lack of control on her actions? The corollary to these questions is: Could this have been avoided? Does society need checks and restrictions to prevent such transformation in normal and ordinary human beings? Social scientists and Western educationists have to understand the significance of an old saying: Excess of everything is bad, nay, extremely bad.

The excess of liberty and freedom, bordering ‘political stupidity’, can be gauged from the fact that the wife and family of a convicted hard-core terrorist in France, Djamel Beghel, has been staying rent free in Leicester in England for many years. Writing in The Telegraph of January 09, 2015, Bill Gardner, says, “… Sylvie Beghal, a French citizen, lives rent free in a four bedroomed house in Leicester after she came to the UK with her children in search of a more ‘Islamic environment’.” Allowing such notions of unchecked ‘Islamic environments’ encourage overground terrorist organisations to cultivate material, moral and money support from simple folk by misleading them to believe that Islam was in danger.

The rising clouds of uneasiness and restlessness in Europe and Western world, due to wayward behaviour of its educated youth, under the influence of ‘Islamists’ is causing adverse reaction in the form of ISLAMOPHOBIA. The truth of the matter is that such a behaviour is the result of an unbridled SOCIAL and FAMILIAL freedom-cum-liberty, allowed to children, after they leave school. While it allows an independent growth but it also creates a vacuum in the mental slot for a ‘guide / mentor’. Invariably this space would be filled by someone else, if parents do not.

Shouldn’t Indian philosophy of caring and guiding your child till you die be examined and appreciated? Under the Western influence, though some of it is losing shine but respect for the family elders still remains, though not at the same level, as enjoyed in the past. But it is there and Indian Children are amenable to parental authority. This is where it was opposite of Western social system and it made the Indian man more amenable to authority and discipline.

The negative point of Indian social system was that it made Indians lose their Individual identity and they could be easily controlled by familial diktats. Handful of foreigners could rule them because they controlled the feudal lords. Most people ascribe Indian vassalage and foreign rule for this character of Indian society. Once again it only proves that excess of everything is bad, nay, next remedy bad. Despite this weakness, all foreigners, through the annals of history, adopted this social system except for the British people because they thought it is akin to enslaving the human mind.

Britain and Europe enslaved societies in Asia and Africa while they talked of free human spirit, liberty and democracy. Winston Churchill, Second World War Prime Minister of England, hated native Indians and found them uncouth, crude and incompetent to rule. Ironically, their own system was more primitive and advocated enslaving other humans as inferiors and weak. The Western concept of family system is similar to a practice in the ‘Animal Kingdom’. In the Western societies a child is left to be on his / her own after the age of 15 or on leaving the school. This needs to be reviewed by Western educationists and social reformists.

When parental guidance is missing, the young mind falls prey to anyone else substituting as parents. This is the reason behind uncanny behaviour of youth, shown by such movements in the West as Hippy cult of the 60s, ISCKON or such other Cults. And today, religious bigots are filling up the PARENTAL SLOT, not only in the Muslim world but also the Western countries, whether it is ISCKON or any other spiritual movement. This is crux of the problem of Western society.

Primarily speaking, it is the ‘Existential insecurity’ in every person, right from the day he was born till he dies. He / she looks for security in parents, friend, wife, husband, or anyone who can be a “guide” to satisfy this social Human need. If there are gaps he wanders around to fill it up. This is where the ‘Islamist strategists’ have succeeded in moulding and influencing the child in educated human beings by suggesting a way out of his ‘existential’ problem. The lure of 72 virgins and going to ‘Jannat’ (Paradise) after you die fighting ‘Kafirs’, is the answer to this problem given by Islamist thinkers. They do fill the slot of PARENTAL GUIDE.

But reverse is also true where “Islamophobia” is now gaining ground as an answer to Islamist terrorism. Basically, it is aimed at gaining control of the parental slot in the human mind to pitch him up against Islamist terror. And all this is happening because of unbridled freedom and liberty being enjoyed by the child and the resulting loss of parental control. Human anatomy is such that no space /slot can remain unfilled.

A defence mechanism in human beings looks for a suitable candidate to fill the slot. And, more often, RELIGIOUS PREACHERS move into the slot and provide him the intellectual solace. This could have been very well done by the parents themselves. It is the “Existential Insecurity” of a man which has been exploited by the religious teachers down the ages and this has been the biggest problem of humanity.