This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/23/boston-marathon-explosions-boston
The article has changed 3 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 1 | Version 2 |
|---|---|
| What caused the Boston Marathon bombings? It's complicated … | What caused the Boston Marathon bombings? It's complicated … |
| (5 months later) | |
| So it's settled, then: the suspects in last week's Boston bombings were "motivated by their religious views". That's the essence of an Associated Press story, quoting two anonymous "US officials" involved in the investigation. The report carries a strong sense of finality, emphasised by Andrew Sullivan, who concludes that faith "by itself is a sufficient explanation. Many don't understand this. But, as anyone with familiarity with strong religious faith will tell you, there are few things more powerful." | So it's settled, then: the suspects in last week's Boston bombings were "motivated by their religious views". That's the essence of an Associated Press story, quoting two anonymous "US officials" involved in the investigation. The report carries a strong sense of finality, emphasised by Andrew Sullivan, who concludes that faith "by itself is a sufficient explanation. Many don't understand this. But, as anyone with familiarity with strong religious faith will tell you, there are few things more powerful." |
| This will doubtless feel like vindication to conservative commentators such as the National Review's Charles Cooke, who on Monday published this diatribe against liberals, especially the Atlantic's Megan Garber, for suggesting that the causes behind an attack like last week's are complex. Cooke writes: | This will doubtless feel like vindication to conservative commentators such as the National Review's Charles Cooke, who on Monday published this diatribe against liberals, especially the Atlantic's Megan Garber, for suggesting that the causes behind an attack like last week's are complex. Cooke writes: |
| Most people, very much including those smugly who call for national introspection, are simply not capable of blowing up children – whatever the provocation. "Alienation," "loneliness," the sequester, a culture of violence, video games, political anger, poverty – none of the reasons that are designed to prevent their authors from having to draw unpleasant conclusions is sufficient to provoke the vast majority of people into committing acts of terror. | Most people, very much including those smugly who call for national introspection, are simply not capable of blowing up children – whatever the provocation. "Alienation," "loneliness," the sequester, a culture of violence, video games, political anger, poverty – none of the reasons that are designed to prevent their authors from having to draw unpleasant conclusions is sufficient to provoke the vast majority of people into committing acts of terror. |
| What liberal analysts narcissistically long for, he argues, is some combination of factors that might have led them to bomb the Boston Marathon, which is futile, because they never would. What does explain the bombings, he concludes, is "an unholy combination of the dreaded 'I' word and very little else". | What liberal analysts narcissistically long for, he argues, is some combination of factors that might have led them to bomb the Boston Marathon, which is futile, because they never would. What does explain the bombings, he concludes, is "an unholy combination of the dreaded 'I' word and very little else". |
| Despite being the worst kind of handwringing liberal myself, I think Cooke has a point about narcissism. It's a seductive error to conclude that because an event strikes me as hard to imagine, therefore the true explanation must lie in something that's easier for me to imagine. Perhaps the real problem is the insufficiency of my imagination. | Despite being the worst kind of handwringing liberal myself, I think Cooke has a point about narcissism. It's a seductive error to conclude that because an event strikes me as hard to imagine, therefore the true explanation must lie in something that's easier for me to imagine. Perhaps the real problem is the insufficiency of my imagination. |
| But what's really striking is the way that Cooke – all too typically of those who favour the "blame Islam" argument – feels not the slightest obligation to elaborate on his proposed alternative. Just saying Islam (or "the 'I' word") seems to suffice. | But what's really striking is the way that Cooke – all too typically of those who favour the "blame Islam" argument – feels not the slightest obligation to elaborate on his proposed alternative. Just saying Islam (or "the 'I' word") seems to suffice. |
| So … how's that supposed to work, exactly? | So … how's that supposed to work, exactly? |
| Debates in this area tend to get bogged down in questions of Islamophobia, which is understandable, since there's a lot of it about. But that risks obscuring an equally big problem with the idea that "blame religion" is an argument-ender. Imagine, for a moment, a hypothetical ideology, X, that really was as appallingly murderous as the most hysterical anti-Muslim commentators take Islam to be. Does the mere existence of X somehow cause people who encounter it to commit acts of terror, in the same way that merely hearing Monty Python's Funniest Joke In The World kills the listener? | Debates in this area tend to get bogged down in questions of Islamophobia, which is understandable, since there's a lot of it about. But that risks obscuring an equally big problem with the idea that "blame religion" is an argument-ender. Imagine, for a moment, a hypothetical ideology, X, that really was as appallingly murderous as the most hysterical anti-Muslim commentators take Islam to be. Does the mere existence of X somehow cause people who encounter it to commit acts of terror, in the same way that merely hearing Monty Python's Funniest Joke In The World kills the listener? |
| Another example: Lawrence Wright's recent book on Scientology includes the revelation that L Ron Hubbard thought one of his early books, Excalibur, would cause anyone who read it to go mad or commit suicide. But L Ron Hubbard thought a lot of things. | Another example: Lawrence Wright's recent book on Scientology includes the revelation that L Ron Hubbard thought one of his early books, Excalibur, would cause anyone who read it to go mad or commit suicide. But L Ron Hubbard thought a lot of things. |
| You don't get around the problem by blaming the beliefs of a would-be terrorist's parents, friends or society, either – because you still have to explain how they came to believe X in the first place. What you need, it seems, is an account of what factors explain why a given person was predisposed to believe in X, or to use it to justify violence. | You don't get around the problem by blaming the beliefs of a would-be terrorist's parents, friends or society, either – because you still have to explain how they came to believe X in the first place. What you need, it seems, is an account of what factors explain why a given person was predisposed to believe in X, or to use it to justify violence. |
| In other words, it's complex. | In other words, it's complex. |
| I wish what this showed was that liberals are right and conservatives wrong, but what it actually shows, I fear, is that the whole concept of what constitutes an "explanation" is irredeemably murky. (Look here for a hint of how deep the philosophical rabbit hole goes.) Liberals pursuing "complexity" tend to run into the sand: Garber seems to imply that once you've attributed an event to a sufficient number of different causes, you're entitled to stop, but even if (say) alienation is part of the explanation, don't you have to explain that, in turn, and so on forever? By the way, brain scans won't get you off the hook, unless you can explain why a brain-based explanation should be taken as more ultimate or fundamental than any other. | I wish what this showed was that liberals are right and conservatives wrong, but what it actually shows, I fear, is that the whole concept of what constitutes an "explanation" is irredeemably murky. (Look here for a hint of how deep the philosophical rabbit hole goes.) Liberals pursuing "complexity" tend to run into the sand: Garber seems to imply that once you've attributed an event to a sufficient number of different causes, you're entitled to stop, but even if (say) alienation is part of the explanation, don't you have to explain that, in turn, and so on forever? By the way, brain scans won't get you off the hook, unless you can explain why a brain-based explanation should be taken as more ultimate or fundamental than any other. |
| Where liberals run into the sand, conservatives run into a wall: evil. John Hinderaker at Powerline puts the argument in almost self-parodic form: the bombings are only hard to imagine, he insists, "if you aren't evil". You want an explanation? Blame evil. Job done. | Where liberals run into the sand, conservatives run into a wall: evil. John Hinderaker at Powerline puts the argument in almost self-parodic form: the bombings are only hard to imagine, he insists, "if you aren't evil". You want an explanation? Blame evil. Job done. |
| There is, of course, a very long history of debates about whether the concept of evil is a coherent one, or on what other beliefs it might depend. But you won't find a hint of that in conservative responses to Boston, in which "evil" simply serves as a placeholder – a way of rephrasing the puzzle, not explaining it. | There is, of course, a very long history of debates about whether the concept of evil is a coherent one, or on what other beliefs it might depend. But you won't find a hint of that in conservative responses to Boston, in which "evil" simply serves as a placeholder – a way of rephrasing the puzzle, not explaining it. |
| I trust you'll be relieved to know that I don't propose to try to solve the problem of what counts as an explanation, or whether evil exists, in a blogpost. In practical terms, anyway, I suspect "what's the real explanation?" is the wrong question. Probably the best we can do instead is to try to agree on policies that seem likely, based on past evidence, to reduce the probability of future attacks. We'll be making some implicit assumptions about the nature of explanations when we do so. But at least we won't be getting distracted by "evil", or the notion of an ultimate set of root causes. | I trust you'll be relieved to know that I don't propose to try to solve the problem of what counts as an explanation, or whether evil exists, in a blogpost. In practical terms, anyway, I suspect "what's the real explanation?" is the wrong question. Probably the best we can do instead is to try to agree on policies that seem likely, based on past evidence, to reduce the probability of future attacks. We'll be making some implicit assumptions about the nature of explanations when we do so. But at least we won't be getting distracted by "evil", or the notion of an ultimate set of root causes. |
| Also, sorry to bring this up, but free will might not exist. I mean, just in case anyone still thought any of this was simple. | Also, sorry to bring this up, but free will might not exist. I mean, just in case anyone still thought any of this was simple. |
| Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning. |