Dehumanization through art: How not to make the world safer for the next generation
Yesterday I listened to an NPR story about the 1-year anniversary of the Taliban attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar, Pakistan, that killed 141 people, 132 of them children. Among the many commemorations is a song commissioned by the Pakistani Army in which a young boy sings about facing an enemy that "isn't human and has no God."
I'm sorry, but the message of that tune -- assuming that it's being translated and communicated accurately -- is exactly the wrong response to this kind of situation, for several reasons:
1. No matter how alien their thought processes and motivations might be to most of us, killers (jihadi or otherwise) are still human beings. They are not a devilish, monstrous Them or Other; they're just a tragically different variety of Us. Encouraging people in the wider population, especially children, to think of radical Islamists or other human foes -- murderous though they might be -- as utterly evil homunculi who have no human needs or feelings or desires and are not worthy of human rights or consideration has several very undesirable effects, such as:
- Making the kind of negotiation and compromise that might actually achieve results -- the same type of distasteful but necessary "negotiation with stone killers" that largely ended The Troubles in Northern Ireland and the apartheid era in South Africa, I'll remind folks -- difficult or impossible;
- Making it easier for populations and the governments that ostensibly represent them to commit war crimes and other atrocities against said enemies, which spawns revenge crimes, and so on, and so on;
- Making the people in your audience more likely to adopt similar prejudices about other groups and individuals they don't like;
- For extremist groups, aiding recruitment (by vilifying a counterculture that people who are already alienated and at the fringes of society can identify with) and retention (by making people who are already members of such groups feel as though they have nothing to return to and thus less likely to leave).
2. No matter how repugnant their religious doctrines and practices might be, would-be theocrats don't act immorally because "they have no God." Implying that that is the case is not only factually wrong but ridiculous. Morality that other people can approve of is not the exclusive province of theistic or religious people; conversely, people who believe that their God will not only condone but bless and reward any hideous thing that they do in his name are capable of committing what other people perceive as the grossest of immoralities.
So, all in all, I predict that this little slice of the Pakistani Army's reaction to last year's slaughter, like many emotionally appealing official responses to complex problems, is likely to be counterproductive. And I doubt that many of us who have watched the never-ending parade of similar American responses to terrorism, official and unofficial, will find my conclusion terribly surprising.
I'm sorry, but the message of that tune -- assuming that it's being translated and communicated accurately -- is exactly the wrong response to this kind of situation, for several reasons:
1. No matter how alien their thought processes and motivations might be to most of us, killers (jihadi or otherwise) are still human beings. They are not a devilish, monstrous Them or Other; they're just a tragically different variety of Us. Encouraging people in the wider population, especially children, to think of radical Islamists or other human foes -- murderous though they might be -- as utterly evil homunculi who have no human needs or feelings or desires and are not worthy of human rights or consideration has several very undesirable effects, such as:
- Making the kind of negotiation and compromise that might actually achieve results -- the same type of distasteful but necessary "negotiation with stone killers" that largely ended The Troubles in Northern Ireland and the apartheid era in South Africa, I'll remind folks -- difficult or impossible;
- Making it easier for populations and the governments that ostensibly represent them to commit war crimes and other atrocities against said enemies, which spawns revenge crimes, and so on, and so on;
- Making the people in your audience more likely to adopt similar prejudices about other groups and individuals they don't like;
- For extremist groups, aiding recruitment (by vilifying a counterculture that people who are already alienated and at the fringes of society can identify with) and retention (by making people who are already members of such groups feel as though they have nothing to return to and thus less likely to leave).
2. No matter how repugnant their religious doctrines and practices might be, would-be theocrats don't act immorally because "they have no God." Implying that that is the case is not only factually wrong but ridiculous. Morality that other people can approve of is not the exclusive province of theistic or religious people; conversely, people who believe that their God will not only condone but bless and reward any hideous thing that they do in his name are capable of committing what other people perceive as the grossest of immoralities.
So, all in all, I predict that this little slice of the Pakistani Army's reaction to last year's slaughter, like many emotionally appealing official responses to complex problems, is likely to be counterproductive. And I doubt that many of us who have watched the never-ending parade of similar American responses to terrorism, official and unofficial, will find my conclusion terribly surprising.