Engineering an Illusion of Superiority
There is a lot of misunderstanding, fear, and confusion surrounding Islam in the West. If there wasn’t, it would mean a centuries long propaganda effort, that currently costs billions of dollars every year, was not working. But this extended smear campaign which stretches back before the Crusades has been and continues to be quite effective.
One of the latest variations on this propaganda is the notion that Western countries are somehow less violent than Muslim societies. This idea stems not only from disproportionate coverage of violence in the Muslim world. It also comes from a trick of media sleight of hand I call ‘externalization.’ It operates on the same principle as ‘misdirection,’ which is a key element of magic. This is a major trend that consistent in many aspects of the Western worldview. Following are a few examples.
Externalizing Social Violence with Prisons
The United States is an incredibly violent country. In researching the Egyptian revolution and the ensuing chaos, I wanted to find out the death toll resulting from all of the associated events, including the overthrow of Mubarak, the election of Morsi, the coup, the Sinai insurrection and all of the bombings, including the downing of the Russian airliner. After tallying all of this up, the total number killed in the 6 years after Mubarak left power was between 7,000-8,000.
This number was somewhat surprising, because I distinctly recalled that the average annual number of gun killings in the US totals around 10,000-11,000. Of course, the US has a much larger population than Egypt.
Egypt’s murder rate is .8 per 100,000 people, which means there are between 700 and 800 homicides in the whole country. The number of killings has spiked during the revolution and the insurgency/low level civil war happening now, and if we average out all that violence, and add it to the normal murder rate, we get a number close to 2000 murders per year, rounding up. Egypt’s population is estimated at 91 million, while the US is 321 million, so there are 3.5 more people in the US than in Egypt.
Dividing America’s rate of killings by 3.5 and comparing it to Egypt’s, even in a time of violence, revolution, massacres, and armed insurrection against the government, we find that America has approximately 50% more annual killings per capita. In other words, Egypt in a time of war is still half as violent as America in a time of peace.
These aren’t just statistics. Living in Egypt, I could really feel this. In all of my interactions and from the general social atmosphere, it was simply much more tranquil and relaxing.
The actual statistics on violence don’t really reflect how violent America is, either, because a huge amount of the violence is prevented through imprisonment. This is what I mean by “externalizing.” A lot of very disturbed and violent people are locked in boxes in remote and rural areas where no one sees them.
No one denies that this system is basically ineffective in actually changing people’s behavior— rates of recidivism are very high. All this does is effectively kicks the can down the road, not dealing with the problem, but simply hiding it away. Inside of these prisons, the same behaviors and mental illnesses are intensified by creating an artificial peer group composed of criminals and the mentally ill, so these tendencies bounce off of each other in a sort of echo chamber and intensify. There is a huge cost to this, with yearly maintenance per prison inmate averaging about $50,000 a year.
In Egypt there are an estimated 100,000 people in prison, compared to over 2 million in the US. This means that at least .6% of the population is in prison, though most estimates put the number closer to 1%. In Egypt, only .001% of the population is in prison. If the prison population of the United States were the same proportion as the prison population of Egypt, it would mean releasing over one and a half million inmates. Since many of these inmates would most likely be mentally ill and very difficult to employ, it would probably lead to a sharp increase in violence. When we try to imagine these numbers, and consider what America would be like if America’s budget for law enforcement was as constrained as Egypt’s, we get a feel for just how much more violent American society is than Egyptian society.
This general pattern holds true across many Muslim countries— in fact, with a few exceptions, like Iraq, Egypt is one of the most violent Muslim countries, and has a large prison population relative to other Muslim countries.
Prison is not only a form of social externalization, whereby violent elements of society are hidden from view without addressing the real problem. It’s also a form of individual externalization. While in medieval Europe punishments were public and often extremely violent (due in large part to a limited budget), prison is not really any less violent when we look at the psychological effect. Instead of outright physical damage, it disfigures and mutilates people’s minds, which then passes for being more humane, since it is not as easy to quantify the damage done.
So we don’t have public discipline like hangings or canings in the US anymore, but we are doing similar damage in order to achieve social control, but it is hidden in two ways;
violent people are quarantined and hidden from view, and
Disciplinary violence is hidden on a more subtle level.
This approach is more pleasant in the short run, and more unpleasant in the long run, because it relieves a symptom while doing nothing about the root cause. Really, it actually aggravates the root cause, because the source of violence is more often than not an individual’s inability to integrate smoothly into society. Spending time in prison results in an even more damaged mind which makes it even more difficult to integrate into society, which leaves the individual unable to fulfill their needs, and thus more likely to be violent.
Geopolitical Externalization of Violence
NATO is an example of externalization on the international level. By means of specialization, European states are able to maintain extensive social systems, thus providing satisfactory conditions for a higher number of citizens, which translates to lower rates of violence. The United States carries the bulk of the military burden, which allows European nations to focus more on social programs.
If NATO were to break apart, Europe would be left in a very vulnerable state. This is unlikely to happen, because by means of economic ties, Europe contributes heavily to the American economy.
This is how a military alliance can allow projecting an image of peacefulness, when in reality they are partners in quite extreme violence.
Environmental Externalization
There is much talk in Europe and the US about environmental regulation, and sustainability. At the same time, these markets are utterly economically dependent on a range of imports from China, where environmental regulation is comparatively lax. In China, labor law and health regulations are such that people suffer under tremendous burden of stress, and many people develop cancer and other diseases as a result of being exposed to toxic chemicals during manufacturing processes.
This is what makes the Chinese exports so cheap, and these low prices are essential to both the happiness of individuals and the success of corporations located in Europe and the US. Thus, outsourcing the poisoning of the environment allows the West to reap the benefits of this destruction while outwardly preaching to others about environmental consciousness.
Externalizing Human Rights
Besides just the importing of cheap manufactured goods from countries with no protections for workers, violence is externalized by support for a number of dictators who routinely use torture, completely disregard due process and civil liberties, and often engage in indiscriminate and extra-judicial killings. Some examples would be the foreign aid from the US to governments like Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Uzbekistan, paramilitary groups in Colombia, the Suharto massacres in Indonesia, just to name a few.
In this way the West is able to reap the rewards that come with violent totalitarian regimes while being conveniently insulated, allowing the creation of a narrative of moral superiority.
Temporal Externalization
If moving atrocities, injustice, and cruelty to locations that are out of view is one means of creating an illusion of moral superiority, it would follow that to do so temporally would also be a means of cultivating this illusion. This is evidenced by the extreme short term perspective.
It is the national perspective that allows Europe and the US to claim superiority— they can point to the lower pollution levels, infant mortality, or life expectancy within their own borders, ignoring the impact that their lifestyle has on other countries in affecting these same indicators. They can even use the damage that they do to other countries as proof that those societies and their ways of life are inferior and in need of ‘development aid,’ or salvation by European cultures.
This reinforces an inferiority complex essential to continued dominance. Anyone who has ever been a competitive fighter, whether in boxing or wrestling or any other martial art, knows that if you mentally accept the superiority of your opponent, you have lost before the fight has even begun.
If we move the level of analysis to the global level, however, this narrative rapidly falls apart as the interdependencies become clearer. This is spatial externalization.
Examples of temporal externalization are the models of corporate profit that do not consider environmental costs, planned obsolescence, or industrial scale medicine for profit.
Corporate Profit
Corporate profit only focuses on the bottom line within a limited time period. Just as a territory like the United States is cordoned off with a border, a fiscal year or a quarter is cordoned off, and one measure of success is emphasized; overall profit. Never mind that IKEA may have had to pay fines for purchasing wood that was illegally logged from protected forest lands in Siberia— if the profits gained from the furniture that was sold with this wood are enough to counterbalance the fines that had to be paid, it was a successful venture.
This doesn’t factor in other sources of value, and particular sources of value to future or past generations, including:
the biodiversity of the earth’s last remaining virgin forests,
the genetic resources of the plants that grow in it with unresearched medical value,
the intangible value of the cultural traditions of the native people of those forests and their traditional knowledge,
the long term benefit that those forests could have had in offsetting and absorbing pollution,
the wind force that those trees would have absorbed, and the damage caused by extra windforce that now sweeps over plains rather than being absorbed by trees
the loss of topsoil that could have produced higher quality food over a longer period of time.
If you were to calculate the value of what is lost, and compare it to the profits gained, the equation would look very different than it does by focusing on a narrow temporal and spatial field of analysis.
Planned Obsolescence
Planned obsolescence is another example of temporal externalization, where resources are abused in order to achieve higher profits, eventually leading to major costs for society.
In planned obsolescence, goods are intentionally produced with design flaws that will cause them to fail after a determined period of time or use. This forces the buyer to purchase new goods and throw away the old ones, thereby increasing profit for the producer.
The spiritual effects of this circumstance include ingratitude, which is a form of disbelief. It is disbelief in Allah, because it is a refusal to acknowledge his blessings. When we purchase a product which is designed to fail, this will generally cause us to feel resentment toward the manufacturer of the product and the product itself.
Subtle emotional effects include developing an attitude towards material objects as being disposable, which leads to a general attitude of wastefulness that can also affect interpersonal relationships. This is because our method of interacting with the natural world will invariably affect our way of thinking about human beings, as we are very much a part of the natural world. Furthermore, it shapes our overall habits and personality.
Aside from the spiritual and emotional consequences, planned obsolescence also leads to acceleration of the depletion of non-renewable resources, as the rate of consumption accelerates to accommodate an unnecessarily high rate of production.
Viewed outside of the customary narrow temporal perspective, efficiency can indeed become very inefficient. Especially when we consider that much of humanity’s industrial production is directed towards producing goods that are pure luxuries and not at all necessary for living a meaningful, fulfilling, and good life.
Ibrahim Ludwick
Imaan Booster 