Archbishop of Canterbury: Youths turning to Jihad because mainstream religion not ‘exciting’ enough

[trotsky]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11463635/Youths-turning-to-Jihad-because-mainstream-religion-not-exciting-enough-Welby.html

Young people are turning to Jihad because mainstream religion is not "exciting" enough, according to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The Most Rev Justin Welby told faith leaders that Britain’s religious communities must do more to provide an alternative to extremism which gives young people a “purpose in life”.

He also warned against being too quick to brand people and groups with strong views on religious matters as extremists.

Nothing will ever be achieved if the only conversations which take place involve “nice people talking to nice people about being nice”, he said.

[DetlefK]

1. No, they turn to jihad because of today's shallowness and decadence.

They see through the illusion of ever-connectedness, permanent entertainment, structures built on errors and hollow societal norms. They want more. They are looking for a vision, for a guide, for an ideal for a better world... And the best they find is a return to simpler, ancient times.

I think, this is a shame. Literature has so many ways, so many ideas, so many alternatives to offer for what our world SHOULD be.
They choose religion because it's "Quicker. Easier. More seductive."
And they follow it with the fanaticism of the recently-converted.

[AtheistCrusader]

3. Are you seriously trying to blame people strapping on explosives and blowing up little kids on my

cell phone, and facebook feed?

Seriously?

[DetlefK]

4. In a way, yes.

You used the wrong term there. It's "smartphone", not cell-phone.

A cell-phone is a thing you use for phone-calls and text-messages.

A smartphone is a thing you use to check Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp, Facebook, Google+, XING, LinkedIn, Netlog, Jappy, MySpace, Flickr, Pinterest, Reddit, Vine, Tumblr... If you don't, you are a weirdo, you become a social outcast.

This is one of the hollow societal norms I am talking about: They eat up your time, they eat up your energy, but they give you neither accomplishment nor satisfaction. But everyone has agreed that this is a thing that you MUST do.




This is not the only possible source of disillusionment.
What about seeing the failures of politics and society and realizing that the powers that be are incompetent at clearing them up or are actively furthering them?
You will never see a better world. Things will be as they always have been:
The group-think, the fracturing, the racism, the exploitation, the poverty, the environmental destruction, the corruption... I think, this is reason enough to despair.

And extremist Islam offers an easy one-size-fits-all solution: The whole world united in a single community, united in modesty, in purpose, in spirituality, in brotherhood.

[AtheistCrusader]

5. Au contraire.

My smartphone puts me in touch with people, ideas, and knowledge I would never be exposed to should I limit my interactions to just the people I can see, from wherever I am, at any given time in the day.

If you don't find accomplishment and satisfaction from social media and the underlying technology that enables it, you're using it wrong.

"What about seeing the failures of politics and society and realizing that the powers that be are incompetent at clearing them up or are actively furthering them?"

This fully flies in the face of the first part of your post, because people often use social medias to spread ideas, such as dissatisfaction with political failures. That realization leading to violence is not the only possible outcome. Non-violent protest and outrage can be enabled by the very technologies you listed off above.

Remember you said:

"No, they turn to jihad because of today's shallowness and decadence."

What you define as 'shallowness' I define as a way to keep track of, and inform, family members across the country that I haven't physically been in the presence of in more than a decade. Rather than cutting these people out of my way by isolation of time and distance, we remain a family.

"The group-think, the fracturing, the racism, the exploitation, the poverty, the environmental destruction, the corruption... I think, this is reason enough to despair."

And yet we have plenty of examples of, for instance, social media and the audiences it enables, being the very sunlight that disinfects ideas like racism.

[DetlefK]

7. It's not how you use it. It's how it uses you.

I tried to find a link to a youtube-video I had seen, but there are too many for a quick search. It was a muslim railing against all the things society demands when they are essentially meaningless, because they give you nothing on the spiritual level and hold you back. The video was from about 10 years ago.



It's not the technology, not the availability of information I am talking about. It's the pressure to do things in exactly this way, even when it's obviously not right, for you or for society or for your country or for mankind at large.
And again, the insisting bombardment with obligatory, meaningless entertainment. (You have not tasted freedom unless you have lived free from commercials and ads for a length of time. Believe me.)

They want more. They want a better world. A world with meaning, a world with justice.



And this brings us to the old dilemma on how to find knowledge:
a priori vs. a posterior

The hard way is to start in reality, at nothing, and to piece it together bit by bit until you reach the spiritual, the abstract level. That's how science works.
The easy way is to start with an explanation, with the abstract, and to work your way backwards from there, back into reality. That's how belief works.

The hard way would be to come up with ideas for a better world and to implement them, never knowing if you will fail or if you will make things even worse.
The easy way is to adopt "perfect" ideas that already exist and that remove all your doubts right away.

And because you have been part of the old world order, you must redeem yourself: You must dedicate yourself to the "perfect" idea to an extraordinary level to atone for your sins and to cut off your ties to your past. First you remake yourself anew, then the ailing world.

[AtheistCrusader]

8. You just lamented not being able to find a youtube video to explain your position.

On a social media site.

My irony meter is a smoking crater. You owe me a new one.

[DetlefK]

9. I failed to find a video that corroborates one of the points I made.

I'll get you a new irony-meter once I have mined enough iron.



And Yes, I'm not perfect and indulge in wasting my precious life-time on DU while the world burns. I only take part in revolutions from the comfort of my keyboard.

[AtheistCrusader]

10. You said

They see through the illusion of ever-connectedness, permanent entertainment, structures built on errors and hollow societal norms. They want more. They are looking for a vision, for a guide, for an ideal for a better world... And the best they find is a return to simpler, ancient times.

Let's take these point by point.

"illusion.../ever-connectedness"
Having family members, such as my mom, just a tap or a click away at any time, day or night, is not an illusion. My friends, many of whom I keep in touch with only through such mechanisms, are not illusions. Nor is the relationship I hold with them, by digital conveyance it may be, an illusion. I am intimately, and constantly connected to a very large sphere of people, many more than I could maintain in meatspace alone. I am even conversing, now, with one DetlefK, and even though we may philosophically disagree, the connection we have at least temporarily elected to share, is no illusion. (And before you ask, yes, I *exist*.)

"permanent entertainment"
One does not need to indulge in such things, to utilize a smartphone or any other social media/technology. My mom's smartphone is used almost exclusively to keep in touch with humans, or pull directions to physically navigate to humans, or literally meet up with people via arranged meeting places, etc. If your smartphone/computer has become a source of 'permanent entertainment' (I agree, an illusory concept) it is because the user has chosen to engage in it. Not everyone does.

"structures built on errors and hollow societal norms"
I would not disagree, and say these don't exist. They can, to some extent. Usually in the reflections of other people, built around some locus like religion, or politics. But there's nothing about a smartphone or computer that intrinsically draws people to such interactions. We have them, because we choose them. Choose something else?

"They are looking for a vision, for a guide, for an ideal for a better world... "
That is an incredibly charitable assumption. That said, there are ample opportunities to achieve just that, through these very digital mediums. Sometimes, right through state-imposed content filters targeting precisely that sort of information. In some cases, to the destruction of some states that attempted to impose such controls in the first place. Egypt is badly destabilized these days, but its new government is evolving rapidly, and shows signs of improvement, what with the new Constitution they just approved. Social media played an enormous part in enabling the re-architecture of their government and social reforms.

I think you, and others, are tilting at windmills here. Social media is no illusion. You can use it in ways that are self-deceptive, and illusory. You can fall victim to people who fabricate illusions for their own gain, monetary and otherwise. But it is, what you the user make of it.

You can even find visions, or guides, via digital media. They exist. I won't debate the merits/truth of such leaders, but they certainly exist. Paths to a better world, means to aid other humans, all exist via digital media. You just have to look.

[Act_of_Reparation]

13. Or, more simply:

People were killing other people long before capitalism, Hollywood, and teh internets. This neoprimitive nonsense paints a rosy gloss over a vast swathe of human history that, for common people, was characterized largely by misery and suffering, followed by death somewhere in your early-to-mid thirties.

People longing for "simpler ancient times" never had bubonic plague or saw their village raided by the armies of Sargon the Great.

[Lordquinton]

12. Ferguson

There's a one word rebuttal for you.

[AtheistCrusader]

14. A much more succinct rebuttal than my Egypt comparison.

Thank you.

[Lordquinton]

16. Technology frees us that is fact.

I wonder what they would have us doing instead of using our phones, back in the coal mines 16 hours a day?

[Bluenorthwest]

6. If it's about a single community untied in brotherhood, why the anti gay violence and such?

How is that a 'one size fits all' solution if it starts with killing all the gay people? People disillusioned by materialistic societies who then embrace bigotry and violence do not impress me in the least.

[mr blur]

15. Do you REALLY believe this?!

If you do then you may be as naive and wrong-headed as that clown Welby.

Do you really think that anyone here (in the UK)but the fading, ineffectual, impotent remnants of the Church of England cares what the A. of C. thinks about anything? (Oh, and a few politicians who pretend to be Christians because they like to hedge their bets).

Your idea that these fanatic killers just yearn for " a return to simpler, ancient times" is, quite frankly insulting to anyone who has had a loved one tortured and slaughtered by these brainwashed murderers. Not to mention to those of us who don't believe that "simpler, ancient times" necessarily involve vicious killing of people who have the temerity to disagree with you or fail to share your fantasies.

[AtheistCrusader]

2. Here's hoping 'mainstream religion' doesn't become 'more exciting' to compete.

[bvf]

11. Count on it.

Market forces, you know.