# Living with terror

- Link: https://www.andreidraganescu.info/2016/07/17/living-with-terror/
- Published: 2016-07-17T08:49:40+03:00
- Author: Andrei Draganescu

Striking fear into people is not what it used to be. Starting with Charlie Hebdo
and finishing with Nice, terror became the brand of stupidity at a global level.
Unlike the 9/11 reaction of the Bush administration who launched into a frenzy of
wars as a form of retaliation, the European Countries and the European Union took
the stance of Unikitty in the middle of Cloud cuckoo land, and fighting Unikitty
is down right stupid.

It does not matter the kind of belonging you get from a priest and a mission, not
does it matter the cause you’re fighting for, you are the book example of crass 
stupidity if you drive over children watching fireworks. I am afraid this is the
reason it is so hard to win this war. On parts of the world information made people
smarter, by default. Sure, we have our Brexit, we have our nationalist dominated
parliaments, but for a while it looks like everyone got smarter than killing random
people to make a point. On other parts of the world people are stuck into a way 
of life that keeps them dumb. And it is like small tumor cancer: you cannot make
a clean cut, these parts are intertwined.

It looks like terror is here to stay for a while. It is going to be a constant event.
There are two things which could pause it: the giving up of personal freedom to 
global war or the giving up of personal freedom to global security. Both unlikely
to happen.

In my view, what these organizations managed to create is one of the most amazing
management structures ever made possible: a stealth distributed cohesive centerless
network. And the “funny” part is that they’ve stumbled upon it, they didn’t set 
out to create this. Al Qaeda was no such thing. Boko Haram is no such thing. But
the worldwide spread group of sleeping agents inside the terror network is exactly
such a thing. It is the alchemy that mixed radical religion, revisionist history,
racism, nationalist speech, the globalization stage of the economy game, sociological
factors and existentialism which spawned the magic potion that activates the agents
of terror. Quick radicalization.

Bad folks have always been organized the same way: there is a money hungry, power
hungry, sadistic sociopath at the top, who gathers minions around eager to level
up on being sadistic sociopaths, who in turn create management levels of lucrative
activities for the money hunger of the leader to be fed, and divisions of sadistic
sociopaths who do not want to level up used to enforce dominance to feed the power
hunger of the top guy.

The new instant radicalization potion is not like that. It is like the flower in
Drakengard who is set to destroy mankind for no clear reason, but who in turn gives
superpowers to those it enslaves. Oh, excuse the anime turned game reference, not
everyone tastes that cup of tea. But this centerless network of sleeping agents 
of terror might be the most amazing sociological creation of humanity and the greatest
challenge for existentialism and humanism: what is the philosophical antidote to
that? Who will be the next Camus to teach us to fight the absurd and live in spite
of if?