We have seen the above photo in various resolutions so many times over the last few days that it looks familiar by now. Is there a deeper reason that explains the familiarity?
I may be dumb or my bum may have become numb having sat in front of the TV motionlessly for days, but I read too much from the photo to my comfort. Medium height, dishevelled hair, boyish face, tee shirt with VERSACE printed across, a large knapsack, a wrist-watch around the left wrist and some sacred threads around the right, six-pocket trousers, light sneakers. Are the terrorists sending us a message? Erase the gun and that could have been any of my friends.
The thought is scary and… sane? Half the story.
Before you write me off, visit any of the recent news sites where readers are allowed to comment and return back. You’ll have seen a number of comments blaming all muslims, demanding their extermination, and other horrifying thoughts. They complete the story.
Who are these readers? People that we daily come across, meet, know. Again, one among us. In a fit of blinding rage, their minds find solace in an unreasonable thought that is by no means a solution. Some even write the thought in their minds in permanent marker. The man in the photo may have been one such. Thy myriad ways in which minds react to trauma is a mystery.
I will venture into one explanation. Problems make people restless and we would rather have a convenient solution, call it an approximate solution and deceive ourselves that it fits, than try harder for the right one. Consider how most investigations are done. Gather the clues, round up the usual suspects and zero in on the most probable. They work because the judgements are handled by an impartial entity. Contrarily, extremist activities capture the culprits and execute them, both faultily and mindlessly.
When I come across a problem, what do I do? Take the known parameters, construct a set, and then? Is it rational to call the set as the solution set while it still is a superset of the solution set? Let us not forget the quantifiers.
The terrorist believes that his (or her) kith and kin and ancestors have been destroyed by someone from this region, kills everyone from this region. The angry reader knows the terrorist is a muslim, so demands killing all muslims. Both are in a limbo of ignorance about the other and identify each other with a larger group that they misrepresent. The mentality which subscribes to the belief that a blurred image is better than a blank image and an answer sheet with a hundred misspelt words is better than a blank answer sheet. Any half-witted smug sumbitch would have called both “lame”.
The sadder side of the story is man’s obsession with what he thinks is the solution. That mis-solution is so intoxicating that the problem no longer means anything. How many who are convinced with the solution think about its side-effects or even understand the problem?
Amazon Ads:
[amazon-product align="left"]0809224798[/amazon-product][amazon-product align="left"]B0002U82US[/amazon-product]