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Terror and the ‘self’ : Comments
By James Cumes, published 2/8/2005James Cumes argues we must harness our narcissistic tendencies to bring about peaceful change and the elimination of disease and poverty.
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Jean Baudrillard’s 1990 book “ Transparency of Evil” considers terrorism as the modern world’s incarnation of evil – the mirror of terrorism as he calls it. In our own narcissistic image of society we have expunged evil and violence and believe we are ruled by reason, freedom, democracy etc. In reality we still face the possibility of violent death through things like car accidents or lightning strikes, but we accept these random acts as part of our world. Terrorism presents a far smaller risk than other causes of death, but it threatens our image of our world, and so is a much more potent force. According to Baudrillard terrorism derives its force from our inability to understand our own natures – something which the terrorists understand better than we do. Perhaps as James says in his article we should look inward if we want to understand terrorism.