When I heard about the Manchester attack yesterday, I was saddened. Not surprised, because these types of things unfortunately don't surprise me anymore, but saddened. It's really depressing to know that there are people out there who kill for fun, and it needs to stop as soon as possible.
I remember when the Sandy Hook shooting happened. I was maybe 10-11 when it happened. I remember learning something that day. I learned that violence was everywhere. I learned that even if your town is a really nice town, with nice people and nice places, you can never be 100% sure that everything will be okay. Unfortunately, I had to learn that the hard way.
I can't speak for the UK, because I'm not from there myself, but I can certainly say that I empathize with you. I know what it's like to lose someone you know, although I won't go into that, due to personal reasons, of course. And for that, I am truly sorry.
-David
 
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I am always surprised when random violence happens in the United States. My girlfriend thinks it is because American students are sized up against over-enthusiastic Asian students. She is Chinese herself and was forced to study 14 hours a day as a child. It is usually something tragic with the Einsteinian space-time theory of general relativity and the persistence of identity of a person. There are actually metaphysical arguments to the effect that "causal chains" are represented in Western learning (although this is not surprising). It is surprising that the persistence of identity of a person or event can be reflected in psychological properties of space-time. You would not expect events happening in Chinese space-time to effect the psychology of Western students, even those in the United States. The United States is a very unique nation in its spatiotemporal history, and so it may not be as surprising as we suppose that various causal chains are violated in principle. It may not be very useful to draw any course of action based on speculated relations of this nature. While in principle there are reasonable ethical arguments to contest the behavior of, for instance, Chinese education, we cannot in practice draw actionable conclusions.
It is worth noting that even at the most pragmatic levels of philosophy there are blind spots. There is certain some parallelism to be described in the geographical history of the United States and the much "older" cultural geography of East Asia. It is not entirely out-of-keeping with our metaphysical doctrines that East Asia could be reflected in Western psychology. These macroscopic-level events are always difficult to diagnose, and so sometimes a speculated reason is the best answer. As we believe today there are usually explanations for everything, but not all explanations are at the level of language. For our psychological health it is reasonable to select a possible reason for an event with an acknowledged problem. If nothing else we correct the problem and stand some chance of improving the situation. There is not much other method of dealing with incomprehensible tragedy.
The UK attack in Manchester is similarly confusing. As usual we will have doubts about our alliance with parts of the Middle Eastern world. Some of these alliances are obviously nonsense by reasonable standards we might apply. For example if, hypothetically, France or the UK had carried out the famous 9/11 attacks--which seems to in some sense be a psychological or sociological impossibility. But, supposing it had happened that way, our response would probably have been much different to France or the UK.
As it stands the political climate is a bit mysterious. As several critics have pointed out--it is a major problem that the United States and the EU acknowledge Saudi Arabia as an "ally" when quite clearly it is not. There seems to be not much stepping away from the alliance; we want to ally with everyone eventually. On the other hand, the alliance with Saudi Arabia in particular is clearly still premature. From the perspective of game theory--especially as it relates to the Middle Eastern culture and Islam specifically, a premature alliance is unfortunately a major blunder. We continue to see this blunder exploited in various perplexing, confusing and problematic ways.
As many critics correctly say, there is a major psychological or sociological problem that this alliance is acknowledged fact. We are quite clearly not allies with Saudi Arabia in the significant sense of the term. Nothing has changed to support the notion that we are in practice allied with Saudi Arabia.
it is very important to note that:
1) the United States acknowledges alliance with Saudi Arabia
and
2) 15 or 19 terrorists responsible for 9/11 were citizens of Saudi Arabia
This fact can probably be explained without resort to anything especially bizarre. Ordinarily when we make an alliance it conveys an intent to become an ally in practice. We ordinarily do not ally with an intent to escalate violence. The reasons for this are very many and very obvious (outside a context of mutually assured destruction).
Anyway... There is every reason to believe the situation relating many Western nations to the specific elements of the Middle East has in fact degraded. It is difficult to see how, if we are "allies" we can both remain allied and yet in specific cases see an escalation of divisive violence. This appears to be a major sociological obstacle to ability to reason about the situation.
Ultimately, Islam seems to take precedence over political ties of other sorts. This seems to be the mindset. Since in some theory of mind we can only be allies with other peoples practicing Islam there is a difficulty. If this sort of fact is at the top of the hierarchy where psychological or sociological processing is concerned--in this case there is a problem. "They" seem to be subjugating a variety of factors: political, racial, and libertarian to a specifically religious sociological hierarchy. The fact that this hierarchy does not function correctly in almost every important way is in stark contrast with its "impressive success" as a form of psychology or sociology.
I think the problem with "Islam" has become a metaphysical problem in an important way. The behavior of certain people suicide bombers for instance is radically bizarre by most reasonable contemporary standards. It is not actually obvious what is happening with the essential rational or conscious properties of people of the Islamic religion. Most other sincere religious practitioners don't have these problems. It is very difficult to separate the problem into something that can be handled sociologically. There are certainly specific nations and cultures where problems exist (for instance North Korea seems to be a current instability). But at least regarding other religions: Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism (and perhaps to some extent Hinduism--not for instance Sikhs) we simply don't see similar sociological problems appear with such ubiquity.
In the days of the pyramids of the Southern hemisphere (thousands of years ago), we did see problems of this nature... And there are still some problems of course in the Southern hemisphere. Ultimately, however, with the possible exception of Kim Jong Un the exact difficulties of Islam are not present. There certainly seems to be good fortune with Christianity, Buddhism and Judaism in most places and among sincere practitioners. Hinduism does represent its own scale of problems, and it seems to be not-coincidental that there is the relation that exists between Hinduism and Islam. Unfortunately religion often falls under its own heading and there is "as ever" some confusion about Hinduism is in particular. Finally we should notice that it is usually Islam (and in and around Islam) where these problems happen most frequently--peculiarly in the West.
We could make some bold-faced claims about the Pyramids and religions relating to the Pyramids, but there doesn't seem to be much rational for discussing the Southern hemisphere as though these religions were actively practiced today. Whatever we believe about this scenario, it seems that Islam is a unique influence among what we usually acknowledge to be the modern world religions. it is reasonable to suppose that Islam is the only world religion that in 2017 holds to the peculiar brand of religion that the 19th and 20th century resisted. In most areas of the present world various psychological fears about "eternal damnation" and so on seem to have largely disappeared. I am not actually sure that adherents of Islam are operating the peculiar sociological ill we associate with fear of damnation.
Islam seems to be unique in its peculiar stance that there is not much reason to fear damnation. This seems "ok" in itself as an exclusive fact. On the other hand, the sort of mass neurosis we rightly relate to Islam--in particular... It seems that there is some commentary to be made regarding the apparent moral advances of the 19th and 20th century--which in fact surely exist. And, the various movements of the 20th century specifically against the theory of damnation. Since this seems to be a sort of bizarre inversion of that problem it is confusing. We can see the Christian religion is not on a crusade and that likewise the Japanese are not on a crusade against Pearl Harbor. These are specific facts about the temporal present. It is probably remarkable that Islam is still crusading "against the damned" (or "doctrines" of damnation).
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EPT
