Suicide Bombers

I don’t think we in the West understand the motivations of a suicide bomber.
There was another explosion in Kabul today, one in the latest string of violence. Afghanistan the centre of attention again, if only for a few moments. We’ve gotten distracted by the conflict in Iraq, the threat of Iran, the attacks in Palestine. Tensions are rising in the East: Afghanistan, Pakistan. We hardly notice it.
But I stray from my point. We as a society do not comprehend the oppression, the hopelessness, that would make someone strap on explosives and blow him- or herself up. We are perfectly willing to go to war. We are perfectly willing to risk our lives for others, or for a cause. But we would not willingly die for the cause, nor for other people.
One of the great moral dilemmas which gets tossed around psychology circles is the lifeboat dilemma. You are on a ship in the middle of the ocean. It sinks in a storm. You end up in a four-person lifeboat with four other people: an elderly man, a young child and his or her mother, Bill Gates, and yourself. It becomes apparent that the lifeboat cannot hold all five of you – one of you must be tossed out of the boat, or you will all die. Sharks swim all around, hungry for their next meal. Who should be thrown overboard?
It’s interesting that people rarely (if ever) nominate themselves. We are generally unwilling to deliberately die, even to preserve another’s life. And so we do not understand why anyone else would.
I’m not condoning suicide bombers. Far from it – whatever good they might try to do with their resistance is negated by the scores of other lives they take down with them. I’m simply saying, we do not understand. We have not tried, and we do not understand. We cannot pass judgement. We cannot scoff at their stupidity. We must first understand.