It’s as Insane as It Looks
Most of us, after we have recovered from the initial shock and horror of a suicide bombing such as the recent atrocity in Manchester, ponder the mystery of the suicide bomber. What could be the motivation for something so horrific? Here is a person who commits an act that he knows 99.9% of humanity will consider monstrous. It is an act done for a cause which any rational person will conclude is doomed—if by “cause” we mean the creation of a worldwide caliphate ruled by psychopaths such as the leaders of the Islamic State.
It’s irrational, and a lot more irrational than the common wisdom supposes. We generally conceive of the suicide bomber as a self-identified martyr—s/he is not crazed any more than the first wave of soldiers to hit Omaha Beach on D-Day.
Are suicide bombers “sane?” Some say that self-destructive zealots are sane if their acts are based on a belief system made legitimate by authorities who purport to translate the Mind of God.
Noam Shpancer in Psychology Today (September 2010) makes the case for the “sanity” of suicide bombers—if there’s a psychological illness, he appears to say, it’s not the bomber’s, it’s that of the society to which the bomber belongs.
I beg to differ. I have some personal experience: in certain dark times of my life I have moved toward suicide, and in my case the thought process, as viewed by an outside observer, was clearly out of touch with reality.* A suicidal mindset has little to do with reason and everything to do with emotion. . . and not simply emotion, but a particular set of emotions that add up to, if one can apply a single word to it, despair.
Despair is a place of no hope for escape from feelings of worthlessness, helplessness, powerlessness, purposelessness, and disconnection from other people. Hope is reduced to ashes. Purpose is reduced to ending it all. At its center is a sense of emptiness, a feeling that some outside stress may collapse you like a paper cup. You are at the brink of an abyss, but the abyss is as much inside as outside yourself.
The brink of the abyss, I believe, is the starting point for most if not all suicide bombers. These are people who, wandering in the darkness of the soul, perceive a spark of purpose, that grows brighter as they approach. It’s a purpose rooted in a belief in a vengeful God whose adherents are violently to bring about faith and justice in a world pervaded by faithlessness and injustice—perhaps the sort of injustice that has brought one’s own fortunes so low. An ideology of violence offers a convenient path to power, since destruction is so much easier than construction. Moreover, to engage in the holy mission is to join a group of like-minded souls, all dedicated to creating their conception of a better world. Connection with others becomes combined with an overarching purpose. Edicts take the place of thought, rational thought being a resource much diminished by depression. The spark, fanned by ruthless leaders, grows into the flame of fanaticism.
Add together a sense of purpose, a sense of power, and a sense of connection with a like-minded group, and you have a formula to counter despair. Hope.
From Fanaticism to Terror, and the Martyrdom Loophole
The suicidal mindset, with its feelings of emptiness, is a receptive vessel into which fanaticism easily flows. Plans for destruction are conceived as signs of devotion, in the religious view purveyed by cult leaders—ways to become closer to God. In the secular view they are signs of nihilism, the abyss into which the suicidal mind has often gazed. Fanaticism joined with nihilism becomes a deadly brew.
We have to distinguish between the suicide bomber and other fanatics engaged in acts of terror. The others’ rage is directed outward, their instincts for self-preservation are intact, and they have some hope, however slim, of surviving attacks. The suicide, instead, brings to the movement a hope to escape a world of emotional pain integral to their very being. It is violence directed inward as much as outward.
An article in Scientific American by Adam Lankford (July 2015) somewhat confirms my intuition on depression at the root of a suicide bomber’s motivation. For example, preemptively arrested suicide bombers showed “suicidal tendencies, depressive tendencies, and previous (non-terrorist) suicide attempts.”
Suicide Bombing and Depression
Adam Lankford went a step further to explain how martyrdom has become a “loophole” in Islamic faith that seems to elude the religion’s prohibitions against conventional suicide. “It is the only way Islamic suicide attackers believe they can guarantee their own death, and yet go to heaven instead of hell.”
We might call this sort of twisted logic disordered thinking, one hallmark of mental illness. Here, not just any disordered thinking, but thinking rooted in a desperate desire to believe in something that offers certitude: an anchor in a sea of unstable emotions within, uncontrolled events without.
The path the suicide bomber takes begins with despair and ends with conviction. Ideology so extreme poses a path of certitude in an uncertain and threatening world. Such a simple goal: to fulfill a holy purpose, kill the infidels by whatever means possible to include one’s own immolation.
Parallels with Non-Religious Mass Killers, and the case for more attention paid to mental illness
I don’t mean to minimize the depravity of a perverse ideology of hate and violence represented by such cults as the “Islamic State.” But the suicide bomber’s mentality, so contrary to natural instinct, elicits a special horror. That it is so bound up with a religion that is ostensibly peaceful makes it all the more horrifying.
Atrocities by non-religious mass killers, such as those so often perpetrated by gunmen in the U.S., are more clearly manifestations of mental illness. They are most often associated with depression and social alienation. Often there are signs unnoticed or minimized by others until it is too late. It is no accident that most of them either kill themselves, or expose themselves to almost certain “suicide by cop.” They are suicides first and mass killers second. In most cases, there is no accompanying ideology, and no alliance with members of a cult. This is evil without a cause, pure nihilism. They know that no one will celebrate their acts as martyrdom.
The National Rifle Association correctly attributes most of these mass murders to mental illness. What they don’t say is that the wide availability of firearms makes mentally ill people an order of magnitude more dangerous than those who attack with knives or clubs.
Mental illness is a scourge which damages all of us in many ways, most of them below a public radar attuned to sensationally destructive acts. The mentally ill, even those afflicted with the “milder” case of chronic depression, represent a loss to society more than they do a threat. Despite the romanticization of depression as a driver of creativity within brooding geniuses, most creative people are more productive when they are not depressed. As for not-so-creative people suffering from depression, depression is a black hole that drains not only their energy, but that of those around them.
I hadn’t meant, when I began this post, to use suicide bombers as poster children for the importance of mental illness. But the deeper I got into it, the more associations swam up from the darkness. I’m not saying that improving mental health awareness and care is going to stop the next suicide bomber, but if it stops even one suicide bomber in the next ten years, it would mean not only the saving of dozens of lives, it also would mean that we have made progress on other mental health fronts. That’s something that would make us all happier and productive. It’s worth a try.
* I do not consider irrational the desire to bring about one’s own death in the case of persons suffering chronic and irremediable physical pain, or complete incapacity to perform meaningful action. It is a rational response to a tragic dilemma, and no one but the sufferer knows the extremity of that tragedy.