Because people as a rule learn to ignore many of their own religious beliefs in order to function; they believe them, but they don’t follow them in many ways. In order to function normally people can’t treat religion seriously, or they start doing crazy things - like blow themselves up. A lack of concern for your or other’s lives is a logical consequence of belief in an afterlife, after all; and you’ll note that while people say they believe in one, most don’t act like it. Very few people treat their own lives as disposable, for example, despite believing that they’ll go to heaven. Very few people just shrug their shoulders when a loved one dies and say “No big deal; I’ll meet them in heaven in a few years. What’s for lunch ?”
The distinction I was making was more that as an insurgent, exchanging gunfire with opposing soldiers and enduring the gruelling conditions of warfare takes a certain amount of bravery in itself, while if one is truly convinced they are a martyr on the express route to bliss at the touch of a button, maybe it just takes a single moment of immense delusion.
If someone was placed in front of a door which led to the ‘Thunderdome’ in Mad Max 3, where from I believe only one man leaves, but was informed to their satisfaction that in fact through the door lay a harem of willing virgins, would they be brave rushing in?
Of course it’s not heresy.
You can be gutsy, brave, self-sacrificing etc and still be a murdering lunatic if you believe in the rightness of your cause.
Whether the term applies to those who think they are martyrs is open to debate though.
Exchanging a split second of agony for eternal bliss and a whole heap of ex-virgins in training though - maybe not.
I think if you have such a high level of fanatacism for what is quite honestly an evil,not misguided,cause then you are not genuinlly sane in the true meaning of the word so you cannot be brave in the true sense of the word either.
When people start giving even grudging praise for these peoples actions then you encourage other misguided or impressionable people to join their cause .
These people are the lowest form of scum ,are not brave ,do not have a valid point,it is not understandable why they feel they have to do theses things ,they pervert their own religion and if their religion is actually the word of god (I wouldn’t know Im an agnostic )then they not only dont go to paradise but instead go to Islamic hell.
I have to agree with this. They are CRAZY…and therefore not capable of being brave. It takes some connection to reality to achieve bravery.
It’s not to the dead guy, so he/she is still sacrificing themselves for an “intangible” reason.
To the op:
I don’t consider them brave, just ignorant. If my brother goes into a room and hangs himself, I wouldn’t call him brave. if the terrorist had just gone out to the desert and blown himself up, all alone, would you still think him brave? People are brave who put themselves in situations where dieing is strong possibility, but not a certainty, and they do it anyway. Firemen and Police are brave.
It doesn’t take bravery to die, it takes bravery to live even if you do think the "world’ is against you.
That is just stupid. You are unwilling to consider an opposing view because you don’t like potential consequences of that view regardless of its own merits.
There was a thread about people who think this way a while back that was summed up by one poster who taught high school students. The reasoning his students used was, “If A then that would suck, therefore not A”.
No matter how bad people are, they still likely have some good qualities. Hitler was an excellent public speaker for example. He used this trait for terrible ends, but the ability itself is good. People who commit evil deeds can be brave while they do them. Heck, I bet some of the hijackers were very nice to their mothers.
Dob, sometimes even suicide requires some bravery. Entering the vast unknown is not easy and some people who attempt it chicken out part way through.
The amount of bravery required for something instantaneous like putting a gun to your head of blowing yourself up does seem to be a good bit less than that needed for something like hijacking a plane, and that is much less than that needed to fight for your cause when you place higher value on your own life.
Was the Virginia Tech killer brave? Were the Columbine killers brave?
The similarity between suicide attacks and these spree murders are obvious. The murderers don’t care about their lives, they plan to die and take as many other people with them as possible. So was Cho brave when he massacred 30 people and then took his own life? It wouldn’t be much different if Cho had flown a plane full of passengers into a building at Virginia Tech, would it? So if the 9/11 attackers were brave, why isn’t Cho brave?
Concur.
We generally do acknowledge bravery on the part of those who openly fight us, even if we hate their cause; look at most American portrayals of Indian warriors, combat soldiers in the US Civil War, Germans in WWI & WWII, and so forth.
We do not generally acknowledge bravery in criminals. No one says “the brave pedophile contacted his prey even knowing the FBI sting was searching for him.” Or “Cho courageously faced his own death after murdering 31 students.”
People who are unwilling to hear the 9/11 hijackers described as “brave” are probably (even if unconsciously) thinking of 9/11 in terms of “crime” instead of “war.” They’re probably right to do so.
edit: I see that Lemur also brings up Cho. Heh.
Sailboat
Could you tone it down with the logic ? 
Sadly what you are saying makes a lot of sense. The only reason I can come up with as to why he’s not , or the hijackers or anyone else who kills in such a wholesale nonchalant manor is really more like my opinion. They are chickenshits . Killing by my way of thinking should be kept up close and personal, manually if at all possible. If all killing were done like this there would be a whole lot less of it going on.
I don’t know what the “true” meaning of the word sane is, but if you are willing to argue that these folks are not sane, would you then be okay with putting them in a mental institution instead of a prison? You really can’t have it both ways.
Wait, I’m not clear on this: are you saying that we should lie or endorse lying about something? That really seems to be what you are advocating: because these people are the enemy, we must have 100% propaganda, and never even hint that they have qualities we associate with good things.
I would guess that most people in the world believe in an afterlife (I don’t, but I’m in a minority). So unless you’re arguing that the concept of bravery is largely non-existant, I don’t find your argument particularly compelling.
I think while most people believe in an afterlife, that belief is for the vast majority so at odds with daily life and human emotion that it doesn’t really percolate down. That’s why most people are upset when a loved one dies rather than truly celebratory, and why even those that say they know they are on a way to a better place still fear death rather than welcome it like winning the lottery, as would be rational given most afterlife beliefs in which a happy afterlife is considered likely and common.
Apos, I’d say that’s true for virtually everyone. I don’t think belief in heaven would completely defeat fear of death in anyone except perhaps a true psychopath.
No, as I said earlier, people learn not to take many or most of their religious beliefs seriously; they believe, often with great fervency, but they ignore those beliefs when it comes to decision making. They believe, but do not act on those beliefs much of the time; this is necessary if you want to keep religion and a functioning modern society at the same time.
I dunno: I’ve met some Buddhists who really and truly did not seem to be afraid of death, even unto and through their own deaths. Of course they didn’t really believe in an afterlife as we understand it anyway.
Of course, we’re sort of agreeing: the point is that beliefs, no matter how strongly we hold them, often still just aren’t as powerful as primal instincts or fears. And that’s exactly why I think it could be perfectly legitimate to describe a bomber as brave.
You’re becoming confused by the issue raised by MrDibble et al. above.
There is a semantic distinction to be made between noble and ignoble bravery, and there is a legitimate argument about whether or not use of the word “bravery,” in and of itself, connotes a positive judgement. If “bravery” simply means “choosing to risk one’s life because one believes the objective is worthwhile,” then absolutely the 9/11 hijackers are brave. If you adhere to a different definition, one where judgement of the action is placed outside the actor, to wit, “choosing to risk one’s life in pursuit of a worthwhile objective,” then the waters become considerably muddier. Who decides the objective is worthwhile? You? All of us in a vote?
The problem with the term “bravery” is these associations, as was being calmly discussed until you blundered in here with your clumsy overgeneralizations. Whether or not the word “bravery” does, in fact, connote praise is, in fact, the subject under discussion. You do not get to dismiss the basic question by fiat.
If you prefer the second definition, “choosing to risk one’s life in pursuit of a worthwhile objective,” then you introduce arguments about the worthiness of the objective. Certain people thought the 9/11 attacks were indeed worthwhile, and would therefore consider the hijackers brave. I do not believe the 9/11 attacks were good or worthwhile, and therefore according to this definition I cannot consider the hijackers brave.
If you prefer the first definition, “choosing to risk one’s life because one believes the objective is worthwhile,” then all you need to consider is the actor’s intent. The 9/11 hijackers clearly thought they were doing something important, and did something difficult, dangerous, and ultimately fatal in pursuit of it. By this definition, they are indeed brave. What anyone else thinks of their action is immaterial.
Note that if one accepts this as the basic quandary, then the Virginia Tech shooter probably shouldn’t be considered brave, because he didn’t really have an objective that can be judged in this way. He wasn’t shooting people because he thought they were space aliens possessing human bodies, or because they were Communist infiltrators, or in service to any other purpose. He shot them to shoot them, period. It was a fundamentally irrational act.
The 9/11 hijackers, by contrast, knew what they were doing. They discussed it, they planned it, they rehearsed it, and they carried it out, in coordination with many others, as one aspect of a larger strategy. The two situations simply cannot be compared.
The basic debate, here, it seems to me, is which of the two definitions of “bravery” should govern.
If you prefer the first, then only the actor’s intent can be considered.
If you prefer the second, then you introduce the requirement of a secondary argument about whether the acts and/or objective is worthwhile. In this context, some people can consider a given act brave while others may not.
Or, to remove some of the immediate emotional context:
Were the Japanese pilots who attacked Pearl Harbor brave?
Missed the editing window. Meant to add:
I don’t know that I can go along with “foolhardy” as a substitute. That, to me, connotes an action that has little or no chance of success.
The 9/11 hijackers were not foolhardy; they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, in the specific operation and in the larger objective, which is to say, agitating the superpower and getting it to lash out blindly and stupidly against the wider world, thus producing isolation and weakness.
Somebody who jumps into the polar bear cage at the zoo, armed only with a staple gun… now, that’s foolhardy.
Cervaise, I note and accept that objection - anyone have a better candidate?
I’d say we can easily list ones that don’t apply - “plucky”, “gumption”, these apply approval.
We want some sort of pithy word that means “very grudging acknowledgment of courage”
I’d withhold the label “brave” not out of outrage or moral evaluation but just because it doesn’t fit. As I understand it, bravery is an act of risking something highly valued in order to accomplish a necessary goal. It need not be life-or-death; one could bravely risk his reputation to support a political cause, even though his life is not in jeopardy. One could bravely go all-in at the poker table, risking only money. The key is that something valued is put in jeopardy, not for the hell of it, but for a chance at accomplishing a more important goal.
I don’t get the impression that suicide hijackers or suicide bombers sufficiently value their own lives to make giving them up (indeed, throwing them away) an act of bravery. It’s like the man who risks his reputation but honestly doesn’t care what people think, or the guy going all-in is playing with valueless matchsticks at stake. This life is meaningless, they are told, and a much better situation awaits them in the afterlife. The suicide isn’t an act of bravery; it’s simply trading up.
If you want to call them brave, be my guest. I simply disagree, or at best content that applying such a label reduces “brave” from being a noble virtue to just being something someone does when they don’t care one way or the other.