There’s been a good deal of hand-wringing in western society over why so many young people are joining the radical Islamic group ISIS, a group which exemplifies the opposite of every value our society holds dear.
While there are probably many reasons for this, I have to wonder if one can be found in something a college student said a few years ago when my wife Lori and I were helping teach a rural issues seminar at UNL. This architectural student made the assertion that the only value of any design – architectural or otherwise — lies in its ability to shock people. This, he explained, is because people are so inundated with new art, music and ideas that nothing stands out except things that shock. And the only way to shock is to be, well, awful to look at or listen to or read.
And while I disagree with him, I do see where he was coming from. We are drowning in a sea of information, and not just on the Internet. There is advertising of one sort or another everywhere. The livelihood of the people promoting themselves or their businesses depends on standing out from the crowd. And while ideally they would stand out for the superior quality of their product or service, it’s old news that there’s no such things as bad publicity. Sometimes it’s better to get noticed – even for something bad – than not to be noticed at all.
It can be difficult, after all, to market to everyone. Individual taste plays a major role in our purchases, and tastes differ. Since marketers can’t please every taste, they either have to focus on pleasing one group, or, as the aspiring architect maintained, do something that everyone finds shocking. And in some situations this second approach does seem to work.
Remember back in the 80s when the National Endowment for the Arts funded “art” that consisted of religious icons adorned with excrement? I’d guess that most of the other projects being funded at that time were a lot more artistic. But who remembers what any of those were?
The same is true of celebrities – once their notoriety begins to wane they often resort to bad behavior just to keep their name in the news. Miley Cyrus seems to have carried this the farthest with her unabashed “twerking” but it’s only a matter of time until somebody does something even more outrageous – only to be rewarded with an extra measure of fame.
The need to shock is clearly a big part of radical Islam. Crashing planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were great ways of getting attention. Today ISIS is striving to outdo even al Qaeda by selling girls into sexual slavery, beheading anyone and everyone they can and destroying irreplaceable ancient works of art – with every depredation duly posted to the Internet.
Why? Because there’s seemingly no quicker way to get attention today than to shock. And just like the college student, there are many young people who believe this. Some will do anything to get their 15 minutes of fame.
Acts of violence shock anyone who has a decent set of values. But when all one values is shock – because that’s what our culture rewards with attention – is it any wonder when seemingly normal young people are attracted to groups like ISIS? And so long as shock remains the best way to “sell” in today’s overstimulated world, there’s apt to be no end soon to this increasingly deranged behavior.