Powerlessness vs. Passionlessness: North "meets" South at the Wtc

Developments leading to the attack on the WTC and the ensuing war on terrorism are discussed– a matter of "north meets south" rather than "east meets west". Passionlessness, as a new type of alienation characterizing both secularized information society and the dispassionate way the "war on terror" is waged, is contrasted with the certainly passionate and religion-driven extremism behind al-Qaeda and similar organizations. This extremism finds its roots a.o. in third world powerlessness, caused by the ongoing capitalist exploitation of a supposedly powerful and certainly exploitative "first world", a lack of education producing an overly simplistic image of a rapidly complexifying environment that cannot be explained anymore by religions from an agrarian era, and the economic deprivation which more than offsets the effects of development aid. This passion of the powerless, which also fueled revolutions (1789,1917) in earlier developmental stages of the western world but has now become virtually extinct there, can indeed be contrasted with the power of the passionless: just compare the faces of bin Laden and Rumsfeld! Many in the Western welfare states romantically idealize this passion, secretly admired and envied as something heroic lost in the race towards hypermodernity. However, such a passion correlates with powerlessness, lack of environment mastery, pre-industrial religions, and conditions of ignorance. In the 21st century, revolutionary passion and its correlates are on their way out – the price one has to pay for economic and technological progress in an admittedly colder but more interdependent world.