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Tuesday, March 08, 2005
"I am Shiva, destroyer of worlds."
Instapundit has a look at the question of whether terrorists, with their propensity for destruction and inability to build anything are like Shiva.
However, the quote above that is at the base of the whole thing goes with Shiva and then J. Robert Oppenheimer. I don't know much about Shiva, but Oppenheimer was a massively creative individual, one of the first to perceive the inner workings of our world, and he was astonished and terrified by the forces he'd found himself able to command.
As Glenn says, "It all depends on what, and why."
I think a modern day Shiva would be the goddess of undertakers, civil engineers and garbagemen, methodically clearing away the physical detritus of the past in order to make room for the detritus of the future. Very useful, that. We'd be in a helluva mess without it.
The Islamists best analogue is found in a much more recent cosmology, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. For those who don't remember, the people of Krikkit, on first experiencing contact with the outside world, were first appalled, then frightened, then angered that an outside world had the temerity to exist, and lest it challenge their worldview, they decided to destroy it. Fits the Islamists to a tee.
posted by gbarto at 10:27 AM
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