We Are ALL Charlie !

May be you've read my Facebook post HERE yesterday about the gruesome killings in Paris of almost all the highly talented cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo, France most famous satyrical weekly newspaper. The terrorist attack has put not only France but the whole Europe and a big part of the rest of the world under shock and i think we can say that, just like after 9 / 11, there will be a before and after the brutal murders of the Charlie Hebdo artists.

And the reason why is because here it's something sacred for all of us, reasonable peoples living on this planet, which has been attacked: the freedom of speech in its larger dimension and if it was not clear yet yesterday's terrorist made all of us understood that it's not a war against islam but against fascism, in this case a radical islamist fascism. Closer to obscurantism, though, because as someone said yesterday "killing twelve people for a guy who died 1600 years ago, you have to be insane". It's indeed a question of insanity and even more psychosis, but i'd like to take a minute or two to answer to a question that probably you'd like to have the answer, i.e what can lead someone to do such monstrosity?

As usual the answer can be find in the books of the great Jiddu Krishnamurti, one the most brilliant minds of 20th century and for whom one week of national mourning was declared in India when he died at 90 in 1986. As i used to say, all answers about why the world is going mad are in Krishnamurti's books. He spent his life to the study of mind, how the thought is working, and explaining why no one should follow any guru, and i can't recommend enough to discover his writings - "The Awakening of Intelligence" in english HERE or in french HERE being a good one to start with.

So, why do i introduce Krishnamurti in all this? Because he explains something essential which is that the brain needs an order to have the thought working properly. And for this it is ready to take anything which includes an "order", whether it is a religion - any religion includes an "order" because  there is a start, an history, a way to behave, rules of living, etc... or it can be any kind of ideology, the late communism being a good example of an ideology including an "order". Now, let's get back to the radical islamists and why they can kill 12 people just because they felt offended by Charlie Hebdo's artists cartoons. Crimes under the name of religion happened all along centuries, so there dis nothing really new, and right now it's radical islamists who are in the foreground but what you need to understand is that the reason why they can't accept anyone having fun of their prophet is precisely because it unconsciously they feel it attacks their own "order". Most of us have enough humor and we wouldn't feel in danger in a similar situation, even if eventually we wouldn't be happy if someone was having fun of someone we love, but we wouldn't kill anyone for that, right? The radical islamists does and i think it's because they can't accept that the order on which is based their life is being put in jeopardy. The fact is that it is NOT being put in jeopardy by cartoons - as "sacrilege" they can be - but for people for whom the only think they have in their life is their religious beliefs then they can think this way and if you add on all this a pinch of fanaticism and psychosis the cocktail becomes highly explosive. Don't get me wrong, i'm not trying to excuse their abominable killings, i'm just trying to explain all this madness.

Yesterday, hundred of thousand of people were in the streets of Europe major cities with the above sign "We are all Charlie" and today was declared a day of national mourning in France. One minute of silence happened everywhere in France and in most European countries, including at Disneyland Paris as you will see in the video below filmed by our friends of the DCP forum. Dozens of European artists have also paid tribute to Charlie Hebdo's artists and i've posted a selection of them on the D&M Facebook HERE.




Video: copyright Disney Central Plaza