It’s serious — but not how you think

A reflection of a proud Munich resident. No politics. No fear. Just truth.
992 terroristic incidents* worldwide in 2016; now three in Germany from Monday to Sunday, and the amok run of Munich.

All (terroristic) attacks executed by different people, different nationalities, and different religions. Yet, I question if they're done for different underlying reasons. I'm so shocked by what happened right in my own neighbourhood, living space and beloved city! But I want to understand and differentiate!

What’s the reason for it, why does it get worse and what can I do about it? What follows is an honest stream of my thoughts on the subject at hand, organised into three parts. In essence, this is the result of recent heartfelt reflections. I don't force any particular political ideology or similar throughout this piece.
Guardian's and Süddeutsche's excellent reporting conclude as follows:

• Würzburg: 17-year old injures five people with an axe in a train.
• Munich: nine people shot and killed, many injured. The 18-year old disillusioned shot himself, bringing the death toll to ten.
• Reutlingen: 21-year old kills one woman with a machete and injures five others.
• Ansbach: 27-year old kills one person with a bomb. At least fifteen people injured.

Now, you might come across statements like these…

“Did you see the video of the terrorist on the rooftop in Munich?”

“Look four in a row, in Bavaria!”

“How can this even happen?”

“…and we must do everything in our power to keep it from our shores.” ~Tweeted by Donald Trump

These statements won’t make things any more positive, but rather worse. I had a conversation with a good friend of mine just two days before the shooting in a Munich “Biergarten”. He explained to me:

“For me, this type of media coverage is useful information because I get an idea of how crazy someone can be.”

I see his point, but as much as I love him, I don`t think his behaviour helps in keeping violence out of this world. I have a different view:

Part 1
Trying to understand consumption of violence

I remember the time I was a teenager and friends of mine shared videos of fights in American neighbourhoods. Or when I saw my first boxing fight and later UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) became a big thing. Every time I saw violence I stared, got tense, felt adrenaline…But I also felt that something was wrong about how we choose to watch violence. One of the founders of UFC once said something interesting about their business model:

If you imagine a gym divided into fours parts. In one corner you see people playing baseball, in the other tennis and in the third football, but in the fourth, you see a fight…Where would you go first?

What does this mean? Violence can be a product for consumption like any other. We stare at it, we upload and share it, we even talk about the details. But, in doing so, we also become desensitised to it and in time fail to respond the right way.
The same happens in my eyes, every time certain media outlets cover news about (terroristic) attacks. They show violence. They talk about the violence. They give us every single detail of it (we can hardly prove if they are true).

But what do all those details matter? What do they really matter? Yes, I understand: I also want to know how many died, but still shouldn’t we show compassion if one died or 300? Does it actually matter if the guy used an axe, a rifle or a gun? Is there any value in watching these videos, if you don`t solve the criminal case behind it?

The truth is, there is no degree of acceptable violence. We must treat all violence the same and we must find out where it comes from and how to tackle the problem.

Part 2
Where does such violence come from?

Why do people decide to take the next step and turn their aggressive thoughts into an act of violence? I can`t fully answer this question, as I think this question is too big for me alone, but here is my try:

There are three things which keep your world together: Peace, family, and belief in love. The first, belief in love works as an energy to achieve the other two. Love can be the transcendental super power, which created everything, in short GOD. The fact that physicists haven´t yet made sense of the world without a transcendent ‘God’ — makes me believe in it too.

Secondly the family is the most important institution we have for creating a secure space to open up and talk about our inner emotions. The family doesn't just mean your biological one, it can also be found elsewhere. It's the group of people you can relate the most to. Family is an honest, true and with love fulfilled bond between other people and you. It`s the strongest tribe we should have and the one everybody should value the most.
So what can I say out of my own experience?

There are people doing acts of violence, not just the cruel ones, but also the little ones because they don't feel love and don`t have a family. But this is not the whole explanation, the problem is actually more complex.
Family and love are dependent on you and your inner-circle's actions. While peace is more dependent on other things and outer circle people.

For peace you need at least three more things:

1. Empathy for other conscious things;
2. A fair and secure environment; and,
3. A commonly shared and trusted value system.

Point 1) Empathy ranks even before family and love in things you can most easily work on from today! A useful thought is the 2:1 ratio in listening to speaking.
We have two ears and one mouth.
Point 2) Income per capita and reduction in poverty improved over the years. But the distribution of wealth and inequality has unfortunately changed for the worse. This situation got even more complex with the continual technological advancements.
And now it gets to the point that people currently address most, but with a wrong angle and intensity…
Point 3) Create a commonly shared and trusted value system: something to believe in! You can find value systems in reading philosophy (hardest), spirituality/meditation (least obvious) or following a religion (easiest). People tend to be lazy animals and take what's there for granted. So we blindly accept the value system we're given without questioning or challenging its foundations. Just a few people in this world take the energy to not just do what`s easiest and attempt to point out a broken status quo.

Status quo: the commonly shared value system is broken!

Bottomline before conclusio: If you don´t have a working value system yourself, religion can be convenient in giving you one and enabling you to belong to a family. Yet, this comes with the price tag of losing your individuality. This is why most westerners no longer like religion. But people who don´t have a functioning family, source of love or a strong drive for self reflection are in high danger of falling into a trap.
Getting disillusioned by people who are able to control others value systems (e.g. religion) and make people do what they want.

Let`s wrap it up: What can I conclude for myself today about the drivers of such violent attacks?

Case A: People act violently because they dont feel love and/or dont have a functioning family.
Please consider yourself lucky at this point that you somehow got to one or both of these elements of true happiness.
Case B: People who can control others value system disillusion people to do what they want. This serves them to gain power and control enemies with tactics the enemy fosters (“consuming the product”).
In short: Terror as a strategy and you help them.

All terroristic attacks mentioned at the start of this article and most or all acts of violence fall into Case A or B for me. Just looking at it, I expect Case A is the bigger one, but most of the time I only hear discussions and opinions of Case B in the media :-(

Part 3
What can I do?

How can case A and B happen? I mean humanity got richer, we established peace in most areas where we killed each other and we made sure everyone has enough to eat, right? So why do we have to suffer from this kind of violence?
Because we stopped caring and fighting for the three elements: Peace, family, and belief in love. Peace seems to be the job of politicians nowadays. While politicians actually perceive their biggest job as trying to get re-elected. The family seems to be of little concern. We rather chase our dreams, careers and most of the time materialistic things.
Ironically, it seems westerners have replaced one religion with another: Christianity with Materialism.

And worst, believing in love seems to become a sell-out, executed by people trying to make money with it in a world following materialism.

This is where things went wrong in my eyes!…BUT how can we stop it?

First: We need to stop consuming the product “violence”! Demand drives supply and producing more violence — doesn’t matter on which side — will not stop this madness!

Second: Stand up, use your maturity (german: “Mündigkeit”) and talk about the stuff that truly happens. Don`t just blame another religion, help by starting a conversation so people gain empathy for each other. So we all can overcome the dark times of being steered wrongly by religion.

Last: We must re-find our inner-self. Build functioning families. Raise our kids with love and the values we share and believe in. And when this is all working in the right direction, our task is to start helping others, who aren’t as lucky as we are. Everyone deserves the same chance for education. Find and create his inner-self, raise his kids, and finally, help others to achieve the same. This is for me the circle of life.

Best
Max
— — —
I`m happy to receive your opinion about my thoughts, but please be respectful and constructive. Everything you read is my own views. Happy to share sources for the article with you, just contact me via Twitter. Thanks for spreading the love and recommending this article!
Edit: Number of terror incidents 2016. I excluded the amok run and differentiate clearly between amok run and terroristic attacks.

PS: You`re the change.

PPS: Your actions matter. Get an idea of what you want to do, plan it, reflect on it, meditate on it and do it.

Thanks for the support: Especially to Julian, Chris (CSRGL) , Juan Vaamonde , Yosuke, Niklas, Amedeo and Biunca, Finn, Dick, Philip, Johannes, Benji Hyam & Eva Fisher (who inspired me to actually start drafting).