Having a BA in psychology qualifies me to make extraordinary pronouncements about people's state of mind, whether I know them or not. And I'm sure that scattered among the journalists and analysts covering the Boston bombing are other psych majors who feel the same way. It's kind of depressing to see the storylines developing before anyone really has a full picture, and I am constantly on guard about being set up with a neat explanation.
The prevailing winds carry the tale of a nice college boy, corrupted by a fancy-dressing (Horrors! Americans hate it when people get dressed up!), possibly radicalized older brother. Here's the thing that concerns me. People are very good at associative thinking, and thus are prone to confusing correlation with causation. My dog is good at associative thinking too, and it's clearly disappointing to her that every time I put my shoes on it does not mean I am taking her for a walk. Yet she perks up visibly whenever I do so.
I won't feel like I know anything until I start hearing about motivations. I'm a great believer in humans' rationality (emotional outbursts notwithstanding). Even if their assumptions are completely wrong, people tend to do what they do for a reason, and my observation over the years is that even the most horrible people do what they do, not for the sake of doing evil, but because they want something. Bin Laden thought that American bases in Saudi Arabia were blasphemous, and wanted his country purified. Delusional, of course, and with reactions taken to immoral extremes. But he didn't do evil for its own sake; it was done for the purpose of advancing a cause.
So I'll need to know a whole lot more before I reach any opinions on this whole thing. Yeah, we know something about the means, but how about the ends?
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