[Syria / Damascus] - The Ideological Self Kills for a Phantom of Absolute Truth

Event Baseline: Two Syrian security officers were killed and five suspected ISIL fighters were killed with six arrested in a raid on an ISIL cell near Damascus, according to the Syrian Interior Ministry.

ISIL is not a group. It is a program of belief. The program says its version of the divine is the only real. It must erase all other versions. The Syrian state has its own program. It says its sovereignty is the only real. It must erase the challenger. Both programs run on the same hardware: the self that needs to be right. The raid is a collision of two absolutes. Neither can see the other as human.

The victims and the killers are both trapped in the illusion of identity. The ISIL fighter believes he martyrs himself for God. The Syrian officer believes he defends the nation. Both beliefs are mechanical. They are inherited scripts, not perceptions. The script demands that the other be killed. It leaves no room for awareness without choice. This is not a conflict of geography. It is a failure of thought to see its own fragmentation. The only way out is to see the belief as a mental prison, not a truth. Until then, the blood continues.