No Ordinary Violence By Sam Harris Summary

In “No Ordinary Violence,” Sam Harris states possible reasons for violent human behavior. Many may believe people like this only have one ulterior motive. However, Sam Harris shows there are actually a few different reasons for extreme human violence. Besides explaining different types of violent people, he also touches on why they may be doing what they’re doing, as well as the brave story of Malala Yousafzai.

At the beginning of this post, Sam Harris explains four different types of violent people and their possible motives. The first type of people are “those who are suffering from some form of mental illness that causes them to think and act irrationally,” (No Ordinary) which is not their fault at all, but it is likely for an unstable person to obtain weapons of this caliber. He explains that because of their illness, not everything they do or say will make sense, and if they are allowed access to guns or explosives, the result may be deadly.

The second type of people to be described is the evil psychopaths, and these people are not ill. However, they are “malignantly selfish, ruthless, and prone to violence,”

(No Ordinary) and will harm others when given the opportunity to. Harris states that the reason for our fear of these first two descriptions is not because of any social variable, but because it is simply who they are. Sam Harris then goes on to show that these kinds of people could actually have control over an entire country, like Kim Jong-Il over North Korea.
The last two types of people are those believing they are doing the right thing and lastly, those driven by ideology. For those falling in the first category, they aren’t insane or ill, “they are just part of a system in which the negative consequences of ordinary selfishness and fear can become horribly magnified,” (No Ordinary) which is actually the case for quite a few people. Sam Harris uses the examples of soldiers in combat when the reason for fighting is unjust. As for the second and final category, those certain people are driven by a certain kind of ideology. Now, whether that specific ideology is political, religious or both, is another story.
Finally Sam Harris touches on the story of Malala Yousafzai.

Long story short, Malala felt that women should have the right to an education. When the Taliban caught word of her views, they planned to kill her. On her way to school, a Taliban gunman shot her with the intent to murder her, while she was on the bus to school. She was shot on the top left side of her forehead, but miraculously survived. She now goes to a boarding school in Birmingham and openly speaks out about educational rights and the current politics in Pakistan. In addition to this, she was also nominated for a Nobel Prize, but didn’t win. Harris feels “she absolutely deserved it… but this recognition would have made her security concerns even more excruciating than they probably are already,” (No Ordinary) so in the long run, it may not have been a bad thing for her to have

lost.