, is easily the most radical, yet is relatively unknown.

Most of those who have been exposed to it brush it aside as the delusional ramblings of another French madman.

Leap of faith

And it's true - Baudrillard demands a leap of faith. But so, let's be frank, does any reality we choose to believe in.

Here are three of Baudrillard's key observations on terrorism (massively simplified, of course):

Scotland

Let's look closer to home.

Baudrillard would argue that what we're witnessing in Scotland is another example of the return to singularity - in this case through independence.

Whatever happens over the course of the next week, Scotland will sooner or later get its independence as the system 'resets' and a people reclaims itself.

No
.

Malicious desire

Different singularities operate and resist in different ways.

While Scotland might play the system at its own rules, albeit with "malicious desire", Radical Islam is undermining it through a level of symbolic violence to which a system built on life - liberal capitalism - cannot respond.

This is potlatch where those who make the biggest sacrifice win the day.

And sincethe system cannot respond to the ultimate sacrifice ofsuicide (its own death is the only violence it cannot exert), it is destined to lose.

Return to the tribe

If the phenomenon of terrorism we're witnessing is what Baudrillard believed it to be (he died in 2007), then everything will change.

In the years ahead, the global system built on liberal capitalist values and economics will slowly fallapart.

We will return to a fragmented order made up of singularities, individual cultures and value systems.

We will return to the tribe.