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What Makes a Terrorist, What 'Cures' a Terrorist?
[cite] Lynn Cornish:[/cite]
1)I'm not looking for power. Tell me: what does power mean to you? I feel pretty powerless over most things; no, I should say: I AM powerless over most things.
2)You are not persuading me or dissuading me and I trust I am not you either. This is just a friendly exchange of ideas, right? If I'm completely misunderstanding you, please forgive me.
3)I too gravitate towards what sounds true to me. Our sound-true's are quite different, huh? So that's interesting.
1) I believe you because you said it.
PS: power to me is "being" and mastering your own "being". Jesus said: "be" ye, therefore, perfect. Not "do" perfect; "be" perfect. Being exists only in language. I have experienced my own being shifting by my word alone. Oh, what it would be to master my speaking and therefore master who I am being.
2) I didn't mean to say I thought I was persuading or dissuading you; it was actually my way of saying that I was not trying to do either. Yep. Friendly.
3) Well, truth is relative.
Paradigm = Point-of-View
Think of a person standing in front of and facing an elephant and another standing behind of and facing the same elephant. The elephant paradigm of the two people is quite different even though they are looking at the same thing.
This is why I say truth is relative. It is not that it is. It just appears that way to you and me, or at least, we could never say for sure one way or the other. We could walk around the elephant and see it from all points of view but ideas are not that way. They are much harder to view from all possible points of view.
Comments
We all inherit varying degrees of social responsiveness which determines our ability to feel group identity. While most people are able to feel enough of this connection in civilization, others need a smaller scale and more intimate tribal setting than civilizations offer. Besides this, ideology regardless of its name, plays a fundamental role in fulfilling this need and in rationalizing any ensuing actions. The simple back and white ideologies are the most effective, whether they are Nazi, Communist, Christian, Islamic, or Jewish, etc.
Other ideologies, like Buddhism, offer less suitable rationalizations. They are more introspective; there is no evil villain out there role - no 'capitalist pigs', 'inferior races', 'infidels', 'devils', 'unsaved sinners'... etc. Ah, but nevertheless, people in Buddhist cultures still find a rationalization to kill when they need one.
Truly, the emotion comes first, then we grasp whatever ideology or simple rationalized excuse to support it. Yet, many blame the ideology - religious ones being a favorite. Why? We seem to instinctively take life at face value, for one thing. But I digress. Emotion is key. Our tribal biology hungers for social connection - sports, family, government, religion, business, education, etc., all play themselves out in a tribal context. (Sure, a suit and tie looks difference than the tattoos of an African tribe's man, but,...)
Young people who do not feel an 'appropriate civilized' sense of tribal connection are the willing recruits for charismatic megalomaniacs of every stripe. The process is the same, only the surface rationalizations vary. Simply put, hooliganism is a symptom of tribal disaffection from civilization.
Thus, the remedy for terrorism, and related 'gang' activity of all types, is [chref=70]easy[/chref]. These atavistic behaviors will disappear the instant people have a sufficiently intimate connection with each others. Mmmm... it is a little hard figuring out how to [chref=78]put this knowledge into practice[/chref], eh? How shall we begin this [chref=64]journey[/chref]? After all, civilization causes this sense of disconnection, and we're not going to dump civilization. Although, it wouldn't hurt to [chref=80]reduce the size and population of the state.[/chref] In any case, as Buddha suggested, Right Understanding is a fine place to start. And one day [chref=17]the people will all say, 'It happened to us naturally.'[/chref]