Cnn.com reports that at least 160 people were killed in a retaliotory attack by the Israeli’s against Hamas in Gaza.
Dennis Embry and I published the following several weeks ago in the Eugene Register Guard. We will not put an end to such violence until we make use of behavioral science knowledge about why such exchanges occur.
Prevailing views about the “war” on terror are directly contrary to scientific understanding of human behavior. Human beings who are traumatized by attack become highly motivated to counterattack. Yet government leaders in the U.S. pursue a military strategy that pays little attention to these effects. Scientific understanding of human behavior confirms the bumper sticker that says: “We are making terrorists faster than we can kill them.”
Trauma perturbs the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. As a result, people exposed to stress become hyper-vigilant and prone to attack perceived threats. These reactions occur whether the stress results from a legitimate effort to fight terrorism or from a terrorist attack. They are the result of natural selection; organisms living in a dangerous world were a bit more likely to survive if they were quick to counter-attack. It didn’t matter if some counter-attacks were misplaced, so long as counter-attacking generally contributed to survival.
Yet policy makers are blithely unaware of the seeds we are sowing. It may be that the death of a small child was accidental and unintended when a dangerous terrorists’ headquarters was bombed, but that does not lessen the trauma to those who knew the child–or their tendency to seek revenge.
There are well-understood group processes that channel the fear and rage of traumatized individuals. Social psychologists have shown that groups faced with a threat as trivial as another group building better bird houses become more cohesive and will cooperate to defeat other groups. These processes operate even when group membership consists of simply being of the same race or religion. There is little doubt that thousands of Islamists all over the world have become motivated to attack us as a result of the attacks they have witnessed on their co-religionists.
Our current leaders dismiss this analysis. During the 2004 campaign John Kerry said, “I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side …” Dick Cheney responded, “A sensitive war will not destroy the evil men who killed 3,000 Americans and who seek the chemical, nuclear and biological weapons to kill hundreds of thousands more…”
Such thinking reflects the same behavioral process that occurs among Islamists. After 9/11 many Americans are more motivated to see us attack Islamic people than to build bridges to them.
But we may be able to escape the trajectory of our behavioral inheritance by adopting a scientific pragmatism that asks not whether we—or “they”—are right, but whether we are doing everything we can to minimize the number of people who are motivated to kill us. We may be convinced that our military actions are justified. But as a practical matter whether we are “right,” or “wrong,” has no influence on the impact of our actions.
Recent research on treating post-traumatic stress disorder points to what is needed. Many soldiers remain fearful and on high alert long after leaving combat. Effective treatment involves helping them accept the fear, distress, and suspicion they feel, but become able to see their reactions as reactions, not as the traumatic events they originally experienced. They become able to set a more flexible course through life that cannot erase what has happened, but enables them to move to a more fulfilling life.
In a similar way, citizens of nations that face terrorism can accept that they live in a changed world and that fear and anger toward those who hate us are the natural results of our having been attacked. The link between these feelings and our actions can be tempered by a pragmatic analysis of what will work. The move is not to deny our feelings or to insist that we feel love for those who would kill us. It is rather to accept what we feel as a natural human response and in doing so, recognize that this same response will occur in those on the other side of any conflict.
Committed terrorists certainly won’t be impressed by our sensitivity. But if we are sensitive to the contribution that “collateral” damage makes to terrorist recruitment, we will minimize such damage and reduce the number of those who are willing to join the terrorist movement.
Great Blog idea Tony. Gives new definition to Positive Psychology. Each of us has the responsibility to minimize our own toxicity. Eliminate stress in your life, and well being will follow.