Terror, Violence, Instability...Crazy?

Another shocking act of terror, this time, again, in Paris.

The purpose is to be shocking, the purpose is to terrorize. Twenty years ago I remember reading a prediction that this would be what the world would be like.  After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the idea of a lot of "asymmetrical" battles would occur against fanatics.  They would not represent countries, or anything or anyone that a nation could clearly go to war against, just random acts of terror like this, designed to make everyone feel vulnerable, anywhere, any time.

I gave my little talk last week at the Psychological Convention.  My talk was premised on the idea that emotional and psychological problems are very complex, and that their causes are not just psychological, or biological, or familial, or environmental, but all of those things -- all of those things interacting, all the time.

One of the questions I posed to the group was, " Are all suicide bombers crazy?"  No one answered that question and we moved on to the Big Data part of the discussion.

But clearly now, that is a relevant question.  What does it take for someone to decide that it is a viable option to go and kill as many people who have done nothing to him, with the knowledge that he will almost certainly die himself while doing that?

I guess, at some level, they have to feel their cause is that important.  Do they also think their lives have no future, or do they believe that they will be given a greater future in some kind of after-life?
Or do they feel that the resulting infamy and media coverage is enough to have made their lives worth it?

What kind of group pressure, family pressure, religious fervor, does it take?

This kind of behavior is not new.  Countries, empires, city states, have all been able to convince energetic, healthy young men to go charging into battle for centuries, often at the cost of their lives. All for the greater glory of....what?

Even now the U.S.  has its soldiers all over the world, and now we will certainly have more of them, going into battle against these forces of terror.  Battle, often to the death, has been the way of humans for as long as their have been different groups that can oppose each other.  Religiously, it began right at the beginning with Cain and Able.

But now, the world is much more interconnected.  More and more people are beginning to feel that a person living in China or New Zealand, is very similar and just as worthy a soul, as a person living in Ferguson, MO, London, Moscow or Mogadishu.  We read the same internet news, look at the same pictures of kittens, trade with each other, lend each other vast sums of money, and visit each other's countries in numbers that were unheard of fifty years ago.

But, there are still many, probably a majority of people, who feel that their culture, religion, race, subculture, family, is better, and more important than any other.  They feel that anyone, or any slight difference is a threat to their survival, and therefore needs to be destroyed.

It is the struggle between these two world views that is going on now, internationally, and nationally here in the U.S.  It seems to describe the differences between our two major political parties.

In some ways, both of these views are correct.  The world will not be safe until we all learn to understand each other and resolve our differences peacefully.  We now have the knowledge and technology to be able to do that.

But until that is done, there are people who will fight that goal, and insist on destroying it, and "we" need to be protected from "them."

Happy New Year, Bang, Bang

It's a new year.  I hope you are all healthy and happy, and that you and all those you love are safe and warm.

I am old and cynical, so take this for what it's worth, but 2015 does not hold much promise for being much better than 2014, except maybe for the Patriots -- that's the football team, not a bunch of Whooped-Up Americans.

For most people 2014 was kind of OK.  If you were rich you got richer.  Everyone else paid a little more and got paid a little less, but for most folks it wasn't too drastic.  If you were poor and struggling last year it looks like you will be poor and struggling this year. If you had psychological and emotional issues last year more of you will be able to get some kind of help, from some kind of somewhat trained helper.  They may give you a supportive place to list your difficulties.  They may offer some advice, the kind of which you knew before you saw them.  They may even help you see that you have some paths to choose that you didn't realize were open to you.  That can be very helpful.

But they won't be able to open any doors that are closed to you, or spend enough time with you so that you can retrain your brain to not be so reactive, or to learn totally new behavioral responses to stressful situations, or to change the stressful situation, or to change the fact that you may have chronic pain or a degenerative disease.

In short, there is still no really effective treatment for all the things we call "mental illness."

The guy who shot the two policeman in NYC, the kid who shot his adoptive mother and a couple of other people in Idaho, the veteran who shot his psychologist in Texas, and of course, the jihadists who killed so many people in Paris were all suffering from some form of discontentment.  I believe that  at sometime in their lives they had either actively sought help, or were at least known in their communities to be people who were "at risk."

Do we know what to do to help people who are "at risk?"  I think that most of the time we could figure out an answer.  Find a way to form a relationship, to not only offer help but to offer some resources so that they are able to use the help -- a place to live, job training, stable support people, food, warmth, trust, encouragement, understanding, new and better options to choose from.

But that is very time consuming and very expensive.  It's much simpler, easier, and cheaper just to wait until they go off the rails, and then shoot them.

there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.
-- H.L. Mencken.