What can we do?

It has long been known that there are two types of thinking -- logical and intuitive. And logic comes in two varieties. And we also know that emotions, whether induced by stress or hang-ups, can affect thinking.

Intuition

From Discover Mar 2003
By Steven Johnson



This study nearly a century ago was our first definitive glimmer that "thinking" is neither entirely conscious nor even cerebral.

This page will be no surprise to many women who find intuitive thinking second nature, it is so automatic. If you want to see this one in action, play "Twenty Questions" in a mixed group of males and females. The men tend to ask linear questions logically designed to narrow possibilities down to the final answer. In contrast women tend to be seemingly unorganized in their questions, yet they often leap to the answer out of the blue so to speak. Like the patient reported on above, women are often more accustomed to following up on their hunches. One woman advised her friends: Listen to your intuition, it is telling you something.

Emotional Barriers

See Little Boy Saved for an example of how emotions can develop early to the detriment of their owner. In that case, a competitive father put down his son so routinely that the boy began thinking he was a loser by nature. Even after maturing and beating his father at last, the "little boy," no longer little, could still not feel or believe the new reality. His self-image, his hang-up, prevented him from being all that he could be. His "self" was one that examplifies a type Authoritarians love to pounce on, a type they can look down upon.

There are many other ways hang-ups can develop. They all have in common the fact that their owner is typically unaware of them, or of their origins. Common also is that hang-ups get in the way of logical thinking. For example, "The Little Boy" feeling of one down would prevent him not only from voicing his opinions; he could only parrot what his father taught. Radicals feed on people like this, and not just in Islam.

These features bear on terrorism directly. It is no stretch of the imagination that with repeated negative experiences with the more developed world, individuals in Islam can build up an automatic fear response to Westerners and their ideas. Put enough negative stuff in a psyche and you have hatred. This response gains the power of masses once it collectively penetrates the mass psyche. Muslim society is just one example.

In this light, terrorism is indeed a war of psychology, to be fought with psychology in mind. What are we doing instead? First, with Afghanistan and then with Iraq, we are feeding Islam a steady diet of negative stuff (beyond what we already were). Beyond logic, Muslims can grow to hate us because they fear us, whether or not the process is conscious.

Moreover, radical mullahs fear secular governance that separates church and state -- they lose their power. Muslims on the street who have had relatives killed by Israelis cannot help but harbor negative feelings toward Israel, and also toward us as Israel's only benefactor, and without whose help Israel could not exist as a nation for long. See Zionism.

Our support for Israel, our historic betrayal of Iraqi citizens, and in their view our theft of oil from their homeland provide reasons why many Iraqi's do not dance in the streets with our "governance."

Deep down they fear us only a little less than they feared Hussein. At the same time, they view our technology with envy, and that exacerbates their pain and humiliation.

Mr. Bush made this bed; American soldiers now must live with it, male and female alike. And now over 2,000 have died in settling the Bush family score. Over 2,000 have died in dividing Iraq into hostile lands where no American can tread. Over 2,000 have died while Iran and North Korea charge on toward greater terror capability. Over 2,000 have died as a hundred times their number have become mired in a wasteland veneer of oil riches. All this leaves Mr. Bush, more importantly, all of us, unable to answer the larger threats of our time.

This is the end result of emotions controlling actions to the virtual exclusion of thinking.

Maybe Mr. Bush silently invoked "Manifest Destiny!"