The evolution of society leads, for some nations, to an incapacity of further
development based on symbolic models. These nations feel that the world is
going towards something they can't follow and understand. The solution for
them is to adhere to an invariant or universally accepted model, like a
religion or a nature/tradition conservation movement, to orient their
activity, and to offer them an easily understandable and attainable goal in
predictible time (fundamentalist reaction).
Some individuals, who have strong fundamentalist reactions, could try to
modify the society by direct action. A class of such reactions is terrorism.
The definition for terrorism considered here is: terrorism is an antisocial
phenomenon, which implies attacking some persons without an explicit reason.
It also means destruction of material goods without explicit reasons, when
these goods do not belong to a state.
If the persons attacked are the representatives of a government and the goods
attacked belong to the government, then we have acts of war. A state can
defend itself from acts of war, but in front of a terror attack, the
protection offered by the state is limited. The main reason is that the
government officials accept the limitation of their rights, and they accept a
certain discipline. These persons are well enough informed to understand that
they could be the targets of an attack. The same is valid fo defending the
goods belonging to a state.
Many terrorist movements have tried to commit war acts and not terror acts.
Thus, they try to obtain a legitimity as liberation movements, who fight for
liberty or independence against a state.
Example: ETA in Spain tries to attack only the representatives of the state or
local administration, and the goods belonging to them. It is difficult however
for ETA to comply with these rules, all of the time. IRA acts the same way,
trying to delimit itself from terrorism. Both movements make notable efforts
to be considered liberation movements at war with an opressive state, and not
terrorist movements.
Al Quaida tried at some time to attack only American military targets (thus
delimiting itself from terrorism), but the attack on WTC in New York is
clearly a terror act. The people killed were not representatives of the state,
the planes used were not military, and the buildings did not belong to the
state). However the attack on the Pentagon was not a terror act, but a war
act.
A practical aspect should be noted connected to the tendencies of terrorism:
who has vocation to build, has no 'vocation' for terrorism. To build planes,
buildings and so many other material goods supposes an immense effort on
scientific and technological levels, in labour organisation, on the social and
cultural level. Those who know how difficult these things are done, and how
many causes can block easily this process, will not have the tendency to
destroy material goods.
We change now the discussion and will refer to the individual terrorists
existing in any society. Serial killers exist, and others, who kill randomly
innocent people. By definition, they are also terrorists, even if they act
alone, without any connection to a group.
It is clear that a society can't protect itself against terrorism through
stricter laws. The tougher laws will determine the disappearance of exactly
those facilities, which permitted the progress of the society. Multiple levels
of security will produce the fragmentation of the society. Thus, due to the
reduction of the capability to communicate, the level of generalised
schizophrenia increases. This could lead to a disaster on long-term.
Not any person who refuses symbolic models will have terrorist tendencies.
There are adaptation forms to a world that evolves in another direction than
the one desired by some. In the attempt to find the individuals with
tendencies towards terrorism, one can consider a few aspects:
1. Children who have been normal at birth, but have been abused during
childhood, are on the highest level of risk. Individuals aggressed
explicitly or implicitly by the environment, can build illegal models,
which enter their PSM; the ones with difficulties of communication have the
tendency to build too short-range models for understanding the world they
live in (schizophrenia XS 1 and 2).
2. The stresses generating shielding models and illegal models can affect any
person, as society is very complex. For persons from 'imagistic' countries,
an important source of stress is the assimilation and operation of advanced
symbolic models. Forcing them to evolve from an image platform to high
level symbolic models can destabilize the structure of models. For the
'symbolic' countries, the same can happen on a more reduced scale.
3. The isolation or elimination from society of the individuals with clear
tendencies towards the destruction of the democratic system.
4. Relaxation in the protection of privacy. The so-called right to privacy
hides important sources of stress both for the people protected by this
right, and the ones around him/her. If everybody would accept the opening
of their privacy, the society as a whole would have less real problems.
The working principle of democracy should be somewhat modified, i.e. a
democratic system protects only those who respect democracy. Thus, the
individuals who fight against democracy should not be protected by the
democratic system.
Conclusion: The evolution of society is based on symbolic models. Those who
have not the capacity to follow this trend will 'run for shelter' into image
models. Slowly a break will occur between 'symbolic' and 'image' people. The
'image' people, who are not those who push the society forward, will see that,
from their point of view, society goes into a wrong direction. One of the
extreme answers to this situation is terrorism.
Warning: The individuals based on image models do not accept logical
argumentation, because logic is an exclusive characteristic of symbolic
models.