Fundamentals of Terrorism

      The extreme consequence of not responding to the feelings and inner needs of others is violence and terrorism. The rising tide of violence everywhere in the world is an indicator that the human race is not communicating well on the levels of being necessary to create the conditions of understanding and compassion necessary for harmony and peace to rein on earth. The real answer to the world’s problem with violence and terrorism will eventually be found in the depths of human communication and listening. It will be found when people everywhere, as an aggregate, are able to listen and respond to the real needs, feelings and concerns of others. Studying what prevents people in general from doing so offers a view of human dynamics that often ends in violence, terrorism and despair.  

The Basic Spirituality of World Psychology
The essence of spirituality is not found
in the worship of high beings,
or in the study of religious doctrine or dogma,
but in the capacity to enter into the world of others
and to respond with feelings.

     The way we increase our intelligence is by listening. In dealing with current world problems we need to listen to many different people and get into their worlds and see through many eyes of perception. We will reach ultimate understanding of the deepest problems plaguing humanity only by listening to many other people’s points of view. Our failure to do this and change what needs to be changed is what is escalating violence and terrorism in the world and in far too many homes for us to count. Though many people feel that violence, terrorism and war are solutions to conflict, all three only add to the hurt, pain and suffering people feel and experience on earth.

 We have to understand people and what motivates them
 if we are to protect the world from escalating violence.

     Terrorism is a vast subject and touches upon the roots of what is wrong with humanity. It touches on the roots of all human conflict. If we are in fact going to try to understand anything about terrorism, and if we are going to try to creatively answer its violent call in ways other than violence, we need to look at all forms of terrorism and all the kinds of organizations that incorporate the terrorist impulse. Terrorism is not limited to suicide bombers and hijacked airliners. If we seriously want a war on terrorism to succeed we need to recognize all the forms of terrorism and understand some of the common threads that run through them all. When our actions and intentions consciously or unconsciously hurt other people we are terrorizing them. Anything that abuses human consciousness can be seen as terrorist to the one being attacked or abused. Any adult who sexually abuses a child is acting as a terrorist. A rapist is a terrorist and so is the government who denies its children education and basic information about sexuality because many will suffer from that denial.

The end result of any successful war on terrorism
 will yield basic changes in humanity
for this is a war against us, its humanity against humanity,
value system against value system.

     We must find a way of communicating across the barriers that separate one being from another, and in fact, when we look up the root definition of the word communicate, we see that it means to make common, to share in common with. “If we cannot share our beings, or make our feelings common with others, and with the total environment in which we live, we will have conflicts within and without,” says Christopher Hills. Because we humans have not found a way to communicate our differences and work things out we have seen the basic tensions and conflicts building up like a magna cone underneath a volcano. Usually it takes a war for a full eruption of conflict but on September 11^th we saw a Krackatoa bursting over the heads of the entire international community.

Our most urgent problem and challenge
 in the world is conflict resolution.

   Unfortunately mankind seems to fail over and over again in the conflict resolution department (communications) and thus anger, aggression, bloodshed, terrorism, and outright war continue to occupy the center stage in human affairs. The most urgent need of humankind is a system of communication that helps people and organizations resolve conflicts yet such a system is worthless unless there are beings that want to practice it.     

     From the perspective of the heart, from the center of our vulnerable being nature, life on earth holds a great potential for the deep hurting of our beings. Inside the heart lies a great capacity for hurt, a sensibility of being that is complete in its ability to feel the uncaring, hurtful and abusive nature of others in ways that lead to a great deal of suffering. Most of us have been hurt one way or another, but some much more than others. In general we are hurt through the general lack of love that gets expressed as a lack of understanding and deep listening on the part of our parents, teachers, friends and others who just do not have the willingness or capacity to care enough. If the people who are supposed to care for us can hurt us, imagine the damage done by bullies and others who are actively seeking others to hurt with their own repressed hurt. 

No side has a monopoly on virtue or vice.

     The traditional terrorist might care intensely about some cause, and be totally identified with the suffering of his or her own people. What they do not care about is the suffering they are going to inflict on innocent victims and their families. Terrorists use innocent people to inflict pain and damage on a system, on a nation, on a whole group of people through the process of hurting a few. Through the few they hope to get to the many hoping in the end that they can alleviate some of their own people’s suffering. In this chapter we are searching for deeper understanding of the dynamics of terrorism and find that these same dynamics are found even in our own homes. They are in fact found everywhere.  

It is exactly our inability to be listened to
 that creates so much of violence and frustration
 in human relationships.

     How do we get someone to listen? The more difficult question is how do we get someone to listen when they do not want to? And the even harder question is how do we get someone or a nation of some ones to change when they have no intention or will to change at all? We often have a need to deliver a message, to make a communication. The most peaceful means is to open our hearts and make a vulnerable communication that expresses exactly how we feel and what we are seeing and needing. But what does a person do when this type of communication is ignored? Certainly new and stronger feelings arise in the moment we feel ignored or when our communications are completely rejected. The more we try to communicate and the more we are frustrated the deeper our feelings of frustration and anger become. Violence is a communication of last resort. When all else fails and communication breaks down many people resort to some form of violence, others just choose divorce. On a world level there is no divorce, there is no getting away from each other no matter how much we try.

     Humans have a great resistance to looking at other people’s point of view even if that point of view is from someone we are intimate with. Its hard enough to care for those who are close to us, care in a way that opens us to another’s perception for we are afraid if we do that it might mean that we will need to change something about ourselves and our behavior. To listen is to change and this is what people resist so they do not really listen.  This chapter is a prelude to several chapters later on in this book that compromise The Psychology of Listening. Though not taught in schools, and though more basic to life than reading and writing, it is offered here as a necessity and is in fact the process followed in developing World Psychology. Through deep listening the truth is made evident. This book offers the view of many beings from around the world that all have a perspective on truth from the place they live. World Psychology is not just for the rich or for the west though a westerner writes it. It is through listening and identifying enough with the world of others no matter where they come from that makes a World Psychology possible.

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