The Psychopathology of suicide-terroristm

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Listen to:

http://americanhumanist.org/podcast/#HNNnotes

podcast #29.

A psychologist shows it is largely the result of religious conviction.

ruveyn

Without an "eternal reward" there is no advantage to be gained in being a splodydope.

Even the Japanese Kamakazi had a spiritual goal.

No Religion, no Splodydopes...

Though I suppose if you found enough thoroughly depressed Emo/Goth Anarchists you might still find a few willing to blow themselves up just to end it all and take a few bastards with them...

There evolutionary advantages to the collective by having Kamakazi units.
Having Kamakazi units can make or break a war. So over time a society will evolve Kamakazi units. It doesn't matter if it is a bomb or a smart bomb( suicide bomber).
Bees in the wild are Kamakazi, they will sacrifice themselves to protect the collective( the hive).

Terrorism in the middle east has rather amazing parallels with organized crime. The idea is to get people with money to give you everything they have and then get themselves killed BEFORE they realize they've been swindled. You see, religion is a VERY effective means of getting your hands on other peoples money. There is so much economic disparity in SW Asia. You have rich oil barons who own the vast majority of the weath of those gulf states and the poor people turn to terrorism as a way to make money.

There is a GREATER evolutionary advantage to having your warriors return to breed more warriors.

Warrior Bees are sterile. Their deaths are meaningless unless to preserve the hive.

But most sucidie bombers are MALE! Since women are controlled by men is muslim societies they can just breed more men to be recruited into suicide bombers. Suicide Terrorism is a relatively recent phenomenon which came about long after the development of explosives and compact munitions; that is-within the last 50 years. Havent you noticed that with the exclusion of the officer corps, MOST of our boys come from poor and uneducated backgrouns? You dont want to send people who are smart/productive off to war to get killed! You wanna send the poor and the incompitent to die so that the upper crust can maintain their way of life.

So-called suicide terrorism is just part of a continuum that includes kinds of warfare where your side is hopelessly outgunned but will fight anyway to force occupation forces to leave their land... where people go into it knowing that they are likely to die. People of course are more likely to accept this if the terms under which they are occupied are very bad ones - such as, for instance, the situation of the Palestinians. The Israelis are not just another power letting people live their lives normally - they are dedicated to their total destruction in due course.

I realize that most suicide bombers are male. Unless you have an utterly out of balance male/female ratio, &/or a culture of polygyny, attrition will inveriably set in as breed stock is depleted.


Very true. One of the best explanations I have read coes from an article by Hans Magnus Enzensberger in Der Spiegel on November 7, 2005 called "The Radical Loser". The bits about Islam & Suicide Bombing begin at the end of Pt. II. http://www.signandsight.com/features/493.html


Actually, no I didn't notice that during my almost 8 years in active Service in the US Army as an enlisted man with a Combat Arms MOS... That may have been true in the 1970s - certainly enough of that type were cashiered for drug abuse/petty criminality just before I entered Service - but it wasn't true in the 80s and has become even LESS true since 9.11

That is the way most wars are fought. Some situation require a different approach. Think about the gain vs losses. A few cheaply made Japanese plane for an aircraft carrier, as floating city full of people. If American only had 10% resource advantage, the Japanese Kamikaze units would have won them the war for them.

In war, it doesn't matter if it is a machine or a man they are both machines. There is no ghost in the machine; just the machine.