Terrorism Is Spreading in Today\'s

Terrorism is spreading in today's world and despite focused scientific research and numerous programs and articles on the subject, the situation continues. There are various reasons for the origin of terrorism. One of them is the explanation that terrorism is caused by "Social facilitation" (International Encyclopedia of Terrorism, 1997), i.e. social / ethnic / cultural / and/or religious traditions, and habits that cause aggression and praise violence against another frequently saying how this violence should be done. An example of this is the Irish tradition of terrorism that dates back to the eighteenth century based on the story of Michael Collins in 1919 that still leads to some of the terrorism of the IRA.

The strength of social facilitation is shown by study after study saying that terrorism is largely a cultural rather than an economic-driven phenomena (ibid.) and that, in that case, it is difficult to stop since cultural / religious myths tend to get transmitted from generation to generation as something that one has to do and as good.

Programs such as encounter groups (where people are encouraged to meet others of another race / nation) or other prejudice-targeting programs, usually prove helpful only in a laboratory environment (and generally when done on college / university students). In real life, these programs usually fall flat for a variety of reasons that include the following:

1. People growing up a terrorist environment are generally discouraged from being friends with their enemy in the first place. To the extreme, their lives may be in danger if they do so. At the very least, their doing so causes them to be rejected by their community.

2. People are influenced by their acculturation to an extent that consequences are enduring (Bargh, 1997) and

3. Cognitive psychology shows that individuals veer towards my-confirmation (i..e that their beliefs are right and it is difficult to think otherwise) and naive realism (i.e. preferring to believe that the other is wrong and that they are right) and rarely if ever changing their views (Nisbett, & Ross, 1980).

For all these reasons, a new and innovative approach must be created and this is where my idea comes in:

Idea

People, the world over, are interested in improving their behavior, if not for personal self-development than out of pragmatic or rational reasons such as enlarging their business opportunities, improving their business performance, and/or bettering their social relationships. People everywhere wish to rationally use, rather than misuse their lives. Were I to have unlimited expense, I would absorb much personal research into investigating and creating an insightful, practical, and scientifically based theory of human behavior (based on, although not necessarily limited to integration of cognitive psychology / sociology of knowledge / epistemology / sociology of brainwashing -- but certainly multi-disciplinary). This cognitive model would present a new way of thinking demonstrating how, despite the fact that you are brought up in a certain environment you can separate yourself from that environment and obtain an objective mindset. The benefits of doing so are basic: they center around the fact that we may be unknowingly 'mentally contaminated' by personal experiences or by the society that we grew up in and are, therefore compelled to act in certain self-destructive manner. We live only one life. How would we feel if, at the end of that life, (or never) we realize that we have misused it. That will be the argument of the book. Philosophies, such as rationalism on the one hand and social constructivism (or relativism) on the other, have attempted to deal with the problem from various aspects. There are gaps with their perspectives, although phenomenology, it seems to me, comes the closest to offering a solution.