Violent political action and selective incentives in decision-making

Violent Political Action and Selective Incentives

Violent Political Action

Everybody who has the family wants to worry only about personal and family life and to have a peaceful society. These people will never like to indulge in war with others and to sacrifice their peace. Unless there is a big threat to their survival, people tend to be peaceful. The question arises why would someone sacri-ce self-interest to take part in violent group actions. In business also, people might involve in violent behavior when they feel threat to their job or career. Often some employees are deprived of facilities, opportunities and fair performance appraisals thus they can become more violent.

Standard models of decision making

The decision making models in business may be rational, adaptive, planned, collective participation, intuitive, and/or emergent. All these models use facts and some procedures to come to a conclusion. No decision making model offers complete solution to emotional decision making in limited time involving too many participants, thus a combination of models may help. However, decisions like offering quota to a particular race, promoting single gender, putting age limit etc. are decisions that can often end up in employee violent behavior (Surowiecki, 2005). The justice and fairness at workplace are rational aspects that can affect lives of employees. The process of decision making can be affected by internal and external stakeholders. The stakeholders can influence the choice of decision making model that favors them the most. Thus the decision making can suit one group but not the other. Often the facts favor one group since the group is in the majority while the intuitive model will suggest something totally opposite.

The decision making models are based on the choices of the majority. However, it should never be overlooked that every human being has a representation in the group (Surowiecki, 2005). Major or minor, this representation should be valued. The reason for this is that in history, sometimes a very small number of people have shown violent behavior that caused damage to many people. Thus, the violent behavior should be avoided at any cost. For this, it is very important to understand why a person or a group will show violent behavior. Everybody has a reason to be violent or non-violent.

Selective incentives

The selective incentives are the benefits that are offered to those in a group. Thus, people may enter a violent behavior to get a selective benefit. This selective benefit can be in form of maintaining individual status, or promoting an individual or offering them protection against a severe action (Ginges, and Atran, 2009). Also the participants in violation may think that their self-esteem increases thus they participate in violence to protect social interests and gain self-importance. For example, during the fight for rights of women, many women would join rallies since they believed that their self-esteem increases by feeling that they can have control on the world by even giving tough time to state police etc. Likewise, the Jews knew in WWII that they are subject of hatred for all and only violence than help them gain some recognition.

Different groups of people can be attracted to different sets of selective incentives. Normally these incentives are those that the group lacks. Money is selective incentive for the poor, power is selective incentive for the suppressed, respect was once critical selective incentive for the women and freedom is the selective incentive for Palestinians. Thus these groups can be tempted to enter a politically violent behavior to get their selective incentive. There is a kind, limit and level of selective incentive (Ginges, and Atran, 2009).

Instrumentally rational individuals

The violence is not only game of insane. When instrumentally rational individuals enter violent behavior, this might be the worst kind of violence. The students for example, that face the issue of school fees raised exponentially are even ready to surround administrative buildings until the fees are restored. Since the instrumentally rational individuals have most probably first analyzed the situation and all other possible solutions and concluded that violence would only serve better, these individuals can be barely controlled. The students are thus ready to sacrifice lives since they believe if their fees are not decreased they would not be able to get professional education and thus they will not get good jobs given financial tight situation and finally their lives will be as miserable as their parents'. This rational decision making is too critical that it can end up in uncontrollable series of violence and sacrifice.

Moral Questions of Behavior

Morality is a set of ethical standards that a person follows. It is ethics and morality that saves us from many inhumane behaviors. The moral questions like should people be treated fairly or not? often lay down the foundations of behavior of individual as well as the society. The moral person will not directly evaluate a situation on the basis of set standards of business or gain. He will rather assess the moral side of a situation to decide how he should respond to it. These people are seldom attracted by financial incentives. Thus, respect is more important to them than the designation and satisfaction values more to them than the money.

Not every human being is alike. While some human beings are tempted by increase in salary and getting promotions, others believe in morality. This morality often leads human beings to violent or non-violent behavior. For example, a generous and kind person believes in respecting human beings and accepting their decisions. Thus if he is not promoted, he might accept the decision since he does not like violence. On the other hand, if the same person sees unjust happening to a person, he might not keep silent for too long. He will finally become violent if he finds an innocent person killed in front of him. Thus a person can often become violent or non-violent because of his moral standards.

The incentives are different for different people. This difference is based on moral standards. A person valuing prosperous life will have moral standards achieving wealth. Likewise, a person valuing family will find it more worthwhile to spend more time with family than in office. Thus the first person can be violent if he is not promoted while the second person can become violent of he is asked to work four more hours in the office.

Examples

People are inherently different. Not even two children of same parents are alike. They have different moralities and respond differently to different situations. Thus some people are violent and other is not. The moral standards guide human beings how to behave in personal as well as the social lives. The Jains are people following Jainism in India. These people are considered super non-violent. These people are vegetarians and consider it a murder to kill and slaughter the animals for food. Often these people will even cover their faces so that the bacteria is not inhaled that might kill them. If any of these people is wronged or suppressed, it is believed that they will not take the revenge since they believe in extremely non-violent world. They respect life on earth. To them the men and women, human beings and spiders and animals and plants are all equal and they should be respected. Thus the moral values of a Jain will make him decide non-violent solutions so that no harm is caused to people.

Likewise, the moral standards of the brutal tribes in India will be different. Some of man eating tribes will not care if they are killing their guests or the children. To them, morality is nothing but words. Such people will be violent in any and all the cases.

The educated and learned people having a peaceful life in a prosperous city will have different moral standards. They will respect the rights of others as well as they will be assertive about their own rights. Such people can show non-violent behavior for a very long time and a very wide range of circumstances. But, they might not bear a threat to their community or danger to their society. They will make every possible political effort, non-violent as well as violent, to maintain the peace in their society.

Women are by nature nonviolent. They are sensitive and like to cause no harm unless pushed too hard. They have instincts of motherly love thus they do not mean to harm a society. However, their non-violence also has a limit. Considering that the women have the selective incentive of well-being of their children, they will be non-violent as long as their children and family is safe. They will thus be very violent in case their family is harmed or their children are beaten by someone physically.

These cases suggest that every human being has separate persona and social values. These values guide the violent or nonviolent behavior of the people. Every moral standard is connected to a set of selective incentives. Thus, each human being has a circle in which he or she shows non-violent behavior and outside which they are violent. In personal, social as well as the organizational lives, a decision making model should be selected that does not call the violent behavior of anyone. An arrangement should be made where each and every individual is offered something right if not everything right.

Conclusion

The political violent behavior does not arise out of nothing. People are only willing to enter social level political violence when they are deprived of selective incentives. The selective incentives may vary from person to person and community to community. For some, power will be selective incentive while for the others; liberty will be a better selective incentive. Besides the worldly gains, moral standards also define what violent and non-violent choices of the people will be. Not every poor black will be a snatcher and not every suppressed Palestinian will be violent. It is thus the matter of personal and group values and moral standards.