The Management of Savagery
Links to a new article about the classic text "the management of savagery" and my comments on that article.
http://brownpundits.blogspot.com/201...-savagery.html
Direct link to the original article by Ahmed Humayun (my comment is posted there in the comments too)
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksd...arbarism-.html
An Author Explains How Mass Killings Happen
This interview of a book's author sits here best IMHO, even if its focus is mass killing - which is part of savagery.
It starts with:
Quote:
Abram de Swaan spent his first years of life in the Netherlands, witnessing the horrors of World War II. After dedicating decades to the study of human behavior, the award-winning sociologist was so struck by the 1994 Rwandan genocide’s eerie resemblance to the systematic killings of the Holocaust that he decided to investigate the roots of mass murder. De Swaan’s new book,
The Killing Compartments: The Mentality of Mass Murder, peers deeply into the minds of those who carry out atrocities, seeking to understand the societal and psychological conditions that give rise to mass murder.
Link to the interview:http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/02...s-happen.html?
Link to the book:http://www.amazon.com/The-Killing-Co...tag=sciofus-20
The Homogenization of Terror
A rather odd title for an intelbrief from The Soufan Group, which links a number of outrages or attacks where mass casualties result, clearly prompted by last week's attack @ Garissa, Kenya and here is one clear phrase:
Quote:
The reality is far more troubling, as groups that have little-to-no-connection are linked by a unifying motivation to kill civilians.
The last sentence makes sense:
Quote:
These groups began as localized insurgencies but have morphed into a homogenized terrorist movement that cares less about local impact than global influence.
Link:http://soufangroup.com/tsg-intelbrie...ion-of-terror/
Unconventional warfare, whether the users are called guerillas or terrorists, often prefers "soft" targets and inhibit the security forces by such tactics as IEDs. Is it 'new' this preference for killing civilians? No. So what is the difference today? Simple we know about it and see the imageery.
Why mass killings are increasing?
I spotted this article via Twitter and it's application is general to US society, not just these murders:https://warisboring.com/what-on-kill...0f1#.6hssdabyf
It starts with:
Quote:
Dave Grossman’s 1996 book
On Killing is a landmark and studied account of how — and why — human beings have inhibitions toward killing others, and how the U.S. military turned its soldiers into far more lethal killers with intense conditioning following World War II.In an updated edition, he warns that these same psychological inhibitions are eroding within American society, but with fewer safeguards, allowing sociopathic tendencies to arise and enable mass violence.
(
Later the author asks) But the question we need to ask is, What makes today’s children bring those guns to school when their parents did not? And the answer to that question may be that the important ingredient, the vital, new, different ingredient in killing in modern combat and in killing in modern American society, is the systematic process of defeating the normal individual’s age-old, psychological inhibition against violent, harmful activity toward one’s own species. Are we taking the safety catch off of a nation, just as surely and easily as we would take the safety catch off of a gun, and with the same results?
A UK academic psychologist offers a viewpoint:https://theconversation.com/can-we-predict-who-will-become-mass-shooters-60969?
Savagery uses religion: evil to good
The author is with ICSR @ Kings College and attempts to answer so many questions. The title is: How religion can drive someone to slaughter his fellow citizens – and believe they deserve it.
A key passage:
Quote:
The movement is, however, millenarian; its followers believe that they are helping bring about the change of a corrupt society, transforming it from evil to good. Once they accept this as their mission, almost any act which is perceived as helping further the project, no matter how horrific, becomes acceptable and legitimate.
Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...-citizens--an/
What to make of criminals and social misfits who suddenly take up the ISIS name?