What is the cause of violence? The destructive natural force is a controversial topic to most people. Atran discusses the point of terrorism bent towards political mediation and political motivating with the aim of influencing a target group (Atran, 2003). He brings up the idea of terrorist view as “freedom fighters” from their side yet otherwise known as “terrorists” from another side. It discusses a report by the U.S Department where some Nazi fighters denounce French Resistance fighters as terrorists. The material solely focuses on suicidal terrorism and characterizes it with the use of self-destructing humans against the civilian population to try to force some political stand (Atran, 2003). The main of a suicide attack is to destroy the target, usually targeting the public through the use of psychological warfare, but as a result, the victims typically are a few innocent individuals. After that, some victims are made to witness it. The success of this magnitude is as a result of training and dissemination of doctrines by influential leaders, and radicalization of individuals who after that create a strong bond and personal sense to willingly surrender to die with the idea eliminating an enemy.
The researcher discusses these group individuals as being of any age, or sex. Atran further explains this method of attack being a choice of weak parties as a weapon against a loud party (Atran, 2003). It reflects on the first contemporary attack which took place in the Middle East in December 1981 when there was the bombing of the Iraqi Embassy killing 27 people and injuring 100 people. The terrorists began using this form of attack and even led to the killing of the pro-Iranian Lebanese Party of God. The result of this killing boosted this form of attack which started to become a tool for warfare. The article further discusses the 1993 Israel-Palestine attack with the aim of derailing the Oslo Peace Records. It gives details of radicalization and Al-Qaida militia as having robust financing as it is with those found in North Africa, Arabia, and some parts of Asia with the focus of ensuring that the re is disruption of western efforts towards developments, initiatives, and infrastructure. (Atran, 2003) The current issue of radicalization is a lost tradition where one takes religion as a tool for the struggle to achieve control over politics.
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The article attributes these attacks to dubious public perceptions. By analyzing the Homeland security research, he finds out that the Homeland Security research concluded on using resources costing billions to protect the sensitive public from attacks yet he identifies the weaknesses which result from vulnerable targets such as malls. These weaknesses being a result of minimal supervision, the complexities involving determining the likelihood of the attack. The easiest of solving the problem is to empower people from becoming terrorists through culture transformation and hunting down who are already terrorists. The article discusses psychopathology as a fundamental attribution error, that is, the tendency of explaining personal traits regarding behavior. The idea of characterizing, for instance, the Middle East attack suffered attribution error because it discusses the bombers as unstable. The author rules out poverty and lack of education as a cause of suicidal terrorism since most of the attackers are well educated and are financially well off.
Patton et al. (2014) focus on a very intriguing topic of homicide about young people. Murder is the second leading cause of death among the young generation. They focus on social media as a vector for youth violence. They demonstrate how youth brutality, such harassing, gang violence, and self-violence, progressively happens in the online space. One of the tools used to collect data and come up with this conclusion is a literature review. They were able to look for relevant studies relating to violence by focusing on young people between the age of 12 years to 21 years on social media platforms which include Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Youtube (Patton et al., 2014). They also searched for relevant data on some specific databases and the use of search engines to find data relating to the social media is one of the causes of hom icides . They reviewed 56 articles out of total 105 materials the y found. They classified these articles into various groups and did surveys on each topic. From t he study , they were able to give a conclusion on reasons behind violence as cyberbullying, cyberstalking, gang violence and cyber suicide. From their study, they were able to show that youth violence merits the consideration by researchers in the criminal, sociological, therapeutic, and the well-being space.
They examined the correlation and consequences of social media aggression.
Dewall, Anderson, and Bushman use a model to discuss theoretical framework of violence (DeWall, Anderson & Bushman, 2011). They employ the General Aggression Model (GAM), to give an extensive also, integrative social– cognitive system to understand aggressiveness and violence. The primary use of this model involves laboratory aggression experiments but again can include tests in real life. They extend the novel on how GAM can bring a comprehensiveness, and research focusing on partner violence, violence involving different groups, global climate change and its impact on violence, and suicide. They found out that some situational factors that increase aggression toward strangers also increase Inter Partner Violence, for instance, alcohol. They also discuss the concept of intergroup violence and identified that hostility among groups is as a result of attributes that each group conveys to a situation and of ecological issues that escalate aggression. Groups, similar to individuals, tend to have persevering inspirations, dispositions, qualities, and convictions that are a result of their earlier history (DeWall, Anderson & Bushman, 2011). Global climate change as well can be linked to violence, that is, it is the cause of the social disorder, war and migration conflicts. They also discuss GAM as a tool to explain non-violent behavior and violent behavior. They, however, give some limitations of GAM through linking attitude and aggression which may not be the case. It also provides a non-comprehensive view of the human attack.
Position and Novel Research
I found Atran article compelling on how young people can be changed and decide to behave in a manner which exhibits violent behavior. Being that terrorism has been a global aggravation in no small extent for a long time. Terrorism has been utilized by different groups to express political and religious convictions, in countering for individual decisions, and in various cases with particular motivations behind threatening and harming individuals. Almost all countries are and have been affected by terrorism somehow. A few states have been victims of fraud, others have been supporters, and most have seen their nationals hit. This article enlightens the fact that, of course, individuals ma y not refuse to settle on choices in that man ner , but as a result of leadership, culture and radicalization since most of them are well off yet they still opt for violence as a tool for their communication.
Violence and terrorism among the youth are expanding as we speak. Nobody knows when they will work and if at any chance that they will get back home safe. Not to mention that nobody knows when they rest if they will be seen the following day again? It is a dangerous world in which we are living at this point.
Without a doubt, the young people receive radical teachings and which the take as the only solution to a problem, therefore making them violent to force the superior people to bow down to their needs. It is an occurrence which creates violence and makes one stop realizing that there are more channels of solving an issue which results in harming others who are innocent creating fear among the population. According to me, human beings are violent, but it depends on the level of education concerning problem-solving issues, and this can be changed by instilling on individual’s radical ideas and therefore turn violent. It occurs to me that the next step to explain this further by identifying variables to try and understand the cause of terrorism since I believe it is a multi-faceted issue.
I would proceed to identify variables that fall within the economic, political, and social arena that have been over time-tested against the number of terrorist incidents within a given country within 20 years. The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) will be the principal source of data for the dependent variable since the database incorporates data on terror incidents since 1990 and up until 2013, and inspects both local and global cases. The GTD has three conceivable criteria for terrorism incidents:
The act aims at accomplishing a political, financial, religious, or social objective.
There must be a proof of an expectation to pressurize, scare, or pass on some other message to a more significant population (or groups of onlookers) than the immediate victims.
The activity must be outside the setting of warfare legitimacy; the outcome must be outside the parameters allowed by universal humanitarian laws.
I believe that the administration may be the best pointer behind the reasons for violence and terrorism within a state. Notwithstanding, I additionally trust that social and financial factors likewise represent an essential part.
I would then hypothesize the positive correlation of employment rate within a country within the span of the selected 20 years and terrorism incidences , the positive relationship between the terrorist incidents and the social injustices . Other hypotheses would include the negative correlation between these incidents and value for human rights, the negative correlation between these incidences and democracy, and the effect s of dominating religion on terrorism. During this research, I will eliminate any unsuccessful assaults with the aim to incorporate just the crimes that have entirely connected to terrorism and to wipe out occurrences that would only qualify as an "endeavor" as opposed to a successful attack. Once done with gathering the information on every nation, I will develop a variable containing the quantity of the incidences in every country consistently. I will then test these variables. After that, I will run a multiple regression on the variables.
I believe that terrorism relates to unemployment, social inequality, human rights, democratization, and religion. After testing these hypotheses, they will either be positive or negative but will give a clear picture on the causes of terrorism and more explanation on why one would decide to be violent as well as the influence of the environment within an individual. In future, the research may also consider including the education level of individuals within a given country in comparison to the number of incidences relating to terrorism. The study will be able to assist in identifying and alleviating violence at a global level taking into consideration its rise currently and the increasing sophistication involving it. It will try to answer the questions linking to suicides and especially the young generation.
References
Atran, S. (2003). Genesis of Suicide Terrorism. Science , 299 (5612), 1534-1539.
DeWall, C., Anderson, C., & Bushman, B. (2011). The general aggression model: Theoretical extensions to violence. Psychology of Violence , 1 (3), 245-258.
Patton, D., Hong, J., Ranney, M., Patel, S., Kelley, C., Eschmann, R., & Washington, T. (2014). Social media as a vector for youth violence: A review of the literature. Computers In Human Behavior , 35 , 548-553.
