Reference no: EM133751820

Discussion Post: Global Terrorisms

Answer one of the following:

I. In the introduction to his book Man and Aggression, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), Ashley Montagu writes that "In the case of man it is possible to say that in spite of attempts to saddle him with instincts, all such attempts have thus far failed. The most notable thing about human behavior is that it is learned." Further "it is within the dimension of culture, the learned, the man-made part of the environment that man grows, develops, and has his being as a behaving organism." The argument about "nature" v. "nurture," and whether we are born aggressive or learn it from our social environment, continues to vex scholars. What do you think? Are terrorists (think of the attackers on 9/11, the Taliban, or the January 6 rioters, for example) born or made so by the environment?

II. In our reading for this week, Karl Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia, the author describes the general camps, the modes of thought, within which we are raised and through which our historical and political thinking coalesce. On Page 118 he lists and then describes the most important representative categories constituting the political and social determinants of knowledge of the 19th and 20th century. These "ideal types" are five (here he is thinking of Europe, I believe): Bureaucratic conservativism; Conservative historicism; Liberal-democratic bourgeois thought; the Socialist-communist conception; and Fascism. If he is correct, and adjusting for the present day, within which such category do most terrorists abroad fall, in your opinion? Most terrorists here in the United States? The majority of Americans?

III. Emile Durkheim developed the idea of anomie, normlessness. When changes occur, traditional norms may weaken or even disappear. These breaks may bring on a lack of order and civility. In ancient and Medieval times, many cultures had periods or bursts of carnival, wild behavior, ecstasy, drunken revelry, Dionysian revels and orgies. Do we need norms to live a civilized life? Is violence a deviation from settled patterns? Can terrorists be brought into civility, do you think? Or are some of these global terrorists simply ignorant, violence-prone and close-minded.