A Note On the Meaning of Terrorism

By Will Foreman

 

One of the ironies of the 9/11 tragedy is that shortly after it happened many Americans were asking, “Why do they hate us so much?” while in Islamic countries people were asking, “Why do they think we did it?”  As I see it, the short answers to these questions are:  (1) Because "they" (the terrorists) perceive us (any or all of us) as being arrogant, selfish, and cruel. (2) On the other hand, we think that certain Muslim fundamentalists committed these egregious crimes, because we have reasonably good evidence that they did. Clearly, our two peoples have much to learn about each other.

Syntropic Communities are, by written contract, opposed to the use of violence except as a defense against aggression by certain types of aggressor.  We stand for a secular democracy that resolves problems nonviolently, preserves freedom of religion, and protects every religion from the excesses of any other religion.  We oppose the death penalty in criminal jurisprudence. However, we recognize that there are those in the world who will not accept the premises underlying democracy. And those who arbitrarily assume the right to kill thousands of innocent, unarmed people must—like any compulsive serial killer—be stopped.

Beyond those few points I must leave behind any claim of consensus among our Partners and begin expressing my personal views.  In this essay, I will argue from perceived historical trends, environmental science, and the syntropic construct of “deep evolution” (See Appendix 1, Creating Democracy In Time) that:

1.              Modern, fundamentalist terrorism develops from conflicting world-system trends, namely, (a) the divergence of rich and poor economies, (b) the divergence of globalization and world trade agreements from democratic process, and (c) the collision between secular and fundamentalist, theocratic social organization.  It signals a period of global crisis that may last 50-100 years and will include severe, ecological difficulties.

2.              Our struggle with fundamentalist terrorists is the final phase of the Enlightenment which will end with a decisive conflict. The Global Crisis, already underway, overlaps the end of the Enlightenment and the beginning of a period of Global Awakening.

3.              The Global Awakening will lead to a world government of secular democracy with a focus on ecological and species self-preservation.

4.              Following the development of Global Democracy there will be a General Crisis of the Human Spirit that will progress to the highest level of human process:  species self-transformation.

5.              Along with Species Self-Transformation we will transcend the limits of natural evolution and it’s planetary habitat.

Historical Perspective

In the 17th and 18th centuries, during the Enlightenment, we arrived at an understanding that humans can create better societies for themselves if they rely on human reason based on human values. These facets of the human mind were to be combined with an increasingly accurate understanding of the natural world rather than basing themselves on static religious beliefs.  Into this new, secular world we then moved to create our self-governing societies, leaving the faith-based claims of various religious hierarchies to their separate, religious organizations.  This was done with the innocent assumption that these two universes of human belief, one concerned with saving the soul and the other with improving the mind and body of humanity, could coexist peacefully.

The significance of the differences between these worlds of thought can hardly be overemphasized.  Indeed, it might have been predicted that there would be a final conflict, not to say an Armageddon, between them.  Most religions derive their values from belief in one or more supernatural beings that preside over both the natural world and a supernatural world from which we allegedly come and to which we allegedly return.

Secular governments and societies, on the other hand, seek to discover cause and effect in the natural world and to govern themselves by continually improving human methods of decision-making.  In decisive contrast to religion, secular society does not offer eternal paradise to it’s citizens but rather more realistic roles in the struggle to keep life evolving.

The highest value in religious communities is the word of an allegedly all-powerful, all-knowing, and eternal God—as revealed by the various charismatics who claimed to have had direct conversations with a supernatural being. This being evidently chose them and their particular ethnic groups—and their particular soil—for depositing his or her will.

In contrast, secular society seeks to create a system of laws derived by human reason and applied in an affirmation of the highest human values:  human life and its continual improvement.  Toward these ends, we fashioned the ideal of democracy, and various efforts to practically achieve that ideal are ongoing.

The World Context

The final contest between secular and religious cognitive styles moves to center stage with a backdrop of already growing ecological disaster.  We are in a Global Crisis and entering a period of Awakening to the nature and scope of the problems. 

The meaning of fundamentalist terrorism lies firstly in its warning or signal function. Secondly, terrorism is an indirect attack on higher intellectual function. It produces a withdrawal from complex, system-wide, thinking and a tendency to narrow one's perspective in the direction of simplistic approaches to immediate survival. Thirdly, and most importantly, terrorism induces a similar shrinking of awareness in the body politic. Complicated, life-threatening problems such as global warming and the horrific widening of the gap between rich and poor are pushed aside by the threat to public security and the police action that ensues. All the arts and sciences suffer. The intellectual development of children is put on hold. The incalculable damage done to the global environment and the regressive effect on the evolution of democracy can only be overcome by dealing effectively and quickly with the root causes of the terrorist impulse. 

In most scenarios, however, terrorism will likely continue a few decades. It will merge with global environmental changes that seriously threaten both the quality and duration of human life. Most probably, this will be a crisis of enormous proportions that will either end in a tragic degradation of human life or in an Awakening on a worldwide scale.  The Awakening consists of a slow dawning on humanity that:

(1)  Enlightenment thought is absolutely opposed by some peoples. Further, it has been partially co-opted by economic interests and packaged primarily as “capitalist democracy.”  Capitalist democracy has stimulated three totalitarian challenges over the past century:  Leninism-Stalinism, nazism/fascism, and fundamentalism.  Most recently, fundamentalists in several religions, relying on literal interpretations of ancient texts, have committed themselves to the destruction of secular democracy.  Their doctrines are, in their own minds, mutually exclusive with other religions and with the Enlightenment.  To be consistent with their own beliefs, they must seek to destroy perceived systems of non-belief in order to preserve their own beliefs and values.  Likewise, secular democracy cannot forever co-exist with totalitarian or faith-based political organizations that seek either by violent or by electoral means to eliminate the separation between religion and state, or in effect, to destroy secular government and replace it with one or another form of theocracy.

(2)  Terrorism arises when extreme poverty, perceived injustice, and the lack of power combines with an overarching belief system that justifies terror as a means of destabilization leading to a change in the power structure.  The best response to terror is to combine police action with an understanding that the world is now  one interconnected whole, a global system within which laws and governments must be brought under one global, secular, democratic authority. This elected authority then must derive its ongoing legitimacy from its ability to guarantee the security of all people and to achieve a just, authentically democratic, global society.  In keeping with this notion of a species-wide, genuine democracy, the ever-increasing disparity between rich and poor must be permanently reversed.

(3)  Further, the capacity of our interconnected, global system to sustain human life, based on projections from present usage, has limits that will almost certainly be exceeded soon unless we dramatically reduce greenhouse gas output and make other changes in the global economy that are necessary to save the human habitat.  In short, the valuing of human life must take precedence over both the profits of special interests and the different religious values that allegedly supersede the value of life.

(4)  Reason alone, the basic tool of the Enlightenment, is not sufficient.  The principles of dialectical (or general systems) and syntropic thought must be added to the dry rationality of secular society in order to give it greater meaning and purpose.  Further, a multigenerational commitment to action on the basis of syntropic values and goals that override both fundamentalist religion and the fundamentalist approach to market economics will be necessary.  Such a commitment is best exemplified today by Syntropic Communities.

(5)  The world will not progress sufficiently to save itself until it moves beyond the elementary principles of the Enlightenment.  We will have to achieve a minimal, threshold set of universal values and goals based upon the secular principles of authentic democracy, and these must be consciously understood, accepted and applied at every level of human organization, including within religious organizations, on a global basis. In brief, we will not survive as a species unless we create within ourselves a global awakening.  The question then becomes, “Will we wake up in time?”

Immediate Strategy

It will be necessary to use violence against those who employ, and plan to employ, terror to achieve their aims, because they will not cease their use of violence in response to reasoned argument from secular democrats.  They must be tracked, captured, tried before juries, and incarcerated if found guilty—preferably before an International Court of Justice.   If necessary, the larger organizations and states that support terrorist groups must also be forced, with a minimal loss of life, to change their policies or be replaced by democratic governments that are committed to discursive problem-solving.

There are, of course, many definitions of "terror."  There is "state terror," "environmental terror," "economic terror," "gender-based terror," "racist terror," “spousal terror,” and so on.  We could go on developing a whole taxonomy of terrorisms, classifying the various manifestations of terror in numerous, abstract ways, such as "direct" or "indirect,"  "private" or "public," etc.

However, we must go beyond the revenge-oriented, cops-and-robbers, “Wanted: Dead or Alive” mentality.  While there is no valid justification for terror, there are networks of cause-effect process that involve each of us in the production of terror.  Therefore, we must look within as well as pointing our fingers at others.   Modern “democracies” and their associated economic systems are unfinished projects.  Terror, sadly, has also been used by partly democratic societies, including the United States.  Every form of terror practiced under the auspices of an evolving democratic state must be rooted out if democracy is to continue progressing toward its ideals.  We must clean our own house, not necessarily before we insist that others clean house, but at the same time.

For example, we must realize that “capitalist democracies” stimulate external enemies—among them fundamentalist terrorists—and internal opposition primarily by reproducing governments that are dominated by large, special interests.  These multinational corporate interests exploit peoples and environments, creating local crises which typically lead to intervention by U.S.-led governments on behalf of the corporations rather than the people and environments affected.   In such fashion, numerous, cynical enemies of “democracy” are born.

Yet when any organization claims to know either the logic of history or the mind of God with such certitude that it consciously assumes the right to slaughter thousands of unarmed men, women, and children, then that organization has gone way beyond human error or the time-limited perversions of an evolving, essentially nonviolent form of government.  Indeed, such organizations have devolved to a more primitive way of life and must be stopped as soon as possible—using the instruments of violence, if necessary, to prevent greater violence.

Religious fundamentalism leads almost inevitably to totalitarianism, and totalitarianism always places its values above the value of human life.  The Taliban killed 5000 people in the Afghanistan village of Mazar-I-Shariff, because the victims—rather like the “infidels” who worked at the World Trade Center—refused to accept the Taliban version of Sharia, i.e., muslim law.  Unlike the World Heritage site in Afghanistan of two, tall and ancient Buddhist statues, the twin towers of the World Trade Centers were filled with thousands of innocent people who were loved and needed. But then, Christian fundamentalists in the United States have murdered physicians and have long threatened to mail anthrax to Family Planning Clinics.  Jewish fundamentalists murdered elected Prime Minister Rabin of Israel because he sought peace with Palestinians.  Hindu fundamentalists murdered Gandhi.  Every variant of totalitarianism—including a totalistic approach to free market economics—is an enemy of authentic democracy.

A Long-Term, Global Action Plan

Yet all human beings must reach out to each other.  What we in wealthy countries need to do now is enter into a large-scale dialogue with the rest of the world, and from that dialogue we ought to formulate something much larger than the Marshall Plan.  We must also go way further than our sudden interest in sending food to the starving people of Afghanistan.  Both would only be temporary salve on wounds that threaten to kill us.  In addition to joining with the developing world to begin a transition to a hydrogen-based global economy, regulated by democratic governments on the basis of international standards for environmental and labor protection. In these tasks we must include the lessons learned by Dr. Hernando de Soto and described in The Mystery of Capital, i.e., we must fully address the complex issues of economic infrastructure in traditional and post-communist economies.

Within the framework of an international organization, we need to create global and regional teams of legal experts, media experts, pedagogical experts, economists, historians, mathematicians, public health specialists, linguists, political scientists, military and police specialists, psychologists, social scientists, and representatives of major religions working together to unlock both the capital and the wisdom embedded in traditional societies.  We also need to bring awareness and change to the political economies of the modernized world. And we must bring about more authentic, secular democracies in all parts of the world—together with deep and permanent changes in the global economic infrastructure.

Other texts describe the syntropic view of democracy, its global action plan, and Syntropic Communities’ Ten Point Plan for reforming inauthentic, modern democracies.  In the final section of this letter I quote a few passages that reference philosophy, religion, and the strategy of change in the hope that these will stimulate the reader’s interest in further study and in making contributions to this perspective. 

Eventually, democracy will evolve beyond what we presently understand as democracy—but not with terrorists as our teachers. If we survive the Global Crisis, it will likely be because we have implemented some version of the above action plan. After a secular global democracy develops from the necessities of crisis, a beginning of a spiritual crisis is probable. The human mind needs purpose and meaning. Having displaced the competing religious sources of meaning, we shall begin to consciously create our own purpose in life. Struggle over the difficulties involved in coming to conscious agreement on a minimal set of shared meanings and purposes will lead eventually to our self-transformation as a species.

The artist T. Scott Sayre noted that all around the world people seem to be making decisions out of fear.  So, too, does the totalitarian temptation lie within each of us.  Our reactions to terror and the Global Crisis will partly define us.  Let us not give in to the drive for quick and easy solutions that destroy the beauty of our ideals.  Let us hold fast to the freedoms we have won while struggling for societies that are sustainable.  The essential point to remember now is that though democracy has its limits, our present, imperfect versions can be improved, and continually improving real-world democracies are our best defense against totalitarianisms that place themselves above life itself… 

 

The Syntropic Perspective

From Creating Democracy In Time, 1994

p. 4 …if we continue to keep our communities divided we will remain misunderstood and essentially unknown to one another.  Our relationships will be unstable.  With increasing competition for scarce resources we will be given to conflicts that—in the presence of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons—are too dangerous to risk.  We have to learn how to re-integrate our separate communities, to stop the violent extremists among us, and to get along with each other at a whole new level of community.

p. 21 …There will be individuals who “know” that “the market will make the best decisions.”  There are individuals and groups who claim divine guidance…as justification for killing those [whom] they perceive to be obstructing their path toward their own…“higher values.”

p. 4… Being realistic, we … know that some of us, through trauma or accidents of learning, tend to remain as very small children—unaware of the needs of others or unable to balance the interests of self with the interests of others.

p. 5… If the fundamentalist and ethnic rejection of democracy as a universal value is widely accepted, then we are all at sea in separate ships—steering with different maps and orienting ourselves by different stars.  In storms or under conditions of poor visibility, we will inevitably collide.

p. 4… Through experience, we have learned that it is difficult to create democracy.  We also know that if we are not truly democratic in the affairs of our community, that is, if some of us violate the social contract, others will be [justifiably] angry.  They are likely, for a while, to turn their backs on the community … itself, if they see others profit by exploiting it.  People may divide against one another while trying to solve these conflicts, but they will—sooner or later—rise up together against those who have usurped the common interest.

p.4-5…Modern ‘democracies’… are still riddled with authoritarian, corrupt, and antidemocratic processes.  Building an authentic and thoroughly democratic system takes time.  Unfortunately, given the rapid drift toward global disaster, we may not have as much time as we think.  Yet without genuinely democratic problem-solving on a global scale humans are likely to experience catastrophic suffering—over increasingly large areas of the Earth—during the next fifty years.  Creating democracy in time, therefore, must be the principle concern with which we prepare for the 21st century.

 

From The Universal Model, 1995

Part Two  A Model Constitution

Syntropy [(Gr) syn = together, tropos = turning or moving toward] is defined here as a conscious turning and moving together toward declared values and ends by purposefully integrating all levels of human action and meaning, including such pairs of actions as may have been previously thought to be paradoxically or antagonistically related.  A syntropic constitution is a set of basic rules designed to help people purposefully integrate their actions toward democratically defined values and goals—and higher levels of authentic democracy.

I.               From the Preamble

…  Major human tragedies and severe inequities already exist as a result of uneven development, handicaps in the distribution of goods, ineffective social organization, gender-based injustices, overexploitation of diminishing natural resources, and historical enmity among expanding ethnic groups.  This world order in which millions of people starve while others throw food away, where millions die unnecessarily from preventable and treatable diseases, where the rapidly deteriorating condition of the environment seriously threatens the health and quality of life for ourselves and our children, where huge expenditures for military weapons drain the wealth and spirit of the human species, and in which the possibility of war still threatens to annihilate life on Earth, should not acceptable to anyone.

II.              From the Statement of Purpose

…It shall be our purpose to create and develop syntropic community organization and networks, depotentiate the sovereign nation-state, create global democratic government with a democratically controlled world peacekeeping force, reduce armaments while maintaining a balance of power that guarantees the security of each people, plan and restore the environment on a global scale, and create a system of mutual assistance among all human communities for sustainable development on a worldwide basis.

III.            From Principles of Organization

19. …Religious freedom and respect for all religions … are guaranteed by this constitution, but religious faith is a different psychosocial process than that process by which we seek to govern ourselves.  The process of democratic decision-making cannot legitimately resort to factual claims allegedly based on divine will nor to the claim that a God is on either side in a dispute between different groups of the human species, nor can any individual claim to know, with intellectually convincing certainty, the will, the thought, the mind, or even the existence of any God.  Religious faith must be left to individuals and to those nongovernmental groups who share a faith.  Democratic decision-making must proceed on the basis of human abilities to test and accurately understand the forces, limits, and possibilities of the natural world.  Democratic peoples shall strive to understand the physical and mental nature—as well as the interests—of the human species, making such information available to enable all peoples to integrate their values and self-knowledge with an awareness of the aspirations of the whole of humanity within the context of the natural Universe.

VIII.                 From The Democratic World System

7. …The elected World Presidential Council shall have immediate control and direct responsibility for the actions of the Peacekeeping Forces and its military command structure.  When, or if, means are discovered and established that can effectively prevent the creation and production of weapons of mass destruction, the World Peacekeeping Forces shall reduce their stockpiles of such weapons to an absolute minimum, or to zero if the situation and future prospects permit.  In addition, the manufacture and sale of all automatic weapons, and of all biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons shall be prohibited by law.  All such weaponry and the equipment for manufacturing such weaponry will be confiscated and destroyed, excepting that which is needed by the World Peacekeeping Forces to fulfill its tasks.  The former employees of the arms business shall be retrained and guaranteed jobs in alternative work.

19. …The syntropic world government shall establish research centers for the exploration and development of new sites for human habitation, including previously uninhabited regions of the Earth and extraterrestrial surfaces, and for the improvement of all aspects of the Earth’s natural environment, for reproductive and population self-management, for creation of new self-contained and self-renewable ecosystems, and for other scientific research that aims directly and indirectly to enhance the well-being of all humans, to protect and extend human life, and to extend the range of human life further into the Universe.

From the brochure entitled Syntropic Community Investment Clubs and the video entitled Democracy In Time:

…ten intermediate steps are necessary in most modern democracies.  The following critical issues…[must be addressed]:

(1)           Campaign Finance—Public financing of non-careerist political campaigns is a necessary expense of democracy and the only logical answer to control of elections by special interests.

(2)           Term Limits—We can refine and diminish political careerism by making it illegal to campaign for office while already in elected office.

(3)           Minority and Gender Representation—Proportional representation for all minorities, small political parties, and both genders tends to bring more people into the political process and would result in dramatically improved decision-making by our legislative bodies.

(4)           Mass Media—We advocate the distribution of media licenses equally among the private for-profit, private non-profit, and public sectors.

(5)           Economy—The economy, which is already naturally divided into for-profit, non-profit, and public sectors must be restructured so that a nearly equal balance exists among the three sectors.  The essential goals are to make our economies sustainable, to significantly reduce the gap between rich and poor, and to democratize corporations and government bureaus.

(6)           Lobbying—We can prevent lobbyists from whispering in the ears of our elected representatives by requiring them to present their views on in organized public forums where a hundred voices can contend by the rules of fair debate.

(7)           Education—If we are to move our democracies ahead, we shall have to teach our students how to fine-tune their abilities to detect the tactics of authoritarian and special interests as well as to prepare our students for jobs that fit into sustainable economies.

(8)           Health Care—We advocate single-payer, guaranteed, universal health care with a Bill of Patient’s Rights to include the right to choose your own health care specialists.

(9)           Environment and Population—A more scientific and less profit-oriented approach to caring for our environment—and for deciding our planet’s carrying capacity at different standards of living—is essential.

(10)        International Organization—An extension of democratic process into all international organizations, especially the United Nations, NAFTA, and the World Trade Organization, and strict new international standards to protect labor, the environment, minorities, and indigenous lpeoples will be necessary to elevate democracy to the next step in its long evolution.

Though terrorists and other perpetrators of injustice must be held personally culpable for their actions, I believe that if these ten steps had been fully implemented years ago we would not now be facing the Global Crisis that is upon us.

Here I will stop and invite conversation.  If you agree with the above, how would you then proceed more specifically to cope with terrorism and improve the present world situation?  If you disagree with any part, what are your thoughts?  How will you personally act to improve your chances of surviving a terrorist attack?  [For those in metropolitan areas and in places especially sensitive to terrorist attacks, I recommend a backpack containing a gas mask, antibiotics, water purification system, emergency food supplies, battery-powered radio, cell phone, emergency phone numbers and escape routes, as well as staying out of large crowds and tall buildings, etc.]