Causesof Political violence
Political violence is like a festering wound, in that, without the aid of antibiotics the wound has the potential to depress the immune system and eventually overwhelm the individual, leading to death. In this analogy, antibiotics could represent forces that are always looking for the rogue virus's bent on the destruction of the whole body (society). I often wonder why people resort to violence, of any kind, to solve a particular problem. Questions can be asked of the individual(s) involved in carrying out the attacks, but the questions never seem to be answered in a way that will show why violence is needed to resolve conflict. Rather, excuses are rendered in the hopes that by the logic used in explaining why conflict must be resolved, this will justify the actions. This leads, though, to a sort of circular argument. For example, in the case of Saddam Hussein (put aside the fact that he is the president of a nation) is an idiot. Why exactly he felt it was justifiable to invade a country, who at the time had an OK relationship with the United States, and then think the US and/or other countries would allow him to forcibly occupy that country. Whatever his logic, his actions were not justifiable. I believe his logic was as follow
Where the cherry pie thesis asserts that humans have a proclivity for violence because of sociological factors, the Insanity Thesis assumes we are violent because we are insane. A popular definition of insane might be " the absence of normalcy." This though leads to the question of "When are you insane" or " What is a sane person?" When someone is termed insane there needs to be a label attached to that insanity. Such as anti-social disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, acute depression, retardation, or autism. This is because, if there is no label attached to a disorder then how can anyone say there is a disorder at all. If there is no label attached to a disorder then clearly there is no disorder. If I totally accept the cherry pie thesis, or any of the other theses, then one could say argue that I am suffering from a psychological disorder. With the exception of anti-social disorder, and possibly bipolar disorder, all the other disorders I have listed will not develop into an individual who will commit acts of political violence. Like the killer ape thesis, the insanity thesis revolves around biology as the determining factor for why people commit acts of political violence, which could then be said, are factors contributing to discontent, but not the cause. The insanity thesis does, however, explain to what extent inclines the discontent to violent expression. More often then not society will place people who fail to meet "normal" requirements of functionality in society into, say, mental health institutions, in order for them to get the proper care they need to be rehabilitated so that they may then be able to function properly in society. I use the Persian Gulf War as a recent example of reasons for why people resolve conflict not through peaceful means but through violent actions. Iraq is not the only country in the system to use this type of logic when tackling an issue that is perceived to have only one avenue of approach to resolution: war. It seems that every, or nearly every, state in the world will resort to brute force to make a point. This then begs the question of, why? I will explore some of the popular assumptions for why people act as they do and try to come to some sort of agreement which we may all universally agree upon. Finally, the last of the theses put
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1557
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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