Old and Foolish

Old and Foolish

 

A lot has been said about age, growing old, wisdom and being foolish. There are many books written as well as wisdom proverbs that gives those reaching the golden years some motivation and at the same time, instill some pride, passion and motivation that being old and foolish has nothing to do with any loss of power or existence in the world.

 

Age is not a simple concept – rather age is a mere perception. Whether one is 50 or 17 or 30 compared to 85 is a mere calculation of time and existence but in no way, reflects the value or worth of such time spent in this world. Bear with me as I write my defense that we are not foolish when we get older and that growing old is a mere compliment and compensation to the order of the world so we can contribute or continue to contribute to societal efforts to change the world and that wisdom is an independent quality not relative to age at all.

 

To many, age denotes decay. This may be a false impression that can be easily proven if that was the subject at hand for this topic we are covering. Aging includes many things that are part of a continuum that begins at a very young age and demonstrated a vigor and vitality of life that is enriched and postponed indefinitely by individual will power to reject aging as a natural process and not slow you down as society expects you to do when maturing into an elderly status.

 

Passion has no age limit. Aging is not relative to what you can do and what you desire to do. Although some physical deterioration takes place, there are often other means to compensate for such reduced abilities or agilities but hardly any of these actions can stop the passion to live life to the fullest if the heart and mind takes charge of your senescence process throughout your lifetime.

 

Rarely do we qualify age as a determining factor when the body and mind keeps up with demands. In all reality, facing the truth one can honestly say the vision of 80-year-old man can exceed or be wiser than the 55-year-old but lack some wisdom along the way towards the final goal of fruitful living one’s life.

However, this could be a fallacy in a case by case basis as it depends on many variables in order to hold this to be accurately projected.

 

One of the first essential rules of eliminating the old myth that wisdom is associated with old age. This is false. There is no guarantee that the older you get, the wiser you become. If one has the ability to experience many enriched life quality related facts, connected or linked to effective interpersonal communications, and possess the ability to step back and learn from each such experiences, impacting an affect, judgment or conflict, then there are many benefits from such occurrences.

 

It is the immediacy of the moment that fills our minds with what was gained through the perspective at the instant. The more you witness, or experience in your life, the fuller the enrichment and perspectives. It is the basic foundation of wisdom and is subject to different definitions. One would have to understand the variable structures of wisdom to realize how it is attained. One quality is time but time is not the sole structure of wisdom. One can attain wisdom at a younger age through enriched contact with life’s experiences good or bad. One can say these are lessons learned to some degree.

 

 

Deciphering empathy, synthesized care of observation and the spirit of justice all play into the wisdom of mankind. One can readily see how one can become wise at an early age if exposed to multiple opportunities to exercise integration and cognition or such events and learn to acquire a self-awareness and capacity to appreciate the fact that these lessons learned are in fact subject to paradoxes, ironies and oxymoronic events that fill our lifetime.

 

This is all based on an individual’s investigative skills, where empathy is defined as a combination of maturity, knowledge, experience and intelligence both cognitive and emotional as well as possessing the skills of patience and connecting to the realization that there are two sides to everything and nothing is black and white. Hence an ability to absorb the self-awareness and at the same time, notice or be aware of the absorption of others rather than self.

 

To summarize my ideas, imagine that the old are always wiser than the young for you cannot be wise about things you have not lived through yet, however, facts reveal that after the age of 30, there isn’t that much of a gain of wisdom from that point on if those individuals lived a life that involved toleration, ambiguity, the search for the truth faced with paradoxes and ironies which in turn the process facilitates a widening of the social radius and a balanced way to cope with adversity. A process that does not have to be complex but in fact can remain simple to gain wisdom relative to your existence in our world.

Old and Foolish

 

A lot has been said about age, growing old, wisdom and being foolish. There are many books written as well as wisdom proverbs that gives those reaching the golden years some motivation and at the same time, instill some pride, passion and motivation that being old and foolish has nothing to do with any loss of power or existence in the world.

 

Age is not a simple concept – rather age is a mere perception. Whether one is 50 or 17 or 30 compared to 85 is a mere calculation of time and existence but in no way, reflects the value or worth of such time spent in this world. Bear with me as I write my defense that we are not foolish when we get older and that growing old is a mere compliment and compensation to the order of the world so we can contribute or continue to contribute to societal efforts to change the world and that wisdom is an independent quality not relative to age at all.

 

To many, age denotes decay. This may be a false impression that can be easily proven if that was the subject at hand for this topic we are covering. Aging includes many things that are part of a continuum that begins at a very young age and demonstrated a vigor and vitality of life that is enriched and postponed indefinitely by individual will power to reject aging as a natural process and not slow you down as society expects you to do when maturing into an elderly status.

 

Passion has no age limit. Aging is not relative to what you can do and what you desire to do. Although some physical deterioration takes place, there are often other means to compensate for such reduced abilities or agilities but hardly any of these actions can stop the passion to live life to the fullest if the heart and mind takes charge of your senescence process throughout your lifetime. Rarely do we qualify age as a determining factor when the body and mind keeps up with demands. In all reality, facing the truth one can honestly say the vision of 80-year-old man can exceed or be wiser than the 55-year-old but lack some wisdom along the way towards the final goal of fruitful living one’s life.

However, this could be a fallacy in a case by case basis as it depends on many variables in order to hold this to be accurately projected. One of the first essential rules of eliminating the old myth that wisdom is associated with old age. This is false. There is no guarantee that the older you get, the wiser you become. If one has the ability to experience many enriched life quality related facts, connected or linked to effective interpersonal communications, and possess the ability to step back and learn from each such experiences, impacting an affect, judgment or conflict, then there are many benefits from such occurrences.

 

It is the immediacy of the moment that fills our minds with what was gained through the perspective at the instant. The more you witness, or experience in your life, the fuller the enrichment and perspectives. It is the basic foundation of wisdom and is subject to different definitions. One would have to understand the variable structures of wisdom to realize how it is attained. One quality is time but time is not the sole structure of wisdom. One can attain wisdom at a younger age through enriched contact with life’s experiences good or bad. One can say these are lessons learned to some degree.

 

Deciphering empathy, synthesized care of observation and the spirit of justice all play into the wisdom of mankind. One can readily see how one can become wise at an early age if exposed to multiple opportunities to exercise integration and cognition or such events and learn to acquire a self-awareness and capacity to appreciate the fact that these lessons learned are in fact subject to paradoxes, ironies and oxymoronic events that fill our lifetime.

 

This is all based on an individual’s investigative skills, where empathy is defined as a combination of maturity, knowledge, experience and intelligence both cognitive and emotional as well as possessing the skills of patience and connecting to the realization that there are two sides to everything and nothing is black and white. Hence an ability to absorb the self-awareness and at the same time, notice or be aware of the absorption of others rather than self.

 

To summarize my ideas, imagine that the old are always wiser than the young for you cannot be wise about things you have not lived through yet, however, facts reveal that after the age of 30, there isn’t that much of a gain of wisdom from that point on if those individuals lived a life that involved toleration, ambiguity, the search for the truth faced with paradoxes and ironies which in turn the process facilitates a widening of the social radius and a balanced way to cope with adversity. A process that does not have to be complex but in fact can remain simple to gain wisdom relative to your existence in our world.

In God We Trust

They have done more than just poisoned the well

They have convinced you all, you are going to hell

They bred their fears so you would run away

And leave behind what got you to stay

 

Don’t listen to them as they pollute the air

With whispering lies into your ear

Your brain is smarter than that, take my advice

Put all their rhetoric of hate and fear on ice

 

Let them think you are insane

But in the meantime make sure you don’t miss your train

The train to freedom, the train to protecting yourself from harm

And keep and fight your right to bear arms

 

Never use violence as a means to offend

But our freedoms we shall fight to defend

Keep your rights, don’t surrender a thing

Tell them to keep their lies and soon we shall win

 

No violent plans, no marches to hell

They think we have surrendered but inside we can tell

Our plan is to preserve freedom, our fight is just

And when it is all said and done, In God We Trust

Hot Humid Nights - a short story about July 1968

Hot Humid Nights – July 1968

 

The days were hard enough but the nights in the tropics, the sleepless nights that drove your mind to sleep deprivation, were filled with moist air, compressed like a smelly sweaty towel, as your bed felt soaked with the humid air; the tropical breeze almost still and your legs ache from the long walks the day before.

Walking through the tropics during the day was torturous enough for any man to endure. Between dodging the prickly vines, sharp tall grass and the mud under your boots, your body sweats every inch not covered by the jungle camouflaged outfit you wore so to blend in with your surroundings. Leeches, mosquitoes and other insects attack each limb and flesh exposed or covered. It made no difference where you were for these nuisance insects would find you.

Filled with regrets, stuck in a war, that is most unpopular, and a friendship with some strangers from everywhere, that lasts perhaps a week or two, you stick to your thoughts like a strip of Velcro, holding desperately onto the reality around you, to keep you from going insane. July nights, filled with a suffering heat, left over from the blistering summer sun of the nightmare that would last for some just weeks, or months but never less than a year.

It was the nights that were horrifying, the nights that played your mind and the nights that tore your heart and soul into pieces. Living and coping with the pulse of life and war around you was surely exasperated by the heat; the hot humid nights no matter where you laid your head down.

As well as dealing with the sleepless nights, your head was dealing with the faces of ghosts before, the sounds of chaos and the perspiration of hard work staying alive and out of the hand of the enemy. Vietnam was surely a distinctly different from the rest of the world on those hot July days in 1968.

Oddly enough, suffering during the day from the heat was manageable by finding shade, drinking water and feeling the almost cool breeze that was relatively moving fast enough to wipe your face with a refreshing swipe of relief. It’s the nights, not the days that make enduring the darkness a challenge. It’s the hot humid nights that makes the fever rise inside your body as you witness the moon above through the trees but the air was still, the insects were chirping and your body was weary.

Even a fleet of dark clouds can bring no relief as the wind dies down to as it flirts with the temperatures rising with the 90’s daily and 100’s almost unheard of in a chain of sequence that only the strong can survive. One could compare these hot July nights like those in Alabama or even the climate of Mississippi as the rains falter and the air is filled with wetness but not a drop falls out of the sky, making you sweat without a spot of flesh being dry.

It was the night that caused you to breakout in a drenching sweat when the sun went down; it was the dew on the morning grass that caught your eye that the sun was coming out and help you dry the wetness from your skin and give you a little bit more energy to go on another mile.

The sopping air of Vietnam evening feels hotter than the day. This saturated feeling of being wet all over drove you mad as you laid there in your bed or on the moistened ground, barely awake, yet a witness to all the misery around you as those sharing your plight, also suffer throughout the night, as the trees sway gently to a hot tropical wind that cannot find you to give you relief from the airless nights where all is strangely still for the hours before sunrise.

Some were fooled by the peace and quiet of a tropical night, but when the air is hot and the body can’t breathe, the rest of the night makes you restless. You cannot sleep and somehow you strangely wish for the day’s scorching sun to give your relief from the saturated and drenched madness around you

It was during the nights you realize how human you really are; the warm humid air keeps you breathing but not without suffering for a cool breath to sooth your body some.

There is no such thing as a good night’s rest, an evening of coolness or a temporary relief from the perspiration and heightened awareness of your respiration, laboring immensely, your exhausted and disheveled body that is trying to rest. In the end, before the sun comes up, your senses awaken to the stench of your own sweat, straining the odors of the night as you pant for a fresh breath of air.

This stench, this cologne of sweat is a poison that robs you from any rest you can get. These odors capture the mood of the day and wrap it up into a reeking fragrance that haunts your mind all over again. You smell like an overripe fruit or vegetable that had been left out in the sun.

These are the odors of stress, anxiety and open mouthed belabored breathing; a preliminary condition to death if the sun doesn’t rise very soon. Your body cannot stand this incessant respiration while the plants and animals around you require it to survive.

Walking in the swamps and marshes during the day, leave residue of plants, feces and other contaminants on your boots and clothes, that stink to high heaven during the hot humid nights. The odor is suffocating and the activity to find a restful pace or breath, is exhausting but who can sleep under such duress. The pulse becomes audible – restless and still. Enduring this hot, humid night once more is a test of wills between reality and the nightmare that visits you often in this land of tropical surprises.

Absence of Silence - a simple poem

Terrorism -descibing terrorists - profiling backgrounds

Terrorism – Describing Terrorist -

Part II

Demographic studies from the 1960s and 1970s constructed a profile of the typical terrorist as a well-educated single male in his mid-twenties from a middle-class background but that has changed so much as the social classes have been mingled, mixed, destroyed or otherwise hybrid into different social categories that includes variances in race, religion, gender and ethnicity backgrounds.

It should be mentioned that the relationship between political orientations and socioeconomic factors reveal that during the 1960’s and 70’s, women are gaining more of a significant role in such acts that demonstrates their propensity to be more favored to perform terrorist acts for the left wing more so than the right wing terrorists (46.2 vs. 11.2 percent) according to tabulations performed by the FBI.

Additionally, the FBI tabulations revealed that “college completion was much more common among left- than right-wing terrorists (67.6 vs. 19.0 percent), blue-collar occupation was more frequent among right- than left-wing terrorists (74.8 vs. 24.3 percent), and there was a trend for both left- and right-wing terrorists to achieve low- to medium-income levels even if they had college education.”

The terror-related inclination to be involved in terrorism swung away from Europe in the 1980s along with a relative quiet or dormant existence of American terrorists’ groups and the advent of a rising world profile of radical Islamic terrorists.

This resulted in the recognition characteristic of the Islamic or Palestinian terrorist of that later period who was age seventeen to twenty-three, came from a large family with an impoverished background, and had low educational achievement. But the pendulum has swung again. Middle Eastern terrorists in the late 1990s and early twenty-first century come from a wider demographic range, including university students, professionals, married men in their late forties, and young women.

The most recent development, the recruitment of women as suicide bombers, arises at least in part from the fact that permits females to participate in acts of terror and actively engage in all methodologies listed as a means to fight the cause or mission.

This profile holds true today as women are listed as leaders, co-conspirators, assassins or bombers in various terrorist scenarios in the Middle East and part of Southeast Asia.

A poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in 2001 among 1,357 adults in the West Bank and Gaza tested the hypothesis that poverty or low levels of education influence attitudes regarding political violence and found that support for terrorism against Israeli civilians was even more common among professionals than among laborers (43.3 vs. 34.6 percent) and more common among those with secondary education than among illiterate respondents (39.4 vs. 32.3 percent)

On the basis of unstructured interviews, American psychiatrist David Hubbard reported five traits of skyjackers:

 (1) violent, often alcoholic father

(2) deeply religious mother

(3) sexually shy, timid, and passive

(4) younger sisters toward whom the terrorist acted protectively

(5) poor social achievement.

On the matter of second-hand information, analysts have claimed to have identified nine typical characteristics of right-wing terrorists:

 (1) ambivalence toward authority

(2) defective insight

(3) adherence to convention,

(4) emotional detachment from the consequences of their actions

(5) sexual role uncertainties

6) magical thinking

(7) destructiveness

(8) low education

(9) adherence to violent subculture norms and weapons fetishes.

It is interesting that these lists, compiled a decade apart, overlap in regard to sexual role uncertainties and probably low education (if this is a proxy for poor social achievement). Yet apart from this superficial overlap, the two studies do not suggest common features of background or personality.

Neither of these studies used controls or validated psychological instruments creating somewhat subjective matter to deal with and taken with less credibility than any other empirical evidence presented for such studies. Since the tragic events of September 11, 2001, attention has shifted to the psychology of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. There is a dearth of published literature describing psychological studies of Muslim extremists.

An analysis of this subgroup of Muslim extremist suicide bombers among the Palestinians revealed a profile of individuals described as:

 

·        ages seventeen to twenty-two

·        uneducated,

·        unemployed

·        unmarried

Most came from respected families that supported their activism, with 30 percent of the families of religious terrorists and 15 percent of the families of secular terrorists reporting their own radical involvement. Peer influence was cited as the major reason for joining a terrorist group, and joining increased social standing. Membership was described as being associated with a fusion of the young adult’s individual identity with the group’s collective identity and goals.

Prison experience was claimed to strengthen group commitment for most terrorists of both types. Anger and hatred without remorse were often expressed, but there was little interest in obtaining weapons of mass destruction localizing both attacks and methods used weaponry chosen to be small arms or homemade explosives.

Other data compiled of individuals identified as Muslims engaged in terrorism for the new Islamic world order revealed some fragmented childhood trauma and only a few suffered from a personality disorders or paranoia but did have histories of petty crimes committed and most were loners. One appeared to be an al Qaeda leader.

Potentially high-value data were gathered outside the academic research apparatus by United Nations (UN) relief worker Nasra Hassan, based non-scientific or control based interviews with “nearly 250” members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad conducted in Gaza between 1996 and 1999. She reports that the suicide bombers ranged in age from eighteen to thirty-eight, more than half were refugees, “many” were middle class, 2 were sons of millionaires, and none were depressed, although “many” reported that they had been beaten or tortured by Israeli forces.

Unfortunately, Hassan’s lucid and widely cited report does not specify the actual number of terrorist subjects, as well as what proportion of this total subject population were intended suicide bombers, failed suicide bombers, or trainers, and offers no specific demographic, socioeconomic, or psychological data.

Other attempts to account for the behavior of terrorists fall into two general categories: top-down approaches that seek the seeds of terrorism in political, social, economic and evolutionary circumstances bottom-up approaches that explore the characteristics of individuals and groups that turn to terrorism.

These approaches are not mutually exclusive. In fact, approaches such as rational choice theory and relative deprivation/oppression theory combine these points of view, considering interactions between circumstances and actors. While acknowledging the importance of top-down analyses and ultimate causes, this article focuses primarily on bottom-up approaches and proximal causes in sub-state terrorism. The principal approaches are organized into groups for the sake of clarity.

However, it will become apparent that conceptual overlap exists between theories within and between groups. It will also become apparent that a particular fundamental conceptual framework— such as psychoanalysis—may inform diverse theories and that the same theory may be championed from different conceptual frameworks.

 

Terrorism, probing the mind - a genesis Part I

Terrorism – Probing the Mind (Genesis)

Part I

 

Terrorism is real and not a figment of our imagination. It has been denied existence and often referred to as a tool of fear or intimidation that should not be recognized by any government or political group.

This is a layman’s termed article that explains the fundamental reasons why terrorism exists and how it is applied to modern history. It is neither academia or politically inspired and should be kept in such content and context. Although there are many theories out there for the reasons terrorism exists today, it is nothing new and has existed in our society since the beginning of time. The biggest difference today is the level of this threat and the significance it plays on your life.

Discarding the reasons, purposes and political slandering of specific groups or individuals, we want to discuss why human nature related to such extreme behaviors has not progressed or changed over time. We also want to identify how the threat has been expanded in our world today compared to the past and how time and space play into that formula for danger. Three interlocking trends have been significantly changed, improved or boosted thereby compressing time and space factors on terrorism.

Comparing the mode of travel from the Middle Ages against the means to travel today we find the globalization of international trade and business seriously impacting the ability for movement around the world. Certainly, one can see the speed of such transgressions happening compared than ever before.

The most obvious enhancement is the mode of travel which has reduced time and space down to hours rather than weeks or months in the past. Lastly, with the introduction of social media, internet and other digital improvements or devices, it allows information to be transferred at a very rapid speed making most decisions real time with a slight lapse in time and space. 

The second aggravating factor is the instability of world leadership, political corruption and the economic disparities connected to radical ideological conflicts that allows individuals or groups to facilitate a cooperative or unified aggression. An act or acts of hostilities conducted by extreme or radicalized mindsets to act as conspirators using the global socio-political systems and the ascent of religious fundamentalism as an aggrieved tool to expose or explode their acts into secular trends of terror-related violence and destruction.

Unfortunately, the potential of macro-terrorists handing over their ideologies and missions to smaller [micro] groups of terrorist has been facilitated by movements and infiltration of key government or commerce positions that facilitates contact for such extreme hostile acts endangering all aspects of the security of civilization as we know it while changing daily.

Without a doubt, the subject matter crosses lines of scholarly and psychological boundaries as the behavior has been identified to be related to various reasons why this problem of terrorism exists in the first place. Apart from the most basic reason of finding the truth, there are other targets these terror groups intend to expose, attack or destroy.

Understanding the roots of the terrorists’ mindset would allow better counter-terror methods and reduce the harm inflicted by such groups or acts. It would benefit local police agencies to engage in such training and staff development methods to reduce their dependency on other agencies including the federal government in our country; a government who normally assumes complete control of such situations to conduct political damage control as well as the primary investigations of these acts leaving little behind for locals to learn from other than what has been shared in classified documents on a limited basis.

Despite such a practical and compelling need to understand the act of terrorism, many government officials have failed to dedicate sufficient time and funding to explore such motivation and despicable acts to support valid efforts by many in law enforcement to reduce such acts world-wide.

The lack of such systematic investigations has left many governments void of answers and how to reduce the origin, deployment and recognition of such terrorist behaviors in their communities making them totally depended on outside sources for help or assistance in understanding this terror phenomenon that is engaging our world today.

In fact, the lack of such insight causes multiple theoretical presumptions and assumptions that may accelerate and exasperate the situation more than help it causing unnecessary deployment of resources and creating fear in the communities without answers how to combat or counter these potential terror attacks timely and appropriately as well as having the right policies in place to implement a sound procedure to protect the citizenry from potential terror attacks created in the terrorist mind.

An optimum counter-terrorism policy would address or uncover the bases or foundation of terrorist aggression and allows a better understanding to deploy and implement better responses, reactionary plans and training for those responding to such situations.

It would be impossible to compile and list every act of terrorism there is in our world today as well as historical basis. For the basic purposes of this writing, we shall identify two common elements of terrorism that includes an act of terrorism as an aggression against non-combatants or unarmed civilians and an act to attack a political goal thereby influencing the change of direction or behaviors in a way that serves the terrorists involved.

Previous definitions of terrorism have suggested there are over one hundred academic definitions of terrorism and each one is based on their behaviors, their intent or declared reasons or motivation, and whether or not this was an act of a terrorist or a “freedom fighter” as the role is often reversed depending on the viewpoint of the scholar or research team members. Each act can be changed or deviated before the occurrence, during the spell or after the session which include variables such as:

 

a)     Environment

b)    Goals

c)     Strategy

d)    Means

 

Causes – created by self-imagined idealists or altruists, others are driven by messianic delusions, others by ethnic or religious animus, and others by entrepreneurial ambitions

The organization and involvement may stem from (1) social revolutionary terrorism, (2) left wing or right-wing terrorism, (3) nationalist-separatist terrorism, (4) religious extremist terrorism, and (5) single-issue (e.g., animal rights) terrorism, proposing that each type of occurrence or cause tends to be associated with its own social-psychological dynamics.

 

·        Types of terrorist acts identified by mindsets and theoretical conclusions

·        Perpetrator number Individual vs. group

·        Sponsorship State vs. sub state vs. individual

·        Relation to authority Anti-state/anti-establishment/separatist vs. pro-state/pro-establishment

·        Locale Intrastate vs. transnational

·        Military status Civilian vs. paramilitary or military

·        Spiritual motivation Secular vs. religious

·        Financial motivation Idealistic vs. entrepreneurial

·        Political ideology Leftist/socialist vs. rightist/fascist vs. anarchist

·        Hierarchical role Sponsor vs. leader versus middle management vs. follower

·        Willingness to die Suicidal vs. non-suicidal

·        Target Property (including data) vs. individuals vs. masses of people

 

Methodology –

 

a)     Bombing

b)    Assassination

c)     Kidnapping/hostage taking

d)    Mass poisoning

e)     Rape

f)      Bioterrorism

g)    Cyberterrorism