Psychological Boundaries and ethnic conflict

“Psychological Boundaries and ethnic conflict” by Lina Haddad and Kristen Monroe is a social helpful yet very disturbing analysis. These two social analyses conclude for us the actual and the closer reasonable reasons behind committing violent commands against the others. Those we do not proceed, or do not want to, as the main reasons most of the time because we always search for an escape of our reality. The conclusion of the first article lead me to think that it is hard on someone to accept that it is mainly the human nature of gathering and forming groups of certain identities that actually create sorts of violence between ethnics . As it is mentioned other factors considered being secondary, but in some readings I read in other classes over such cases the writers considered these secondary as mainly. But now I am totally convinced that it is when we feel our identity is under attack we perform a kind of resistance and as we have seen from the example of the Civil War of Lebanon even in the same community identity has been the dominant reason of all the violent actions.

In the first article “The Dilemma of Obedience” by Stanly Milgram the author has given very nice analyses that seem to justify the obedience of the soldiers during war time for violent actions. It is convincing still disturbing because it is not enough from him to explain that the sense of leaving the responsibility of committing these violent actions is why a solider may do it, or that someone must encourage themselves to transform their morals into action is enough. I need to know how they could transform it. And what if the one, who is obedient to these actions, believe in destruction or his beliefs call for that? It is true that it is the people and the environment around us affect on us, yet I think the psychological side/ the identity of an individual or a certain community performs the most important part on this. It is true if I say that we even have a conflict within ourselves when a part on your back head calls you to think of the others not as others but as humans, while we still want to keep our identity that is different from them and want it to arouse. But then the thought that came into my mind is about fear, isn’t it that when we fear something we want to hold to something else in order to escape that fear. I would think through many times it is my fear that brings my identity forward and slows my heart beat whenever I see an Israeli soldier facing me.

Duty and Brutality

Priyanka Mazumder

In the article “The Dilemma of Obedience,” Stanley Milgram examines the fact that obedience to the authority insists ordinary people to act violently. Now question can be raised that will the actor continue the action, if it conflicts with morality, or at a certain point he will deny performing it? In this regard, to see when people refuse to obey the rules, Milgram set up an experiment where a teacher needs to give increasing electro shocks to a learner, when he makes an error in a learning session (604). In the experiment, almost two-thirds of the teacher behaved as “obedient” (604). Now, will we consider them as monster? But, these people came from different ordinary profession, not from military. So, what triggered them to act violently? What was the perspective of the teachers, when they performed violent action?

From the reaction of the teachers, we find that some of the teacher excused their violent behavior by saying that it was their duty to give command to torture the learners (605). It points out that teachers are not thinking themselves accountable for the action; moreover they transfer the responsibility of torture to the authority. Some teachers even said that “the responsibility belonged to the man who pulled the switch” (Milgram, 606). This statement indicates that when people collectively involve in a violent action, it blocks their vision to see the whole picture. So, they do not feel individual guiltiness.

Similarly in the article, “Psychological Boundaries and Ethic Conflict: How Identity Constrained Choice…….during Lebanese Civil War,” Kreidie and Monroe show that how obedience and loyalty to the group and ethnic identity makes individuals to involve in violence. Unlike Milgram, authors introduced us with several persons, who were directly involved in ethnic conflict in Lebanon. From these subjects’ interviews, we notice that they construct a boundary between themselves and their enemy. They view their enemy as animal and brutal (26). It indicates that subjects have strong belief about how their enemy will behave. In fact, they have an ideology of Us vs. Them, which insist them to use violence means. They told that their enemy deprived them from equal rights and to protect it, they join in the civil war (21). It indicates that subjects are trying to say that their enemy pushed them to act violently. So they do not need to feel guilty and responsible for the civil war.

Now, it is very interesting that in both Milgram’s and Kreidie and Monroe’s article, none of the actor admit that what they did was wrong, moreover they blame others and hold them responsible for the violent action. So, from this we can say that human being has the tendency to get psychological satisfaction and legitimize their cruel action by believing that it is their loyalty and duty to the authority or group.

Work Cited

 Milgram, Stanley. “The Dilemma of Obedience.” The Phi Delta Kappan. 55(9), May. 1974.

Kreidie, Lina Haddad and Kristen Renwick Monroe. “Psychological Boundaries and Ethic Conflict: How Identity Constrained Choice and Worked to Turn Ordinary People into Perpetrators of Ethic Violence during Lebanese Civil War.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society. 16 (1), fall. 2002.

The Dilemma of Obedience; Lebnon: a Case Study of Identity Politics

Marvah Shakib

27/02/2012

Stantely Milgram has done the experiment on the dilemma of obedience to figure out the reason of mass killing by Nazi Germany. In his experiment two people were engaged, “teacher” and “learner,” and the teacher were supposed to punish the learner by electronic shock for every mistake that he does. Interestingly he figured out that none of the participants in experiment refused to punish, and some of them punished with a very high degree of electronic shocks. None of them thought of taking a decision to not to punish, and two third of them fall in to category of obedient by obeying the excremental person. Thus, he indicates that this violence were justified by Nazi Germany, because the people who poured gas or killed innocent people by other methods did not feel guilty because they were obeying, and people in high ranks did not feel guilty because they did not do it themselves rather they played with papers in their offices (Milgram, 605, 606).

Moreover, the Lebanon case study indicates the reason that ordinary people commit to ethnic violence is power of identity and perceptions of self in relation to others to constrain political actions. The narratives and analysis of five perpetrators of violence during the Lebanese civil war illustrates that besides their ideological position, affiliations, allegiances, or individual past, they felt constrained by their self identity, and group identity. Additionally, individuals became capable of committing violent against their neighbors, and people who they lived with in peace for decades, because of the importance of protecting their perceived psychological boundaries (Kreidie and Monroe, 31). Hence, he indicates that individuals would commit any form of ethnic violence by justification of protecting themselves and or their group, and group identification, stereotypes, social representation, were significant for the five individuals in this case study.

As J.Glenn Gray in his text indicates that the  delight of comradeship is that the soldiers have grown throughout their course of training and living will help them to defend, attack and moreover to self-sacrifice one’s life for the other comrade. This idea flows well with the experiment by Milgram and Lebnon case, in which both of them point out that people’s experience of identity power and their perception in relation to others leads them to be capable of committing crime, and are over all obedient.

Finally, being obedient and commitment, loyalty to self identity and group identity are two reasons that can be recognized that as a result of them violence occurs in large scales and has been used in political decision. My query is that, as Western powers do not have the rests identity, and power of individual identity  in such case does not play as important role as it does in the Lebanon case, and I appoint the commanders who point Drons and airplanes to bomb innocents, so they do not obey anyone but themselves as well. Then how the violence done as a result of the international or better to say the head of impariarcal forces’ decisions from west on the rest can be justified (considering in individual scales)?

Shalu Sebastian

Amid arguments on responsibility of soldiers’ involvement in war and killing, J.Glenn Gray in the article The Enduring Appeals of Battle identifies the reasons for soldiers’ performance. Gray examines the psychological features that keep the soldiers fight for their aim and to kill the opponents. The author gives reasons for the violent actions done by soldiers in war, which are mainly due to the delight in seeing, the delight in comradeship, and the delight in destruction. By terming the “delight” in the driving force of the soldiers involved in war, the author considers that ugliness can also please us, and that is the reason behind the pleasure of “seeing” human being’s plight in the battlefield.

According to the author, the lust of human eye to witness the strange and unusual things keeps the person involved in war to keep move forward. By seeing, one is able to feel the reality. He points out that there is only a simple difference between the veteran soldier and a simplest soldier in the delight of “seeing,” which is the difference of the degree. For the simplest soldier the degree of seeing will be much more that the one who used to it. But it is important to notice that the interest or curiosity to see will last within the minds. However, the love for one’s life, especially when someone is encountering with life and death, will outweigh the idea of delight to “see”, at this point the author’s arguments seems futile.

Author’s argument on the delight to see is surpassed by his second argument which is the delight of comradeship. The comradeship that the soldiers have grown throughout their course of training and living will help them to defend, attack and moreover to self-sacrifice one’s life for the other comrade. The sense of importance of objects or persons which they are concerned makes it possible to forget about them. Likewise, the war fought with a clear aim will be more fruitful than fought without knowing the reason. Also, he adds that the power of danger evokes the sense of belongingness and comradeship.

According to the author, the excitement and delight to destroy in the minds of the soldiers especially in case of the youth is another factor that contributes to the war. Although they are not getting happiness from destroying they are so keen to work out the techniques that they learned in the course of training.

Although these reasons are plausible, someone can still argue on soldiers’ sinful hands in killing the innocent civilians.

The Enduring Appeals of Battle

“The Enduring Appeals of Battle” by J.Glenn Gray is a fascinating yet a chilling piece of writing about the psychology of war. It exposes what we call the “ugly truth” or the things we would like to believe are not true at all, or its things that we civilians have never experienced and probably never will and that’s what makes it hard to comprehend. Also, for soldiers who survived wars who are not being honest with themselves or are scared to admit the reality of the appeals that this pieces gives wars. This is not to say that all soldiers feel that way, the writer stresses the fact that some soldiers experience some of these appeals and some might not experience any, it varies from a person to another. The soldier who feels delight in killing and become a soldier-killer will not feel the delight of comradeship anymore, for example.

This piece answers the question that has always circulated in my mind about war. “How could they? Could anyone be able to commit such horrible deeds without the blink of an eye?” Now I have an answer, an answer that is truly convincing but still hard to accept. These appeals of war, the delight of seeing, comradeship, and destruction are the answer. If we join it with one of farmer’s reasoning as to why we overlook structural violence, the fact that we feel with people who are closer to us a lot more that the not close ones, and join it with the fact that weapons are so developed that you don’t need to be in the battle field to see what the bombs you throw out of your plane causes, it all makes sense together.

These appeals might help us understand the reason why McNamara, in the “Fog or War” documentary, refused to answer the question of whether he feels guilty about what he has done. We might never know the answer but we can guess that one of these appeals applied to him just like many other soldiers, namely the pleasure of destruction.

The frightening thing about this piece is that now we release that it is in the human nature that we might enjoy destruction and go for it. But the problem is that we can find a substitute for the delight of seeing and comradeship other than in war, but what about destruction? And does the fact that some find delight in destruction make it justified especially if it’s an unjust war? These appeals help us understand war and its soldiers but does it make their violent actions justified?

– Haneen Ayoub

The Warriors and Violence

Priya Nagarajah

February 25, 2012

When we analyze about war and violence, the moral, ethical dilemma comes here that why war is justified, how violence in war is justified, and should soldiers take the responsibility for killing civilians during battle? In his writing, The Enduring Appeals of Battle, Glenn Gray illustrates the three reasons for justifying the acts of soldiers during war from his perspectives and experiences of being as a combatant in the Vietnam War. He emphasizes that the secrets of war lies behind the delight in seeing, delight in comradeship, and delight in destruction (28).

In his view of comradeship, military comradeship and the communal will of the soldiers lead to achieve the main goals of war. Every soldier in war sacrifices his life because they do not want to lose the comradeship in their battle. He identifies the similarity of self sacrifice of the soldier for their goal with the self sacrifice of Saints for their religious ideology. However, if he refers religion for self sacrifice to protect the ideology, then he should refer the religious theme of not killing others and not getting pleasure from the battle from the suffering of the victims. If the soldier fights for saving the religious ideology by killing civilians and getting pleasure in seeing suffering, then what is the benefit of protecting the ideology of religion? He contradicts in his argument where he says that self sacrifice forced to seek religious and metaphysical justification (49).

In addition, comradeship is built upon communal goal and common will. But, what about the individual freedom, which subordinate to the common goal? He answers that the individual freedom leaves us empty, alone, feeling undirected and insignificant (45). But, the communal freedom will yield the freedom to everyone. I would say that human beings are viewed as social animal. If we applaud by one finger there will be no sound. We need five fingers to make the sound. However, what would he respond to the situation of majority and minority in a society to join for the communal will?

Furthermore, he mentions that if the civilian community has the strong corporation than the military group then the civilians can attain their success what they intended to achieve. This can be applied to the independence of India, where Gandhi was able to get the freedom from Europe because he had the strong support from the people from different religion and different places of India. In addition, Algeria had gotten its independence because of resistance from the whole country at a time against the oppression of French. In this case, I would agree with Gray for having a strong communal will to attain the benefit. However, should we need to use violence, go for war, or, kill the people, when we have strong communal will to attain the goal?

Next, the last reason for the war is delight in destruction. Soldiers have the fear of dying in the situation of harsh violence. Rather than protecting the enemy, the soldier would try to save their lives. Killing is not the real happiness for them it is the “Mad excitement of destroying” (53). Through the excitement he becomes capable of defeating the enemy. However why the soldiers should use the “other” human beings as subordinate to their happiness?

Finally I would conclude that, if we emphasize that the ultimate morality of war is self sacrifice then all the men would go to war for supporting all the unjust wars to show their sacrifice and communal will. And also, of the battle is for finding delight in seeing, destruction then the value of soldier will become as a leisure activity for them. The comrades should use their consciousness to understand why they need to fight? Even their own religion emphasizes the concept of violence, should they need to follow the religion? And what will they gain in the trade off in sacrificing their lives in the battle? What if they would not achieve their goal, but to die? Then what is the reality and meaning of self sacrifice and comradeship

Response to Case for Pacifism

Sneha Thankam Alexander

Response to Case for Pacifism

            In the article, Case for Pacifism, the author presents his argument for pacifism on the basis of need to respect human lives. He says that each human being is not a biological specimen but, a unique living being which embodies a purpose and potential to shape one’s own life based on conscious choices. According to him values, happiness and everything is worthless if it is not for human beings and that by no means the loss of a human being can be compensated by the intended or resulting gain.

He goes further by saying that the analogy of just war theory between an individual and a community is not valid. He firmly points out that even when a community is oppressed there will be ways for the individuals to pursue their culture and practices. I was enraged by this part of his argument. In this situation a community is restrained from using its potential to reach the maximum of its heights. Just as an individual’s freedom is fundamental, a condition in which a community can use its own potential and shape its own future is essential. In a condition contrary to this, the individual that make up the society is also deprived from the liberty of being the individual that they want to be. What is the purpose of being able to follow one’s own culture without being able to fully determining how it ought to be? If this is not possible then the respect of human life that is assumed to exist in such a situation is a distorted one and is mere disrespect of the individuals.

The author himself shows how in a community the tradition and culture determine the method of resisting oppression. This is further developed by suggesting that a tradition of non violence should be developed such that people in a community would not resort to violence. This contradicts his argument of the invalidity of the analogy used in the just war theory. My position is not in resistance to pacifism but, to his argument that the analogy is invalid. I think that it is not sufficient enough to negate this analogy and thus the just war theory.

The Case for Pacifism

Sweta Kumari

Richard Norman defines, “pacifism as the view that it is always wrong to go to war” and tries to analyze the moral and realistic implications of this idea. While he agrees that the moral strength of pacifism outweighs the need of war he also mentions that there can be situations where people have no choice but to resort to war. Such situations can be a case of self-defense or a situation where the person who is killed has brought it upon himself through the wickedness of his own actions. Nonetheless, he goes further and through his particular analyses rejects all the different arguments that have been given in the justification of war such as Just war Theory and Consequestialist Justificatins.

In this article he defines his positions as ‘pasificist’ rather than ‘pacifist’ which remain unclear to me and I would like to read more about it. However, my guess of these terms is that the former means endorsing the basic idea but also accepting that there can be exceptions to it and the later means accepting the absolutist meaning of the idea.

The article makes me wonder how would Gandhi, as an absolute pacifist, would respond to the situation where the person to be killed is solely responsible to the harm acted upon him. For instance, Norman says that in the case of killing in self-defense by a rape victim, it might be justified to kill because the rapist is fully responsible for losing his life. I wonder whether Gandhi would still say that the rapist should not be killed. How would the rape victim in this situation act passively that still shows resistance?

While I too believe that pacifism has fundamental values and killing is not morally justified, I argue that there can still be situations where one had no choice but to kill.

The Case for Pacifism. – Richard Norman

 

In his article, “The case for Pacifism”, Richard Norman discusses Pacifism as the rejection of war, giving importance to the “respect for human life”. Besides, he states that killing human lives is morally unjustified stating that, it is always immoral and wrong to use force and violence. He considers that respect for human life is not only a biological condition of living, but “having a life”. Hence his fundamental argument is that the “respect for human life is more fundamental than the value of freedom and than utilitarian values” (201). He discusses about the individualism vs. the communitarianism. Following this debate, he argues that the loss of human life is ‘irreplaceable’ in the community. Hence, the destruction of an individual may result in the destruction of a whole community. Besides, he brings in the human psychology of how violence will lead to more violence activities.

In this article the author identifies war as the main form of violence. He claims that killing non-combatants and combatants are wrong acts. Besides, violence occurs during the war and the community is affected by the all forms of violence during the war. Moreover, war, use of force and violence are not justified by the author according to the Pacifism perspective.

Norman rejects Walzer’s justification of war as well as critiques the utilitarian calculation of greater happiness. He goes beyond the greater happiness and talks about the values and human goods. As he goes on discussing about the justification of war in two terms, he denies Michael Walzer’s justification of war; “defense of a political community against aggression”. Norman states that this defense is imperfect as well as it is not showing integrity of a community with same basic ethical standards (203).Thus, he writes that the defense will lead to a destruction of the whole nation.

As an ethical dilemma, Norman discusses about killing combatants and the non- combatants. It is said to be wrong to kill the non- combatants since they are innocent, but can we justify the killing of combatants only because they are guilty? At this point, Norman brings in an answer stating that the combatants are not directly morally responsible for the killings; they are less responsible than their leaders. Hence, he is not justifying the killing of the combatants.

As a question that applies to the Pacifism, Norman discuses about “Having no choice” within the individuals when they commit violence. At this point, he writes that when people have no choice they have to go to war. Thus, there are questions that might arise with the notion of Pacifism. Even though, it is ethically justified that the war raises violence and therefore unjustified, can Pacifism be a form to secure the state from evil? Hence, can Pacifism be practiced in the practical level to eradicate terrorism in order to protect a state?

The Case for Pacifism

Asma Noureen

Richard Norman is a strong advocate of pacifism which, according to him, is a principled position underlying the wrongness of killing of human beings (Norman 198). He, unlike realists, condemns war completely and argues that there are ways to resist wars. He is very logical in presenting his arguments throughout the article. He explains his strong case for pacifism by saying that the respect of human life leads to the belief that human killing is unjustifiable even during war, and because the there is always doubts in the positive achievements of the war (even in the just war theory), the war itself is unjustifiable even in the cases of defense and independence (208).

Norman places a great importance in the human life itself, without valuing it because of other characteristics such as happiness, contentment, and freedom in life. He opposes the utilitarian reason of killing a human being to maximize the happiness of the society. He describes that the wrongness of killing is ethically fundamental because saving a human life is more valuable than achieving independence and maximizing the happiness (200) as he further explains, “[H]appiness matters because people matter” (200). When there are not human beings, what is the value of having the happiness? He argues that each individual’s life is same, no matter what he does or intends to do. He values more of the Kantian deontological arguments in which means cannot justify the ends especially when the means is a human life. He suggests not to go to war (military fighting and killing) and accept the oppression because there is no alternative to the loss of human lives during the war. According to him, the loss of community by not going to war is still better than the complete loss of human lives during the war.

I agree with Norman that human life is much more valuable than anything else such as freedom from oppression, independence, or utilitarian causes. Also, each individual’s life is equally valuable. We cannot sacrifice an individual for maximizing the happiness of the whole community. I just wonder what Norman will suggest in the case of switching the train to the track where one person is bound, in order to save five lives on the other side. He might say that we should not switch the track of the train and let the five people die. Even though the value of five lives on one side and value of one life on the other side is the same, but what about the complete loss of five lives in one side and the complete loss of one life on the other? What will be the priority? Is there any priority?

“Violence breeds violence,” Norman reflects on human psychology (208). It reminded me of Edward Luttwak who argues that fighting a war by its all means is the best way to resolve the political conflicts (Luttwak 38). One the other hand, Norman strongly disagree that every war is the seed for the next war and the series of war will never end by fighting. I absolutely agree that peace can never come through fighting a military war, even if it is justified.