Terrorism and Ideas

    Ideas are the driving force of terrorism. They form the mental/cognitive foundation of all terrorist organizations. Without ideas, terrorism would have no justification, and as a result would not take place. 

    Every political movement starts with the development and defining of the core beliefs and ideas of the ideology that provides the information foundation of the political movement. This includes terrorist ideologies. 

      Terrorism is distinct from other forms of achieving a political agenda because of its willingness to commit atrocities and acts of violence to terrorize their opposition. Naturally, this is the defining trait of terrorism. 

      The thing to understand about terrorism and fundamentalism is that even though the ideologies induce violence in their hosts, many of them aren't super complex. However, even relatively simple ideas can latch on to the minds of their hosts even stronger than complex ones. 

 Probably even more so, as complex constructs of ideas can be difficult to understand for a typical extremist and therefore they may be less likely to bear host to certain complex ideologies.

Usually ideologies that justify terrorism are often based on hatred and tribal "us-or-them" mentalities, demonizing and turning into enemies certain groups of people or cultures. 

    This is not unique to terrorist groups. This is present in any ideological system in relation to the structuring of economic and social systems. Ideologies compete with each other for hosts and control of systems. The difference is that terrorists go to a significant extreme of violence to champion there ideologies, often creative acts of violence to instill a terror in an enemy population that is intense and even mind-crippling. 

    Of course, the only reason such action would be taken is to destabilize an enemy system and break the minds of a population with the intent of collapsing the system over time. Usually this is done to a more powerful enemy in order to reduce the competition for ideological and social control that this enemy competes with that nation in a particular region. 

    Sometimes its religiously motivated. Oftentimes its out of a hatred of a culture. But most importantly mass terrorism and intense attacks have the primary intention of destabilization.

     So I did a post a couple months back on a briefing video to the CIA that was claimed to have been done by Bill gates. Whether it was actually him or not giving the briefing is irrelevent because the concepts discussed in the video do exist. There is a gene that has been shown to be connected to religious ideation. It's called the VMAT2 gene. This is nicknamed the "God gene" for a reason. 

    I'm no expert on genetics, but I know genetics is an extremely complex field of biology. Probably a lot more complex than most people can understand. A single gene probably has a more complex effect on the brain and mind than we could understand, and there is probably more genes that relate to religion and belief than the VMAT2 gene. 

   What I do know is religion and belief is, at its core, mostly abstract information. Whether you subscribe to a belief system or not, the belief system exists independently of the human mind and as a result is extremely difficult to eliminate, especially when there is a written record of it, like religious texts and books

   I also know that there are millions, if not billions, of people who have the VMAT2 gene. Some of them may be violent and prone to extremism/terrorism, but I'm pretty sure most probably aren't. I probably have it, and I am a very religious man, and I don't go around committing acts of terrorism. The problem of terrorism is not completely rooted in biology. 

    It has more to do with information and ideas. If you can target the ideas and neutralize them, you can win an ideological war. This is quite difficult though. Yes, some people are probably more biologically/neurologically predisposed to believing certain things over others, but altering the brain permanently can have severe and unpredictable unintended consequences, especially if it is done on a massive scale to a large group of people

  You could commit cultural genocide or cripple the innovative and creative capacity of a group of people.

    Ideology and the information that constructs those belief systems are the root of terrorism, but it is also rooted in things more primal, like hate or territorialism. It is also rooted in vengeance and generational bitterness towards a culture, group, or nation. These problems can be quite difficult to remedy, even aside from the ideological component. There is no vaccine for revenge, hate, and territorialism, and there never will be.

    You have to teach these things out of people. The cure for terrorism and extremist ideologies is the rebuking of their components through the education of people on how and why those ideologies are wrong or evil. Rebuking and the showing of the wrongness of extremist ideologies and changing or opening minds is the endgame to terrorism. I think so, anyways.