What makes a bomb hurler

WHEN a gunman shoots people down in a movie theatre we attribute it to mental health conditions of the gunman in question. When a cop pulls a trigger on an un-armed man we call it self-defense. When a foreign man sits in a plane with explosives in his underwear we call it terrorism. In trying to identify a causal mechanism we spin words and politics to find an explanation that fits our pre-conceived narrative, based on race, religion, and income. But think about this: Is it possible that they all have mental health issues? Is it possible that they are all acting in self-defense? Is it possible that they are all terrorists?

As social scientists we can appreciate the causal link between acts of cruelty and mental health issues (such as lack of empathy), but to ascribe all of the world's cruelty to psychiatric disorders is to assume that a complex mix of environmental risk factors, genetic risk factors, social learning, other afflictions and malaises of the human mind -- such as greed, hunger for power, need for control, misguided ideologies, religious extremism -- have not afflicted mankind, have not affected the actions of people, particularly people in power and the people they have control over.

We need to look above and beyond psychiatry ­-- without negating its role -- and how normalisation of violence may play a role in the use of violence; there is considerable evidence, including my own research, of the importance of the intergenerational transmission of violence suggesting that witnessing violence, including inter-parental violence during childhood, is associated with a greater likelihood that they either perpetrate or experience violence themselves. The basis of this concept comes from Bandura's studies examining aggression used by children which  suggested that children develop violence as a habitual response to conflict through “observational learning.” However, not all children who witness violence as children use violence as adults. This is because children are able to distinguish between positive and negative outcomes, such that, if they find that violence is an effective way of conflict resolution or a means of gaining control, they are more likely to use violence instead of other methods of conflict resolution such as negotiation, verbal reasoning, self-calming tactics, and active listening (Black et al., 2010).

In assessing antecedents of violence, we also need to look at how evil can be created by positions and roles that individuals hold and/or are given. An example of that is the well known Stanford Prison Experiment by Zimbardo in which participants with no prior mental health issues internalised their roles as prisoners and guards to which they were randomly assigned “so completely that the 'guards' became cruel and sadistic, and half the 'prisoners' suffered such severe distress that they had to be released from the study early” (Mintz, 2008). The remaining prisoners gave in to the degrading demands made on them by the guards but became “zombie-like” and “listless” as the guards unleashed what can only be termed evil on the prisoners (Mintz, 2008). As such, Zimbardo, by conducting this experiment, created a recipe for evil that Mintz identifies as: an imbalance of power relations, anonymity (deindividuation), demonisation of victims, severe stress, oversight of abusive practices, absence of self-reflection, and boredom juxtaposed with unhygienic living conditions in a chaotic environment. This lethal mix made the guards of the experiment become who they became, much like the guards who committed the Abu Graib prison atrocities in Iraq.

So when we see a violent man -- the bomb hurler -- let us ask ourselves these questions: is it possible that he grew up in a violent environment and learned violent scripts from his surroundings? Is it imaginable that witnessing and perhaps even experiencing violence has made violence normative for him? Can we picture him thinking about violence as a part of life? Can we almost hear him say that if he doesn't inflict violence, it will be inflicted on him? Can we imagine him being turned evil by others in the way Zimbardo identified? Indeed. We will never know the absolute truth, but all and any of the aforementioned factors may as well apply to him.

Let us also think about that very moment when the act of violence is committed. Who does he think about when he raises his hand to hit someone or hurl a bomb? Maybe he thinks whether his handler would be happy enough with his work to give him another job. Maybe he thinks about his mother at home safe and away from the scene of action. Maybe he is pleasured by the fall of the “enemy.” Maybe he feels sense of power for the first time in his life. Maybe he feels he has control. Maybe it is just another act of violence. Maybe he isn't thinking at all.

Or maybe this is his war and he's fighting the good cause, as he has been brainwashed to believe. And like two Pakistan army officials from 1971 that Yasmin Saikia interviewed, Amin and Alam, he perhaps has a banal approach to violence, as Arendt (1963) would say; he is doing his “duty,” not thinking about it (p.220). Much like them, he perhaps has no choice within the institution in which he operates and has been “persuaded to join the horrific activities” to the extent that he does not even accept that his actions are wrong, or worse, pretends that his actions did not kill innocent people, because he is killing the enemy.

“Terror is meant to strike us dumb. Finding words with which to face it is an act of reconstruction” (Neiman, 2012).  But reconstruction does not provide closure when acts of terror start to look like ''new terrorism'' with maximum destruction and marked religious underpinnings.

The author is Assistant Professor, School of Social Work, University at Buffalo, SUNY and member of the AlalODulal Editorial Collective.