4th May NL memorial day WW-II

The interesting element you bring in, is the considerations for the neighbors. For instance, were those 30 scientist from my audacious example sociopaths? Unlikely, but it sure looks that they are convinced, having a very vicious enemy. Why?

To keep that from happening, society on a global scale needs to find a way to keep these monsters from rising to power, then at least the people would never need to turn on each other for survival. I guess that would be a start...

You have to be extremely careful because this is how it usually starts: "We must eradicate the monster threat!"

Yes, I know. Amazing how easy it was for me to fall into the Moral Entrepreneur category, huh? But really, where else do you start? Other than to have the moral police say "We don't believe you are qualified to be in politics anymore, as your actions don't seem to be what is best for the human flock."

For society as a whole to get along, we all need to self govern. Where self governing doesn't happen, others must step in and decide what must be done. I think that is how it has gone on for tens of thousands of years.

It's an eternal dilemma. To defeat the monster you have to be at least slightly more powerful than the monster and that much power is just going to attract more monsters....
...
.. All I can say is you have to be extremely careful in all cases where you're thinking about taking some action.

Very true. So maybe the direction of fixing the problem by eliminating the monster is wrong. Well, that IS why I said the problem couldn't be fixed in my first post.

So how about taking it from the angle of the group? Once again back to Andre's first post, do humans need an enemy? If we can't eliminate the enemy, then what is the need inside the human to have something to fear?

I have a friend that just today is freaking out thinking the world will end soon due to the financial crisis. She suddenly has an enemy. I would not have made the connection, except for the fact that we are talking about human fears now. Why are so many people creating a fear of Armageddon?

I hope Andre doesn't mind my taking it off subject, but I think it is the same root fear that he is asking about. The need for an enemy. If he doesn't like it, he can redirect me in the correct direction.

For we have the Revenge of the fifth, and the revenge of the sixth to deal with,

If you look at primitive societies you'll see that they often become cooperative for cooperation's sake in the absence of an enemy. They work together to erect houses for newlyweds, fish as a tribe, gather fruit en mass when it ripens, etc. They don't look for enemies. Enemies happen, and when they do, you have to drop everything and deal with it.

That is the outlook I had until the other day. Unfortunately I had two abnormally busy days, and didn't get back here to respond.

When I look around at today's society, I see many groups that hate or have behavior that does not seem normal. Name your poison. A few would be the OP of WWII Nazi society, then you have the anarchists, the Wall Street haters, and the global warmers/anti global warmers.

So is this something related to modern day society?

Unfortunately, this is all the time I have for now, I should be back Monday.

*peace*

Maybe such groups are substitutes for religion?

...When I look around at today's society, I see many groups that hate or have behavior that does not seem normal. Name your poison. A few would be the OP of WWII Nazi society, then you have the anarchists, the Wall Street haters, and the global warmers/anti global warmers.

So is this something related to modern day society?

Maybe such groups are substitutes for religion?

In social psychology, group polarization refers to the tendency for groups to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclination of its members. These more extreme decisions are towards greater risk if individual's initial tendency is to be risky and towards greater caution if individual's initial tendency is to be cautious... The phenomenon also holds that a group's attitude toward a situation may change in the sense that the individual's initial attitudes have strengthened and intensified after group discussion...

War and violent behavior

Group polarization has been reported to occur during war time and other times of conflict. When there is a feud, individuals with the same viewpoint or on the same side, unite and share information; creating a heterogeneous group.[28] During a time of conflict, it is not normal practice for an individual to mingle with the enemy. When individuals with the same views spend all of their time together, their viewpoints become stronger and more extreme.[28] Group polarization can also help in explaining violent behavior. A notable example from history is the Holocaust. During the Holocaust, Hitler united a group of like-minded individuals, Nazis, who shared the common belief that Jews should be exterminated. Once these individuals united into a group, they viewed anyone who didn’t hold Nazi beliefs as outsiders, thus demonstrating polarization.[29] As they polarized, their sense of unity increased and their Nazi pride intensified, ultimately causing them to engage in the violent behavior that they did. Group polarization is also evident in similar situations, such as terrorist attacks and gang violence. While polarization can occur in any type of conflict, it has its most damaging effects in large-scale inter-group, public policy, and international conflicts.

Every year on the 4th of May, the Netherlands memorizes their deaths of world war II

When I was a toddler to teenager, every adult had memories of The War. Yes I am that old. Everybody knew plenty of people who died due to the hostilities or due to the holocaust. And every conversation in those times turned to that subject, invariably, ending to the question, how was it possible? How could a complete population, our neighbors, normally nice and kind people, have turned into such monsters? What could possibly be the force behind that, to drive normal people to such a madness?

And then silence. Of course nobody had any sensible answer to that. But we all vowed that it would never ever happen again.

Nowadays after decades of good progress in sociology studies, things slowly start to get clear.

It seems that everybody needs an enemy.

Does that make sense?

We have met the enemy, and he is us.