--- JulieReneB@xxxxxxx wrote: > But isn't there a difference between individual > violence and collective > violence? I mean, individuals who behave violently > on behalf of a violent > community are not acting out of the subsuming rush > you describe. Crusaders killing > those who would not convert, Al Qaeda members flying > planes into towers, > Palestinians blowing themselves up on buses -- they > are not acting out of a momentary > rage or an immediacy -- fight or flight. Collective > violence is not as .... > immediate, as instintct-driven. Help me out here, > someone... > Julie I believe that even the individual violence is not completely instinct-driven, though it may be convenient to present it as such later (for example if it comes to a court procedure). Less so is the violence of terrorist organizations, especially at top levels which engage in political calculations etc. And then you have modern nation-states where violence is institutionalized in the form of largely professional or specialist services, while the political objectives are formulated by groups far removed from the actual fighting. I suspect that this will be the most rationalized form of violence overall. (With allowances made for individual mistakes born out of incompetence, anger, fear, etc.) One mistake here is that we often take 'rational' to mean morally justified, which it does not. Another is that we often tend to overestimate the ability of reason unaided by personal experience to predict the consequences of actions. O.K. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos: High-quality 4x6 digital prints for 25¢ http://photos.yahoo.com/ph/print_splash ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html