This is the first in a new two-part series by guest author Dr. Majed Ashy.
Often, the bloody destructive assaults known euphemistically as “armed conflicts” grow out of the operation of at least three factors. Grievances, real or perceived, need to be present in the relationships of two or more sides. These grievances can be due to historical, social, political, racial, religious, economical, territorial, or other injustices that have not been addressed or are simply denied.
A common second factor is the occurrence of an event with the power to ignite the conflict—e.g., the killing of an archbishop (impetus to World War I), the shooting down of an airplane with a top official (impetus to the Rwandan genocide).
A third factor is the presence of leaders who will take advantage of the event in order to escalate the conflict and stimulate destructive emotions through their speeches, propaganda, appeals to deep instincts and fears, and use of historical and current symbols and analogies to whip people up into readiness to commit violence.
Another factor, probably less well recognized, is the rampant experiencing of armed conflict by children and adolescents. The human brain is in a state of elasticity during the years up through adolescence. Various neurological developmental processes are influenced by environmental events. Stresses due to the trauma of war and violence, experienced and witnessed, have hormonal and other physiological consequences that affect various neuro-developmental processes. In my view, the wars of the past decades contributed to the brutality we witness today, and I believe that the wars of today are the factories that will produce the hate and brutality of the future. Unless we stop them.
Majed Ashy, Ph.D. is an Assistant professor in psychology, Merrimack College and a Research fellow in psychiatry, DBPRP at McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School.