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(revised 10/23/01)
Dominator and Partnership Models for life
This is a fascinating piece! It attempts to bridge the huge gap between the individual psyche of a terrorist and the family and social dynamics that produced that psyche. Also she unites the need for long and short term solutions, instead of polarizing them.
From the LA Weekly, Sept 28 2001
Riane Eisler is a historian, cultural-transformation theorist; international activist for peace, human rights and the environment; and president of the Center for Partnership Studies. In The Chalice and the Blade (1987), an international best-seller, she reviewed Western history in a new way, and introduced the models of domination and partnership as two underlying possibilities for human organization. In Tomorrow's Children (2000), she applied them to child development and education. Her next book, The Power of Partnership, due in spring 2002, is an original self-help book. We can't help ourselves, she says, outside the complex web of our relationships - from family, to nation, to the Earth. She devotes a chapter to international relations, and the subject of terrorism comes up again and again.
Eisler discusses terrorism and transformation with former L.A. Weekly staff writer Helen Knode.
RIANE EISLER: Look, this is not about the U.S. and the Arabs. It goes much deeper - and we need to understand this to deal with the long-range implications of terrorism. What kind of family produces a person willing to fly an airplane into a building full of people he's never met, who aren't armed, who've never done anything to hurt him directly?
It's where I start, because gender relations and parent-child relations are the critical, formative relations. This is where we first learn what's normal and moral, where we learn values and behaviors.
Terror and hate have a context. My research shows that underneath conventional classifications - religious versus secular, tribal versus industrial, right versus left, capitalist versus communist - are two underlying ways of structuring relations. They're actually two opposite poles, with a continuum in between. At one end of this continuum is the dominator society. Dominator societies have existed throughout history and have the same basic plan, whether it's Attila's Huns, Hitler's Germany or the Taliban's Afghanistan. These societies consist of rigid top-down rankings, of "superiors" over "inferiors," men over women, adults over children, "in-groups" over "out-groups" - rankings backed up by force and the threat of force in homes, in society, and between societies in chronic wars.
Terror is built into the dominator system, and these bombings are the latest manifestation of that fact. Muslim fundamentalists are extremely dominator, in a bizarrely feudal way. It's as if they have one foot in the Middle Ages and another in our postmodern world with its powerful technologies of communication and destruction.
Their family structure is feudal, too - but first I want to be clear that this isn't an anti-Muslim diatribe. There are dominator elements in every country, and we've seen worldwide dominator regression in recent years. We see it in multinational sweatshops, environmental rollbacks, the widening gap between haves and have-nots, the IMF's structural-adjustment policies. And we see it in resurgent religious fundamentalism, in the East and West, aimed at putting women back in "their place" and reinstating the absolute authority of the father.
Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson call submissive women the cure - free women anger God, and we're being punished. Their initial response to this horrible tragedy was to use it to incite more hate and persecution of the groups they're after - feminists, secularists, abortionists, gays, lesbians, even People for the American Way. It's grotesque. I know Falwell apologized under pressure. But unfortunately, it's not surprising that our own fundamentalists have introduced the first divisive note into a cataclysm that, above all, requires unity and sanity.
You see how the dominator mindset works. What they call the cure, I call a central problem - I, and every person who truly values freedom and democracy.
In rigid dominator families, whether in the Muslim world or elsewhere, you learn from childhood that it's okay to impose your will by force on those weaker than you - women and children - that it's your God-given right to do so. And you learn never to express your anger or resentment against those who cause you pain, for fear of more pain. So you have a lot of stored rage that can be redirected toward "out-groups," in pogroms and lynchings and "holy wars."
Family is not the only factor. The family and society are profoundly interconnected. A mark of where a nation is on the dominator / partnership scale is how it treats women and children. Even if your family is less authoritarian, in a Muslim fundamentalist context, you still live in a culture where, for example, women get acid thrown in their face because they aren't wearing a burka, or get killed by members of their own family because they exhibit sexual independence. You live in a culture that worships strong-arm rule and male violence.
My research shows a definite link between intimate violence and international violence. People in dominator societies learn to accept control from the top, gross inequities in living standards, a high degree of violence and fear in day-to-day life. The basic model for domination is the punitive parent, specifically the punitive male head of household. And since you can't go against this powerful figure, you learn to project onto "evil enemies."
Although the U.S. isn't an entirely innocent victim. There are reasons why we're perceived as an enemy. Our policies - for example, insistence on cutbacks in social services and privatization by debtor nations, alliances with oppressive dictatorships - have caused enormous suffering.
But the goal of the current terrorist tragedy is not justice or equity for the women, children and men who live in Arab countries. Osama bin Laden has enormous wealth, but does he do anything to help the hungry Afghan people? Do you realize how wealthy the Saudi elites are, in contrast to the mass of Arab people? No, this terrorism is about control and power through fear and force. They want to be the world's governing economic, religious and political power, and the West has that power.
There are real grievances about oil, territory and multinational corporations, but the hate and violence mask another agenda. Where dictators or repressive mullahs rule, they cultivate hatred of the U.S., and the West in general, for two reasons. One is fear of our cultural influence - freedom for women, the undermining of traditional authority, and Western democracy, as imperfect as it is. They see the threat this poses to their domination, and to a system based on rigid rankings. The other reason is that fanning hatred against the West deflects anger and rebellion from themselves. That keeps the people from turning against the elites, who benefit enormously from their ties to the West, while few if any of these benefits go to the average Arab.
There's a short-term strategy and a long-term strategy - and they have to be simultaneous. In the short term, I'm afraid that military response against terrorist bases in nations that fund and support terrorism is
necessary.
The pure "peace and love" response is the flip side of the "kill and hate" response. Neither is realistic, and both ignore the psychosocial dynamics of terrorism we've been talking about. Unfortunately, failure to respond will encourage more terrorism. In the dominator mind, there are only those who dominate and those who are dominated. Nonviolence is equated with women, with what's despised, what's controlled and is legitimately, and easily, terrorized into submission.
If you've got a psychopath lunging at you with a knife, that's not the time to talk about peace and love. It's the time to defend yourself to save your life. The time to talk about peace and love, and to put them into action, is before that person becomes a psychopath. If we're to effectively address the festering problems that breed terrorism, we have to deal with the foundations of violence. We have to think of the long term. Any war on terrorism is doomed to fail, just like the war on drugs, unless we address the deepest historical, cultural, social, economic, political and psychic forces that produce terrorism. This is urgent in our high-technology age.
People argue that humans are naturally violent, but this argument comes straight out of the dominator view of human nature. Evolutionary science shows we carry genes for both violence and caring. The decisive issue is our experiences, and particularly the influences of childhood. These experiences actually affect brain chemistry and synaptic development, and with that the propensity toward violence or caring. We'll never eliminate violence completely, but we can eliminate structural violence, violence built into the system.
Addressing the foundations of violence would entail cultural transformation. I spoke of two underlying ways of structuring relations - one is the dominator model, the other is what I call the partnership or respect model. Here power is nurturing and empowering, rather than fear-and-force-based and disempowering. The male and female halves of humanity are valued equally, and there's a high value placed on caregiving, empathy and nonviolence, qualities that are part of the biological repertoire of both men and women.
The U.S. is divided between partnership and domination. It does awful things and wonderful things. Think of the NGOs spending billions to help people worldwide - peace, human rights, feeding hunger. It behooves us to throw our resources into a shift toward partnership, at home and abroad. Did you know there's a new House bill to create a Department of Peace? We make a mistake to deal with dictatorships to protect our oil interests. We're safer in the long run to join with pro-democratic forces in the region. There are many people in the Muslim world who would welcome U.S. help. I know some of them. They're working for religious freedom, the human rights of women and children, family planning - real democracy, not just a vote.
We have to stop exporting our violent media. We have to re-examine the values behind globalization. If it's only to promote what we inaccurately call free enterprise, which primarily benefits the elites of the developing and developed world, then we're actually strengthening the top-down socioeconomic structures integral to the dominator model from which violence inevitably comes. On the other hand, if we back an international campaign involving heads of state and clergy to end intimate violence, we're dealing with foundational matters, with the school for violence. If we channel economic aid and training to the grassroots, if we channel health-care, nutrition and educational programs directly to women and children and make their implementation a keystone of globalization, we're addressing foundational matters.
Let us call it the partnership response to terrorism. We need a long-range plan, and we need to do this together with people all over the world. And if we only talk violent solutions, we fuel the dominator regression that will be fatal to everything we Americans yearn for and aspire to. We have to change the foundational dynamics of terrorism. Without this, we'll never have lasting peace or security.
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The Challenge of Terror: A Traveling Essay
John Paul Lederach
So here I am, a week late arriving home, stuck between Colombia, Guatemala and Harrisonburg when our world changed. The images flash even in my sleep. The heart of America ripped. Though natural, the cry for revenge and the call for the unleashing of the first war of this century, prolonged or not, seems more connected to social and psychological processes of finding a way to release deep emotional anguish, a sense of powerlessness, and our collective loss than it does as a plan of action seeking to redress the injustice, promote change and prevent it from ever happening again. I am stuck from airport to airport as I write this, the reality of a global system that has suspended even the most basic trust. My Duracell batteries and finger nail clippers were taken from me today and it gave me pause for thought. I had a lot of pauses in the last few days. Life has not been the same. I share these thoughts as an initial reaction recognizing that it is always easy to take pot-shots at our leaders from the sidelines, and to have the insights they are missing when we are not in the middle of very difficult decisions.
On the other hand, having worked for nearly 20 years as a mediator and proponent of nonviolent change in situations around the globe where cycles of deep violence seem hell-bent on perpetuating themselves, and having interacted with people and movements who at the core of their identity find ways of justifying their part in the cycle, I feel responsible to try to bring ideas to the search for solutions. With this in mind I should like to pen several observations about what I have learned from my experiences and what they might suggest about the current situation. I believe this starts by naming several key challenges and then asking what is the nature of a creative response that takes these seriously in the pursuit of genuine, durable, and peaceful change.
Some Lessons about the Nature of our Challenge
- Always seek to understand the root of the anger - The first and most important question to pose ourselves is relatively simple though not easy to answer: How do people reach this level of anger, hatred and frustration? By my experience explanations that they are brainwashed by a perverted leader who holds some kind of magical power over them is an escapist simplification and will inevitably lead us to very wrongheaded responses. Anger of this sort, what we could call generational, identity-based anger, is constructed over time through a combination of historical events, a deep sense of threat to identify, and direct experiences of sustained exclusion. This is very important to understand, because, as I will say again and again, our response to the immediate events have everything to do with whether we reinforce and provide the soil, seeds, and nutrients for future cycles of revenge and violence. Or whether it changes. We should be careful to pursue one and only one thing as the strategic guidepost of our response: Avoid doing what they expect.
What they expect from us is the lashing out of the giant against the weak, the many against the few. This will reinforce their capacity to perpetrate the myth they carefully seek to sustain: That they are under threat, fighting an irrational and mad system that has never taken them seriously and wishes to destroy them and their people. What we need to destroy is their myth not their people.
1. Always seek to understand the nature of the organization - Over the years of working to promote durable peace in situations of deep, sustained violence I have discovered one consistent purpose about the nature of movements and organizations who use violence: Sustain thyself. This is done through a number of approaches, but generally it is through decentralization of power and structure, secrecy, autonomy of action through units, and refusal to pursue the conflict on the terms of the strength and capacities of the enemy.
One of the most intriguing metaphors I have heard used in the last few days is that this enemy of the United States will be found in their holes, smoked out, and when they run and are visible, destroyed. This may well work for groundhogs, trench and maybe even guerilla warfare, but it is not a useful metaphor for this situation. And neither is the image that we will need to destroy the village to save it, by which the population that gives refuge to our enemies is guilty by association and therefore a legitimate target. In both instances the metaphor that guides our action misleads us because it is not connected to the reality. In more specific terms, this is not a struggle to be conceived of in geographic terms, in terms of physical spaces and places, that if located can be destroyed, thereby ridding us of the problem. Quite frankly our biggest and most visible weapon systems are mostly useless.
We need a new metaphor, and though I generally do not like medical metaphors to describe conflict, the image of a virus comes to mind because of its ability to enter unperceived, flow with a system, and harm it from within. This is the genius of people like Osama Ben Laden. He understood the power of a free and open system, and has used it to his benefit. The enemy is not located in a territory. It has entered our system. And you do not fight this kind of enemy by shooting at it. You respond by strengthening the capacity of the system to prevent the virus and strengthen its immunity. lt is an ironic fact that our greatest threat is not in Afghanistan, but in our own backyard. We surely are not going to bomb Travelocity, Hertz Rental Car, or an Airline training school in Florida. We must change metaphors and move beyond the reaction that we can duke it out with the bad guy, or we run the very serious risk of creating the environment that sustains and reproduces the virus we wish to prevent.
Always remember that realities are constructed - Conflict is, among other things, the process of building and sustaining very different perceptions and interpretations of reality. This means that we have at the same time multiple realities defined as such by those in conflict. In the aftermath of such horrific and unmerited violence that we have just experienced this may sound esoteric. But we must remember that this fundamental process is how we end up referring to people as fanatics, madmen, and irrational.
In the process of name-calling we lose the critical capacity to understand that from within the ways they construct their views, it is not mad lunacy or fanaticism. All things fall together and make sense. When this is connected to a long string of actual experiences wherein their views of the facts are reinforced (for example, years of superpower struggle that used or excluded them, encroaching Western values of what is considered immoral by their religious interpretation, or the construction of an enemy-image who is overwhelmingly powerful and uses that power in bombing campaigns and always appears to win) then it is not a difficult process to construct a rational world view of heroic struggle against evil. Just as we do it, so do they. Listen to the words we use to justify our actions and responses. And then listen to words they use.
The way to break such a process is not through a frame of reference of who will win or who is stronger. In fact the inverse is true. Whoever loses, whether tactical battles or the '"war" itself, finds intrinsic in the loss the seeds that give birth to the justification for renewed battle. The way to break such a cycle of justified violence is to step outside of it. This starts with understanding that TV sound bites about madmen and evil are not good sources of policy. The most significant impact that we could make on their ability to sustain their view of us as evil is to change their perception of who we are by choosing to strategically respond in unexpected ways. This will take enormous courage and courageous leadership capable of envisioning a horizon of change.
- Always understand the capacity for recruitment -- The greatest power that terror has is the ability to regenerate itself. What we most need to understand about the nature of this conflict and the change process toward a more peaceful world is how recruitment into these activities happens. In all my experiences in deep-rooted conflict what stands out most are the ways in which political leaders wishing to end the violence believed they could achieve it by overpowering and getting rid of the perpetrator of the violence. That may have been the lesson of multiple centuries that preceded us. But it is not the lesson from that past 30 years. The lesson is simple. When people feel a deep sense of threat, exclusion and generational experiences of direct violence, their greatest effort is placed on survival. Time and again in these movements, there has been an extraordinary capacity for the regeneration of chosen myths and renewed struggle.
One aspect of current U.S. leadership that coherently matches with the lessons of the past 30 years of protracted conflict settings is the statement that this will be a long struggle. What is missed is that the emphasis should be placed on removing the channels, justifications, and sources that attract and sustain recruitment into the activities. What I find extraordinary about the recent events is that none of the perpetrators was much older than 40 and many were half that age.
This is the reality we face: Recruitment happens on a sustained basis. lt will not stop with the use of military force, in fact, open warfare will create the soils in which it is fed and grows. Military action to destroy terror, particularly as it affects significant and already vulnerable civilian populations will be like hitting a fully mature dandelion with a golf club. We will participate in making sure the myth of why we are evil is sustained and we will assure yet another generation of recruits.
- Recognize complexity, but always understand the power of simplicity - Finally, we must understand the principle of simplicity. I talk a lot with my students about the need to look carefully at complexity, which is equally true (and which in the earlier points I start to explore). However, the key in our current situation that we have failed to fully comprehend is simplicity. From the standpoint of the perpetrators, the effectiveness of their actions was in finding simple ways to use the system to undo it. I believe our greatest task is to find equally creative and simple tools on the other side.
Suggestions
In keeping with the last point, let me try to be simple. I believe three things are possible to do and will have a much greater impact on these challenges than seeking accountability through revenge.
- Energetically pursue a sustainable peace process to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Do it now. The United States has much it can do to support and make this process work. It can bring the weight of persuasion, the weight of nudging people on all sides to move toward mutual recognition and stopping the recent and devastating pattern of violent escalation, and the weight of including and balancing the process to address historic fears and basic needs of those involved. lf we would bring the same energy to building an international coalition for peace in this conflict that we have pursued in building international coalitions for war, particularly in the Middle East, if we lent significant financial, moral, and balanced support to all sides that we gave to the lrish conflict in earlier years, I believe the moment is right and the stage is set to take a new and qualitative step forward.
Sound like an odd diversion to our current situation of terror? I believe the opposite is true. This type of action is precisely the kind of thing needed to create whole new views of who we are and what we stand for as a nation. Rather than fighting terror with force, we enter their system and take away one of their most coveted elements: The soils of generational conflict perceived as injustice used to perpetrate hatred and recruitment. I believe that monumental times like these create conditions for monumental change. This approach would solidify our relationships with a broad array of Middle Easterners and Central Asians, allies and enemies alike, and would be a blow to the rank and file of terror. The biggest blow we can serve terror is to make it irrelevant. The worst thing we could do is to feed it unintentionally by making it and its leaders the center stage of what we do. Let's choose democracy and reconciliation over revenge and destruction. Let's to do exactly what they do not expect, and show them it can work.
- Invest financially in development, education, and a broad social agenda in the countries surrounding Afghanistan rather than attempting to destroy the Taliban in a search for Ben Laden. The single greatest pressure that could ever be put on Ben Laden is to remove the source of his justifications and alliances. Countries like Pakistan, Tajikistan, and yes, Iran and Syria should be put on the radar of the West and the United States with a question of strategic importance: How can we help you meet the fundamental needs of your people?
The strategic approach to changing the nature of how terror of the kind we have witnessed this week reproduces itself lies in the quality of relationships we develop with whole regions, peoples, and world views. lf we strengthen the web of those relationships, we weaken and eventually eliminate the soil where terror is born. A vigorous investment, taking advantage of the current opening given the horror of this week shared by even those who we traditionally claimed as state enemies, is immediately available, possible and pregnant with historic possibilities. Let's do the unexpected. Let's create a new set of strategic alliances never before thought possible.
- Pursue a quiet diplomatic but dynamic and vital support of the Arab League to begin an internal exploration of how to address the root causes of discontent in numerous regions. This should be coupled with energetic ecumenical engagement, not just of key symbolic leaders, but of a practical and direct exploration of how to create a web of ethics for a new millennium that builds from the heart and soul of all traditions but that creates a capacity for each to engage the roots of violence that are found within their own traditions.
Our challenge, as I see it, is not that of convincing others that our way of life, our religion, or our structure of governance is better or closer to Truth and human dignity. lt is to be honest about the sources of violence in our own house and invite others to do the same. Our global challenge is how to generate and sustain genuine engagement that encourages people from within their traditions to seek that which assures the preciousness and respect for life that every religion sees as an inherent right and gift from the Divine, and how to build organized political and social life that is responsive to fundamental human needs. Such a web cannot be created except through genuine and sustained dialogue and the building of authentic relationships, at religious and political spheres of interaction, and at all levels of society. Why not do the unexpected and show that life-giving ethics are rooted in the core of all peoples by engaging a strategy of genuine dialogue and relationship? Such a web of ethics, political and religious, will have an impact on the roots of terror far greater in the generation of our children's children than any amount of military action can possibly muster. The current situation poses an unprecedented opportunity for this to happen, more so than we have seen at any time before in our global community.
A Call for the Unexpected
Let me conclude with simple ideas. To face the reality of well organized, decentralized, self-perpetuating sources of terror, we need to think differently about the challenges. lf indeed this is a new war it will not be won with a traditional military plan. The key does not lie in finding and destroying territories, camps, and certainly not the civilian populations that supposedly house them. Paradoxically that will only feed the phenomenon and assure that it lives into a new generation. The key is to think about how a small virus in a system affects the whole and how to improve the immunity of the system. We should take extreme care not to provide the movements we deplore with gratuitous fuel for self-regeneration. Let us not fulfill their prophecy by providing them with martyrs and justifications. The power of their action is the simplicity with which they pursue the fight with global power. They have understood the power of the powerless.
They have understood that melding and meshing with the enemy creates a base from within. They have not faced down the enemy with a bigger stick. They did the more powerful thing: They changed the game. They entered our lives, our homes and turned our own tools into our demise.
We will not win this struggle for justice, peace and human dignity with the traditional weapons of war. We need to change the game again. Let us take up the practical challenges of this reality perhaps best described in the Cure of Troy, an epic poem by Seamus Heaney – no foreigner to grip of the cycles of terror. Let us give birth to the unexpected.
"So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a farther shore is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells."
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U. of Michigan ISR Survey on emotional impact of attacks
Wed, 10 Oct 2001
New University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR) survey finds some positive impact of terrorist attacks on American psyche
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ANN ARBOR---Americans are still suffering psychologically from last
month's terrorist attacks, according to a special survey of the
political, social, psychological and economic impact of the terrorist
attacks, released today by the University of Michigan Institute for
Social Research (ISR), the world's largest academic survey and
research organization.
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More than 66 percent of the nationally representative sample of 668
American adults surveyed between Sept. 15 and Oct. 7 reported at
least some trouble concentrating, 52 percent said they felt
depressed, and nearly 62 percent reported restless sleep at least
some of the time in the last week. Only 21 percent said they often
felt hopeful about the future, compared with 68 percent answering
that same question in a national survey in 1990.
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But the Sept. 11 attacks have also had some positive effects on the
American psyche, contributing to a sense of cohesion among the U.S.
public, according to results from the survey, called How America
Responds. More than 90 percent of those surveyed agree or strongly
agree that they are proud to be an American, and nearly 60 percent
agree that the world would be a better place if people from other
countries were more like Americans. These are higher levels of
patriotic feelings than reported in other national surveys conducted
in the past five years.
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At the same time, the public has shifted its attitudes toward the
diverse groups that make up the country, with a greater tendency to
view Americans of different races, ethnicities and religions more
favorably than in the past.
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"This is a patriotism of inclusion that seems much less jingoistic
and ethnocentric than similar periods in the past," says U-M
psychologist James S. Jackson.
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On the "feeling thermometer" included in the survey, Black Americans
were rated positively by 67 percent of respondents, compared with 63
percent of people surveyed in 2000. Hispanic Americans were rated
positively by 64 percent of respondents, compared with 58 percent in
2000. Asian Americans were rated positively by 62 percent of
respondents, compared with 61 percent in 2000. Jewish Americans
received positive ratings from 67 percent of those surveyed. Even
White Americans received better ratings in the survey---78 percent of
respondents rated them positively in the wake of the terrorist
attacks, compared with 72 percent in 2000 and 63 percent in 1998.
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"These results, which indicate more positive feelings about the
diverse racial and ethnic groups in America, suggest that the events
of Sept. 11 may have produced a more expansive sense of who is an
American," says Jackson. "Of course, how long these positive feelings
last remains to be seen."
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Jackson also notes that although Muslim Americans and Arab Americans
did not fare as well, 43 percent of respondents rated these groups
favorably.
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On the whole, groups in the Middle East were rated less favorably
than those in the United States. Israelis received positive ratings
from 44 percent of respondents, Palestinians from 25 percent, and
"Arabs in the Middle East" from 22 percent.
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Complex causes seen for terrorist attacks
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The survey also found that Americans seem to believe that the
terrorist attacks have many causes rather than one single
explanation. "As a nation, we are not making the mistake of seizing
on a single simple answer to a very complex question," says U-M
psychologist Robert L. Kahn. "And that's reassuring."
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In an open-ended question asking respondents to name possible reasons
for the attacks, almost half provided at least two reasons and one
out of five provided three or more. Among the most frequently
mentioned were hatred of the United States, undesirable
characteristics of the terrorists, religious issues, non-religious
differences between the United States and the terrorists, and U.S.
international policies. (See attached selection of respondent
comments.)
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When next presented with a list of possible reasons, only 4 percent
of the people surveyed agreed with only one item on the list, while 6
percent agreed with two, 12 percent agreed with three, and 78 percent
agreed with four or more. About 82 percent responded "yes" when asked
if it was Osama bin Laden, and about 62 percent agreed that it was
because terrorists are sheltered in some countries. Almost 64 percent
agreed that U.S. support for Israel was a reason, 51 percent agreed
that U.S. failure to support Palestine was a cause and about 62
percent agreed that the U.S. role in the Persian Gulf was a reason.
While not many people think the terrorist attacks were inevitable, a
result of human nature or God's will, two-thirds agreed that the
attacks were caused by a few crazy people. About half said
Muslim-Christian conflict was responsible.
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Patriotism and Personal Security
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"Even though patriotic feelings have increased, the attacks have
affected Americans' sense of personal safety and security," says U-M
political scientist Michael Traugott, noting that about half the
respondents in the survey say that the attacks have shaken their
sense of personal safety a great deal or a good amount. "The
significance of these altered feelings about personal safety can be
seen in their attitudes about the economy, their own economic
behavior and their willingness to let civil liberties be eroded."
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For example, 76 percent of those whose personal sense of safety was
shaken a great deal said they would be willing to give up some civil
liberties in return for greater security, compared with 66 percent of
those who said their sense of personal safety was not affected at all
by the attacks. And 68 percent of those who reported being shaken a
great deal said they would support random searches by police in
public places, compared with just 41 percent of those who said they
were not affected at all.
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The survey results are based on a national list-assisted telephone
sample, with interviewing conducted from Sept. 15 through Oct. 7. A
randomly selected adult (18 years or older) was interviewed in 668
sample households, for an AAPOR response rate (3) of 59 percent.
Standard errors for estimated percentages near 50 percent, reflecting
the complexity of the design, are about 2 percentage points. Hence,
the "margin of error" is estimated to be about 4 percentage points.
The margin of error will vary for different statistics and will
always be higher for statistics computed on subgroups. In addition to
sampling error, use of the survey to describe the full U.S. household
population is limited by the omission of non-telephone households,
non-response to the survey, and failure to obtain accurate responses
from sample persons.
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EDITORS: Graph will be available at
http://www.umich.edu/~newsinfo/Releases/2001/Oct01/r100901b.htm
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Established in 1948, the Institute for Social Research (ISR) is among
the world's oldest survey research organizations, and a world leader
in the development and application of social science methodology. ISR
conducts some of the most widely-cited studies in the nation,
including the Surveys of Consumers, the National Election Studies,
the Monitoring the Future Study, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics,
the Health and Retirement Study, and the National Survey of Black
Americans. ISR researchers also collaborate with social scientists in
more than 60 nations on the World Values Surveys and other projects,
and the Institute has established formal ties with universities in
Poland, China, and South Africa. Visit the ISR Web site at
www.isr.umich.edu for more information.
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How America Responds University of Michigan Institute for Social
Research
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Question: "People have different explanations for the terrorist
attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. What do you think are the
reasons?
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Some answers that were volunteered:
"My first thought is jealousy: America's ability to do what it does,
the fact that we can be in the Middle East and spend money to help
people they disagree with. Resentment is a better word, or religion.
Power goes with resentment and jealousy, and religion is used as a
cover in lots of cases. Not religion so much as power."
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"I think that they do not want us to interfere. We've been favoring
Israelis over Palestinians. I don't think it has anything to do with
our economy or wealth."
>
"I think it's just ignorance of other cultures. I'm finding it really
hard to understand."
>
"I believe that part of it is different views between Americans and
the terrorists we're dealing with. In times past, the U.S. has stuck
their nose in business they probably shouldn't have been in. I think
we're dealing with maniacs."
>
"Just evil people."
>
"It's a complicated problem, and there's not an easy solution. It
will be years."
>
"Boy, I think it's basically a religious war."
>
"My analogy is that there are certain times when human nature looks
for a scapegoat similar to what the German people did to the Jews in
the 1930s. Certainly in the past 30, 40 years some policies support
of the Shah of Iran and the funding of Israel are two things the
Arabs seemed not to have liked. Also, the general perception of
America as arrogant in its power."
>
"I think that these particular people hate our way of life."
>
"I have been unable to develop a coherent reason."
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Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) for children’s anxieties
Thought for the day....
"A mind is like a parachute. It only functions when it is open."
Unknown
*************************
Hi Everyone,
This is now a few weeks after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on
the U.S. and, as expected, the repeated showing of the World Trade Center
collapse on television has left its traumatic imprint on the psyches of
citizens around the world. Children are particularly susceptible to this
emotional insult and, unless we take steps to relieve it now, they will
likely carry this burden the rest of their lives.
EFT Contributing Editor Steve Wells from Australia saw these effects in his
own children and takes us through his skillful use of EFT in their behalf.
Those of us with children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, etc. would do
well to apply EFT immediately to these youngsters. Even if they are not
showing outward signs of being traumatized, it is a good idea to apply EFT
anyway. A little insurance may provide a lifetime of freedom.
Hugs, Gary
(Gary Craig teaches is self-healing method, Emotional Freedom Technique and has a marvelous website with many examples of how this "energy psychology" technique can help with all sorts of anxieties, pains, and other problems www.emofree.com
******************************
"Daddy it's falling down! My house is falling down!" My daughter began
screaming these words on the morning of her 3rd birthday. Just a moment
before, she'd been playing excitedly with her toys, and then she suddenly
started screaming. I rushed over and embraced her. In a split second I
made the connection with the World Trade Centre disaster (I had thought we
had managed to shield her from those disturbing images, but obviously
sometime during the initial few days of 24-hour all-channel coverage she had
managed to see enough to make a connection) and I asked her "Did you think
our house might fall down like those buildings did?" "Yes", she cried. As I
held her I began to tap lightly on the face points for her. Within seconds,
she was feeling better and began to smile. Soon she was ready to play with
her toys again. I thought that would be the end of the matter.
About a week after this event, my 7-year old son, who had a virus and was
running a temperature, cried out in the night, "Dad, I need some tapping!"
As I walked into his room I couldn't help smiling. Here was a boy that for
the first 2 years of my use of EFT would frequently mutter "That won't
work!" whenever I suggested tapping. Those who have followed our progress
over those years know that typically when I persisted with doing the tapping
for him anyway it invariably worked. Now he knows the power of the
technique. He doesn't seem to have as much anxiety as he used to and so
calls me infrequently these days. And he is learning to do the tapping for
himself but he still needs assistance with some "hairy" issues. This one
turned out to be quite a hairy one.
When I asked him what was wrong he told me that someone had put boulders on
him and he was being crushed by them. He said lying in his bed was like
lying on steel and being crushed by these boulders. My mind again moved to
the Trade Centre disaster and for a second I wondered where these thoughts
might have come from. However I quickly refocused on his experiences and
rubbed on his sore spot, saying, "Even though these boulders are crushing
you, you're still a good kid and I love you". I have learnt that it is
really important not to deny someone's experiences whilst doing EFT and I no
longer feel the need to even reframe these into statements such as "Even
though it feels like. Or "Even though you believe." I have had far better
results treating the strongest form of the problem as voiced by the person -
or in the case of "dreams" like this, by their subconscious mind.
As I put my hand on my son's chest I felt his little heart beating like mad.
I proceeded to tap on the points, whilst having him repeat the words "These
boulders". Three rounds of tapping later and his heartbeat felt more normal
and he was much more relaxed. He said he was feeling much better and I
reminded him that he could continue tapping for himself. We practiced for a
moment with him tapping on the points and saying the words. Throughout the
process he was smiling the whole time. Then he lay back down and went off
to sleep.
The next night, the virus that had been in his system had been transferred
to my daughter (one of the joys of parenting), who also had a temperature.
Sometime during the night we brought her into our bed as she was burning up
with fever. At some point during this time, she again started screaming,
"Daddy, it's falling down, my house is falling down!" whilst pointing at the
walls.
It was only the morning after this event that I stopped to reflect on how
calm I was during this time, and how my totally calm matter-of-fact manner
actually helped her engage with the tapping process at the time and
facilitated her calming down also. I have mentioned previously how
important I believe it is for parents to tap on themselves for their
children's problems and how they are affected by this. Now once again I
have been convinced of the power of this. Having previously done a lot of
tapping on my daughter's upsets I now felt calm and able to deal with the
situation.
Once again, I did the tapping with my daughter, but this time I persisted
until it was clear that she was truly over the experience. I rubbed on her
sore spot for her and repeated the words, this time focusing on her feelings
"Even though you're scared Daddy loves you and you're still a good girl",
and when tapping alternated from the feelings to the images that I knew were
disturbing her ("Scared", "House falling down"). The whole process took
maybe 5 or 6 minutes, after which she settled down and went off to sleep.
Had we treated all the aspects? I'm not sure, but it sure is reassuring to
know that we have a tool ready at hand to treat these problems should they
come to light again.
Two days after my daughter's late-night panic I have been reflecting on how
grateful I am to have a technique such as EFT to assist both my family and
myself to deal with problems such as this, particularly in these difficult
times. I am reflecting on the fact that I was able to fly across the
country two days after the World Trade Centre disaster and was able to
totally eliminate the anxiety that came up prior to the trip, only
remembering about it afterwards as I reached my destination. And the fact
that whilst away my airline company went bust and I was stuck in a city over
3000km from home with the prospects of being there for some time - and it
truly didn't upset me! And the fact that while I see anxiety all around me
right now and have plenty of reasons to be worried I am still able to
function with relative calm and make some quite difficult business and
financial decisions.
I truly believe that there is more need than ever right now for EFT and
other energy therapy techniques to be shared as widely as possible with the
world. I believe we are experiencing a global anxiety unprecedented in this
generation and the need for techniques such as these has never been
stronger. I believe that for most of us the place to start is in our own
homes, with our own family and friends, and with ourselves.
Whether or not you think you were personally traumatised by the events of
September 11 or by subsequent events, I encourage you to treat yourself and
everyone in your family anyway. While you are there, treat yourself for
anxiety about the future and what "Might happen" as well as some of the bad
things that inevitably will happen. Then you will be able to move forward
without fear and continue to live your life.
Osama Bin Laden said, essentially, that no-one in America - and, by
implication, any of her allied countries - will be able to live without
fear. Let's prove him wrong.
Steve Wells
EFT Contributing Editor
wells@iinet.net.au
PS: Our newly published book "Pocket Guide to Emotional Freedom" has all the
essential information you need to start getting results with EFT - all in a
handy volume that will fit in your purse or pocket. Great for people just
learning EFT, and for clients. For more details, please send an email to:
wells@iinet.net.au
See also: Self-Healing: Brief psychotherapy with WHEE (a hybrid of meridian based therapies plus EMDR) and other approaches on this site.
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From Robin Morgan
(For those unfamiliar with her work, Robin Morgan edited one of the early anthologies of second-wave Feminist writing, Sisterhood Is Powerful, and is a widely respected poet.)
Dear Friends,
Your response to the email I sent on Day 2 of this calamity has been overwhelming. In addition to friends and colleagues, absolute strangers- in Serbia, Korea, Fiji, Zambia, all across North America--have replied, as have women's networks in places ranging from Senegal and Japan to Chile, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, even Iran. You've offered moving emotional support and asked for continued updates. I can't send regular reports/alerts ... But here's another try. Share this letter as you wish.
I'll focus on New York--my firsthand experience--but this doesn't mean any less anguish for the victims of the Washington or Pennsylvania calamities. Today was Day 8. Incredibly, a week has passed. Abnormal normalcy has settled in. Our usually contentious mayor (previously bad news for New Yorkers of color and for artists) has risen to this moment with efficiency, compassion, real leadership. The city is alive and dynamic. Below 14th Street, traffic is flowing again, mail is being delivered, newspapers are back. But very early this morning I walked east, then south almost to the tip of Manhattan Island. The16-acre site itself is closed off, of course, as is a perimeter surrounding it controlled by the National Guard, used as a command post and staging area for rescue workers. Still, one is able to approach nearer to the area than was possible last weekend, since the law-court district and parts of the financial district are now open and (shakily) working. The closer one gets the more one sees--and smells- what no TV report, and very few print reports, have communicated. I find myself giving way to tears again and again, even as I write this.
f the first sights of last Tuesday seemed bizarrely like a George Lucas special-effects movie, now the directorial eye has changed: it's the grim lens of Agnes Varda, juxtaposed with images so surreal they could have been framed by Bunuel or Kurosawa.
This was a bright, cloudless, early autumnal day. But as one draws near the site, the area looms out of a dense haze: one enters an atmosphere of dust, concrete powder, and plumes of smoke from fires still raging deep beneath the rubble (an estimated 2 million cubic yards of debris). Along lower 2nd Avenue, 10 refrigerator tractor-trailer trucks are parked, waiting; if you stand there a while, an NYC Medical Examiner van arrives -with a sagging body bag. Thick white ash, shards of broken glass, pebbles, and chunks of concrete cover street after street of parked cars for blocks outside the perimeter. Handprints on car windows and doors- handprints sliding downward--have been left like frantic graffiti. Sometimes there are messages finger-written in the ash: "U R Alive." You can look into closed shops, many with cracked or broken windows, and peer into another dimension: a wall-clock stopped at 9:10, restaurant tables meticulously set but now covered with two inches of ash, grocery shelves stacked with cans and produce bins piled high with apples and melons--all now powdered chalk-white. A moonscape of plenty. People walk unsteadily along these streets, wearing nosemasks against the still particle-full air, the stench of burning wire and plastic, erupted sewage; the smell of death, of decomposing flesh.
Probably your TV coverage shows the chain-link fences aflutter with yellow ribbons, the makeshift shrines of candles, flowers, scribbled notes of mourning or of praise for the rescue workers that have sprung up everywhere--especially in front of firehouses, police stations, hospitals. What TV doesn't show you is that near Ground Zero the streets for blocks around are still, a week later, adrift in bits of paper--singed, torn, sodden pages: stock reports, trading print-outs, shreds of appointment calendars, half of a "To-Do" list. What TV doesn't show you are scores of tiny charred corpses now swept into the gutters. Sparrows. Finches. They fly higher than pigeons, so they would have exploded outward, caught midair in a rush of flame, wings on fire as they fell. Who could have imagined it: the birds were burning.
From a distance, you can see the lattices of one of the Towers, its skeletal bones the sole remains, eerily beautiful in asymmetry, as if a new work of abstract art had been erected in a public space. Elsewhere,> you see the transformation of institutions: The New School and New York University are missing persons' centers. A movie house is now a rest shelter, a Burger King a first-aid center, a Brooks Brothersâx clothing store a body parts morgue, a record shop a haven for lost animals. Libraries are counseling centers. Ice rinks are morgues. A bank is now a supply depot: in the first four days, it distributed 11,000 respirators and 25,000 pairs of protective gloves and suits. Nearby, a mobile medical unit housed in a Macdonald's has administered 70,000 tetanus shots. The brain tries to process the numbers: "only" 50,000 tons of debris had been cleared by yesterday, out of 1.2 million tons. The medical examiner's office has readied up to 20,000 DNA tests for
unidentifiable cadaver parts. At all times, night and day, a minimum of 1000 people live and work on the site.
Such numbers daze the mind. It's the details--fragile, individual--that melt numbness into grief. An anklet with "Joyleen" engraved on it--foun> on an ankle. Just that: an ankle. A pair of hands--one brown, one> white--clasped together. Just that. No wrists. A burly welder who drove from Ohio to help, saying softly, "We're working in a cemetery. I'm standing in--not on, in--a graveyard." Each lamppost, storefront, scaffolding, mailbox, is plastered with homemade photocopied posters, a racial/ethnic rainbow of faces and names: death the great leveler, not only of the financial CEOs- their images usually formal, white, male, older, with suit-and-tie--but the mailroom workers, receptionists, waiters. You pass enough of the MISSING posters and the faces, names, descriptions become familiar. The Albanian window-cleaner guy with the bushy eyebrows. The teenage Mexican dishwasher who had an American flag tattoo. The janitor's assistant who'd emigrated from Ethiopia. The Italian-American grandfather who was a doughnut-cart tender. The 23-year-old Chinese American junior pastry chef at the Windows on the World restaurant who'd gone in early that day so she could prep a business breakfast for 500. The firefighter who'd posed jauntily wearing his green shamrock necktie. The dapper
African-American midlevel manager with a small gold ring in his ear who handled "minority affairs" for one of the companies. The middle-aged secretary laughing up at the camera from her wheelchair. The maintenance worker with a Polish name, holding his newborn baby. Most of the faces are smiling; most of the shots are family photos; many are recent wedding pictures. . . .
I have little national patriotism, but I do have a passion for New York, partly for our gritty, secular energy of endurance, and because the world does come here: 80 countries had offices in the Twin Towers; 62 countries lost citizens in the catastrophe; an estimated 300 of our British cousins died, either in the planes or the buildings. My personal comfort is found not in ceremonies or prayer services but in watching the plain, truly heroic (a word usually misused) work of ordinary New Yorkers we take for granted every day, who have risen to this moment unpretentiously, too busy even to notice they're expressing the splendor of the human spirit: firefighters, medical> aides, nurses, ER doctors, police officers, sanitation workers, construction-workers, ambulance drivers, structural engineers, crane operators, rescue worker âx|tunnel ratsâxx. . . .
Meanwhile, across the US, the rhetoric of retaliation is in full-throated roar. Flag sales are up. Gun sales are up. Some radio stations have banned playing John Lennon's song, "Imagine." Despite appeals from all officials (even Bush), mosques are being attacked, firebombed; Arab Americans are hiding their children indoors; two murders in Arizona have already been categorized as hate crimes--one victim a Lebanese-American man and one a Sikh man who died merely for wearing a turban. (Need I say that there were not nationwide attacks against white Christian males after Timothy McVeigh was apprehended for the Oklahoma City bombing?)
Last Thursday, right-wing televangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat rtson (our home-grown American Taliban leaders) appeared on Robertson's TV show "The 700 Club," where Falwell blamed "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists and the gays and lesbians ...the American Civil Liberties Union, People for the American Way" and groups "who have tried to secularize America" for what occurred in New York. Robertson replied, "I totally concur." After even the Bush White House called the remarks "inappropriate," Falwell apologized (though he did
not take back his sentiments); Robertson hasn't even apologized. (The program is carried by the Fox Family Channel, recently purchased by the Walt Disney Company--in case you'd like to register a protest.)
The sirens have lessened. But the drums have started. Funeral drums. War drums. A State of Emergency, with a call-up of 50,000 reservists to active duty. The Justice Department is seeking increased authority for> wider surveillance, broader detention powers, wiretapping of persons (not, as previously, just phone numbers), and stringent press restrictions on military reporting.
And the petitions have begun. For justice but not vengeance. For a reasoned response but against escalating retaliatory violence. For vigilance about civil liberties. For the rights of innocent Muslim Americans. For âx|bombingâxx Afghanistan with food and medical parcels, NOT firepower. There will be the expectable peace marches, vigils, rallies. . . . One member of the House of Representatives--Barbara Lee, Democrat of California, an African American woman--lodged the sole vote in both houses of Congress against giving Bush broadened powers for a war response, saying she didn't believe a massive military campaign would stop terrorism. (She could use letters of support: email her, if you wish, at barbara.lee@mail.house.gov).
Those of us who have access to the media have been trying to get a different voice out. But ours are complex messages with long-term solutions--and this is a moment when people yearn for simplicity and short-term, facile answers.
Still, I urge all of you to write letters to the editors of newspapers, call in to talk radio shows, and, for those of you who have media access--as activists, community leaders, elected or appointed officials, academic experts, whatever--to do as many interviews and TV programs as you can. Use the tool of the Internet. Talk about the root causes of terrorism, about the need to diminish this daily climate of patriarchal violence surrounding us in its state-sanctioned normalcy; the need to recognize people's despair over ever being heard short of committing such dramatic, murderous acts; the need to address a desperation that becomes chronic after generations of suffering; the need to arouse that most subversive of emotions--empathy--for "the other"; the need to eliminate hideous economic and political injustices, to reject all tribal/ethnic hatreds> and fears, to repudiate religious fundamentalisms of every kind. Especially talk about the need to understand that we must expose the mystique of violence, separate it from how we conceive of excitement, eroticism, and "manhood"; the need to comprehend that violence differs in degree but is related in kind, that it thrives along a spectrum, as do its effects--from the battered child and raped woman who live in fear to an entire populace living in fear.
Meanwhile, we cry and cry and cry. I donâx t even know who my tears are for anymore, because I keep seeing ghosts, I keep hearing echoes.
The world's sympathy moves me deeply. Yet I hear echoes dying into silence: the world averting its attention from the Rwandaâx s screams. . .
Ground Zero is a huge mass grave. And I think: Bosnia. Uganda. More than 5400 people are missing and presumed dead (not even counting the Washington and Pennsylvania deaths). The TV anchors choke up: civilians, they say, my god, civilians. And I see ghosts. Hiroshima. Nagasaki. Dresden. Vietnam.
I watch the mask-covered mouths and noses on the street turn into the faces of Tokyo citizens who wear such masks every day against toxic pollution. I watch the scared eyes become the fearful eyes of women forced to wear the hajib or chodor or burka against their will . . .
I stare at the missing posters' photos and think of the Mothers of the Disappeared. And I see the ghosts of other faces. In photographs on the walls of Holocaust museums. In newspaper clippings from Haiti. In chronicles from Cambodia . . .
I worry for people who've lost their homes near the site, though I see how superbly social-service agencies are trying to meet their immediate and longer-term needs. But I see ghosts: the perpetually homeless who sleep on city streets, whose needs are never addressed. . . .
I watch normally unflappable New Yorkers flinch at loud noises, parents panic when their kids are late from school. And I see my Israeli feminist friends like Yvonne, whoâx ve lived with this dread for decades and still (even yesterday) stubbornly issue petitions insisting on peace. . . .
I watch sophisticates sob openly in the street, people who've lost workplaces, who don't know where their next paycheck will come from, who fear a contaminated water or food supply, who are afraid for their sons in the army, who are unnerved by security checkpoints, who are in mourning, who feel wounded, humiliated, outraged. And I see my friends like Zuhira in the refugee camps of Gaza or West Bank, Palestinian women who have lived in precisely that emotional condition--for four> generations.
Last weekend, many Manhattanites left town to visit concerned families, try to normalize, get away for a break. As they streamed out of the city, I saw ghosts of other travelers: hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees streaming toward their country's borders in what is to them habitual terror, trying t |
