Exact Opposite of a Terrorist Organization
Love, not terror
Why don´t we create an organization, that is the exact opposite of a terrorist organization ? Not angry people who bring terror to civilians; nothing but suffering, death and destruction… but emphatic people who understand root causes of things, try to correct those root causes and bring relief, love, understanding, empathy and affection along the way ? Change through love, not terror.
I ask myself: what is the point of a terrorist organization ? Yes, there are broken people who want nothing else but to see the world burn, who want to inflict suffering on others... but what is the root cause of this ? How did these people came to be ? Probably because they themselves have suffered, right ? In my optimism bias filled life I try to look at terrorist organizations and optimistically try to believe that they just want to bring change, right ? But why bring change by terror ? To send a message ? Is that the point ? Yes... to cause destruction, live in infamy... but there has to be a deeper meaning to it, right ? Or am I just naive ? Is it all about destruction ? How does that hatred come about ? How does that create itself ?
Let´s explore and look at terrible events like 9/11 and October 7th... I am one of those people who actually didn’t know that 9/11 was actually about Palestine... I was so distracted by the terror, I didn’t even get that message for 20 years... and it´s crazy when you think about it... Wasn’t that the whole point in the first place ? To send a message and enact change ? What a shit way to do it... not only is it terrible, it´s not even effective...
What did Hamas want to accomplish by terrible October 7th ? Freedom for Palestine ? What did they think would happen ? Hatred just creates more hatred... and what did they get in return ? Did they free Palestine ? Of course not... That´s a really shit way of trying to enact change... I understand that the life the people of Gaza have lived for… oh too many years… created the conditions for hatred to grow too large... but seriously wasn’t there a better way ?
I would love for someone to shed more light on this for me... but until that happens... why don’t we create a "love organization" ? Instead of random acts of terror, we could do random acts of kindness... I remember when I was living in Bulgaria: One time I was in a hurry waiting at the checkout line at the store, a retired old lady was taking forever to count her coins and try to pay for her groceries... no matter how she counted she didn’t have enough... It’s just my nature to not get angry like some people do, waiting at the checkout line in a hurry... it was just my nature to obviously help her out and pay for the groceries... but what if we do that at scale ? Random acts of kindness to send a deeper message about the problems of our societies...
But there’s a big problem... humans have a strong negativity bias because of evolution.... negative emotions affect us much more deeply than positive ones. We are programmed like this, because it helped us survive throughout history... We pay more attention to bad things and outcomes because we want to protect ourselves... Bad things are a bigger threat than positive ones are... so we pay more attention. For example, according to Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s work on Prospect Theory the pain of loosing 100$ is psychologically about twice as powerful as the pleasure of winning 100$.
Imagine 2 different recipients won a lottery... one was told they won a 1,000,000 $ and the other one was told they won 500,000 $... but then they tell the first one: "Oops, there’s been a mistake, you have to return half, you’ve only won 500,000 $." Guess what ? The person will be devastated and miserable... even though they just won 500,000 $, they feel really bad by thinking of what could’ve been… while the person who had "only" won 500,000 $ was much happier... even though they both won the same amount.... how crazy is that ?
That phenomenon is why we never hear about or even have "love organizations"... but we´re stuck with the scourge of terrorist organizations... and they´re not even effective... what a waste...
So we must push through negativity bias, and try harder to bring positive change into our world :)