Heroism, terrorism and social violence: notes in political psychology

Behavioral and psychological difference between the terrorists of the 1990-2010s and the ones of the 1950-1980s reflects an overall trend towards increasingly primitive political thinking. The structure and logic of religious motivations and the literal faith in the afterlife rewards make the terrorists' activities more cruel and destructive compared to the ones of the secular "revolutionary romanticists". The author's conclusions are not only on the literary sources but also his personal observations of many years and his practical experience with the politicians of various allegiances. The dangerous psychological trend is accompanied by the diffusing margins between war and peace conditions and also between military, production and home technologies: modern weapons are every day cheaper and more easily available. The paper shows that the regress in humanitarian intelligence coupled with the accelerating technological development is fraught with fatal effects for the global civilization. Independent calculations made by the scientists in Australia, Russia and USA have shown that the current century is expected to be crucial not only for human history but also for the whole planetary evolution; this puts special responsibility on the present-day generations. Throughout millennia, group solidarity has been supported by the image of common enemy ("them - us"), which at the same time has facilitated the meaning formation. Actually, the key conditions for the Earth civilization's sustainability are formation and mass assimilation of new strategic meanings free from intergroup confrontations. Social psychological experiments (Sherif et al.) and political observations show that consolidation without confrontation is available. Modem cross-disciplinary science provides the basic points for panhuman meanings; yet, real political attitudes are currently drifting into a dangerous direction.