Originally posted by DA Morgan:
Sorry but this thread is a load of rubbish stacked to the ceiling.
What is a terrorist? Someone else blowing up my stuff.
What is a freedom fighter? Me blowing up someone else's stuff.
Was George Washington a freedom fighter?
Not if you asked King George III.
I find it hard to believe that anyone engages it this kind of mental nonsense after age 15.
This is a widely acknowledged observation, and I think people here know at least that much, DA.
This said, however, it is only one starting point in understanding human behavior. That is, being aware of certain political aspects of terrorism, like the one you raise, has not prevented acts of aggression, so any further attempt to delve deeper into the problem of human aggression can only be a good thing, not something to be discouraged. Summing up "terrorism" in a couple of sentences and declaring it not worthy of discussion isn't good enough.
Whether having such a discussion can be counted as science, however, is another matter altogether. If science could somehow observe all the mechanics that govern human behavior, would these observations explain what I?d tentatively call ?human nature?? Would it change anything if science did know? Even if science did know everything there was to know about how the mind works, would it then have predictive powers over human behavior? That is, using the knowledge they have on human behavior could science have some influence over real world politics, and human interaction?
I?m not sure it could. I would imagine that people would react counter intuitively if they suspected they were being manipulated in even the slightest way. If "hard" science cannot answer these questions, or cannot explain human interaction, then perhaps we should consider political science a real science. The science of human relations, or do you consider this not to be a real phenomenon?
