I had dinner with my neighbors a few days ago, and we somehow got to talking about this. One of them had grown up in the '60s and recalled that the scariest public event for her then was JFK's assassination. But things reached a new level of horror with the cult events that occupied the public eye of the '70s: Jonestown, the Manson Family, etc.
Jonestown was the largest single loss of American civilian lives until 9/11. Nine hundred and thirteen individuals lost their lives in a mass suicide/murder, the origin of the saying "drink the Kool-Aid," referring to the unquestioning acceptance of group norms. It's not difficult to imagine that this, along with the aftermath of the Manson murders, had a traumatizing effect on the public's psyche.
Some 40 years later, and I find myself wondering what's behind a phenomenon like ISIS. I'm sure there's a great body of sociological research that could shed some light on the question, but in our armchair capacity, my neighbor and I speculate that the instability of the '60s was the impetus for many of the curiosities that point forward. And the destabilizing effects of rapid globalization, not least of all the War in Iraq and other conflicts, have similarly given rise to the likes of ISIS.
The Civil Rights Movement and the response to the Vietnam War broke the status quo. That translated to a lot of progress, but there's also another side to it. The questioning required to make progress also left a lot of otherwise healthy individuals lost as myriad unexplored avenues and lifestyles were opening up. More nefarious actors were able to take advantage of individuals in that state.
If not war-torn Syria or Iraq, ISIS recruits comprise marginalized or disillusioned individuals from other parts of the world. They're in search of meaning and structure in their lives, and in a similar fashion, are finding it among homicidal radicals.
Jonestown was the largest single loss of American civilian lives until 9/11. Nine hundred and thirteen individuals lost their lives in a mass suicide/murder, the origin of the saying "drink the Kool-Aid," referring to the unquestioning acceptance of group norms. It's not difficult to imagine that this, along with the aftermath of the Manson murders, had a traumatizing effect on the public's psyche.
Some 40 years later, and I find myself wondering what's behind a phenomenon like ISIS. I'm sure there's a great body of sociological research that could shed some light on the question, but in our armchair capacity, my neighbor and I speculate that the instability of the '60s was the impetus for many of the curiosities that point forward. And the destabilizing effects of rapid globalization, not least of all the War in Iraq and other conflicts, have similarly given rise to the likes of ISIS.
The Civil Rights Movement and the response to the Vietnam War broke the status quo. That translated to a lot of progress, but there's also another side to it. The questioning required to make progress also left a lot of otherwise healthy individuals lost as myriad unexplored avenues and lifestyles were opening up. More nefarious actors were able to take advantage of individuals in that state.
If not war-torn Syria or Iraq, ISIS recruits comprise marginalized or disillusioned individuals from other parts of the world. They're in search of meaning and structure in their lives, and in a similar fashion, are finding it among homicidal radicals.
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