A good piece on why young men make such good terrorists:
thestar.com
Lost Boys
Jun. 11, 2006. 01:00 AM
JENNIFER WELLS
On Sept. 28, 2001, Lionel Tiger posted one of his characteristically tightly written — and tartly observant — essays on the Web magazine Slate. What had seized Tiger's imagination in the still hot ash of 9/11 was the subject of young men or, to put a catchier label on it, Lost Boys.
Tiger is the Darwin Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University. His seminal work, Men in Groups, published in 1969, coined the term "male bonding" — surely one of the catchiest catchphrases of all time — and he has remained at the forefront of research into boys as a societal class ever since.
"The terrorism of Bin Laden," Tiger wrote in Slate, "harnesses the chaos of young men, uniting the energies of political ardour and sex in a turbulent fuel."
The Boys of Bin Laden represented a microscopic subclass of extremism. Yet Tiger's essay triggered the broader, discomfiting question: Is there something in the makeup of young men that might make them especially malleable, or prime fodder, for Al Qaeda and related enterprises? In the wake of the recent arrests of five male minors among a group of 17 alleged terrorists here at home, the question yet again arises: why boys?
Tiger, a Canadian who has closely watched recent events unfold from his perch in Manhattan — "slightly to the right of the Chelsea Hotel" — described young men in that Slate article as "the most lurchy, impressionable, energetic, socially exigent and politically inept" in our social system. He wrote those words with the greatest affection. Anyone who keeps close company with males in adolescence can appreciate the precision of the description.
"Dealing with young males is the most difficult issue," he says. "They are hormonally deranged, or at least charged. They are all seeking somehow to establish themselves as potentially useful full-grown adults. They have a commitment to a kind of bonded or micro-corporate identity, which is very strong."
Exploring that bonded identity is essential to any understanding of the adolescent male. And any inquiries into how that bonding expresses itself invariably leads, at least in the land of academia, to a discussion of rhesus monkeys as hierarchical status-seekers who bond in roaming, all-male packs post-puberty.
There have been plentiful studies on this matter. Further, says Jordan Peterson, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, studies into the serotonin levels of monkeys have shown a clear link between status and emotional stability. "We know that beyond a shadow of a doubt," he says. "If you knock a monkey down in status, its serotonin levels fall."
So being part of the group is part of our biological heritage. And status matters. "It's also part of the fact we're highly social," says Peterson. "It's probably particularly relevant for young men between the ages of 16 and 26 ... Having a group not only gives you an identity but provides you with distributed social protection."
In discussing the emotional urges of adolescence, Marc Lewis, professor of human development and applied psychology at U of T, refers to the "chemical fuel of the brain" — its neuromodulator systems. "Your goals and plans and urges get charged up," says Lewis. "However, development of the prefrontal cortex, especially the more dorsal part, is not complete."
What that means, continues Lewis, is that the "good sort of high-level thinking-ahead stuff" — planning, preparing, comparing different outcomes, adjusting strategies — doesn't finish maturing until the individual reaches his early 20s. The delay in the maturation of boys puts them, "to the extent that we know," says Lewis, about two years behind girls.
Anyone who has witnessed the fearless, risk-taking, locked-in-the-moment, need-for-speed behaviours of some young men may recognize such traits. This at a time when they are their most physically powerful, most aggressive, most at the mercy of testosterone surges.
William Pollack, whose long list of accomplishments include his positions as assistant clinical professor, department of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School and director of the Centers for Men and Young Men at McLean Hospital, just outside Boston, asserts that the socialization of young males — "and this is 2006, not 1946" — persists in sending age-old messages. Be stoic. Be independent. Chin up. Be, to use a tired term, macho.
Pollack's own research into adolescent individuation contradicts some of what has come before. He says that young men and young women do not seek a separation from their intimate connections — largely family — in order to find their true selves, but rather that they want to retain those connections while figuring out "who they are and what they stand for." As this plays out, young women — socialized, he says, to be more in touch with their feelings — tend to feel less isolated and are "less likely to be drawn into simple answers by cult leaders."The U of T's Peterson recalls Jean Piaget's work on moral development and the "kind of messianic morality" that drives a teenager's desire to change the world. "Now let's look at the darker side of things," says Peterson, whose book Maps of Meaning explores, as he says, "why individuals become pathologically cruel in the service of group identity."
Consider a particular movement, a particular cult, a particular leader. "We're going to find that the guy who leads this group is arrogant, narcissistic, hubristic — and by that I mean he's going to have an ideology. He's going to believe he's 100-per-cent right. And he's going to be completely opaque to counter-evidence." What gets lost, continues Peterson, is individual integrity. "The way to become resistant to totalitarian ideology is to understand that you have individual responsibility for your life."
The examples in literature, as in history, are innumerable. Consider Anthony Burgess's droogs (A Clockwork Orange) or the shuddering power of Jack in Lord of the Flies. "Listen all of you. Me and my hunters, we're living along the beach on a flat rock. We hunt and feast and have fun. If you want to join my tribe come and see us. Perhaps I'll let you join. Perhaps not."
"The moral," wrote Golding of Flies after its publication, "is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable."
Young men, of course, have no lock on adolescent emotional turmoil. And it's easy to get tripped up by any attempt to assert generalities and define commonalities. For this reason, Fred Mathews, director of research and youth justice programs at Central Toronto Youth Services, enters the conversation with caution. "What happens when a small group perpetuates an action, we tend to generalize to the whole group," he says.
Mathews has spent 20 years researching youth-gang culture and can cite exceptions to anything one might identify as predictors of adolescent behaviour. If you want to explore poverty as a root cause for gang activity, Mathews will reflect upon the kid "from a very wealthy family" who dealt in stolen luxury cars and trafficked in heroin, or the midtown youths engaged in swarmings and assaults who were all kids of privilege.
Susceptibility to strong ideas? "It could be political ideas, it could be an attraction to alternative lifestyles in youth subculture," Mathews says. "Developmentally, I think you would find that in both genders ... It's to be expected to have kids feel strongly and passionately and to believe in things. I don't want to pathologize that part of it."
There may be, Mathews continues, gendered expressions of the way in which adolescents act out, in using, by example, extreme means to seek political ends. "You might find more boys engaged in that than young girls," he says. And adolescence is ideal seeding ground for extreme behaviours, though the overall numbers, he reminds, are exceedingly small.
"They're full of energy and excitement and enthusiasm and idealism," he says. "And that can be distorted if they're channelled in ways that are anti-social or manipulated by adults who have very narrow or dogmatic views of the world." The more crime-focused the organization, he says, the more hierarchical and the more likely it is that the gang will be led by adults.
The developmental piece — the planning and assessing of outcomes that Marc Lewis refers to — lags during the transitional age of young gang members. "They don't look at the other side of pulling the trigger," says Mathews of kids who get into trouble with the law for using guns. "They're caught up in the bravado of the lead-up to the act."
The group is the anchor and, says Mathews, "anything that removes kids out of the dominant culture and puts them on the margins amplifies the effect of that group affinity, group belonging and group norms ... It costs a lot to step outside of group norms. The cost of isolation. And that's one of the hardest things for a human being to face, the threat of isolation." |
