Jack the Terrorist

A few short thoughts on why our current approach to tackling terrorism is not working.

Jack the Terrorist Terrorism is to some extent like a Jack-in-the-box (the toy where there is a puppet on a spring that can be pushed down into a box, and released by opening the lid). The more it is pushed down, the greater energy it has to spring up. The more energy that is exerted in putting it down, the more energy it retains to explode back up. What is more, this jack-in-the-box has some extra special features:

1. Reinforced Fist – Instead of a puppet it contains a solid boxing glove in the form of a fist.

2. Special Spring Generation – Whenever it is pushed down, it not only retains the energy expended on its suppression, but it generates more, all by itself – it uses the energy given by the other to generate more of its own – exponentially. So when it is in its box, invisible to the unknowing eye, it is all the time generating greater energy – the very act of suppression triggers this power generation. The spiral spring strenghtens and tenses.

3. Self-release – The build-up will continue, until one day someone pushes the button opening the box and releasing the fist, or until the day when the lid can no longer contain the built-up energy of the spring, and it explodes out into the face of the nearest innocent bystander.

Tactics for dealing with this new version jack-in-the-box have shown remarkable ignorance of its basic mechanisms. The most common one is just to force it back into its box. It is clear that this is only a short-term solution, but given the short-term perspective of today’s leaders, that doesn’t seem to matter. Next time it is someone else’s problem. Some people try putting a stronger lock on the box, but with this model, that just produces an even more powerful explosion when the Jack does eventually break out – due to its power for exponential energy generation. The thing with this feature, is that it is very hard to predict when Jack will break out. For one moment, it will be at half explosion capacity, but in the nature of exponential growth, the next moment it will be there in your face. One thing is for sure – you can never suppress the Jack forever.

A more drastic approach, normally adopted when the fist has caused unexpected and surprising amounts of damage, it not to stop at squashing it back into its box, but also to destroy the boxing-glove fist itself. The fist is, after all, the most visible part of the jack-in-the-box. This brings us onto the next special feature:

4. Self-regenerating – in case someone thinks they have finally wiped out the dastardly threat in the form of the fist, secretly in the darkness of its box, the Jack regenerates a new form to top the spring. What is more, it is likely to be even more deadly and unexpected than the last.

What of course people have so far failed to look at is what actually drives the fist to explode in the first place – the secret of the Jack-in-the-box – the spring. And until they do, we can be sure that Jack will continue to shock and surprise us for many years to come. Terrorism cannot be destroyed or “wiped out”. More than that, terrorism feeds on the very powers of destruction and oppression. Starving terrorism means changing the way we relate and respond to it.

Working with the Wyrd

Below are a series of quotations from The Way of the Wyrd, by Brian Bates (Arrow Books Ltd, London, 1983). They illustrate how Anglo-Saxon spiritual leaders understood the world. “Wyrd” is the word they used to express what lies behind our visible world.

I have inserted comments about how I feel these kind of insights can guide us in our work as trainers today.

“The soul is what gives form, direction and pattern to all things, for it forms a shield-skin around the life-force, enveloping vitality in a recognisable shape. The form of the shield-skin defines the kind of creature we are. The shield must be continually maintained with each succeeding breath, for if it is not then life-force would burst from it like molten metal, shapeless, uncontrollably leaking back into earth. The soul is the essence and at the moment of death, when the shield-skin ceases and life-force returns to Mother Earth, the soul leaves the body and leads an existence separate from it. […]

“ The shield-skin is a temporary existence; life-force flows like a stream and the shield-skin should be the valley through which it flows, not a stagnant pool blocking its movement” (pp.97-99 – my emphasis)

3 main elements – soul, shield-skin, and life-force. What struck me about this was the parallel with a good training process, particularly over a number of days. The “shield-skin” is the structure of the training, the themes and methods, the framework within which space is created to allow things to happen. The “life-force” is the energy which develops within a group around the themes you are exploring and the methods you are using. The “soul” is the people – the trainers and participants – and that which is inside of them.

At the start of the process, people bring their individual “souls” to the gathering. During their time together, those individual souls connect in some way, and a group “soul” takes shape, which gives the form to the “life-force” that emerges. At the end of the process, people go their separate ways, the “life-force” of the meeting returns to its source, and the “shield-skin” of the programme ceases to exist, and the individual “souls” return to their existences, enriched by the group process and still in some way connected by the group “soul” that they all shared.

It also sheds light on the apparent paradox of structure and space. Some people try to do away with all structure, but then there is no “valley” for the “life-force” to flow down, then it dissipates frustratingly. Structure is essential, in order to create the channel for the energy. Control is a different thing. Trying to control the “life-force” once it is flowing within the “shield-skin” will only cause disturbance, like putting your hand in a fast-flowing stream. Letting go of control does not mean letting go of awareness. Precisely the opposite. In releasing the “life-force” we are able to connect to the “soul”, reflect on what is happening, and learn from it, within the safety of the “shield-skin”.

“We cannot control our lives, because we too are inseparable aspects of wyrd and express its will. But this is not the same as saying our life is determined . Rather, it is saying we live like an ocean voyager – trimming our sails to the winds and tides of wyrd is something that happens at every instant. The pattern of life is not woven ahead of time, like cloth to be worn later as a tunic. Rather, life is woven at the very instant you live it. […]

“Patterns change as they are woven. A pattern that is complex has more scope for change, for there are many themes on which a new pattern may be based. … The task of a sorcerer is to become fully aware and sensitive to all nuances of his life-design as it unfolds.” (p. 113)

“Life is woven at the very instant you live it…”. If that’s the case, then the trainer had better be there, or rather here, in the now, as it happens, in order to be able to experience it and build on it. The trainer’s job is similar to the “sorcerer” in terms of being aware of what is unfolding in one’s own “life-design”. But you must also be watching what is happening to other people’s “life-design”, to the “life-design” of the group soul, and help to make the patterns visible to the group for them to name, unmask and engage with.

See also my talk on the Way of Wyrd.

From that Place of Power-With

An exploration of power dynamics in relationships.

Interacting – Engaging – Developing

That’s basically what we are doing over here, at our new organisation / training centre / performance laboratory in Utrecht, the Netherlands, appropriately titled Engage! InterAct. Through our engagement and interaction with people, we are developing a theoretical and practical approach to training, non-formal and life-long learning that aims to underpin many of the key elements that our society finds itself challenged by – e.g. multiculturalism, citizenship & participation, the “knowledge society”, the suffering and threatened extinction of the human race and other beautiful species…

Open Source Learning

We have called the approach “Open Source Learning”. Open Source Learning promotes a relationship between participant and educator in which certain values are inherent – including power-with, partnership, enabling, flexibility, open-mindedness, responsibility, creativity and transformation.

If the approach to learning is based on these kind of values, we believe it will encourage people to see the world in a way that goes beyond an insecure and ultimately unrealisable quest for simple solutions. It will help people to let go of the need they feel for control, and allow them to open up and deal with the continually changing reality of diversity and uncertainty. On a fundamental level, it aims to transform narrow-minded and stagnating societies, organisations and institutions into open, dynamic and engaging places to live and work.

Changing the rules of engagement

However, it also goes beyond the structured learning environment, to any situation where people are interacting with each other in some kind of dialogue / negotiation, where the aim of one or both parties is to end up somewhere different to where they started. This could be teacher-pupil, parent-child, doctor-patient, development worker – target group, politiciancitizen, social change activist – mainstream policy-maker…

In terms of social change, the key element is not to end up playing the game which is inherent to the very system you are trying to change. In the work we have been doing on conflict management, it has become very apparent that the only way to fundamentally transform situations of destructive conflict is to lift both sides out of the negative spiral of domination-submission/rebellion that we so easily seem to slip into. There is a model that we use to help explain this:

When we enter into negotiation with someone about something (which we are doing in most of our interactions with people), we tend to find ourselves caught up in a mythic power game, where we all struggle for Power Over. The task is to try to get the relationship onto one of Power With, as it is from that place that we can realise our full human potential.

If we find ourselves in a position of Power Less, we tend to find it hard not to respond in that role – usually either through fight or flight. Both those responses keep the other comfortably in their role of Power Over. If we are able to centre ourselves, and respond to the other from a position of Power With, their domination role is suddenly undermined – their victim is no longer there and they are thrashing at thin air. It is very hard for someone to maintain their Power Over role when they are being approached from a position of Power With. Sometimes it happens instantaneously, sometimes it takes much patience, strength and persistence, but that person will eventually come round to Power With – and what a revealing and beautiful transformation takes place! The same is true the other way round – if someone puts us in a role of Power Over, because they take a role of Power Less, we can help lift them up to Power With by acting from that place ourselves.

A lesson from the front-line

I was recently in Bethlehem, Palestine (a couple of weeks after the recent conflict had started to escalate) working with an international youth group which contained eight young Palestinian men, on the themes of nonviolence and intercultural learning. As we grappled with the challenges of nonviolence, one of the Palestinians told a story that illustrated the above theory perfectly. He had himself been crippled in an attack in a Mosque in Hebron by an Israeli right-wing extremist a few years earlier and was now in a wheelchair. He told the story of how they had arrived at an Israeli checkpoint one time, when a flustered soldier came over to them shouting questions and waving his gun.

Our friend asked gently “Why are you talking to me like that?”. The Israeli soldier stopped in his tracks, his face transformed, he lost all his aggression, and proceeded to apologise and explain how difficult he was finding everything. During the exchange, he accepted a banana and bottle of water that our friend offered him, and by the end they were together bemoaning the terrible situation. By refusing to play the role the soldier was expecting, by refusing to accept the role that the soldier had taken on himself, our friend transformed both the situation and the person by speaking to him from a place of Power With.

For me this is a lesson that has resonances at all levels – whether we are concerned with empowering forms of education or achieving fundamental and sustainable social, cultural and individual transformation. It is a challenge we must face up to in both our personal and work life if we are to create lasting change for the better.

To see more on this topic, see “Open Source Learning – a key to multiculturalism, citizenship and the knowledge society”.

Download the PDF here.