In Group/Out Group + "Learning to Hate" + ... = Terrorism?

Note: This is a stream of consciousness post. Sources cited will be forthcoming.

For those of you who are confused, I've been taking an intro to sociology class this semester, and we've been talking about various things. This weekend I'm going over Ch. 4 of the sociology book and ran into the following:

"'Arrests Made in Vandalism Spree,” the headline said. In March 2010, three high school students, two juveniles and one 18-year-old, allegedly spray-painted obscenities on cars, homes, and an elementary school in Muncie, Indiana. A police captain said, “I think they just started out to do a friend’s house. The thing kind of carried away after that and went nuts through the rest of the neighborhood.” The estimated damage was in the thousands of dollars and was so extensive that the 18-year-old suspect was charged with a felony. The police captain said the boys felt sorry for their vandalism. “They probably wish they could take it back, but it happened and it’s a lot of damage.' (Werner, 2010)

This news story depicts an unusual group activity, spray painting. It is likely that none of these teens would have done the spray painting by himself. If so, this news story reminds us of the importance of the many groups to which people typically belong. The English poet John Donne (1573–1631) once wrote, “No man is an island, entire of itself; Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main” (Donne, 1839, pp. 574–575). Obviously meant to apply to both sexes, Donne’s passage reminds us that we are all members of society. At the more micro level, we are all members of social groups and categories. As we have seen in previous chapters, sociologists look at us more as members of groups and less as individuals, and they try to explain our attitudes and behavior in terms of the many groups and social backgrounds from which we come. For these reasons, sociology is often considered the study of group life, group behavior, and group processes. This chapter discusses the importance of many types of groups for understanding our behavior and attitudes and for understanding society itself. We will see that groups are necessary for many of our needs and for society’s functioning but at the same time can often lead to several negative consequences, as the story of vandalism in Muncie illustrates."

While I was certainly aware that spray painting can be considered "vandalism" and such an act is illegal, my immediate thought due to a past event was, "Are there times when spray painting wouldn't be considered illegal or unusual?" (For those wondering what the past event is, please comment or reply. I don't feel it is necessary to explain it at this time, but I can in another post or comment reply.)

Then I noticed in section 1 of this chapter, it mentioned in-groups and out-groups. At this I remembered a few things:

1. In a book I more recently (in the broadest sense) read, I remember a Christian scholar mentioning that distinctions b/t the two can turn into conflict, though it doesn't always escalate to violence. However, this can be said of certain suicide bombing terrorist groups like the Tammil Tigers (sp?). For those of you crying "Islam" or "Islamophobic," they're neither, as the closest religion they would be related to is Hinduism. However, their acts are more for political reasons. Albeit, the same can be said of Al Queda (sp?) aka "The Base" and probably Hamas as well, which was essentially the scholar's point. As mentioned earlier, while it doesn't always escalate to the taking of human life, this is why the author is hesitant to use certain terms in a pejorative sense. e.g., "us, them, f*g, homophobic, Islamophobic, moderate Muslim (in the facetious sense), n****, boy, White, et al."

2. I also remembered that people can be unaware of this distinction, as a sort of cognitive dissonance. e.g., although many of my best friends would say they despise cliques, I would often find them part of one (in the broadest sense) during lunch, i.e. Asians would all sit together, albeit separate from blacks, and vice versa. The author observed this while sitting alone at a table, and those who didn't know the author would sometimes think of me as a "loner" anyways, so he was seldom exposed to company, particularly during his senior year when he was observing this. Even before this, due to some non-empirical commonalities with blacks (such as taste in hip-hop/rap, etc.), the author would sometimes visit the table where only blacks would sit, though he wouldn't necessarily sit with them, or be invited to, possibly to a feeling of awkwardness. Why this felt awkward was probably due to it being uncommon or rare, or just due to the fact of it being a new atmosphere and being the only one with a diff. label, mainly "White," albeit the author himself doesn't really like the label for the same reason he doesn't like the label "n*gg*," and recognizes it as a social construct, not a biological concept. The essential point is, this seems to be similar to the unawareness of the high schoolers in the above example. (For those of you who aren't me or don't know me that well, please don't assume, and ask if you have any questions.)

3. The instructor's lecture on "learning to hate," which certainly describes the experiences of former Islamic terrorists, or at least the few the author has seen/heard of/read about in their testimonies. (Some of these do have a American conservative spin on them, though the author does not necessarily share or endorse these views.)

So, the author is wondering, can the same phenomenon that happened in the above examples also end up in something as terrible as the 1994 or 2001 attack on the WTC or the firing of 3,000 plus rockets on civilian targets, or is this simply an error of composition?

Also, if this is the case, how do we plan to counter this phenomenon which produces said result?

Thanks for reading. :)