The best metaphor for the long-term campaign against terrorism is not war, but cancer. Like cancer, terrorism spreads from one cell to another, inducing each in turn to reproduce a foreign, dysfunctional code at the expense of the larger context and survival of the organism depending on healthy cells for survival. The usual mechanisms by which a culture balances itself and keeps individuals within socially accepted boundaries are hijacked and used to produce increasingly off-center and unstable behavior in leaders and followers alike. The urge to punish wrongdoers becomes a series of crusades against this or that symbolic evil, trampling the rights of anyone lacking official power. Religious or political authority becomes a cover for the infected, allowing individuals to continually push consequences onto those who should not have to bear them. Israeli "collective punishments" give cover for "collective punishments" by Hamas and Hezbollah, the disease passing back and forth between the two sides as each demands the moral high ground for itself and fails to see its own complicity in the pattern of outbreak. The cancerous code is loyal to no one, its goal is replication for its own sake. It does not care if you have power or no power, it only wants you to perceive the world in terms of good people and evil people, and to harness your anger at the "evildoers" to unleash waves of violence and keep insane cycles of resentment, demands and punishments spinning. Next thing you know, you're an evildoer, and the code tramples you with no remorse.

There are social, political and economic systems which blind people to the effects of their actions on human beings, focusing intently on efficiency, media exposure, money or some other single variable. Jihadists measure their success by media exposure. If an atrocity gains exposure, it must be the hand of God. Media agrees, atrocities are more interesting than nonviolent protest or bridge-building. Viewers agree to keep their eyes glued to the set when suicide bombings are reported, and to look the other way at stories of reconciliation or diplomatic courage. It's almost a parody of the free market system, in which monetary gain is assumed to be a sign that what one is doing is right and justified, with the costs of sacrificing long-term integrity unrecognized by players who know they won't be around later to clean up the mess, having taken their massive gains and moved on. Gregory bateson made the point that any system which focuses on maximizing a single variable will cause changes in every other variable, to the point of endangering the entire system. A corporate culture that focuses solely on the bottom line and a radical religous system that puts ideology above human compassion will both drive a system over a cliff.

A good response to terrorism might be patterned after the immune system, with societies learning to recognize vulnerable cells before the cancer takes hold, redirecting the code away from cruelty and punitive crusades. The stories of young Muslims living between the contradictory worlds of tribal monotheism and secular materialism may provide clues for the cultural immune system to recognize the dysfunctional "suicide code" as it spreads and alter it. Their knowledge and experience would make up the "antibodies" of the system. They might also give the West some ideas about humanizing capitalism and overcoming rifts between religious and secular worlds.

I'd like to see more TV programs humanizing conflict rather than desensitizing us to it or using it as fuel for cynicism, and generate response from the public to add more energy to finding and carrying out solutions that work on the human, face to face level, rather than the faceless bureaucratic level. CNN impressed me by covering the Israeli-Lebanon outbreak from hospitals on both sides. No doubt the high ratings of medical shows made that decision easier, but I'm more hopeful about our future response to war if we are going to see the real human consequences, rather than turning the whole thing into a video game.

We must be seen as a human culture by the world (whether "we" are Americans, Arabs, Israelis, etc), not as a conspiring nest of snakes as much of the world sees us, but as human beings who want to understand other human beings. The alternative is for Godlike wrath to be delivered by some sociopathic group or another. We've already seen where that leads. When masses are perceived in relation to governments, as faceless machinelike or insectoid beings with no humanity, it becomes frighteningly easy for alienated groups to take revenge on the system by punishing those who live under it. Terrorism and our own dysfunctional responses to it are both byproducts of social systems which fail to recognize the human beings affected by political policies carried out in their name. If Israelis don't see Palestinians as people and Palestinians fail to see Israelis as people, each side is able to justify machine-like responses that impact human lives and create escalating cycles, all under the belief that being justified is more important than making humane, intelligent moves in the "game" that is not a game.

By attacking places where ordinary people are vulnerable, as opposed to high security buildings or military targets, terrorists send the message "Your system cannot save you... unless you reject it." They want their verdict on our system to be the word of God, uncontestable, the way Gandhi's Satyagraha was impossible for the British to stop (terrorism and nonviolence both attempt to use media and the occupier's social support system to their advantage). They want people to stop seeing their government as a protector and see it as a liability instead. The message is not so much "We will kill everyone and there's nothing you can do about it" but rather, "Your government cannot save you, only replacing it with one that minds its own business can save you." Which is, interestingly enough, the message the Bush Administration would like to send to Iranians: "Your government is a pathogen, cast it off and live in peace with us." Two systems, only marginally "human" in the sense that each member of each system must protect the basic assumptions of the system rather than expressing their own human views and doubts, are facing off like gigantic machines, one top-heavy and equipped with high-tech weaponry, the other decentralizing and metastasizing like a cancer with small but deadly genes... and neither can restore balance to a aystem in which the oxygen, the life of the culture, is strangled by reliance on organizations that protect themselves by marginalizing dissent and difference, homogenizing the views of the mass, and leveraging mass behavior into profits at the expense of biological and social ecology.

And, in a sense, both sides are right: governments and global corporations tend to be pathogenic. They replace healthy decentralized systems with arthritic and inhuman bureaucracies that serve themselves at the expense of the whole, cannibalizing and mechanizing the authentic cultures and modes of communication of a society, using religion to serve political agendas, harnessing the conformity impulse to cow people into silencing their real feelings and thoughts. The corporate system can become entrenched and bureaucratic, squeezing the life out of decentralized small businesses that make up a more diverse economic ecosystem. A counterbalancing movement would be the development of community cells building healthy social and business ties to other cells, putting oxygen in the global bloodstream by linking diversely rather than channeling money and power into the hands of a few. Corporations and governments cannot save us, they're too slow and clumsy, and we need information networks that are very fast and agile, that can pick up on threats and point them out to government. We need an Islamic and Arab population willing to expose atrocities before they are committed, especially as nuclear weapons become cheaper and more widely available. We need to create a dialogue that brings out the truth, rather than buying it, and that means each side in the "clash of civilizations" needs to better understand the truth it cannot see on the other side. Americans need to identify with Palestinians and Israelis alike, not one or the other in isolation. Palestinians need to see the suffering of Israeli victims of suicide bombings. Sectarian gangs in Iraq need to be restrained by the larger population, with attacks on innocent people removed from the category of justifiable or rational responses to power struggles. Americans need to better understand the impact of US foreign policy, rather than viewing Muslims with suspicion. If empathy is not encouraged across lines, demonization fills the vacuum. People who reach out to the other side in any conflict are viewed as traitors, or as hopelessly naive, and they need wider support.

Perhaps some of people who could help make peace are the same ones who are drawn to crusades and suicide bombings. They are magnetically pulled toward their opposite, toward a synthesis of what has been kept apart too long. Many of the suicide bombers tried on Western lifestyles and got hurt, felt betrayed and went back to what they thought was a more "traditional" Islam, to get revenge on the culture that poisoned them. Rejecting the "whoredom" of the West, they rejected their own bad selves for being so easily led astray. Idealistic, intelligent young men got into drinking or womanizing when first exposed to freedom, then felt guilty and were seduced by radical teachers who preyed on their feelings of shame and alienation, and converted those feelings into a belief that they could attain paradise by blowing themselves up (suicide bombings are the most intimate possible form of attack, literally mingling the blood of perpetrator and victims, and this intimacy is viewed as superior, more pure and holy than romantic love or sexual freedom). Given the choice between a rootless materialism with nagging shame, and immediate fame and community recognition through "martyrdom", it's possible to understand the choice some are making. The larger Islamic population has to marginalize the use of the word "martyr" in reference to acts of murder. A martyr suffers for his faith. He does not inflict his faith on others, or punish the innocent to avenge his own suffering.

Like smokers who give up tobacco and become insensitive toward those who are still unrepentant smokers, fundamentalists embrace an extreme, puritan form of Islam or Christianity that promises them a new start, as long as they utterly renounce the "whoredom" of modern Western society (hard-line Muslims and Christians both condemn Hollywood, sexual freedom, "decadent" music, and so on). If they had adapted better individually, had been able to reconcile their sexual impulses and the drive to express their spirits through art, music or relationships with their core religious beliefs, they would not be so easily seduced by the radical teachers who fish for the most alienated and lost, those most torn between anger, lust and shame. Abandoning the corruptible body may be another theme: both radical Islam and fundamentalist Christianity have some concept of "rapture", a release from the body that is viewed as sinful and corrupt (suicide bombings are spoken of as a kind of rapture, as an act of both personal liberation and communion). Young Christian and Muslim men did the same thing during the Crusades, working off any personal sin through righteous rape and pillage. It's an old pattern, revived and aided by new technology. We may stave off the possibility of a Christian fundamentalist nuclear regime bent on taking the right side in the Final Battle (I don't get the feeling Americans are real happy with our "Christian" political culture at this point). But we may not be able to ward off nuclear attacks by fundamentalist Islamic groups that view not only their own deaths but the deaths of innocent people as worthy of celebration. Suicide bombings have a viral, contagious quality. They spread until everyone's using them against everyone else, as in Iraq. How can a viral tactic be stopped? Perhaps by portraying it as ineffective, but regardless of whether suicide bombings gain any real power for the groups that orchestrate them, they are wildly effective at gaining media coverage for those groups, who may be too obscure without them to compete for less toxic forms of political participation. Success at democratizing Iraq may not be enough. The tactic may stay in use for its media impact, whatever its longer-term effects on social and political stability. Chaos favors short-term tactics in general, especially if they gain immediate attention and glory for the groups that promote chaos.

The shortage of Arab and Muslim entertainers in American media leaves a visible hole, in light of our occupation of Iraq and unwillingness to be a fair mediator between Israel and the Arab world. Idealism, when not allowed to blossom through art, entertainment and politics, turns cancerous. Self-expression denied leads to envy, resentment and the urge to punish others. What seems shallow and frivolous does matter, if one group is excluded from that process of frivolity-generation. Media is how we communicate to ourselves who, and what, matters to us. How does our media system appear to people who have very little representation in it?

It's easy to believe that because Moses (read Numbers 31, for example) or Mohammad were violent in serving their goals, that the goal itself was wrong. The goal of religion, regardless of the particulars of dogma, is to unite what was once disunited. The body of Christ, or the body of Islam, is meant to include the body of all humanity, living under a moral code that works for humanity. Sectarian violence in Iraq is the exact opposite of what Mohammad represented. A Christian crusade against Islamic or secular "heresies" is the exact opposite of what Christ taught. The goal is not further fragmentation, but higher levels of social integrity and cohesion, the formation of a global body that can survive, rather than falling apart. With weaponry becoming more and more destructive, the formation of some global body (functional or dysfunctional) is inevitable, it is more a question of how individual rights can be protected and how the body can self-regulate without too much power being used by an unaccountable few. Free trade and democracy are good ideas. They cannot be manipulated by a handful of people with extraordinary wealth and power, or by decentralized groups using nuclear or biological weapons to force their vision on the body as a whole. At some point, the choice will be global chaos and fragmentation, or some kind of global agreement to recognize human rights, to derail cellular terrorism, and to keep communication and trade lines open so that a global culture can develop to override the influence of historical resentment, religious fanaticism and identity crusades. If everyone's going to base their politics on hatred of America or Israel, or "God bless America" insular pride on our part, nothing's going to work. Hate is not a sustainable culture, regardless of the target.

Local cultures will need representation and defense against exploitation by monocultures. The global body cannot be one in which a single corporation, nation or insular group has the power to impact the entire planet's security or economy, and it can't be a centralized socialist or fascist regime. A defense against terrorism has to be one that is in everyone's interest, not a single nation crusading against evil, and free trade requires some recognition of higher values than money and convenience on the part of consumers and producers alike. America can't be the sole superpower, and if it's going to have to share power, it's in our interests that others recognize some of the things we value, such as the rights of individuals and freedom of religion and the press. If we keep trying to dominate, we'll just become a convenient excuse for others to become cynical about those values and turn to the "realism" of dominance and force. Suicide bombings are excused with finger-pointing against Israel and the US, and the refusal to address the needs and concerns of Arabs make it far more difficult for moderates to marginalize groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Going back only to the point of division where one's own tribe gained its own sense of identity will not work. We cannot survive if we are compartmentalized and recognize only the historical suffering of our tribe, our religious sect. We have to go back further, to when identity was a human connection to the land, to nature, rather than a tribal identification with warring gods whose voices in the ears of the tribe led to persecution of other tribes. We have to identify with all victims of war.

There is a kind of poisonous anonymity in religious conflicts... nobody stands on his own word, they insult others in the name of this or that religion or nation, and then slink back into the mass. I don't think that kind of aggression is instinctive, it seems more like a way for marginal members of a group to feel empowered and make up for their own questionable status. It's about being a "man" by manipulating the energy of a group in a way that is more reminiscent of females goading men into fighting for them. To be a "real man" would be to stand on one's own word, owning one's language and emotions rather than hiding behind the mass. The feeling of masculine empowerment gained by manipulating tribal energy seems like a false front that can only bring up the same insecurity that required such forceful language as compensation. And to someone who feels insecure and helpless in the face of overwheliming historical forces, what could be more empowering than speaking as if one were a god, or a powerful mass that might as well be a god?

Muslim women need to be heard, and they will, in the end, be the driving force behind the more compassionate and freethinking wing of Islamic culture. The goal of any religion is to form a body out of many limbs, and women are much more likely to perceive their bodies as a reflection of their culture, and to sense the interplay of the individual and the mass. Women worldwide are gaining a voice, and it is the power of that voice that fundamentalists fear and feel they must stifle by reinforcing a more "reptilian" masculine code. The tensions of war reinforce the need in males to be tough and unwavering, but they also do terrible damage to women and children, who are not heard above the drill instructor cadences of the men. This has to reverse at some point, and it will signal a change in our thinking about war and religion on all levels, challenging our notions of good and evil, personal and collective identity, and the meaning of love and hate. The global empowerment of women is a new thing. Internet, cell phone and GPS technology are also new, and have the potential to change the dynamic in violent situations where more eyes and voices on the ground can make a difference. Together, they may be able to reverse long-standing trends that threaten the survival of the species. As terrifying as things are at the moment, the possibilities for change are great, if we see them and make them real.

*

I believe it's the number of social connections, the six degrees effect between bystanders and perpetrators that determines how far mass cruelty can go. It is when feedback cascades upward, from the powerless to the powerful, that the powerful become accountable. That feedback does not have to be violent. It only has to convey the message that the powerless are real, that they are being affected by decisions made upstream. Isolated groups can fall into arrogant insanity, getting no feedback from the real world, and the feedback from those groups tends to be punitive and highly toxic. They interact only with their own image of the world, which is usually a dark one (Hitler's fear of a Jewish conspiracy, Arab fears of a Zionist genocide against the Palestinians, Jewish fears of another Holocaust at the hands of Arabs). When people get more feedback from ther real world, they are less likely to go on crusades to destroy evil... those crusades turn out to be as evil as the demons they set out to destroy. Demons can only be killed by light, by recognizing as human the people one has formerly seen as parasites, occupiers or terrorists.

Look at any group that goes too far, and there's a good chance it will have had diminished contact with other groups, and has shut itself off from feedback. It does make a difference that so few books are translated into Arabic from English. But books are translated from Arabic into English, and it matters little to an American culture that depends on television rather than books for its view of reality. We can demand that Arabs and Muslims distinguish us from our government, but do we do the same for them? Without contact through literature, business ties, academic exchanges and travel, one culture must view the other through a distorted lens, and make political decisions accordingly.

Toxic hatreds seem to flourish when bystanders do nothing to intervent. When it gets to a certain point, people stand up to it and send clear signals that the social body regards it as a cancer, as something to be eliminated. The question is, how much feedback from bystanders is necessary to prevent repression and bullying from flourishing in the first place? How much of an apathy vacuum does there have to be for evil to gain momentum? In Iran, many who believed in the Islamic revolution ended up being its victims. The same thing happened under Soviet Communism. How can the mass learn to avoid that kind of mistake? It's easy to believe that by attaching oneself to a powerful group, one can remain safe. History disagrees. When tactics like suicide bombings, censorship and repression against women, gays and intellectuals are on the increase, what is the best way to undermine those trends and establish unity in diversity? Without unity, fragmented groups can only watch in horror as the system is hijacked, or attach themselves to bullies to stay safe, only to fall prey to the bullies when the wind shifts.

Rather than publicizing so much hatred and stereotyping, wouldn't it be nice to persuade Israeli and Arabic media to show the personal, heartfelt stories of people on all sides who have suffered and have valid ideas about solving the problem? Why do we let the most mean-spirited, insecure and violent among us represent us in large numbers? Why do we become so absorbed in "political suffering" (in which only the suffering on ONE side is recognized) when suffering is one of the few things that can unite people to overcome division and tyranny? We need a global mourning ceremony for all victims of violence, and we need a global agreement to stop inflicting mass rage and historical resentment on individuals who would rather be left alone in peace. As long as we are divided by race, religion, nationality or politics, we're not being real, we're not being authentic, and we're not able to stand up against genocide and other atrocities. Humanity needs to stand up for humanity, once and for all. The real war is not against any one group, it is against dehumanizing tactics that spread from group to group, turning the planet into a playground for ancient hatreds (and modern manufactured hatreds). Terrorism has to be opposed not because "Islam is a violent religion" or "Israel/America is the real terrorist" (both dodges used to avoid self-examination on anyone's part), but because *any* weaker side in *any* conflict will be tempted to use terrorism as a tactic in the future, unless there is universal, consistent and unambiguous denunciation of the act, regardless of who uses it against whom. Noncombatants must be insulated from the horrors of war, everywhere. If they are not, then humanity has left the building, perhaps for good.