We find that verbal conflict initiated by governments not only failed to deter ISIS but in fact increased the frequency of ISIS’s attacks on civilians.

In an effort to solidify their reputations, extremists engage in further violence toward civilians, thus leading to worse humanitarian consequences.

From 1982 through 2016, Korean media outlets have reported over 120 instances of vandalism, arson and harassment targeting Buddhist temples and facilities in South Korea. An extension of on-going tensions between South Korea’s Buddhist and Evangelical Protestant communities, this one-sided wave of violence and harassment has caused the destruction of numerous temple buildings and priceless historical artifacts, millions of USD in damages, and one death.

[This article] examines the responses from South Korea’s Buddhist and Evangelical communities and various government agencies, as well as the effects of these responses, before investigating the relationship between these incidents and the mainstream Evangelical doctrines of religious exclusivism, dominionism and spiritual warfare.

What happens to the meaning of Buddhist rituals in military spaces? Do the military confines and the political context alter the meaning of “non-violent” rituals? Can they become “violent” rituals?

During the Sri Lankan civil war, some extremist Buddhist monks espoused an explicitly violent “just war” ideology. While the majority of Sinhala monks did not go that far, they still demonstrated their support indirectly, through e.g. the chanting of pirits before major battles.

I intend that this offering will, however imperfect, stand as a memorial to the many Cambodian Buddhist monks and laypeople, both named and unknown, who lost their lives or had their futures traumatically altered by the tragedy that overwhelmed their country in the 1970s.

Before this point I had a very naive and simplistic view of the Israel/Palestine issue. I thought of it as a conflict between two religious peoples who had competing claims for the same area of land and occasionally killed one another over it…

… how mothers deal with the political situation that is responsible for the early and violent deaths of their children

Idea systems could be drawn from or embedded in the worlds of art, sciences, politics, or religion. The logics that tie an idea system’s components together can be as diverse as the ways that humans can think. Structurally speaking, the following set of mechanisms are fundamental for an idea system to operate: coherence mechanisms, defense mechanisms, adaptive mechanisms, and communicative-cognitive mechanisms.

A scholarly analysis of how ideologies develop and operate with a particular emphasis on their social function. Three case studies are analyzed in depth: the European witch hunts of the early modern period, Mao’s Communist Revolution in 20th-century China, and Bush’s “War on Terror” in the 21st-century United States. Commonalities are discussed and theorized along with some thoughts on what “fair-minded” people might do with this understanding to keep a level head in turbulent times.

For an interview with the author about the book, see the New Books Network episode.

Beliefs can be highly resilient in the sense that they are not easily abandoned in the face of counterevidence. This has the advantage of guiding consistent behavior and judgments but may also have destructive consequences for individuals, nature, and society. For instance, pathological beliefs can sustain psychiatric disorders, the belief that rhinoceros horn is an aphrodisiac may drive a species extinct, beliefs about gender or race may fuel discrimination, and belief in conspiracy theories can undermine democracy. Here, we present a unifying framework of how self-amplifying feedbacks shape the inertia of beliefs on levels ranging from neuronal networks to social systems.

Sustained exposure to counterevidence can destabilize rigid beliefs but requires organized rational override as in cognitive behavioral therapy for pathological beliefs or institutional control of discrimination to reduce racial biases. Black-and-white thinking is a major risk factor for the formation of resilient beliefs associated with psychiatric disorders as well as prejudices and conspiracy thinking. Such dichotomous thinking is characteristic of a lack of cognitive resources, which may be exacerbated by stress. This could help explain why conspiracy thinking and psychiatric disorders tend to peak during crises. A corollary is that addressing social factors such as poverty, social cleavage, and lack of education may be the most effective way to prevent the emergence of rigid beliefs, and thus of problems ranging from psychiatric disorders to prejudices, conspiracy theories, and posttruth politics.

Our findings indicate that dehumanization enables violence that perpetrators see as instrumentally beneficial. In contrast, dehumanization does not contribute to moral violence because morally motivated perpetrators wish to harm complete human beings who are capable of deserving blame, experiencing suffering, and understanding its meaning.

The peace movements are weaker and largely reactive to and restrained by the [state-backed,] radical, Buddhist nationalist movements.

… revolutionaries suffer subjective vertigo when they meet the state’s disciplinary violence with the revolutionary violence of the subaltern; but they are spared objective vertigo. This is because the most disorienting aspects of their lives are induced

… the scholarly act of embracing members of the Black Liberation Army as beings worthy of empathic critique

… so many warriors perished on the battlefield. The response of the arahants is truly astounding.

How “motivated reasoning” led ancient Sri Lankan monks to create a problematic theology to justify murder which is still haunting the Theravāda today.

… ask whether it is necessary–or wise–to abandon the field of the emotional sublime to the fascists