Both terrorist groups and cults tend to become countercultures with their own codes of behavior into which each new recruit is ind...octrinated. The activities of both tend to be on or beyond the fringes of socially acceptable behavior. It has long been established in the study of cults that any deviant group will attract individuals who have a grievance or feeling of deprivation, provided the group offers some explanation or remedy. We have seen that the same is true of terrorist groups. Populations with similar or shared grievances or feelings of deprivation constitute a pool of possible converts. In the case of cults, it was further found that social networks--similar ethnic, social, educational, or other relationships existing before the recruitment takes place--are highly influential in determining who among the many in the pool are most likely to be among the few who are recruited. Despite the greater heterogeneity of personality types among terrorists in general, there appears to be a remarkable homogeneity in terms of social networks within specific groups.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Terrorists often claim to be fighting wars, and to be doing no more than is necessary in war. This is nonsense. War is certainly t...he natural expression of collective resentment; but it occurs between organised groups and is fought openly, against a collective enemy. It is possible to fight a war with undiminished respect for the rights of the enemy individual. Indeed, that is the duty of every soldier. But the terrorist must disregard this duty and disobey the law of war. His feelings towards the individual are abolished by his loathing of the group, and it is this--rather than his cowardice, cruelty, or intemporate hate--that constitutes his true moral corruption.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My consciousness-raising group is still going on. Every Monday night it meets, somewhere in Greenwich Village, and it drinks a lot... of red wine and eats a lot of cheese. A friend of mine who is in it tells me that at the last meeting, each of the women took her turn to explain, in considerable detail, what she was planning to stuff her Thanksgiving turkey with. I no longer go to the group.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Colonel "Bat" Guano: Okay, I'm going to get your money for you. But if you don't get the President of the United States on that ph...one, you know what's going to happen to you? Group Captain Lionel Mandrake: What? Colonel "Bat" Guano: You're going to have to answer to the Coca-Cola company.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The primary imperative for women who intend to assume a meaningful and decisive role in today's social change is to begin to perce...ive themselves as having an identity and personal integrity that has as strong a claim for being preserved intact as that of any other individual or group.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical pretensions, a crime is anything that a group in power chooses to prohibit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nothing in medieval dress distinguished the child from the adult. In the seventeenth century, however, the child, or at least the ...child of quality, whether noble or middle-class, ceased to be dressed like the grown-up. This is the essential point: henceforth he had an outfit reserved for his age group, which set him apart from the adults. These can be seen from the first glance at any of the numerous child portraits painted at the beginning of the seventeenth century.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mental health data from the 1950's on middle-aged women showed them to be a particularly distressed group, vulnerable to depressio...n and feelings of uselessness. This isn't surprising. If society tells you that your main role is to be attractive to men and you are getting crow's feet, and to be a mother to children and yours are leaving home, no wonder you are distressed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[University students] hated the hypocrisy of adult society, the rigidity of its political institutions, the impersonality of its b...ureaucracies. They sought to create a society that places human values before materialistic ones, that has a little less head and a little more heart, that is dominated by self-interest and loves its neighbor more. And they were persuaded that group protest of a militant nature would advance those goals.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »