Mirror, Mirror, Emotional Mirror

I came across a very interesting Web site while I was cleaning out my Bookmarks on my Web browser.
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/04/angrynegative_p.html

I quote from this site where they quoted from another site, well, just read what it said.

Emotional Contagion

Steven Stosny, an expert on road rage, is quoted in Restak's book:

"Anger and resentment are the most contagious of emotions," according to Stonsy. "If you are near a resentful or angry person, you are more prone to become resentful or angry yourself. If one driver engages in angry gestures and takes on the facial expressions of hostility, surrounding drivers will unconsciously imitate the behavior--resulting in an escalation of anger and resentment in all of the drivers. Added to this, the drivers are now more easily startled as a result of the outpouring of adrenaline accompanying their anger. The result is a temper tantrum that can easily escalate into road rage."

After I read this I thought about all the different countries that are having riots in the street filled with very unhappy, angry, resentful, dangerous people. Now I understand how a person can influence other people to carry out terrorist activities. They believe that they will be happy once they kill all Americans and Jews. Problem is they're not alive. That doesn't seem to be a problem for them.

I wondered how it was possible for this many people to be so angry and hate so vehemently that they would kill themselves in order to kill those they hate. I don't know if this society has the possibility to change. These people have seen this hatred from the time they are babies. Their brains have been formed by hate to hate.

Hate is one powerful emotion and ""emotions" are not simply a fuzzy-feeling concept, but represent physical changes in the brain".

From a paper on Memetics and Social Contagion,

"...social scientific research has largely confirmed the thesis that affect, attitudes, beliefs and behavior can indeed spread through populations as if they were somehow infectious. Simple exposure sometimes appears to be a sufficient condition for social transmission to occur. This is the social contagion thesis; that sociocultural phenomena can spread through, and leap between, populations more like outbreaks of measles or chicken pox than through a process of rational choice."

Emotional contagion is considered one of the primary drivers of group/mob behavior, and the recent work on "mirror neurons" helps explain the underlying cause.

http://lifehacker.com/#!168087/negative-influences-can-be-bad-for-you

In the past I have heard myself start talking like the people I'm around. There were people in my life who would suck the life out of me with their negativity and anger. They could take all the air out of a room. People I'm around have an influence on me. I can't believe that I'm that different from other people. That being the case, I feel sure the mobs of people wanting to change their country may think that by riding themselves of kings, rulers, and tyrants, that will bring them happiness. Yet if they don't get rid of all the negative, angry, controlling religious zealots who want them to kill Americans and Jews they will never see a day of happiness. The desire to kill others who don't agree with you comes from hate, fear, and anger. It is contagious.

So why would our country want to supply angry, hate filled, resentful people with guns? It will come back to bite us like Osama bin Laden. According to some writers he was supplied with guns and training to fight the "...Soviet Union’s invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, which lasted from 1979 to 1988 and ended with a Soviet defeat at the hands of international militias of Muslim fighters backed by the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan." Just ten years after he helped defeat the Soviet Union with our help he signed a fatwa that "...was published in a London-based Arabic paper, Al Quds Al Arabi; it called on all Muslims to “kill the Americans and their allies - civilians and military,” wherever they may be."

In 1994 Osama bin Laden attempted to overthrow the regime of Saudi Arabia and he condemns corrupt regimes in many Muslim countries, and Mu'ammar Gadhafi is considered his enemy. By the articles I've read it appears that Osama bin Laden has tried to overthrow several different regimes. Who knows if he is behind the militants in Libya. It could also be the Muslim Brotherhood. They have the same goals.