by John Brian Shannon | March 23, 2017

Yesterday’s terror attack in London has sharpened the will of Britain to face terrorism in all its forms, and has served to demonstrate the resolve of Britons to soldier-on despite a display of violence clearly designed to rattle citizens.

This is the London that survived The Blitz and returned stronger than ever. If terrorists are trying to cow a population into submission they chose the wrong city. The merchants of terror will soon find that they have expended much effort for little gain.

Terrorists want big headlines, a terrorized populace, and an over-compensating government that takes corrective measures far exceeding the scale of the problem.

Any publicized response to terrorists should be considered ‘overcompensating’ because more people are killed in Western countries by lightning than are killed by terrorists. More Europeans are killed by falling down their stairs at home than have been killed in the entire history of modern terrorism in Europe. And thousands of people are killed every year in car accidents. Yet the governments of Europe haven’t declared war on cars, stairs, nor lightning.

Tragic as yesterday’s events are, giving the perpetrators and backers of such crimes too much airtime only serves to reward and encourage them.

The Rise of Terrorism vs. The Rise of Knowledge and Responsibility

‘Under the radar’ for many, our civilization has entered a new era; A time of changing attitudes, a time for new pathways to better outcomes.

Knowledge has become more broadly available, more engagement occurs between citizens and their governments, more diversity adds to our understanding of the world, and along with the omnipresent globalization factor, all of these work to shape our worldview and the worldview of people in every corner of the world.

We’re now in an era akin to the time when Homo-sapiens superseded the Neanderthals, which was a time of unprecedented change. But our point of change is where the practitioners of ‘Win-Lose’ paradigms will be superseded by the practitioners of ‘Win-Win’ paradigms. (Terrorists and their thinking will become obsolete as ‘Win-Win’ thinking gains more traction)

The games desperadoes play which are designed to horrify and control large populations, are so 20th-century. Terrorists are rapidly becoming caricatures of themselves similar to ‘Achmed the Terrorist‘ of Saturday Night Live fame.

Why? It seems that wanton destruction and spreading fear have become the goals (for some) in the 21st century.

Terrorist groups no longer make demands, nor recite carefully worded manifestos that were years-in-the-making, nor do they bother to rail against the religious beliefs of Westerners, nor against alcohol, bikinis, or any other taboos created by puritanical control freaks.

In their own control-drama world they lost at the ‘Win-Lose’ game, a paradigm that they chose from the outset, because they believed they could ‘Win’ at that game. But they lost.

Now they console themselves by staging terror attacks sans-message to assuage their disappointment — a sad way for any human being to live their life, and let’s not forget the profound sadness they create among the innocent people caught in the crossfire of their destructive acts.

They Didn’t Start Off That Way

It’s a safe bet that every single human was born perfect —  ‘free from sin’ as they used to say.

And in a perfect world every person would mature and fulfill their best destiny.

What failure it must be then that shapes young minds to eventually become killers of innocent people due to an imperfect understanding of religious texts. And then to fall even further by taking innocent human lives out of the sheer disappointment of having lost at the ‘Win-Lose’ paradigm.

Humans can’t fail much worse than that.

And every bit of it is preventable, either by every child receiving an advanced education so as to be able to properly understand the proper context and meanings of religious texts (for example) — or by teaching young minds that the only outcomes worth pursuing are ‘Win-Win outcomes’. Either would be fine. Both would be better.

“If you treat a man as he could and should be, he will become all that he can and should be.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Keep Calm, and Carry On

In the meantime, while the human race continues to stumble unevenly towards Win-Win outcomes, the best way to manage the people who’ve grown up without the benefit of a proper education, without context in their lives, and are largely untaught in the concept of ‘Win-Win’ thinking — is to *not overreact* to their violent attempts to control outcomes.

And in so doing, we remove the incentive for them to practice their ideology.