Deviant Behavior

1. Does the enormous increase of personal bankruptcy today suggest that “Americans have lost their sense of shame” as many government officials believe?

The rise in national patterns of personal bankruptcies is a worrying pattern in the US, which could be an illustration of unbearable financial difficulties amongst the American population. This worrying phenomenon is attributable to a number of factors that define the economic stability of the country as well as other forces from a global outlook. While many government officials are quoted to be hastily branding these patterns as a consequence of Americans losing their sense of shame, it would be naïve to exonerate any economic player since many economic mechanisms at the disposal of the government could also bear some negligent liability. As an illustration, the blame of the cause of the recent economic crisis squarely rests on the incompetence with which the federal economic systems approached the risky economic culture that exposed not only the American but also the entire global economy to dangerous collapse threats (Wang and White, 2000). If trusting in the applicable economic system amounts to shamelessness, then this qualifies the entire American population for the same description.

While the Americans lost their sense of shame as argued, it can be identified as a consequence of trusting incompetent debt advice that has encouraged insecure economic trends. The unprecedented increases in consumer debts when compared to the personal level of income seems uncontrollably unbalanced, perhaps due to the failure of the entire economic system to discourage public engagement in risky financial trends. According to (Garrett, 2006), household spending significantly contributes to personal bankruptcy than ever before. The author reckons that the cushionary intervention introduced by bankruptcy legal reforms in 2005 were not adequate to stop the behavior of consumption that contributes to high cases in many states across the country. While the actual spending may be considered for irregular trends causing the exposure, more potent factors may come into play to catapult the condition to the worrying levels that it has reached. Spending beyond income capacity cannot be sustained for long unless the national mechanisms to discourage a national outbreak of such behaviors are ineffective. Shamelessness in national economic and legal frameworks can be said to be shameless

Considering what presents the failure in discouraging personal bankruptcy, Western capitalism is bears the largest blame. In terms of public debt escalation, the government appears to rush into debt to finance the skyrocketing spending. The effect of public spending under the extreme capitalism culture therefore exposes the population to a debt spirit that has got out of hand. Risk management has been compromised eventually exposing the entire economy to gradual paralysis manifested by personal, institutional and national debt crisis. To illustrate the failure of the national economic management systems, there is lack of coordinated raising of the alarm by whistleblowers, perhaps due to extreme capitalism that ignores any direct intervention likely to defy the principles of a liberal economic culture. As a result, a heavy public debt leads to measures such as sacrificing economic growth to finance the debts. It is therefore clear that an increase in public deficits frustrates development and growth in the national economy which exposes the population to such consequences as unemployment and heavy social spending (Neely, 1998). Western capitalization that defies the success of other Western civilizations in many respects therefore contributes to the shame of the rising bankruptcy, other than the Americans character.

Public debt that was initially intended to act as a solution to cushion the economy from adverse impacts of unprecedented expenditure has now turned into a problem. Perhaps involving education, taxation reforms, innovation and government intervention would assist the system to find out the most appropriate approach to deal with the looming challenge instead of keeping a blind eye on it (Warren, 2005). On the other hand, the blind following of the American population to the ineffective economic system and regime could also contribute to the cited shamelessness. Adopting better personal finance management could enable the American population faced with bankruptcy threats to avoid landing into trouble. Basic financial safety rules encourage individuals to spend less than they can make while sticking to a savings culture (Garrett, 2006). However, in the American population, spending is not a factor of income and savings capacity. Economic survival in such an environment could only be sustained if individuals take care of their finances to avoid adverse impacts of a deficit culture. In light of a shaky international economic outlook, it is more of a cautionary environment that should prompt the ordinary consumer to change their spending culture. However, the ordinary consumer in the American economy finds a spending incentive in the deficit thereby attracting risks of bankruptcy (Gross and Souleles, 2002). The opinion of the majority of government officials therefore holds true in view of these shameless accounts.

References

Garrett, T. (2006) “The Rise in Personal Bankruptcy: Causes, Comparisons, Corrections,” HYPERLINK “http://stlouisfed.org/community_development/assets/pdf/bankruptcy.pdf” http://stlouisfed.org/community_development/assets/pdf/bankruptcy.pdf

Gross, D. B., & Souleles, N. S. (2002) “An Empirical Analysis of Personal Bankruptcy and Delinquency,” Review of Financial Studies, 15(1):319–47

Neely, M. (1998) “Personal Bankruptcy: The American Pastime?” Retrieved from: HYPERLINK “http://stlouisfed.org/publications/re/articles/?id=1768” http://stlouisfed.org/publications/re/articles/?id=1768

Wang, H., & White, M. J., (2000) “An Optimal Personal Bankruptcy System and Proposed Reforms,” Journal of Legal Studies, 24(1), 255-286.

Warren, E., (2005) “The Over-Consumption Myth and Other Tales of Law, Economics, and Morality,” 82 Washington University Law Quarterly, 629-664

2. Is there a “terrorist personality”?

Adequate literature or research information about terrorist personality profiling techniques or existence of such personalities is elusive to terrorism and psychology students (Silke, 2001). Lack of such classification as terrorist personality does not however imply that there are no psychological links to terrorist tendencies or behaviors. Exposure to terror or inhumane treatment at personality development stages of an individual can be slightly relied on to establish some hostility tendencies but such explanations cannot sufficiently be used in the categorization of individuals to possess or lack terrorist personality (Crenshaw, 2001). Childhood abuse for instance can be relied upon to characterize an individual’s behaviors, which have been relied on by many terrorist biography drafters linking the two cases. The extent to which such information can be relied in establishment of a defective personality as observed in terror perpetrators is limited and cannot amount to confidence levels required. However, behavior profiling can be perfectly done from the background to which these individuals are exposed to.

It has been reported that children exposed to some form of hostile upbringing and trauma have been involved in some hostile life attitudes such as those exhibited by terror perpetrators. The trauma experienced during the young age condition the survivors such that their approach to cope with the injustices experienced is usually justified through hostility and violence. However, not all victim of an injustice survive to exhibit hostile lifestyles as the proponents of this observation hold. Some of the victims lead a withdrawn life, which makes this observation a selective case across the individuals. While the environmental factors in which an individual is brought up have implications on the life approaches adopted, it does not always affect the individuals in a similar manner. It would therefore be incorrect to consider the histories of such individuals as enough thresholds to brand their behaviors as terrorist personality.

In the deliberations of whether there is a terrorism disorder, terrorism would then be considered as a preserve of or purely perpetrated by victims of the respective personality disorder. While personality disorders possess certain features that assist psychologists to identify and distinguish between the wide spectrum that exists, terrorism cannot fall under that classification. However, terrorism and mental illness manifested in personality disorders can be interrogated in a parallel design. Although personality disorder victims are significantly different from terrorists, it would be naïve to assume that there are no behavioral similarities between the two despite them being entirely different. To elaborate further on this distinction, personality disorder victims are not terrorists in nature on one hand while terrorists are not particularly victims of a specific mental illness under the personality disorders. Projective identification may however bring the distinction between some manifested behaviors to a very thin line on the dichotomy.

One of the most prominent characteristics of terrorist perpetrators is a specific extremism ideology usually propagated to elicit certain hostile beliefs that are observed in nearly all cases of terrorism. Despite the apparent distinction to the effect that terrorism and personality disorders are different psychological cases, there are certain confusing elements that contribute to the controversy in some sections of scholarly work. Defense mechanisms observed in both cases contribute the apparent similarity that occasions the confusion. As an illustration, dominance of envy coupled with annihilation anxieties may be reported in both cases, making it possible to categorize terrorism tendencies as a personality disorder upon extrapolation of the same observation in specific personality disorders (Silke, 2001).

Extremist ideologies may be evoked from the nature of upbringing, environment and the influences thereon by individuals manifesting terrorist ideologies. In order for extremist ideologies to see the light of the day, the leaders in terrorist organizations formulate an effective belief system that applies manipulative and hidden agenda that plays around the victims’ psychology. Without such leaders, the terrorism organization would not be effective in perpetrating its terrorist agenda. In view of the need for organizational leadership in terrorist ideologies, it would be different were it possible for terrorism to work on some defective personality (McCormick, 2003). Since there lack of such terrorist personality profiling, it is difficult for current studies to enumerate the missing link between personality and terrorism.

In conclusion, it would be defective for modern students of terrorism to brand it as a consequence of a personality disorder (Borun, 2004). According to the author, there are several psychological explanations to terrorism behaviors in a better way than a terrorism personality perspective. Earlier research on terrorism applied psychoanalytic theory, narcissism and early typologies to significantly make contributions towards establishment of a better distinction (Silke, 2001). Instinct theory under which psychoanalytic theory and ethology perspectives fall have been applied to link accumulation of emotional and violence tendencies as provoked by a number of factors. Other perspectives applied in the study of terrorism include; the drive theory which has also been variously referred to as the frustration-aggression theory, social learning theory, cognitive theory, biological approaches (such as neurochemical, hormonal, psychophysiological and neurosychological factors) and raw empirical approaches.

References

Borun, R. (2004) Psychology of terrorism. Tampa, FL: University of Florida Press

Crenshaw, M. (2001) “The Psychology of Terrorism: An Agenda for the 21st Century,” Political Psychology, 21(2):405-420.

McCormick, G. H. (2003) “Terrorist Decision Making,” Annual Review of Political Science, 6:473-507.

Silke, A. (2001) “The Devil You Know: Continuing Problems with Research on Terrorism,” Terrorism and Political Violence, 13(4):1-14.