Terrorism and rationality: Do they ever go together?
April 23, 2010“Rationality is concerned with the selection of preferred behaviour alternatives in terms of some system of values whereby the consequences of behaviour can be evaluated” (H. Simon, 1957)
A group of my students in the Masters in Emergency Management presented today an interesting twist on a bog standard topic albeit a central one in any decision making course; Rational choice. The question they posed was: Is an act of terrorism less rational just because we consider it to be unethical or inmoral? Or perhaps because such an act hasn’t been embedded in our set of values and beliefs?
It may be useful at this point to take a step back and consider what terrorism and terroristsare. If we were able to detach ourselves from political, religious and even geographical allegiances for a moment that is, if we could become truly objective, most people would agree that terrorism is what the enemy does. Who the enemy is depends on our particular political, religious and even geographical situation. Those in power view it as an instrument of destabilisation of the institutions of a country, while those trying to seize power claim governement actions are acts of terrorism against the will and freedom of the people.
Going back to my opening quote, Simon claims that rational action only comes as a result of measuring the consequences of this action against a set of values and finding it is acceptable. This means that, as long as an individual goes through this process and finds the outcome satisfactory; then, despite of the loss of lives, the chaos and the feelings of sadness, anger and desire for revenge, the process can be considered rational. Or can it?
