Terror in history

Fear was one of the first feelings affecting humans at the beginning of life on earth. It was very clear in the paintings on cave walls when humans lived thousands of years ago (prehistory). Fear had big influence on the course of civilization and human behavior. Fear was one of the factors, which kept humans living together in communities as social animals.

Human beings were at first were like animals similar to any other creature. They were weak and full of fear of everything around them. That fear was one of the first characteristics that made human beings different from any other animals living on the earth. The other animals had basic fear but of immediate things (instinctive fear) humans had fear but with logical reasons (cause and effect) because of actual events and memories (past experiences).

That weakness of the humans and their struggle to survive in a hostile environment with many real things raised fears inside the first humans made the humans that we know now (us). The first thing that the early humans tried to do in the beginning of his life on earth was to over come their fears. For that they used many things, they used other humans, animals, tools and nature; they developed a belief system, which gave them hope and protected them from harm. They learned to use used everything around them in their life morally and physically.

In my opinion, God created human as an animal and left them to develop, but God created fear inside human beings and let them deal with their fears, and learn to overcome them on their own. God gave us messengers and encouraged us to have faith in order to overcome our fears and as we grew more realized, we became more organized and developed religion, note it was man not God who did this. This is why there is fighting between people, because the different religions decided they were the only ones favored by God, and this created division and more fear. In many mythologies, God created Eve and Adam in heaven; they lived there happily with everything in their hands. There was only one rule, one forbidden thing! It was eating the apples from the tree of knowledge, the knowledge of good and evil. God told Adam and Eve that they will be severely punished if they eat of that tree! That condition made fear in side them; they didn't have any other fears beside that one. They were eternally living with no pain or any problem except the fear from eating apples!!!

Ultimately they couldn't cope with that fear, day after day it grew and grew, until one day they decided that they had to try the fruit. They felt that they needed to overcome their fear. Some one said that the devil in the form of a snake told them to do it; I feel that the devil is our feelings!

Humans need to deal with their fears and overcome them by any means possible. Sometimes we ignore our fears for awhile (if we can) by moving it deeply inside our subconscious to stay there until one day it comes back into our consciousness because something has disturbed us again. Another way that humans use to overcome their fears is changing his fear to another feeling, like love for example. Maybe that seems like a strange idea, but let me explain what I mean here, and to tell you the truth about love; if we return back in history to the earlier days at the beginning of human life on earth, we see humans living individually, facing his fears alone he was afraid of everything even other humans. There was fighting between humans (in mythology, fighting between Adams' sons) but fighting didn't release humans fears, so by his logical psychological mechanisms he converted his fear to love and co-operation (friendship) with other humans.

The opposite of love is hate which means if there is no love then there will be hate, fighting and fear, so it's clear that some of our first feelings of fear became love as one way to overcome our fears (in Arabic we speak no love only after fighting) even these days we can see that sometimes we have problems with someone for any reason after it has been dealt with it can be changed and it will become love or friendship.

The other way that humans used to overcome fear was by using other humans and tools, please don't misunderstand my idea about using humans, in our modern life we use this expression "use people" to mean giving them a job or role to play. People say sometimes "You are using me".

(About using tools you can read my article; Peace tools **)

I'll explain my idea about using other humans to overcome fears; human did that by many means, marriage, slavery, friendship and co-operating. There were many systems for that like; families, tribes, sects, nations, communities and work for money or even voluntary work, that created many relationships between humans (about which it is possible to write book in itself) in brief these systems and relations helped the human to overcome his fears and made humans to be socialist creature, but also created many kind of conflicts (wars) throughout history, which had big effect on developing our civilizations.

Conflicts and wars were remarkable events in our history as humans. There were many reasons for these wars and conflicts between nations and individuals. If anyone did a simple study about the reasons for wars, he will find that fear about something is the common link between all wars in our history! I could tell you many examples, but in general humans need many things to live like water, food, place to live in, work to provide as much security as they can get. So there were many conflicts because of getting these things to supply all their needs.

No having what we think we need makes us insecure and causes massive fear (like suspending oil supplies etc) fear was behind everything and it had been used very widely in human activities and in conflicts.

We have used insecurity to make people fearful by increasing the feeling of fear inside them to control them as in religion, fear of punishment in our after life for example, is a strong deterrent and whole societies are ruled by this kind of fear. The people who have the power use fear by different means for many purposes, like in the last war with America against Saddam, Americans manipulated peoples fear of mass destruction very clearly.

From the first days in our history, humans have used different methods of increasing fear inside his enemies in conflicts, for example by using loud noises (drums) in fighting, by using colors on the body like on the native American (red Indians). With evolution the methods have made big progress using modern technology.

Increasing fear took place in wars and conflicts by remarkable tactics. Please before you continue reading, notice this important fact; never ever was annihilating enemies the only target for human in wars or conflicts. I didn't find in history one war where either party has as their only target, to eliminate his opponents! Because it against the continuation of life (like I explained before) and if termination was the only target in wars then we will have no humans on earth! Especially now we have nuclear bombs. Notice this important fact; the target of conflicts and wars is just to increase the feeling of fear inside enemies, to destroy their willpower to continue their ability or willingness to fight and push them to give up some of their rights to the winner.

The proof of that is the concept of prisoner of war and the protection that he will have when his enemy surrounds him. That is exactly the target of wars to make the opponent give up and submit to the winner. Now when we put this idea in front of us we understand that killing and destruction in war are just to increase fear inside the opponents not for killing and destruction by itself.

Wars employ many tactics using force by special means to increase fear to a high degree until it becomes terror. An example for my idea is using a weapon of mass destruction, which America did to Japan in world war2, America didn't use nuclear bombs to kill all the Japanese but only to put fear inside them and destroy their willpower to continue the fighting, also in Iraq with Saddam who using chemical weapons on the Kurdish people (like I explained before).

Another noticeable tactic used widely in wars and conflicts throughout history was attacking the weakest or most feeble section of the enemies system. Humans live in communities like tribes or countries; I call these communities systems. The system has many sections, like government, leaders, army, ordinary people, economic facilities, so in conflicts or wars any part of these sections is exposed for attack from the enemy. But to have a better result in increasing fear in their enemies, they attack vulnerable parts or sections of the enemy's system, the civilians (ordinary people) the unarmed part of the community.

Normally the army are prepared to defend itself so, to attack the army the attackers need good preparation and the result maybe is not sure, but attack civilians needs less preparation and less power! It's mostly sure to have good result and it's effective to increase fear inside people, it makes them feel fear because they have lost their security and it will cause terror in their hearts.

The obvious example for this is the 11th of September attacks on America. These attacks increased fear in the world to very high level, never reached before. It was very clear and noticeable that it created terror and for that we called it a TERRORIST ATTACK. What effected people and made them to feel that degree of fear is the method that the attackers used (civilian airplanes) and also the targets of the attack (civilian buildings). Now why did they did perform these attacks and for what? It is another subject and I'll answer in the next page.