1. JOIE DE VIVRE OR DEATH CULT?
An Alternative Vision
Sue Pearson
ISLAMIST IDEOLOGY
The UK has now extended its bombing against Isil into Syria, but you cannot kill an
idea, only supersede it with a more comprehensive, compelling one. Yet the West’s
emphasis on the individual and materialism is not the answer for Muslims who place
the highest value on the group and the next life. The main reason the West has
found it difficult to counter extreme Islamist ideology is because Islam conjoins
social, legal and religious rules, whereas the West now separates these domains.
“From the standpoint of Western modernity, Islam’s refusal of any sharp distinction
between politics, culture, morality and religion looms up as distinctly pre-modern”,
states Terry Eagleton in Culture and the Death of God. Ayaan Hirsi Ali calls for a
reformation of Islam in Heretic, Mona Eltahawy for a sexual and social revolution in
Headscarves and Hymens, but because these areas are linked, they either all have
to be changed at the same time or be separated and reformed independently. This
process could take decades or centuries as religious reformation and gender
equality did in the West. An alternative would be a new way of thinking that is based
on what we share rather than what divides us: stages of human brain development.
Combining social/legal/religious rules into one generalised construct or ideology is
an early stage of development, whether in Judaism with the Ten Commandments or
in our own pre-conscious childhood. Parents teach us to be polite, to not hit another
child and to say our prayers, and in a child’s brain these rules are combined as part
of the ‘obeying authority’ construct, often in fear of punishment. Later more evolved
parts of the brain take over from the unconscious, and we separate out the rules into
different categories and update earlier mental constructs; but sometimes they remain
unchanged and can be linked in the unconscious with parts of our development that
have been repressed. What happens individually can happen collectively too.
CHRISTIANITY
Christianity, with its own version of fundamentalism, is a system that also needs
updating. However, Christ’s message was unique at his time, and began the process
of separation and individuality in the West, taking religion away from the tribal
allegiances of Judaism. He encouraged his followers to separate themselves from
familial bonds, and to separate state and religion: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s
and to God what is God’s”. Rather than blind obedience to rules, he offered
principles such as “Love your neighbour as yourself”, which have to be applied using
individual interpretation. He outraged people by having a woman as one of his
closest followers, to whom he revealed the truth of his after-death experiences and
because he encouraged women to learn from men, rather than serve them. He
proposed changing the law from retaliation to mercy, for unlike Mohammed and
kings before and since, he was only a religious leader, not also a warrior. And above
all, he offered a new role model for men: Man the Shepherd not Man the Hunter.

2. MAN THE HUNTER
The model of Man the Hunter is a mental construct or ideology from pre-history,
which dominates all cultures, if not all men, even today. It is used to justify social
inequality, male domination and violence, yet it dates from a failure to adapt to
changing circumstances. As humankind moved from a nomadic culture to the
agricultural age, most former hunters settled down but some failed to adapt to
become Man the Shepherd, preferring the thrill and glory of the chase, even though
meat was now safely and widely available. These testosterone-fuelled males used
their planning, strategic and killing skills on other people to become the warrior class
and leaders, claiming the spoils for themselves.
These social misfits also perverted the skills of the farmer by treating humans like
animals to be owned, worked, sold for profit, their movement restricted, herded onto
boats and trucks like cattle, bred from and unwanted stock (usually female) culled. It
is this mindset that led to the slave trade, the trafficking of people, the abuse of
women and children, ethnic cleansing, genocide, sexual slavery and to concentration
camps to destroy contaminating human ‘vermin’, like the pyres to burn cattle in the
foot and mouth epidemic.
This division between a warrior class and settlers, between the ruling elite and the
masses, created a split in human and social development that has yet to be
reconciled: hunters prey on the young, the old and the sick, the same groups that
modern societies seek to protect. Man the Hunter became the glorified model for
male motivation and domination. It is not just in the killing fields of war or in violent
psychopaths or repressive dictators that you see his predatory nature. He is there in
the gangs who roam the urban jungle; in sexual predators looking for ‘fresh meat’; in
the media frenzy when a politician is brought down; in those who ‘make a killing’ on
the stock market and in the financially obese fat cats who keep the spoils for
themselves in business, banking and politics. It is this model in its most virulent
strain that has been released on the world by radical Islamists.
THE WEST
On the other hand, the model of male domination has been modified in the West,
most notably in the last 100 years by women and children. Patriarchy, the inheritor of
that prehistoric hunter dominance where the spoils were unevenly distributed and the
majority of people were subjugated, was deconstructed by the Women’s Movement.
Adolescents also began to rebel against outdated parental and social authority, to
carve out their own territory with its own rules, to post narcissistic images online,
while struggling with two opposing unconscious drives - the one for life in love,
eroticism and joie de vivre and the other the death instinct seen in goth revivals,
vampire movies, extreme risk, anorexia or suicide. Then in early adulthood, the
most evolved part of the brain, the Forebrain behind the forehead, matures to help
teenagers move onto the next stage of development. It is the Forebrain that helps
us resolve conflict verbally, rather than physically as we do when children.
However, if these stages towards greater equality and individuality are denied, the
drive can be forced underground, into the unconscious. A ‘gatekeeper’ controls the
repressed and unexpressed warring elements of human development in the

3. unconscious, where they become twisted and destructive over time. The adolescent
drive towards individuality, encouraged in the West, is denied in radical Islam but
finds expression by being subverted into martyrdom and by achieving notoriety
through internet propaganda, while giving full reign to the death instinct. This
gatekeeper is the role model for all who dominate others through violence and
repression, such as dictators, abusive fathers and criminal bosses. Radicalisation is
a form of brain-control by which authoritarian rulers release even deeper levels of
destructive power onto outside enemies to preserve and enhance their own position.
But before we fall into the good and evil, us and them, way of thinking, we have to
remember that at an earlier stage in its development the West too had its empires,
crusades, religious wars, torture and abuse of women, some of which continue
today. The US, where individualism reigns supreme, was founded by rebel ‘black
sheep’ who killed and imposed their belief system on the pre-existing population, and
where law was in the hands of the gunman – and still is. There have been more than
one mass shooting a day in USA in 2015. And La Place de la Republique, where
thousands gathered after the Paris killings, has not always symbolised unity. It looks
back to a time when France herself had its own ‘Reign of Terror’, driven by mob rule,
barbarities and public executions.
As well as recognising similarities between stages that developing countries are now
experiencing and our own history, we also have to acknowledge the West’s role in
the present situation. As Matthew d’Ancona wrote in the Guardian on 30 November
2015, “Blair himself has conceded that the failure to plan properly for reconstruction
in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein provided groups such as Isil with an ideal
context of lawlessness and resentment in which to grow.”
IRAQ WAR
Why was removing Saddam Hussein such a priority for President Bush and Prime
Minister Blair? The answer lies in a better understanding of the role of the
unconscious. A young man’s key developmental task in adolescence is to challenge
and overthrow his father’s dominance ‘to become a man’. If this does not happen at
the appropriate time, perhaps because a father is too powerful (like President Bush
Snr) or too ill after a stroke (like Mr Blair Snr), then the drive is stored in the
unconscious until it can be completed, often at the midlife stage. This inner drama
can be projected onto the world stage outside, with Saddam Hussein perfect in the
role as the Big Bad Daddy who just had to be challenged and overthrown to
complete unfinished business. ‘Mission accomplished’. Except that it wasn’t.
All sides were driven by unconscious forces, not just Bush and Blair. Western
leaders deluded themselves they would be welcomed as heroes and saviours;
Saddam Hussein replicated the gatekeeper role of the unconscious and Isil is driven
by unmodified, primitive constructs that encourage the rise of the death cult to create
a world in the image of the darkest aspects of the collective unconscious. The
unconscious also floods in during individual mental breakdown, when intervention is
necessary to protect others, but where the aim is to change old patterns of thinking
and behaving to achieve a better balance between all parts of the overall system,
and to develop greater self-awareness. This is a model we can apply to the world
outside when faced with a breakdown in law, order and morality.

4. ALTERNATIVE VISION
An alternative vision would begin by examining and updating the unmodified mental
constructs that still dominate our thinking today. I have referred to the continuing role
of ‘Man the Hunter’ from pre-history, but there is also internet pornography with its
depiction of rear entry sex, visible pudenda, promiscuity and male only pleasure that
arouses sexual instincts from man’s primate past. The global obsession with money
and with building bigger erections and weapons reflect a regression to the anal and
phallic stages of early childhood development.
Secondly we need to achieve a better balance between different value systems.
Western ideology is based on liberty, individualism and material consumerism, which
are seen as the ‘enemies’ of conformity, the importance of family and community,
and the spiritual dimension, which the West have neglected or rejected. But rather
than seeing the other as the enemy, we need to see they all contribute to the
different stages of human brain development in which we all share. And this process
is happening on both sides already, particularly among the young, thanks often to
social media. Whereas many Muslims are seeking greater freedoms and individuality
both at home and abroad, others in the West are calling for less freedom for
multinational organisations, are more concerned for others than their own social
status, and want something more important that competitive capitalism to believe in.
We also need to develop self-awareness through learning more about the different
stages of development and the role of the unconscious. Being at different stages of
development does not imply superiority. Like parents at midlife with challenging
teenagers, both can learn from each other. Those at an earlier stage of
development can learn from the experiences of the more mature, including from their
mistakes, and the more mature can recognise the opportunity to change offered by
the challenges to their established way of thinking – and that what worked for them
may not be appropriate for others in a different time and place.
This article is based on a new way of thinking explored further in my book Integrated
Thinking: The New IT, available from Amazon. It links human development with
social, political, global and spiritual development, examines the role of the
unconscious and is supported by the latest research in neuroscience. An overview
can be seen on http://youtu.be/90zkQddUsR0 (both zero’s).
An alternative vision based on our shared development is not a new idea. As the
Roman writer Terence said: “I am human, and nothing that is human is alien to me”.
© Sue Pearson 2015