It is the task of a government to take all reasonable security measures and to do whatever it can to prevent and counteract terrorist attacks against its people.
In addition, it would be important not to forget already existing local traditions and practices which contribute to mutual understanding, and to peace and progress. Constructive traditions and practices that are already well established deserve to be highlighted, encouraged and facilitated. Both from the point of view of applied psychology and from the point of view of memetics, it would be more efficient and more effective to strengthen the positive rather than investing all energy in tracking down and trying to suppress the negative.
In order to decide which tradition or which practice is tolerable or constructive and which is posing a potential threat to other constructive and peaceful members of society, a robust model is needed of a society that knows an acceptable degree of peace (on a scale from tolerable to profound) and sustainable progress, giving in addition sufficient scope to ‘ideodiversity’. In order to become more robust, peace, locally in the neighbourhood and on a global level, should be made measurable. In view of the fragility of international peace, each change of power in one of the nuclear weapon states in the world is like a russian roulette for planet earth. What if the next leader turns out to be mentally unstable or vulnerable to the “Jan van Speijk” syndrome — called after Jan van Speijk (1802-1831), the Dutch naval lieutenant who made his gunpowder ship explode at the port of Antwerp, on 5 February 1831, allegedly shouting “We rather blow us up!” (“Dan liever de lucht in!”) and killing himself, most of his crew and an unknown number of Belgian revolutionaries who had demanded that he should haul down the Dutch flag on his ship. J. van Speijk had a difficult youth in poverty as an orphan, but managed to join the Dutch navy for a swift and heroic career. His famous, “explosive” act was irrational from the point of view of war strategy and did not help the Dutch to keep Belgium, but it turned him into a Dutch national hero.
Administrators at all levels — municipality, state, international — should be invited and encouraged to develop memetic strategies, or any nonviolent transformative strategies, to establish and strengthen peace and progress, and to protect and promote ideodiversity, first of all in secondary education where its lack is at present most distressing.
SOME LINKS FOR EXISTING TRADITIONS, PRACTICES, INITIATIVES CONTRIBUTING TO PEACE
Benedictan monastery in Mamelis, Netherlands: www.benedictusberg.nl/english/index.html
(The church of St. Benedictusberg Abbey, which gives the impression of a hall for zen-meditation, was designed by famous architect Dom Hans van der Laan (1904-1991), who applied in the construction his theory of numerical relationships, a three-dimensional expression of the golden ratio.)
Global Union of Scientists for Peace: www.gusp.org — “a global counterinitiative to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and to support alternative, peaceful means of conflict resolution.”
Art project “Tempel europa” in which all European countries — and even countries outside Europe — are invited to participate: templeeurope.eu/
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(Open for additions, suggestions and comments !)