Terror in Norway: How Can We Continue from a Point of Utter Despair? Promoting a Dignity Culture, not Just Locally, but Globally

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Lindner, Evelin Gerda
Copyright Year	2012
Abstract	On 22nd July 2011, Norway suffered two sequential terrorist attacks against its civilian population, the government, and a political summer camp in Norway. This tragedy has shocked Norway to the point that even mentioning the name of the 32-year-old perpetrator Anders Behring Breivik was being avoided for a while and ABB was being used to refer to him. He was first regarded as right-wing terrorist and later, in an initial evaluation, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. A second evaluation began on 13th January 2012. The guiding questions of this paper are the following: What should be done after such atrocities have occurred? How can one continue from a point of utter despair? What can a society do to help its members? What can a society do to help prevent repetitions of similar acts of violence in the future? In my work, I use a wide geohistorical lens that encompasses the entire history of the species Homo sapiens. It has been argued that large-scale models sometimes explain details more clearly and parsimoniously than when only the details themselves are studied. The lens that I use helps explain how and why destructive cultural, social and psychological scripts from the past still permeate human activity, from the level of the individual to that of nations, and why they are being detected, rejected and transcended much too slowly. The paper begins with a personal message that honours the feelings of those who are left in shock and despair after the 22nd July 2011. It then embeds right-wing extremism into a larger geohistorical context. The paper then highlights insights that might be drawn from such a large-scale contextualisation. It then lists a number of recommendations relevant to preventing similar atrocities in the future:
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Alternate Webpage(s)	http://www.humiliationstudies.org/documents/evelin/TerrorinNorway.pdf
Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article