Sizoo Bram, Strijbos Derek, Glas Gerrit
Threat Management Team, Netherlands Police Agency, Driebergen, Netherlands.
ORCAT, Zutphen, Netherlands.
Front Psychol. 2022 Oct 19;13:997121. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.997121. eCollection 2022.
Understanding lone actor grievance-fueled violence remains a challenge. We believe that the concept of grievance provides an opportunity to add an engaged, first-person perspective to the assessment of lone actor extreme violence. We propose an enactivist philosophical approach that can help to understand the why and how of the pathway from grievance to violent extremism. Enactivism sees grievance as a dynamic, interpersonal, and context-sensitive construct that indicates how (potential) offenders make sense of the world they live in and how under certain circumstances it fuels violent behavior. Hence, grievance should not be understood as a given thing, but as an unfolding experience that involves sense-making through (regulation of one's) interaction with the (social) environment. This (self-)relational and ecological understanding requires another approach than looking at demographic factors or life histories, only from an outsider's perspective. Enactivism invites us to look at such risk factors as external indices of an ongoing process of active self-regulation and sense-making, and in some cases spiraling toward extreme violence. To understand the mindset of the offender we need to look more in depth at the processes that shape this mindset: why does this person, with this history, in this context, and at this point in time, proceed to use violence? The enactivist approach to the mind offers a complementary framework that may help us to understand the dynamics of grievance as a possible precursor to violent extremism. It also helps to appreciate why the relative unpredictability of the pathway toward lone actor extreme violence is not necessarily a sign of empirical weakness but a matter of principle due to the non-linearity of the processes involved. We end by summarizing how enactivism could contribute to the prevention of extremist violence and research and how it can help to avoid reinforcing stigmas and re-establishing a confirmation bias.
理解由冤屈引发的独狼式暴力仍然是一项挑战。我们认为，冤屈这一概念为在评估独狼式极端暴力时加入一种参与其中的第一人称视角提供了契机。我们提出一种具身认知哲学方法，它有助于理解从冤屈到暴力极端主义这一过程的原因及方式。具身认知将冤屈视为一种动态、人际间且对情境敏感的建构，它表明（潜在）犯罪者如何理解他们所生活的世界，以及在某些情况下它如何助长暴力行为。因此，冤屈不应被理解为既定的事物，而应被视为一种不断展开的体验，这种体验涉及通过与（社会）环境的（自我）互动来进行意义建构。这种（自我）关系性和生态学的理解需要一种不同于仅从外部视角审视人口统计学因素或生活经历的方法。具身认知促使我们将此类风险因素视为积极自我调节和意义建构这一持续过程的外部指标，在某些情况下，这一过程会朝着极端暴力螺旋式发展。为了理解犯罪者的思维模式，我们需要更深入地探究塑造这种思维模式的过程：这个人为何在这种背景下、在这个时间点，基于这段经历而诉诸暴力？具身认知的思维方法提供了一个补充框架，它或许能帮助我们理解冤屈作为暴力极端主义可能先兆的动态过程。它还有助于理解为何独狼式极端暴力之路相对不可预测，这不一定是实证不足的表现，而是由于相关过程的非线性而成为一个原则问题。我们最后总结具身认知如何能为预防极端主义暴力及相关研究做出贡献，以及它如何有助于避免强化污名和重新确立确认偏差。
