Pathology of Sacrifice Culture with an Emphasis on Psychological Approaches

The goal of the writer of this essay is to do pathology of the sacrifice culture. Of course, this goal can be studied from different aspects. In this writing, we only talked about its psychological approaches. Especially, recognizing its frameworks has been focused on. besides, considering the importance of Islamic councils, we reviewed the relation between councils and sacrifice pathology because of being legal, popular, and wide spread.

News ID: ۷۷۴۰۸

سه‌شنبه - ۳۰ دی ۲۰۰۷ / 2007 30 October

The goal of the writer of this essay is to do pathology of the sacrifice culture. Of course, this goal can be studied from different aspects. In this writing, we only talked about its psychological approaches. Especially, recognizing its frameworks has been focused on. Besides, considering the importance of Islamic councils, we reviewed the relation between councils and sacrifice pathology because of being legal, popular, and wide spread.

There have been many definitions about culture. Mostly, culture is defined as a collection of knowledge, laws, customs, conceptions, and values directing behavior of a society’s people. All the time, some popular rises and movements appears in societies that give new identity to culture, while, they are influenced by the society’s culture themselves. In the old view, there was no reception of cultural diversity, and in some cases, particular types of culture that had less generality comparing to the society’s culture was considered a “Cultural disable.”?
In this kind of assumption, people believed in the conception of “Melting Pot”? meaning that all other cultures must be melted and absorbed in the general culture. In modern views, culture is no more a melting pot, but they believe in multi cultural views. According to this, different cultures are offered to the society together and their validity is internalized by collision of thoughts and opinions.
In our society, according to cultural events and obedience of the religion, the national traditions, and values, special cultural moves appeared that one of them is the sacrifice and altruism culture. Although the definition of the sacrifice culture is very difficult, but what is important is that it is the integration of high-ranked definitions like courage, benevolence, humanitarianism, sacrifice…. The survival of the sacrifice culture is conditioned on its firm frameworks. Of course, frameworks of the sacrifice culture can be studied from different aspects.
In this writing, we only talked about its psychological approaches. Especially, recognizing its frameworks has been focused on. In the other words, we will point at pathology of the sacrifice culture from the point of psychological approaches in this essay. One of these views is the subject of documents and survival of sacrifice. Document consists of an expression given to express faultfinding of a behavior. The way people’s giving document is influential in consistency of behaviors. Other views expressing the sacrifice culture are in relation with stimulation, control source, predisposition, adaptation, and economical social status.
It is suggested to refer to the main essay to read further.
2. The necessity of the sacrifice culture pathology A culture is made of things that all both influence on the society and are influenced. Bilateral interaction between frameworks of cultural elements and the society results in activity of the culture. Influential factors on the culture are sometimes friendly, constructive, directed, and positive, and sometimes they are odd and negative.
To form a positive and suitable direction to the culture, its constructive elements must be reinforced and its non-constructive elements must be omitted or opposed. According to the spirit of time, societies’ cultural current follow religions, languages, national elements, and different events happening in those societies. All of these cause special cultural models in the society. In our society, after the victory of the Islamic Revolution and 8 years of the sacred defense, a set of values and norms gathered and introduced a culture called the sacrifice culture.
The sacrifice culture is not specified to our Islamic society. In every country, symbols and emblems of sacrifice can be found, and following them, a set of values dependant to those symbols are found as well. What makes societies’ sacrifice culture including our society different from other societies is our being national and religious. In our society, the sacrifice culture is severely influenced by religious instructions, religious exponents, and devoted people who expanded the religion. From the other hand, since, religious values have found time and place belongings and national elements have always formed culture alongside the religion so that all members of a society gain unity and uniform identity from it.
The religious and national identity is two basic frameworks of the sacrifice culture in Iran. Of course, we should remember that these two basis are considered as the most basic and constant basis of the culture too. Being non-religious and non-national is destructive for extending and continuance of the sacrifice culture as much as being religious and national is constructive in forming the sacrifice culture. The basic point in necessity of the sacrifice culture pathology is that confrontation of cultures is common because of increasing communicative technology in the present world. In many cases, some factors enter our society that influence on the friendly culture intensely because of these communications.
It seems that there are two logical solutions for this cultural deal, or exactly saying, cultural invasion. The first solution is enriching the friendly culture. As we said before, the religious and national identity is one of our cultural important bases such as sacrifice culture. To stabilize and extend the sacrifice culture, we should pay attention to its reinforcement and fortification at the first step. Masters of education and culture of our society must always try to enrich religious cognition and national understanding in order to stand enemy realization and cognition. Of course, some pests have always menaced us from the point of religion realization and national identity that will be pointed at in the coming pages. The history verifies very well the above word. For example, Mongols’ defeat and its digestion in Iranian culture prove the superiority of this factor.
Another basic point in the sacrifice culture pathology is a theoretical subject about existence of one or more cultures. It was thought in the past that there must be a dominant culture in a society and other sub-cultures must be absorbed and digested in it. This process was called the melting pot, but today, this process does not have popularity. In a non-cultural way, we cannot form a culture. Cultural contacts are very simple considering the spirit of time and power of communication. Then, in our present world, acceptance of “Cultural diversity”? has become popular. It means that cultural fields must be diverse, and of course, there is no other choice.
When cultures are accepted together, the friendly culture will be accepted more then ever. If we want to extend our culture in a non-cultural way, definitely, we create a cultural resistance. In the other words, another solution for survival of the sacrifice culture is existence of a culture different from it. Based on this, the multi-cultural view is a reformist view, idea, and movement that cover all people of the society. A dangerous point in pathology of the sacrifice culture is one-way rejection of non-friendly culture. If methods of opposing non-friendly culture are not suitable, not only we did not extend the culture of sacrifice, but also we helped indirectly extension of non-friendly culture. Considering the above introduction, now, we go through pathology of the sacrifice culture. Of course, we can review this important thing from multiple views, but what is important in this essay is that we want to talk about the sacrifice culture from the point of psychological pathology.
3. Pathology of the sacrifice culture and the theory of Association, Association means a process that people use to associate events (or behaviors) to their fundamental factors (Hider, 1985). Here, the theoretical subject of the Association Theory is not considered, but we point at its practical examples in pathology of the sacrifice culture. Realization of the sacrifice culture can be correct or incorrect according to the method of people’s association. The practical example of the sacrifice culture is nothing but the social behavior. Some examples of the social behavior combine and form the sacrifice culture. Before formation of such a behavior, knowing it occurs. One of realization pests of the sacrifice culture is cognitive disorganization. As we said before, sacrifice behavior guarantees cognitive examples.
As long as human’s cognition about this behavior is not contrary, it will keep on extending. However, if a conflict occurs in the process of forming behavior cognition, people tend to change the previous cognition in order to reach coordination, because, the practical model of this behavior is not equal to its cognitive example. One of important pests of the sacrifice culture in the practical and functional scene is the growth of non-sacrifice behaviors in sacrificers, since, it leads in a contrary cognition comparing to the previous one. The sacrifice culture should not experience general and natural transformation although it experiences changes through the time. Another cognitive pest in pathology of the sacrifice culture is a kind of cognitive error. It means that we tend to relate others’ failures to their internal factors and associate their success to their external elements.
The practical point of this subject is that our society’s cultural authorities should not ignore situational factors. The sacrifice culture is related to the environmental events. To be live and dynamic, definitely, we should pay attention to the environmental factors surrounding this culture. We must provide the most prominent behaviors of the sacrifice culture. If the sacrifice culture has material and impermanent examples, it emerges as a pest of cognition for the sacrifice culture that is called cognitive orientation or “Protrusion”? in psychological literature. This kind of orientation makes us consider the most prominent incentives as the most influential of them. If something has a movement or it has eye-catching colors, probably, we take it as the occurrence factor of every change in the environment. Once, a sacrificer was someone who took gun by his hand and fought enemies. This image introduced the sacrifice culture. If we want to preserve this culture, its prominent incentives must be preserved too. Of course, the main incentive of the sacrifice culture is fighting and courage, but orientation enters when the most prominent incentives become overcome and cover the main incentives that are the true reason of the behavior, but not that much prominent.
The functional point of this subject is that the society’s cultural authorities must be always looking for recognizing incentives of sacrifice behavior and consider it as the prominent point, otherwise, non-friendly and prominent incentives that are strange to the sacrifice culture will be replaced with the main incentive. The association way of successes can be internal or external. Undoubtedly, we owe sacrificers’ sacrifice and efforts for preserving the integrity of this country, but what keeps the sacrifice culture is the sacrifice culture itself, not external changing factors. In analyzing previous victories and failures, the association way must be done toward the internal factors, not the external ones. For example, we should point at the sacrifice spirit, not the quantity, and the number. We learn from the event of Karbala being like Imam Hussein instead of learning a lesson from him.
This expanded and extended the sacrifice culture of Karbala. Considering the mentioned points, recognition of the sacrifice culture is the first important point in extending it. Formation backgrounds of recognition must be clear, documentary, and together with pleasant outcomes. The main part of recognition is formed through outcomes of the sacrifice behavior. In the other words, the outcome of the sacrifice behavior is the basis of our association. People try to infer from a behavior that whether that behavior adapts to the same cultural feature or not. Since, in case of not being adapted, its constituent definitions will not exist although we have that word. For instance, today, few people infer construction and flourish from the word “Colony.”? Why has it been this way? Because, passing of time has revealed that the outcome of constructive behavior does not match with the word colony. Considering the cultural adaptation above, correct and basic culture formation is the basis of extending the sacrifice culture too. Definitely, one of organizations influential in this process is the Islamic Council.
Considering the tasks and constitution of Islamic councils, many of their tasks are correct in the line of culture formation. For example, articles 2, 4, 5, and 25 of the Civil Council refer to cultural activities directly and indirectly. (Hosseini Nik, 1377) 4. Pathology of the sacrifice culture and social influence social influence occurs when a person or a group’s behavior affects others’ behaviors. In the other words, the term “Social influence”? is a public effort from a person or a group to change opinions or behaviors. The sacrifice culture as behavioral has concrete examples. What is important now, from this point of view, is recognizing influence methods of the sacrifice culture and its more social influence. One of penetration tools for the sacrifice culture is changing look.
The society’s authorities, especially members of councils, can take basic steps to change people’s look considering councils’ being pervasive. The social influence through changing view is mostly based on verbal realization and generally, it is supposed that human’s behavior has a cognitive basis. As we said in the previous pages, one of extending ways of the sacrifice culture is creating better cognition and knowing its frameworks. As we try to know about civil sanity and regarding cleanness throughout a city in different ways, we have to act the same way in the sacrifice culture fields as well. Unfortunately, the present views toward the sacrifice culture are not so pleasant as they were in previous years, and its most important reason is the lack of cognition in people.
Another penetration tool of the sacrifice culture is using power strategies. Using such strategies does not always lead in success and have a high level of error. Then, in pathology of the sacrifice culture, some part of failures is related to incorrect usage of the power strategies. For example, one example of the power strategies is satisfying economical and financial needs of sacrificers. From the very beginning, this strategy was not used correctly because of special subtleties. However it was working temporarily, it was not in service of sacrificers at all so that if we talk about a word like sacrificer, soon, it reminds us of financial privileges, not giving priority another one to oneself and doing sacrifice. From the other side, we have made sacrificers believed that the only way of gratification from them is the financial way and satisfaction of their economical needs, while, it was good to use this strategy to elevate sacrificers’ abilities from the beginning.
Councils as one of power sources are in contact with sacrificers directly. More important points is that the main part of councils’ members are sacrificers themselves, then, they are able to both prevent the future harms and use these power strategies better themselves. Another factor that is important in pathology of the sacrifice culture is the influence of the majority on other people and the social influence. Nowadays, this scientific fact has been accepted that the amount of social influence depends on the number of people. The more the number of doers of a behavior, the more their influence will be. After formation of Islamic councils, a good chance was given to the society and it was that sacrificers hired a great number of people directly and indirectly. These people were in the society before then, but they found better identity after formation of councils. Then, decisions made by members of councils will be considered as the majority decision if they are made at the same time, in the same form, and in an expansive range throughout the society as well as having executive capability. Consequently, the amount of the social influence will grow more than before. Limiting the sacrifice culture to a particular group of people in the society is an important point that should be mentioned in pathology of the sacrifice culture. The sacrifice culture has desirable and ideal behavioral indices that every society wants them. This kind of culture should not be known as the culture of a special type of people, but as much as possible; its exponents must be public. Although sacrificers are limited groups operationally, the sacrifice culture has general exponent. The more we extend belonging of this type of culture to more people, the more we add to its social influence. In pathology of the sacrifice culture, the feeling of the lack of control or learned despair has a high position. When our country’s cultural authorities or sacrificers assume that they have no control on the society’s cultural waves, they will face many destructive outcomes. Humanistic approaches related to the social behavior are often based on the theory that we have approximately complete control on our behavior as human creatures.
Unfortunately, this false conception is being formed in the present society that we have no control on non-friendly cultural currents and we have to accept them willy-nilly, while, the reality is different. Councils as widespread popular foundations can create this control sense in the society. The lack of despair toward the non-friendly culture will extend the sacrifice culture itself. 5. Pathology of the sacrifice culture and the Theory of Stimulation Stimulation is a response to the why-ness of a behavior. The sacrifice culture contains a series of social behaviors in which some stimulation are hidden. Behavioral stimulation is different and diverse. Facts of research show that internal incentives are influential on a behavior’s permanence (Glover and Browning, 1375). To stabilize the sacrifice behavior, its stimulating elements must act beyond its material and external factors.
One of the main points in pathology of the sacrifice culture is that we have paid attention to just financial and economical factors and no more, especially, most of non-material stimulating factors have been minimized in the recent years. One of the main tasks of councils as widespread, legal, and popular foundations is paying attention to non-material incentive factors in extending the sacrifice behaviors. Of course, in some cases, we have to use material incentive factors too, but we should know that satisfying material needs has its own particular delicacies, because, if it is used exaggeratedly, it will create expectations in next steps that cannot be satisfied practically. If it is satisfied less than usual, it will not regard others’ rights. In the subject of incentive factors’ influence on the sacrifice behavior, we point at some of factors plying roles in this subject as follows:
1. Keeping sacrificers’ self-esteem in satisfying incentive factors of the sacrifice behavior Whatever we use, we have to tools preserving sacrificers’ self-esteem. It might be inferred that economical and financial aids are the most necessary kinds of interference in incentive affairs of the sacrifice behavior, but the reality is different, since, in order to not performing it correctly, it will harm sacrificers’ self-esteem, and finally, it will be concluded that whether losing health or tolerating stressful years of captivity is repayable by getting money. In pathology of the sacrifice culture, any incentive effort must be to service the sacrifice culture. A sacrificer is dependant to the time and place, while, sacrifice has no time and place limitation.
Using false tools prevents extension of the sacrifice culture, while, it hurts sacrificers’ self-esteem in some cases as well.
2. Permanence of servicing sacrificers
3. Servicing sacrificers directly
4. Constancy of servicing sacrificers
5. Creating the feeling of worthiness in sacrificers
6. using up sacrificers’ interests