The entirety of the present college campus and workplace demonstrations confounds me as I believe others are too and likewise have tried to understand where it stemmed from and why. The outward presentation of claims of diaspora, disease, death, deprivation, and displacement with layers of ethical, moral, and historic justifications are certainly valid issues for a cause. However, why this specific conflict? Why not the Russian-Ukraine conflict or any one of the other racial, ethnic, and geopolitical conflicts presently occurring elsewhere?
Yes, we have learned that organized entities are making efforts to fund campus demonstrations and distribute propaganda with an aggressive agenda aimed at disenfranchising Israeli relationships with the schools. While there are 3.7 million Arab Americans in the U.S. there are 15.2 million undergraduate students enrolled in colleges, and a Jewish population of approximately 6.3 million, the second largest Jewish community in the world after Israel. The world's core Jewish population is estimated at 15.7 million, which is about 0.2% of the global population. Only 170,000 people here identify as having Palestinian heritage. The statistics do not correlate with the dramatic level of activity. Instead, egos, adrenaline, and indignation are volcanically erupting around the globe of 9 billion ethnically, financially, socially, and culturally diverse people—why this here now I asked.
My research located a scientific paper that I found informative.
Uncertainty Is Associated with Biased Expectancies and Heightened Responses to Aversion
Daniel W. Grupe and Jack B. Nitschke
Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin-Madison
https://www.academia.edu/3892005/Uncertainty_Is_Associated_With_Biased_Expectancies_and_Heightened_Responses_to_Aversion?sm=b
While the findings are important, of note the subjects tested were all undergraduate college students in the US providing me with a rational understanding of what I perceived as irrational behaviors.
“…This study adds to an extensive body of evidence showing that uncertainty amplifies the negative impact of aversive events, as assessed both physiologically and behaviorally.” Further; “Because aversive events that occur under conditions of uncertainty have a more negative impact than certain aversive events, individuals may learn to evaluate uncertainty more negatively, thus contributing to the over-association of uncertainty with negative outcomes.”
What is behind aversion? “… humans are notoriously flawed at objective contingency awareness and frequently misjudge relationships between cues and resulting outcomes. Factors such as memory load, the salience of events, the presence of motivational factors, and the availability and complexity of situational information all have an impact on one’s ability to objectively assess such contingencies (for review, see Arkes & Harkness, 1983).”
“For some individuals, uncertainty about the future can be an intolerable state that interferes with one’s ability to adequately prepare for potentially negative events, and which causes such events to seem even more stressful or aversive (Bar-Anan, Wilson, & Gilbert, 2009; Hirsh & Inzlicht, 2008; Kimmel, 1967; Nader & Balleine, 2007). This is especially true for anxiety disorders, particularly generalized anxiety disorder, for which intolerance of uncertainty has been put forth as a core construct (Dugas, Gagnon, Ladouceur, & Freeston, 1998). These negative attitudes and enhanced responses may be seen in situations involving both risk (i.e., multiple possible outcomes with known probabilities) as well as ambiguity (i.e., unknown probabilities of event occurrences). Accordingly, the present study allows for the possibility of both risk and ambiguity rather than attempting to distinguish between them (Bach, Seymour, & Dolan, 2009; Hsu, Bhatt, Adolphs, Tranel, & Camerer, 2005).”
Admittedly there comes a hormonal welling-up of self-empowerment with assertions of personal rights and participation in a serious ideologic cause. However, there are shortcomings with rights-based thinking, manifesting illogical and irrefutable self-centeredness—energizing a sense of entitlement that cannot contribute to a practicable bilateral resolution of the original problem but rather to identity politics emerging as wholly that of one for oneself. *
Students live in fear of an uncertain and unjust future made more untenable by the anarchists inciting them to act out their underlying issues with cohorts toward a prominent common curative cause. It is the student’s self-fear of the potential negative consequences of risk, ambiguity, uncertainty, and unanticipated events occurring in their lives that blinds them to the inherent power they have to deal with life. They do not trust themselves and we have given them cause not to trust others. Gaza is a problem, but a generational aversion with minds absent of resilience is our now-and-later problem, not the solution.
*EDITIED FROM: Štular, Nina Katarina, "A Dangerous Pursuit of Safety: The Value of Freedom of Expression and the Folly of Trading It Away" (2022). Honor Scholar Theses. 190. https://scholarship.depauw.edu/studentresearch/190
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