Parasites, Energy and Complex Systems: Generating Novel Intervention Options to Counter Recruitment to Suicide Terrorism

In an extension to the parasitic analogy, 'infection' is presented as achieved through the movement of energy. The chapter focuses on exploring the concept that bundles of beliefs can usefully be thought of as influencing behaviour in the manner that biological parasites interrupt the functioning of animal models' brains. The extraordinary alterations in animal behaviour, driven by parasitic manipulation of the complex functioning of brain activity, are quite something to the uninitiated. The chapter continues and expands the line of Analogical Research (AR) first advanced in print in 2012. AR seeks to shed new light on intractable problems by exploiting analogous contexts. In this case, viewing suicide terrorism as being the product of rational actions driven by powerful bundles of memes that influence cognitive processes. The chapter has advanced extensions to the analogy of parasitic infection as a means of explaining the recruitment of individuals to extremist causes.