Faced with the horror of crazy politically motivated massacres, has contextual psychology anything to say? I was asked to write this blog, yet my mind feels only confusion and the need to back away from the horror. As if it had nothing to do with me, nothing to do with us. But it has to do with me, and it has to do with us. My compassion goes to the victims, to a targeted community, I fear a deepening spiral of violence, I feel anger at the conditions which might have fed this latest atrocity.

Does a troubled young man start shooting in a mosque for no reason, or is this the result of something deeper and closer to us? Will we ever know? Contextual psychology invites us to consider the wider context. Does the sources of intolerance, of blind violence toward Muslims or western civilization plunge their roots in an inherently fanatical religion or in an essentially satanic civilization? Over here the refusal of visas, and drones raining automated death from the sky, over there the bloodthirsty attacks deliberately targeting civilians. On both sides the dehumanizing of the other, a willful denial of humanity, and a proclamation of irreducible otherness.

The context comprises many elements. Geopolitical aspects: colonialism’s the poisoned legacy, continuing interference in societies painted as unable to evolve without imperial trusteeship, the rape of energy resources. The blowback from supporting extremist factions in ideological and geostrategic games that reduce peoples and societies to mere sacrificial pawns. The legacy of having sought to impose human rights on societies that hadn’t fully chosen them, leading us perhaps to ourselves abandoning our own values in the illusory search for absolute security.

But it is much closer to ourselves and way deeper than that. It is in each inner move of dehumanizing the other and, ultimately, ourselves. In each move we make to impose on others, on our loved ones, our children, our students, our citizens rather than seeking to nurture what works, to support progress, to offer and nurture choice. When we become unable to recognize our common humanity in the other, when being right comes before living together, when brute force takes over. When we choose moving away and building walls rather than moving toward, finding ourselves in one another, understanding, forgiving and accepting one another, and together evolving toward more understanding and kindness. And if I was you there then, what would I feel?

We already know where the systematic dehumanization of the others leads. The twentieth century taught us. Here we are back in time of fear, in times of the other as inhumanly other, in times of those whom we must eliminate because of where they were born, what they believe, or what they think. Finding in ourselves the sources of this dehumanization and its counterpart, passivity in the face of stigma and exclusion, is to recognize that our present problems are eminently human. Today’s technology gives us access to Instant horror. We need a psychology that allows us to welcome with compassion and acceptance all our darkest and most extreme feelings and thoughts so as to give us a chance to not let them dictate our behaviors and push humanity in a deathly spiral, in which our very humanity might not survive. The Association for Contextual Behavioral Science was born of the realization that, in the wake of 9/11, humanity’s future hinged on the development of a Psychology more adapted to the challenges of the human condition. This is truer today than it ever was.

If there is a hope, it lies in each and everyone of us. It lies in our ability to face our thoughts, to question our certainties, to dare to think differently. We can learn. It is possible, always possible, choose to act in a different way. Living values can never be imposed— on ourselves any more than on other people — they can’t even be defended. We can, at most, choose to embody our values, through each one of our actions and words. This is what gets me up every morning and what ACT teaches us, with love and compassion.