In response to stopping terrorism, violence, etc.
It's a fact that humans are products of their environment[1,2]. This has been known for quite some time. However the degree to which we are products of our environment has always been a hot topic of discussion. On one side we have a status quo in the medical profession that insist we are pre determined for disease both physically and mentally. On the other side we have social scientists that say we are solely products of our environment and genetics only gives us predispositions to things like mental illness or obesity and so on.
I tend to agree with the social scientists. We have triggers; genetically. They are either pulled or left alone. The environment in which you live is the catalyst for that type of action.
Going off of that I'll point to Michel Foucault, a mid-twentieth century philosopher and social critic. The bulk of his work focuses on dissecting the ideas of power and knowledge. He understands these two entities to be synonymous with each other, which lays the foundation for his critique of governmental and institutional power. Through his critiques, Foucault positions himself as a post-modernist philosopher interested in the societal controls of modernity. He believes power, and therefore knowledge is not absolute; it is defined, enforced and accepted within the society in which it’s institutionalized. This of course is the opposite of modernism, which exercises the belief that science and reason possess the knowledge for an ultimate truth. Stemming from the industrial revolution, modernity reigned supreme through much of the twentieth century and arguably still does today.
Without the willingness to accept that our environment effects so much of what we do we will never understand the means in which to change it. The ideas of violence and power are not born inside of our minds. They grow, over time, from our perceptions. Forcing an ideology or a standard on an environment will not change the behavior of the individuals occupying it; it will only enforce the causation of negative action.
1.) http://www.mindingourbodies.ca/sites/default/files/suicide_a...
2.) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1556-4029.2007....
+ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucauldian_discourse_analysis