Devoted Actors Are Not Rational

--Almost all current approaches to resolving resource conflicts or countering political violence tend to assume that adversaries make rational choices...

When people are asked to trade sacred values for material rewards they tend to react with outrage and anger, although they are sometimes able to accept trading one sacred value for another.

But not all things in the world can be treated like items in a shopping mall. . . most of us would be outraged and disgusted by someone willing to offer such a tradeoff for our children, our country, or anything else we may value as "sacred."

And I guess we just need to deal with it.