And here we are. This is one of those hinge points in history, a moment people remember other events in the context of “before” and “after” that moment
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Outside of those few survivors and their relatives, the terror, the senseless loss of life, the organized violence that is war directed against your own home is an abstraction to most Americans. Something we see in movies.
Today it’s real for Ukrainians. Particularly Ukrainian children.
War is legalized mass murder (and, historically, legalized mass looting and rape). It’s as if people step out of their own humanity and become monsters, their brutality almost unrecognizable as human.
Like a pack of wild dogs, a swarm of locusts, the reaction of hornets when their nest is damaged, humans become something other than “civilized” when they commit to war. There’s something deep in our DNA — we observe the same swarming, warlike behavior in our closest relatives, the Chimpanzees — that drives us to the type of temporary insanity necessary to murder total strangers in mass numbers.
Because humans have this demon buried deeply in us all, societies throughout history and prehistory have organized themselves in ways to reduce the chance of war. We let out that horrible instinct in gladiator conflict like football; the Iroquois did it with Lacrosse. The Olympics were created to diminish the probability of wars breaking out.
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Outside of those few survivors and their relatives, the terror, the senseless loss of life, the organized violence that is war directed against your own home is an abstraction to most Americans. Something we see in movies.
Today it’s real for Ukrainians. Particularly Ukrainian children.
War is legalized mass murder (and, historically, legalized mass looting and rape). It’s as if people step out of their own humanity and become monsters, their brutality almost unrecognizable as human.
Like a pack of wild dogs, a swarm of locusts, the reaction of hornets when their nest is damaged, humans become something other than “civilized” when they commit to war. There’s something deep in our DNA — we observe the same swarming, warlike behavior in our closest relatives, the Chimpanzees — that drives us to the type of temporary insanity necessary to murder total strangers in mass numbers.
Because humans have this demon buried deeply in us all, societies throughout history and prehistory have organized themselves in ways to reduce the chance of war. We let out that horrible instinct in gladiator conflict like football; the Iroquois did it with Lacrosse. The Olympics were created to diminish the probability of wars breaking out.
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But make no mistake. A war against one is a war against all. As John Donne reminded us:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were:
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were.
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
(For the “Daily Audio” of Thom reading this article, available only to paid subscribers, check the “Daily Audio” tab on HartmannReport.com.)
Originally posted at The Hartmann Report
