Can we one day wave
goodbye to our killer instincts?
The year 1998 has so far been on of those years replete with anniversaries. January, for example, saw the 100th anniversary of Emile Zola's J'Accuse; May was the 30th anniversary of the May 1968 student riots whilst September saw the 60th anniversary of the abortive Munich conference, which precipitated the Second World War. This November is no exception.
On Wednesday 11th November, whilst we will be in our respective places doing our respective things, many senior citizens will probably be reminiscing over their lost friends, and relatives who died in one of the greatest and long-lasting wars of the twentieth century -- one which ended exactly eighty years ago. Eleven o'clock will be the key time when the tears will most probably begin to flow, for they will probably get flashbacks of the jubilation and excitement they felt when a cease-fire was finally declared on November 11th 1918 - the day the First World War came to an end.
Lorenzo's well-written article about the annual Veco trip to France brought home to me my experience of the Palo-Delsemme trip last September, in 1997, to Amiens. After that trip, I believe I experienced an emotional and intellectual catharsis.
In high school, I went on quite a few history trips - Ypres was one of them where all the names of the deceased on the Menin gate just left me speechless. However, as informative and insightful as these trips were, they did not leave me with that sense of loss and futility that this trip to Amiens did.
The sense of futility has faded since then and, as Lorenzo puts it, "dissolved and dissipated into the night". However, as Dr.Palo illustrates in a theatrical manner the extent to which history is about perceptions and how normative it is to explain history away as being about "the good and the bad guys", it makes me stop and think why I am sitting in that class.
I am sitting there not only because I am taking a history/politics class as a free elective, but also because I truly believe in the importance of history. In fact, I have a favourite quote by Benjamin Franklin: "think of these things: whence you came, where you are going and to whom you must account". I have subsequently paraphrased Franklin's quote and used it to define what I perceive history to be: "the study of the nature of mankind: where he has come from; where he is going and to whom he must account".
This self-styled definition of history is in fact significant in that it has been the force that has helped me change my major from International Affairs and Economics to International Affairs and History. Many people have wondered, even asked me, what history can do for me in the future. The impression I get is they feel that studying history is not a "lucrative" investment, because the only thing one can really do with it, is teach. I have even, at times, had my major laughed off by some people.
Despite these discouraging remarks, I remain convinced that without history the world and its problems become meaningless. The preoccupations that we experience in our lives, and see on television, are merely passed off, at best, as mere bad luck, and, at worst, as nothing to do with us.
We need look no further than Bosnia and more recently, Kosovo. "What do these have to do with our lives?", I have heard many people ask. Probably nothing, except that, in my opinion, the troubles which these countries have experienced are indications of the potential of all human beings to commit mass murder because they believe that their ethnic group, or race, is better than any other.
A recent article from one of the websites dedicated to portraying the southern perspective of events explains how very easy it is for groups of people to become polarized in their beliefs because they feel one group is better than any other: "people can regress to a primitive logic. If they seriously believe they face a choice of 'kill or be killed', then they can and will kill" . In other words, it does not take long before our killer instincts see the light of day.
The self-satisfied idea that I, in writing this article, am better than the person accused of mass murder, or genocide, is a fallacy. I am a human being with emotions and a perceived sense of my own history and past. Give me the wrong circumstances and a distorted sense of reality that my enemies deserve to die, and I could very easily be that murderer. It is my sincere belief that my killer instinct is a reality of my character and also not as latent as I would like it to be. However, what are the "wrong" circumstances that lead people to kill, and where is the wrong place to be before one feels compelled to kill?
Even the seemingly harmless attachment to national identity which has sunk deep in most people's psyche, can turn into a sinister form of nationalism when it is used as justification for violence. Perhaps, it is time we stopped stereotyping; it is time we stopped criticizing people we know nothing about. It is time we finally started seeing people as who they are and not what colour skin they have or what social class they come from.
We students here at Veco form a fraction of the people who are going to become the leaders of tomorrow. We have a responsibility to shoulder - and one of them is divesting stereotypes so that we can create a much more peaceful world - for our children and ourselves. Just because it is difficult does not mean to say that we cannot make the effort. It would probably be very naïve to assert that crime and wars would be a thing of the past. However, maybe we here at Vesalius College can remember on November 11th , those First World War veterans who are still alive are hoping for a better future for their children and grandchildren - one without a Great War ever again.
Max Sunrise
