The senseless killing of men, women and children in Australia in a horrific anti-Semitic and anti-human act. Hollywood icon Rob Reiner and his wife having their throats cut while sleeping in bed—by their own son.
These shocking situations appall anyone who has a sense of decency and humanity.
But they beg the question: are these acts an aberration that we should think is infrequent and circling on the periphery of society, or are they part and parcel of human nature?
In a humanistic view, and one that we should say is held by most people, we believe that these heinous acts are a fringe manifestation of evil people who make up a tiny minority of humanity.
We are quick to think of a Hitler, a Stalin or a Mao Tse Tong, men who killed or ordered others to kill millions of people.
However, the perusal of our daily news tells us that violence, the kind that kills people, is a lot more frequent than we would think.
Did not Cain kill Abel his brother right at the beginning? Have we made improvements since then? Hardly.
Indeed, the very concept of war should answer the question. It’s not just that men of power call for war, it’s that there are common men and women who are eager to sign up for it.
What about our cities whose constant gang and personal violence grace our media every day?
Recently, there has been an uptick in violence on commercial aircraft, with flyers either fighting with each other or the flight attendants.
Yes, we are all very much stressed by modern society. Information overload from our phones and computers has had a deleterious effect on our emotions and actions. But there were no iPhones and computers when Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes with his brilliant but ruthless warfare.
Violence and the potential of violence is as natural to men and women as rain from a dark cloud.
We have been accustomed to thinking of big government as a big Sugar Daddy, handing out entitlements like candy canes.
But the primary purpose of government is not to please our material wants, but to restrain evil. When it fails at this job, chaos ensues.
That is not to say that we should all live in an autocratic society where our every move is monitored and our every motive questioned. It simply means that men and women have a proclivity to do evil.
Psychology over the last one hundred years would like us to believe that men and women are born into the world completely innocent, a tabla rasa upon which society writes for good or evil. When it writes evil, criminality is manifested. When it writes good, virtue springs forth.
This concept has been the progenitor of some terrible laws as when a dangerous criminal is let go because, well, aw shucks, his dad beat him as a child, and he is still acting out.
If we are naïve, we are putting our families in danger. Indeed, we are putting the whole of society in danger.
Hate, anger and violence are the entente that can bring down an empire. And besides our personal battles, it has led to the slaughter of millions. Witness the death camps of WW II.
The great poet Robinson Jeffers in his poem The Bloody Sire declares,
Stark violence is still the sire of all the world’s values
He got it. Do we?
He ends the poem with,
Old violence is not too old to beget new values
The violence that we have seen may indeed beget new values.
But it all seems to be moving in the wrong direction.
