Another nine people were killed today, with hundreds more injured, in Lebanon during a horrifying second wave of explosions. These were followed by nauseating waves of admiration for Israel’s great “technological prowess” in killing masses of people and terrorizing entire populations.
We know very well that if such an action had been carried out by an enemy of the West, the same people who speak of “highly targeted action” would be tearing their clothes, calling it a horrific and intolerable act of terrorism, and demanding immediate and violent retaliation. How can we explain this blatant double standard?
It’s actually quite simple: these people think only of themselves, utterly lacking a sense of community, and are imbued with an “ethic” that is capitalist and Hobbesian — the ethic of “homo homini lupus” (man is a wolf to man).
These are the kind of people who, if they see something unattended, they steal it; who would set fire to the entire Amazon rainforest for a thousand euros because “if I don’t do it, someone else will.” They are the ones who, if you steal their purse, they run you over with their SUV to get it back, leaving you there to die while justifying their actions with, “anyone in my position would have done the same.”
The key to their rotten mentality, which normalizes all kinds of violence, lies in their belief (whether genuine or self-serving) that the rest of humanity is just like them — that there are no good people, that anyone who does good deeds has ulterior motives, is a hypocrite, or has something to hide. They think that anyone who says “I wouldn’t kill my mugger” is either a liar, a fool, abnormal, or a hater criticizing them only out of envy or for some other reason.
Convinced that the rest of humanity is like them or worse, they justify any atrocity by claiming it’s normal, natural, and part of the order of things to use violence on others because otherwise, others would use violence on them.
This mentality creates a vicious cycle: since I think only of myself and don’t care about others, I steal the land of an entire people, and when that people eventually reacts, I have proof that they hate me, envy me, want to rob and kill me — so I inflict more violence, and so it continues.
Obviously, with such behavior, it’s unlikely these individuals will earn the esteem and respect of others. So they compensate for the fundamental human need not to remain isolated by accumulating power and wealth, literally buying people, but without ever obtaining sincere affection, leaving them eternally dissatisfied, always seeking more power and wealth.
Unfortunately, there’s no simple way to show these people that the vast majority of the world loves living in society, loves socializing and cooperating with mutual respect because they have no incentive to understand reality.
For example, if Israel acknowledged that Palestinians are normal human beings who are intolerably oppressed and not wild beasts thirsty for their blood, they would have to admit that stealing their land and freedom is wrong. This would require giving up part of their well-being, which is based on the theft of lands and the enslavement of Palestinians.
Therefore, it’s pointless to expect them to stop on their own: the paranoid vicious circle feeds itself to the point of extremism and self-destruction. Stopping this dystopian madness falls to that part of the world capable of living in peace and mutual respect, which must intervene to halt this psychopathic drift.
It is up to the most conscious among us to wake up their fellow citizens from their slumber, showing how the consequences of inaction and indifference in the face of the exponential growth of violence will not stop at our doorsteps but will sweep us all away, sooner than we expect.
Alessandro Ferretti
KULTURJAM, September 19, 2024
