Describe human nature. Do we all have the equal capacity to create and destroy? Are we “good,” and are all those who aggressively take others’ lives “evil”?
Is there something we haven’t thought of that might change the world so that peaceful people would have a greater influence on those willing to cause suffering? Are those who cause suffering ever remorseful?
These were the questions following humanity’s ejection from the Garden of Eden, and they’re the focus of many today after the massacre in Mumbai.
The predominant belief is that the young men in Mumbai who took 183 lives were “evil.” That is clear, the world says, adding that it’s good that those smiling Satans are dead.
But is it that simple?
On March 16, 1968, during the war in Vietnam, a massacre was committed by American soldiers at My Lai. A company of 30, drunk and high, entered this quiet village where mothers and grandmothers were feeding children breakfast and indiscriminately stabbed, gang-raped, shot and killed 500 people – women and children.
When the village was calm with death, a three-year-old boy climbed out of a pile of bodies and ran. An American soldier, William Calley Jr., ran after him and executed him, shooting him in the head and back. (A woman who lived across the street from the Calleys for several years told Time magazine in 1969: “He was a wonderful boy and would do anything for you.”)
Of the 26 officers and soldiers accused in connection with the massacre, Calley was the only one whose charges stuck. He was found guilty of killing 22 civilians and given a life sentence. Calley served 3-1/2 years under house arrest. Today, he lives in Atlanta.
Those who pulled the triggers in Mumbai have caused incalculable suffering to the Jewish People and the world. A little boy, Moshe, is an orphan, and a woman in Virginia is a widow and grieving her 13-year-old daughter. This type of suffering never ends. I have seen it in my family.
But what of the suffering after My Lai? What is it in our nature that encourages us to vilify certain barbaric actions and be OK with others? Baruch Goldstein, the West Bank doctor who in 1994 killed 29 people who were praying in Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque (and wounded 150 others) is one such example. His grave has become a shrine. It is confusing.
Furthermore, what makes a person so mad that they’re able to look in a child’s eyes and see them as the “other,” thereby making them an acceptable target for an AK47 bullet?
Seymour Hersh, the national security correspondent for the New Yorker, writes that he has spoken with officers, company commanders and platoon leaders in Iraq, many of whom “can’t stand their job, because 95 per cent of their time is spent keeping kids from doing terrible things to the civilian population of Iraq.” How and when did those normal American boys lose their ability to discern between the innocent and the guilty?
Mumbai has raised many questions. Is “good versus evil” so simple? Is there anything we haven’t considered when dealing with hatred and destruction in our world? How do young people become so blind that they’re able to murder with conceit? Are they prideful throughout their rampage? Is there any way to restore the sight of those who follow them? What moral gauge do we use to mete out punishment, and when do we use it?
A good, healthy friend told me, “Once, when I was young, I got so angry that in another second, I could have killed my mother.”
What does that mean? Describe human nature.
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