Remora

I'm sunshine this week, ladies and germs. First I harangue you about Hiroshima, and now here's a link to a discussion of Rwanda:
Conversation with Philip Gourevitch, p. 4 of 7
I'm reading Gourevitch's book for a job I'm doing, and it is impressive. Here's a quote from the Conversation --
"People like to go to the Holocaust Museum and say, that's who I relate to, the guy who did right. Either they relate somehow to the victim and feel bad about themselves and sorry for themselves, or they relate to the good guy. Very few go in there and say, oh yeah I probably would have been just like an ordinary conformist Nazi murderer, right? But probably the great majority of people who go through that museum would have been, because that's what the great majority of people in Europe were. They were either bystanders, collaborators, or in some other way morally reprehensible positions which are all too understandable. But there they are. But no, this museum allows you to fantasize that you're sort of morally excellent. And reality doesn't allow that fantasy much room, sadly."

The flip side is that people refrain from violence out of conformism too. There have been times that I wonder why I've never murdered, and certainly it is amazing that I know no murderers. Or I think I know none. The first human quarrel in the Bible ends with murder - Cain killing Abel. It must have made sense to Cain, since he had no example of what you do in a quarrel - how you keep yourself from hurting someone you don't like. The first thing that occurs to him is end his brother - just as he ended other irritants: swatted mosquitos, squashed spiders. It must have seemed so logical. Of course, the story goes on to gift Cain with the kind of foresight he could only have if he'd been living among a group of people for some time - remember, he cries out that the mark God puts upon him will make him a target for other people. Maybe the act of murdering Abel gave him second sight, and he saw both how easy it was and how futile it was. The recoil from murdering is in our system as much as the lust to do it.