At first on advice, but then on instinct and experience, I have kept my head down on the war in Palestine.  If you don’t, you are liable to get your head shot off, by either side.  Louise Adler had a note in The Age on Saturday which was met with the usual response from the usual suspects.  One passage prompts two reflections.  ‘…. peace cannot be premised on the subjugation of a people.  Violence only returns.’

The first is obvious; the second is elemental and instinctive. 

Sparta, Athens, Rome and England learned the first.  So has every other aspiring emperor.  It is now the turn of Russia.  The most obvious example occurred after the most brutal war in history.  The attempt to subjugate the German people by the Treaty of Versailles led ineluctably to a war that was even more gruesome.  It was only left to Keynes to say why and for Hitler to say how.

Humanity has been reluctant to leave revenge to the law, much less to God.  The problem is canvassed in the Oresteia and Hamlet and so much more.  It is just a fact of life that violence begets violence.

Any community, of people or nations, depends on people showing tolerance and restraint.  Violence tests our subscription to that rule. 

As it seems to me, there is an unstated premise to so much of what is said on both sides in this current conflict.  That is that it is in order for me to treat you as being somehow different because you come from a different tribe or subscribe to a different faith.  That premise contradicts the Enlightenment view of civilisation which says that each of us has our own worth or dignity merely because we are human.  It also banishes tolerance and restraint.

I do not believe in original sin – or any religion – but if I did, the above would for me be its source.  Because of what my ancestors did, or what others did to my ancestors, I should be treated differently.  The same goes for you.  That state of mind inevitably breeds conflict.  And even it is based on an inarticulate premise – that I have the right to judge others and act toward them based on that judgment.

And I see no relief from any of this.  It look so be part of our doom as human beings.  One that does not afflict gorillas.