VER EN ESPAÑOL

12.13.2010

Mass graves, revisited: from whence the barbarity?

Have you ever taken another person's life? Ever purposely done physical harm to another human being? Ever enjoyed it? I wonder how it feels? (not enough to want to try it, though!)

THE WALL OF NAMES
"a permanent memorial to the victims of the Rwandan genocide - a poignant reminder of the estimated 250,000 victims buried just metres away."

I can be indignant today over yesterday's unthinkable deeds, but I am unable to prevent such atrocities from occurring tomorrow. It seems easier to register my horror at events in far away places than to stand up to the seeds of like brutality in my own backyard.

What does it take to be a perpetrator of -or accessory to- wholesale savagery?