Serb Lesson
Saturday, January 01, 2000
The Serbs are only the latest tribe of Europe - and hopefully the last - to engage in bestial cruelty towards a neighbouring tribe. How can we make sure it's the last? You can count the steps on one hand.
Firstly, we must pause from our ethical parlour games where anything goes and admit that there really is evil in the world and in the human heart. The torture, rape and murder of innocent, helpless strangers is evil.
Secondly, the perpetrators and their friends must drop the pathetic justifications for what their army and police did to helpless villagers.
Third, it must be admitted that other tribes, of other races and religions, have behaved just as badly if you look back into history.
Fourth, we must voluntarily give up the self-indulgent pleasure of mocking and maligning other tribes, and judge all people humanely and only on the basis of their humaneness. Prejudices taught to our children today become instruments of torture in their hands tomorrow.
And finally, to positively motivate our moral evolution, we must celebrate and promulgate the wonder and beauty of the natural variety of humanity, of the male and the female, the young and old, black and white, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Jew and atheist.
Anything less is mean, puny, and condemns us to another round of suffering of this subhuman kind.
Philip O'Carroll