alleviate the isolation of the lonely crowd and become, however briefly, part of an intense community engaged in the pursuit of something larger than the self. 9 They are motivated by genuine ideals. They feel the suffering, the pain and the humiliation of their fellow believers. They seek to dedicate and if need be sacrifice their lives to end what they see as the injustice of the world and to honour the memory of those they see as its victims. As Michael Ignatieff wrote in
The Warrior’s Honor
, the book he wrote in response to the Balkan wars, ‘Political terror is tenacious because it is an ethical practice. It is a cult of the dead, a dire and absolute expression of respect.’ 10 Holy warriors are altruists, and what they commit is altruistic evil.
We have seen in this chapter how altruism leads us to make sacrifices for the sake of the group, while at the same time leading usto commit acts of violence against perceived threats to the group. Good and bad, altruism and aggression, peace and violence, love and hate, are born together as the twin consequences of our need to define ourselves as an Us in opposition to a Them. But we have a way further to go. Something more than simple identity is needed for good people to commit truly evil deeds.
3
Dualism
Exaggerate each feature until man is
Metamorphosized into beast, vermin, insect.
Fill in the background with malignant
Figures from ancient nightmares – devils,
Demons, myrmidons of evil.
When your icon of the enemy is complete
You will be able to kill without guilt,
Slaughter without shame.
Sam Keen
, Faces of the Enemy
(1986)
1
One day between November 1946 and February 1947, a young Bedouin shepherd, Muhammed edh-Dhib, in the company of a cousin and a friend, discovered a number of ancient decaying leather scrolls in a cave in Qumran, amid the mountains that border the Dead Sea. The story Muhammed told was that he was tending his animals when he noticed that one had strayed from the flock. He idly tossed a stone into the small opening of a cave and became frightened when it made an unusual noise, as if it had hit not the bottom of the cave but a jar inside. Unnerved, he fled, but later returned with his two companions, climbed into the cave, retrieved the scrolls and brought them back to his family. After drying them, his father took them to some local dealers. One declared them worthless. A second bought three for low prices. A further scroll came into the possession of the Syrian archbishop of Jerusalem, who showed them to a scholar who realised their value and significance.
This prompted a dramatic search for other caves and scrolls against the background of Israel’s War of Independence. Itcontinued under Jordanian auspices until 1956. Eventually eleven caves were found to contain documents, yielding a vast library of 981 different texts. Among them were by far the oldest manuscripts of biblical texts then known, dating from the third or second century BCE (subsequently even older fragments dating to the sixth century BCE were discovered at Ketef Hinom), together with other previously unknown ancient documents.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are one of the great discoveries of modern times. Most believe that they were the work of a small community of separatists who had taken the decision, sometime in the second pre-Christian century, to leave Jerusalem and live in seclusion until the day when Israel’s enemies and its own corrupt religious establishment would be overthrown and the reign of righteousness restored. Some believe they were a branch of the Essenes, others that they were a dissident group of Sadducees, yet others that they were a group in their own right, one of many in those turbulent, fissiparous times.
Less well known is another major manuscript discovery some two years earlier near Nag Hammadi, a settlement in upper Egypt. It was there in December 1945 that Muhammad Ali al-Samman and his brothers had gone to dig in Jabal al-Tarif, a mountain
The Warrior’s Honor
, the book he wrote in response to the Balkan wars, ‘Political terror is tenacious because it is an ethical practice. It is a cult of the dead, a dire and absolute expression of respect.’ 10 Holy warriors are altruists, and what they commit is altruistic evil.
We have seen in this chapter how altruism leads us to make sacrifices for the sake of the group, while at the same time leading usto commit acts of violence against perceived threats to the group. Good and bad, altruism and aggression, peace and violence, love and hate, are born together as the twin consequences of our need to define ourselves as an Us in opposition to a Them. But we have a way further to go. Something more than simple identity is needed for good people to commit truly evil deeds.
3
Dualism
Exaggerate each feature until man is
Metamorphosized into beast, vermin, insect.
Fill in the background with malignant
Figures from ancient nightmares – devils,
Demons, myrmidons of evil.
When your icon of the enemy is complete
You will be able to kill without guilt,
Slaughter without shame.
Sam Keen
, Faces of the Enemy
(1986)
1
One day between November 1946 and February 1947, a young Bedouin shepherd, Muhammed edh-Dhib, in the company of a cousin and a friend, discovered a number of ancient decaying leather scrolls in a cave in Qumran, amid the mountains that border the Dead Sea. The story Muhammed told was that he was tending his animals when he noticed that one had strayed from the flock. He idly tossed a stone into the small opening of a cave and became frightened when it made an unusual noise, as if it had hit not the bottom of the cave but a jar inside. Unnerved, he fled, but later returned with his two companions, climbed into the cave, retrieved the scrolls and brought them back to his family. After drying them, his father took them to some local dealers. One declared them worthless. A second bought three for low prices. A further scroll came into the possession of the Syrian archbishop of Jerusalem, who showed them to a scholar who realised their value and significance.
This prompted a dramatic search for other caves and scrolls against the background of Israel’s War of Independence. Itcontinued under Jordanian auspices until 1956. Eventually eleven caves were found to contain documents, yielding a vast library of 981 different texts. Among them were by far the oldest manuscripts of biblical texts then known, dating from the third or second century BCE (subsequently even older fragments dating to the sixth century BCE were discovered at Ketef Hinom), together with other previously unknown ancient documents.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are one of the great discoveries of modern times. Most believe that they were the work of a small community of separatists who had taken the decision, sometime in the second pre-Christian century, to leave Jerusalem and live in seclusion until the day when Israel’s enemies and its own corrupt religious establishment would be overthrown and the reign of righteousness restored. Some believe they were a branch of the Essenes, others that they were a dissident group of Sadducees, yet others that they were a group in their own right, one of many in those turbulent, fissiparous times.
Less well known is another major manuscript discovery some two years earlier near Nag Hammadi, a settlement in upper Egypt. It was there in December 1945 that Muhammad Ali al-Samman and his brothers had gone to dig in Jabal al-Tarif, a mountain
Similar Books
