Seminar Three
Warfare, genocide and ethnic conflict
Mobs and militias

We need look no farther than to the pre-civil rights America for some of the most dramatic examples of dehumanization, when blacks were hanged and burned publicly in savage rituals. Photographs of the “barbeques,” as they were called, were sent to relatives on post cards.

In some ethnic conflicts, which may or may not be labeled genocide, children have been conscripted into the killing armies. A memorable example is chronicled by Ishmael Beah, a child ex-soldier himself.

This is the personal story, published in 2007, of Ishmael's life in Sierra Leone, West Africa, where he had a nonviolent childhood until age twelve, when his world fell apart. His family was murdered in front of his eyes, and he was conscripted into a militant army for two years. During this time he learned to murder with impunity and enjoyed torturing his captives before killing them, having learned that he should view them as the ones who killed his family.

Here is a painful example of E. O. Wilson's we-they. Ishmael describes burying captives alive after forcing them to dig their own graves. In the course of his rehabilitation at age fifteen he lived through flashbacks of the torture he once enjoyed imposing on his victims.

The idea of death didn't cross my mind at all and killing had become as easy as drinking water. My mind had not only snapped during the first killing, it has also stopped making remorseful records, or so it seemed. I joined the army really because of the loss of my family and starvation. I wanted to avenge the deaths of my family. I also had to get some food to survive, and the only way to do that was to be part of the army. It was not easy being a soldier, but we just had to do it… I am not a soldier any more.… What I have learned is that revenge is not good… if I take revenge, I will kill another person whose family will want revenge; then revenge and revenge and revenge will never come to an end.

Ishmael Beah

Ishmael's story describes his own deviant and disturbed behavior. How do we view such behavior on the scale of an entire culture engaged in genocide or warfare? Where do we draw a line between human nature and deviant individual behavior?

No one knows how to draw such a line, but the question must be addressed, because we must try to understand where cultural group behavior ends and sick, disturbed individual behavior begins, even if we can't draw a fine line. Human nature is part of this equation, and we must understand how it has evolved if we ever expect to do anything about it. Otherwise the cycle will go on and on, as Ishmael Beah warns.