Dehumanizing Your Enemy Serves Only To Dehumanize Yourself!

In the past I have tended to be very specific about what specific incident(s), event(s) or issue(s) I am writing about. While doing so may have been useful in getting people to think about those things more seriously it has often harmed my more universal goal(s). In effect; universal wisdom is very hard to convey without giving specific examples, but by going into specifics one risks being misunderstood and one's universal values risk being perceived as hypocrisy! So, this time I find myself forced to avoid being specific in the hope that a broader and ultimately more important message be conveyed.

A recent event happened that over time will push a certain set of people in the world to re-evaluate things and to make very hard decisions. This event was not only a most complex event, but its root causes are even more complex! To give you a rough idea of what I might be talking about I am going to relate to you a semi-fictional story that has a lot of basis in reality:

The Story of History Island

(by Jean-Pierre Ady Fenyo...myself ofcourse)

Not very long ago there was a time when large sailing ships were the only way significant numbers of people could travel from one side of an ocean to another. In those days there were many unchartered, undiscovered and unknown islands, especially in Tropical waters. This is the story of such a ship and such an island.

H.M.S. Wilberforce was a grand Galleon over 120 feet in length and 80 feet in width, fore to aft. It had three decks and could comfortable transport over 300 persons from the coast of England to the coast of Peru in about 2 and a half months.

On May 14, 1748 H.M.S. Wilberforce was caught in a sudden and rather violent storm, and during that storm it went off course nearly 40 nautical miles! By nightfall the storm began to subside but not enough to prevent the ship from hitting a reef and being split into two! Fortunately enough, all but 11 of the 220 passengers aboard managed to swim to the safety of the shores of a nearby, uninhabited island! The ship was transporting 170 ethno-religious fanatics and 50 relatively normal persons! And of the fanatics most were of X Ethno-Religion and only a few were of Y Ethno-Religion. The ratio of each group among the 11 dead was approximately the same.

Within a few days the island had been fully explored, and was found to be as big as London City proper was in 1748! It had everything imaginable for relatively normal living, including several fresh water springs, a few small lakes, a couple of waterfalls, several small dormant volcanic mountains, plenty of tropical fruit trees and berry bushes, an assortment of various wild animals, including fowl, reptiles and rodents, not to mention some poisonous spiders, snakes and what not! It also was surrounded by beautiful soft-sanded pearly-white beaches, brilliantly clear aquamarine blue warm tropical water and inlets, rich in fish and other wonders of the sea! The Captain of the ship tried to keep everyone united, but soon enough two main groups formed, and two smaller groups. The largest group was for those who were religious fanatics of the X Ethno-Religion, numbering some 130 people, followed by the second largest one, comprised of the 50 non-fanatic persons of both ethno-religious backgrounds, but mostly being of the Y Ethno-Religious background, another smaller one comprised of the Y ethno-religious fanatics whose number was 20, and the smallest of them all was made up of the few who were a-religious and who numbered just 9!

Logically the island was divided into four distinct territories, but the proportions were not quite fair! The X fanatics, being the largest number of people, easily managed to force everyone else into much smaller parcels of land, especially parcels of land that were not the nicest ones either! The X fanatics named their 90% of the island "X-ria", the non-fanatic, predominantly of Y background, group named their 4% of the island "Democratonia", the Y fanatics named their 4% "Zealand", and the group of 9 a-religious people named their 2% "Athenia". Already the seeds of conflict were beginning to be sown! Especially because there was a brief time of a few days when the "Democratonians" held at least 10% of the island, including a very viable section which would have made it possible for them to live relatively decent lives, without harming anyone else!

In the first two months that followed there were signs of growing tension and some minor border disputes and fist-fights, but otherwise there was so-called 'peace' without fairness; an obviously false peace that would not last long!

The "Athenians" had also had enough of the situation and decided to join forces with the "Democratonians" in demanding that the "Democratonians" get a full 10%, and they, the "Athenians" get another 2%. The "Zealanders" suffered in their small and poor piece of the island, but refused to risk war!

What happened next was totally unnexpected! One of the women from X-ria fell in love with a man from Democratonia, and left her parents, brother and two uncles to be live in Democratonia with her newfound love! In effect, she had decided not to be a fanatic anymore. Unfortunately this did not go down well with her familials and they attempted to force her back and threatened to kill her lover. When they almost succeeded, causing serious injury to the love-struck couple, the Democratonians and Athenians declared war on the X-rians and after three days of violent conflict, in which ten X-rians, two Democratonians and one Athenian were killed, the Democratonians managed to capture roughly 16% of the island, and awarded 2% more to the Athenians. From that point on things were definitely not peaceful. After ten years of conflict the borders changed little, but the children were born and the total population began to increase, even with a few fatalities every now and then! Then in the 12th year the Democratonians, in an attempt to get back to the 'real world', sent an expedition on a small raft, which discovered another much larger island that was actually inhabited! Its people were called the Restonians and soon enough trade was established between the two islands. The Restonians did not know who their ancestors were or how they had come to live on their island and they had had no contact with any other peoples for longer than they could remember! But the Restonians trade was not exclusively with the Democratonians, Athenians or even the Zealanders. They soon made special and exclusive alliances and deals with each group, and discovered that by exploiting the conflict between the peoples of The Island of Historia they could benefit greatly! After all the Restonians numbered four times the total number of people on Historia!

Now what I forgot to tell you is that in 2% of that extra 4% of the land the Democratonians held a family of X-rians decided to remain and they soon grew in number. These X-rians somehow managed to live under Democratonian rule without much ado, until a group of the originally displaced X-rians decided to exploit this fact and force that family into conflict with the Democratonians. At some point the X-rians began launching suicide attacks, using crude explosives made from the various natural minerals imported from Restonia Island! The situation eventually became so bad that the Democratonians threatened another all-out war with the X-rians, especially after the X-rians began to tell half-truths about the history of the conflict of Historia Island to the Restonian Islanders. The Restonian Islanders were such opportunists that they cleverly managed to play up to each side to the degree that suited them best; knowing that it would always be to their advantage to keep the conflict going while seeming to want all sides to make a lasting peace settlement! The X-rians even tried to turn the Y fanatics of Zealand against Democratonia and Athenia! Such that most of the Y fanatics of Zealand felt forced to leave Zealand and live in Democratonia, leaving a small fraction of Zealanders to actually allow Restonia to use Zealand as their foothold, in exchange for protection from either side! For this to work these few Zealand fanatics who remained in Zealand spoke more and more in favor of the "plight" of the X-rians, even lying about the actual truth of the actual History of Historia's conflict. Thus such a situation began to arise that was to the detriment of all! The X-rians began to subdivide into various clans, some of whose leaders were worse than others, and even a few who made relative peace with Democratonia! The Democratonians were living in constant fear of the suicide attacks by the X-rians in the land they held, which they were more than willing to return to X-ria if all the X-rians would agree to let Democratonia live peacefully on its original 10% of the island's land! Even though the Democratonians had set up, over time, a very strict set of rules and laws governing their military, a small but growing minority within their military began to violate those wise rules and laws, mostly out of revenge for the loss of loved ones to the X-rians, who seemed to have no qualms about using such suicide attacks! Such suicide attack methods were alien to the culture and history of the Democratonians, and to even most of the Restonians! Yet the Restonian leaders, who also had various competing clans, failed to ever point out to the X-rians how totally unacceptable such suicide attacks were, and continued to profit from the conflict! Anyway, as time went on another minority of Democratonians, joined by many Athenians, a few former Zealanders and even some Restonians and X-rians began to express concern over that minority of the Democratonian military which were even killing unarmed X-rians in the occupied part of X-ria. Things were obviously going to get even more and more dangerous as new and more destructive technologies and weapons were invented and any peaceful outcome seemed less and less likely!

That is, until twenty years and countless lives lost later, yet another large island, slightly further away, finally discovered the Island of Historia and The Island Restonia! For on that island, New India, lived a wise man who was their democratically elected leader and knowing that he could use his islands vast wealth and resources for good began to try to point out to all parties concerned just how dangerous the situation was. But the Restonians, who had profited, did not care to take the warning seriously enough, and they argued that if New India wanted to really help they should give a piece of their own island to the non X-rian Historians, especially to the Democratonians! But by now the Democratonians had suffered too much injustice and would never agree to anyone else running their affairs! Even if the New Indians were able to give a part of their island to the Democratonians, which they were not, the Democratonians had a deep historic connection to their land and that combined with their fear of having to rely on outsiders made such a proposition pointless! Thus, because of these very complicated entangled interests and constant half-truths and even outright lies, a situation arose where the Restonian majority actually began to hate the Democratonians, even as they were themselves not fanatics and would never agree to have the X-rians living next to them! Fortunately for the Democratonians and Athenians of Historia Island a growing number of X-rians were also seeking to live in true democratic and non-fanatic communities within X-ria, but these efforts were violently squashed by most X-rian clan leaders. Most but not all! Another important factor was that many of the X-rians living under Democratonian occupation were actually becoming more interested in Democratonian social ideals and the freedom offered by such, such that the majority of X-rians were no longer really interested in their welfare and yet were more than willing to help incite conflict between occupied and occupier, and to provide the means, in effect the weapons, to keep the conflict going on and on and on! And even in Democratonia there emerged a few corrupt and unethical leaders who abused their positions of authority and who understood that their own ability to profit financially from the continuation of the conflict was to insure that the conflict would continue!!!

Still, the problem was that a new and most terrifying weapon, based on parabolic mirrors and the rays of The Sun was about to make the whole mess even more dangerous for all three islands! The Democratonians managed to invent this Sun Ray weapon, but the Restonians were soon able to invent their own version, which they sold to one of the X-rian clans! The New Indians were now forced to make their own Sun Ray weapon and soon enough this super weapon was in the hands of all sides. But to make matters worse it was discovered that an X-rian group of ultra-fanatics were making efforts to get the biological weaponry developed by the Restonians and the New Indians, with which they would be able to unleash utter chaos!

End Of Story -Sort Of

Now, if you do not see the real story behind this fictional story then you are probably not as well educated, informed and enlightened as you thought you were!

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