The New Neo

I have decided not to watch or read the descriptions of atrocities that occurred on October 7. Nevertheless I come across headlines, I hear references, and so I actually know quite a bit about what happened. It is so terrible, so horrific, so sadistic, so atavistic, that the mind recoils. And yet it happened – and it happened in many cases to children, the most innocent of all.

So I’ll just link to this post at Legal Insurrection, which contains many of the grisly details, as well as this from Caroline Glick about both the atrocities and the widespread denial from Hamas-sympathizers. Consider yourself warned.

I’ve never been able to watch horror films, either, I think because of things I had read as a child that affected me so deeply that I became unable to deny what human beings can do to each other. I couldn’t keep what I saw on the screen in the realm of “just a movie.”

I can remember some of those things I read or saw as a young child. Holocaust photos, of course, which I came across at about the age of seven in a large book at a friend’s house. Another source was Greek mythology. I no longer remember the story, but I was about six and it had to do with soldiers surrendering and then being tortured and ultimately killed in ways I’ll not go into here. Another Greek mythology source was this tale, which I probably came across at around nine years old. I remember feeling as though I might throw up. I put the book down and didn’t pick it up again for a long time.

Another story that came along a little later – perhaps I was ten – was during a period when I read books about English royalty. Henry VIII’s two beheaded wives, of course, but most of all Lady Jane Grey. Her beheading at the age of 17 troubled me immensely. I didn’t care what she’d done; her death absolutely horrified me.

And so on and so forth into man’s humanity to man. I’ve had Catholic friends tell me they had similar nightmares when reading of the lives of various martyrs.

I simply could not understand, and still cannot understand, wanting to watch a horror movie as well.

So on a certain level the events of October 7 simply represent an old old story. As Sarah Hoyt writes:

Time and again when reading history, we come across some horrible act of violence, some terrible event, and historians from the safety of their offices and the height of their theories ask how this was possible? How could humans do this beastly thing? How is it even possible that civilized man, civilized, I say, could do this or that or the other.

The truth is that humans, despite all our striving to do better, are creatures where our violence and the ability to dream up and execute horrible atrocities are as much part of us are our dreams, our moral thinking, our thirst for knowledge and our theories. …

Humans have, with great effort, with discipline, with careful raising of their children and with philosophies that value life — be they Judeo Christianity or our national creed — raised themselves above the petty cruelty, the wanton sadism of the not-so-noble savage. We can, in places, in times, given enough abundance, enough time, enough luck, and enough investment in certain ways of living, raise ourselves above creatures that kill innocent women and children. We can even rise above creatures that make the bodies of horses and young men into art installations.

The beast inside isn’t gone. It’s not vanquished. It’s quiet. And kept quiet by ideals and thoughts, by our front brain repressing the impulses of beast.

However, this is never universal. This is never everywhere. …

But when the culture goes sour, when savagery is encouraged and when it’s believed a source of strength, and mindless violence against others is treated as proof of worthiness and power, be it in the Gaza strip or amid our ante-fa, it must be met.

There must be no excuses. There must be no “more sinned against than sinning.” There must be no excuses.

Because if the civilized won’t stand for civilization, savagery wins.

We must face evil and not deny its existence if we are ever to fight it.

NOTE: Here’s the Jewish approach to what it calls “the evil inclination”:

‘The good inclination and the evil inclination.’ In the typical Rabbinic doctrine, with far-reaching consequences in Jewish religious thought, every human being has two inclinations or instincts, one pulling upwards, the other downwards. These are the ‘good inclination’—yetzer ha-tov—and the ‘evil inclination’—yetzer ha-ra. The ‘evil inclination’ is frequently identified in the Rabbinic literature and elsewhere with the sex instinct but the term also denotes physical appetites in general, aggressive emotions, and unbridled ambition. Although it is called the ‘evil inclination’, because it can easily lead to wrongdoing, it really denotes more the propensity towards evil rather than something evil in itself. Indeed, in the Rabbinic scheme, the ‘evil inclination’ provides human life with its driving power and as such is essential to human life. As a well-known Midrash (Genesis Rabbah 9: 7) puts it, were it not for the ‘evil inclination’ no one would build a house or have children or engage in commerce. This is why, according to the Midrash, Scripture says: ‘And God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good’ (Genesis 1: 31). ‘Good’ refers to the ‘good inclination’, ‘very good’ to the ‘evil inclination’. It is not too far-fetched to read into this homily the idea that life without the driving force of the ‘evil inclination’ would no doubt still be good but it would be a colourless, uncreative, pallid kind of good. That which makes life ‘very good’ is the human capacity to struggle against the environment and this is impossible without egotistic as well as altruistic, aggressive as well as peaceful, instincts. …

The Rabbinic view is, then, realistic. Human beings are engaged in a constant struggle against their propensity for evil but if they so desire they can keep it under control. The means of control are provided by the Torah and the precepts. …

It follows that for the Rabbis the struggle against the ‘evil inclination’ is never-ending in this life.