Losing our Humanity

The pictures coming out of Bucha are horrendous. They speak of unspeakable acts. And it is likely that similar horrors or worse will become evident in other Ukrainian towns and cities as the Russians are pushed back. What is the purpose of such atrocities and what risks are we running by not doing everything we can to stop these atrocities from continuing?

What is happening is of course nothing new. It is not new to the Russians, as it mirrors their actions in Syria and Chechnya. But it is also not a new military tactic in a multitude of other countries and ancient kingdoms. In addition to the Holocaust, relatively recent history includes genocides in Darfur, Rwanda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Cambodia. Huge numbers also died in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and Stalin’s purges. The American Indians were mercilessly decimated. There is literally an endless supply of atrocities that can be cited. And after each one we say that it won’t happen again, we say that we have grown as a civilization, as a species and we have become better than our history, until it does happen again and much of the world’s population looks away, or makes excuses about how their hands are tied. As we look away or make excuses each of us loses a little piece of our humanity. It is eating me alive.

In Congo, approximately 10 million people were killed when Leopold II, the king of Belgium whose reign began in 1865, sought to plunder the Congo’s resources and enslave the population. And going back further between 1206 CE and 1227 CE, it is estimated that Genghis Khan killed about 40 million people, 10% of the world’s population at the time. Attila the Hun about 800 years earlier killed similar numbers. The atrocities committed then were as brutal as any that can be caused by today’s modern weapons. And more recently in Congo rebels kidnap children from their villages and force them to perform unspeakable acts as a way of increasing loyalty to the rebels, for the acts are so unspeakable that these children feel that they can’t return to “normal” society. They feel that the only place they will be accepted is among the rebels. Similar psychology plays out wherever these acts are carried out.

Many times these atrocities are committed by countries or organizations that have become dominated by strongmen, autocrats, dictators, or kleptocrats who want to line their own pockets with stolen wealth. And by vilifying either groups external to the country (such as Ukrainians) or internal groups and dehumanizing them the attempt is made to blame these “others” for the failures of the leaders and to gather support for atrocities committed in purging them. Not everyone falls for this psychological warfare, hence the brain drain currently underway in Russia, but enough do that we repeat the cycle over and over.

It may be that Russia, knowing that they were going to commit atrocities in Ukraine, even before they invaded, immediately threatened nuclear annihilation for any country that dared to stand in their way. They act like a bully to the rest of the world. And the rest of the world, while helping Ukraine with some weaponry, and accepting refugees, has not yet dared to punch the Russian bully in the nose, making them stop. Our feud is not with the Russian people themselves, for we have to let the majority of the people know that they, under the right circumstances, can find a place back into society. Otherwise, they will simply increase their beliefs in and commitment to the Russian propaganda, for they driven by cognitive dissonance, will feel that they have no choice. Don’t get me wrong, those who committed these atrocities need to face justice, and the WW2 excuse of “I was just following orders” can’t be allowed.

I have no interest in a nuclear exchange with Russia. But when intolerable actions occur, we must take a forceful stand if we are ever going to, in fact, grow as a civilization and make the next autocrat who rises realize that their behavior won’t be tolerated. In this way we may be able to head off the next atrocity before it happens. I am old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. I am old enough to remember how in school, we practiced rapidly moving to the basement and going behind piles of gravel, as though those stones were somehow going to protect us from a nuclear blast. While I have no interest in a nuclear exchange, I also have no interest in standing by and letting others be massacred.

There have been a number of recent leaders who have risen, around the planet, who can best be described as psychopaths. Among their traits are glibness/superficial charm, grandiose sense of self-worth, need for stimulation/proneness to boredom, pathological lying, conning/manipulative, lack of remorse or guilt, shallow affect (i.e., reduced emotional responses), and callous/lack of empathy. A detailed checklist that can be scored can be found at https://psychology-tools.com/test/pcl-22. Pick a leader who you think may be a psychopath and rate their behaviors on the checklist. See how they score.

Unlike many mental illnesses, psychopaths will cause harm not just to themselves, but to others. When they get to positions of power it can be very dangerous. We are now in a dangerous moment. The vast majority of Russians are not psychopaths, even if they have a leader who is. The vast majority of Russians, including senior military commanders want as little to do with a nuclear war as any of us. We have to take stronger actions than we have to date to protect those who need help in protecting themselves, if we are to keep our humanity. It is time to punch the bully in the nose.