How does a group foundedwith the goal to do good works wind up as a vehicle for murder and pillage? Howdo WE wind up enthusiastically blowing the legs off the children of storekeepers and taxi drivers we have never even met, in defiance of our cherishedbeliefs and of a God who specifically told us to knock it off on a number ofoccasions? Are we unworthy of the epithet "sapiens?" or are we justtripped up by something around which we only need to wrap our wits?
How does a group founded with the goal to do good works wind up as avehicle for murder and pillage?
To sum it up in a nutshell, it goes like this:
A group is founded with some good intention or other and a policy builtaround that good intention. The basic purpose and policy drive its actions.It's a good group, people of good will like it and join it. It's quite well runso it prospers and gains influence.
The vast majority of human being are sane (i.e., honest and constructive inmotivation). They tend to get along and where they form the policy-makingbodies of groups or set the group agenda, such groups tend to stay more or lesson the rails of their original good intentions.
A small minority of human beings are not sane.They are destructive inintent, even though that intent is often masked.
By "masked" I mean that there is a disparity between what they SAYand what they DO and they will claim the most noble motives while committingthe most heinous acts.This confuses honest men of good will who, being of goodwill, are naturally generous in their opinion of their fellows and assume alltheir fellows are of good will also. They are consequently often slow to twigwhat they are actually looking at when they see criminals at work (dead bodiesin the streets, cities on fire, children with limbs blown off, little thingslike that.).
The insane minority are a liability to have around and overtly or covertlytend to mess things up for the sane majority. They are, in other words,criminal.
The criminal minority, being criminal, do not baulk at deceit, or theft orworse. They too assume that others are of similar inclination to themselves andconceive of their fellows as untrustworthy and dangerous.
When an honest group prospers and gains influence, the criminal is attractedto it for the opportunities it presents to carry out criminal works such as a.)get rich without the inconvenience of having to earn it b.) become powerful;c.) inhibit, restrict or destroy others.
That group might be a religion, a political group, a government, policeforce and so forth. If devious and clever enough, the criminal can pull off hisprimary objective: the achievement of a powerful and influential positionwithin the group. He then has the resources and channels of influence of thegroup at his disposal for the achievement of his own nefarious goals.
This does not mean that all men in powerful positions are criminals, themajority are not. However, those positions are flames to a moth and where acriminal personality does get himself into such a position, the rest ofhumanity is in trouble. The Spanish Inquisition is one primary example. I'msure you can think of plenty of contemporary examples.
Once in influential positions, the criminal can strengthen his own positionand weaken those of more decently motivated men. He is not hampered by qualmsabout Truth, Honesty or the need to respect the rights of others.
When a criminal or group of criminals gain control of the executive body ofa group and are able to alter or reinterpret its policies ("What Jesusreally meant when he said love thy neighbour was......") and dictate itsactions, the group will then act as a criminal group. The group becomes acriminal group even though the majority of its members are sane men and NOTcriminal.
The criminals that have seized control of the group's agenda engage in allmanner of deceit, false reports, and reinterpretations of original policy tojustify whatever criminal enterprise they now wish the group to engage in, suchas the murder of "unbelievers" and seizure of their property, theinvasion of a foreign country to nick its gold/ food/women/oil etc.
Original policy and the original founding spirit of the group becomereinterpreted, explained away, edited out of the scriptures, obscured bygobbledygook, taken out of context and what-have-you.
The sane members of the group become very confused and start to feel a bitbatty themselves.
The sane man finds himself, without quite ever understanding how it ended upthat way, in a war where he is expected to kill other human beings he has nevermet in the name of a god who told him repeatedly (or so he thought) not tokill.
Summary
Where a group has moved away from its original ethos and towards a moreviolent, covetous or morally lax position, you know that criminals have movedin on and suborned its policy-making, agenda-setting bodies.
A handful of criminals can thus wind up controlling a nation of millions ofhonest people. Such a nation will engage in criminal acts such as murder andmayhem that are normally anathema to the basic social instincts, mores and customsof the majority of its members.
Thus a group can act insane when the vast majority of its members are sane.It can act criminal even though most of its members are honest people. It canengage in mass slaughter even though the majority of its people would not somuch as kick a dog.
Thus humanity as a whole can appear insane even while the vast majority ofhuman beings are sane.
Having found themselves party to acts they know are wrong, good men begin tofeel degraded. The nation or race loses pride in itself and begins to decay.
Humanity is not bestial, savage or criminal. But a small minority of itsmembers are. Man's weakness lies in his inability to detect and keep from powerthat small minority.
And herein lies an answer to war and to the instability and short-livednature of civilizations
