Pill Boxes and Sand Bags

Driving in to work this morning I decided to use the Saudi Shams gate to the diplomatic enclave.  We alter our routes for security reasons and it had been a few days since I used that gate.  When I made the last left hand bend before the U-turn at the barricade I saw an unusually long line of cars waiting to enter the enclave.  Usually there is very little traffic at this gate.  Oh well, so I slowed after the U Turn and joined the line.  The school kids were showing up as many local kids go to school on the enclave.  A kid about 5 was trying to kick start a motor bike next to the curb on my left.  I idly looked across the street to my right and studied the housing on the other side of the large wall.  In front of the wall was a sand bag emplacement just past the curve in the road.  As I looked at this structure I remembered all the bunkers and pill boxes that were in Sasebo, Japan when I first lived there.  Those were remnants of WWII.  Gun emplacements to protect the home port of the Japanese Imperial Fleet.  The sand bag structure I was looking at now was built to protect against civil unrest in a city that did not exist when those Japanese pill boxes fell silent. 

This caused me to think about how we treat one another.  Why is violence such a prevalent element in all societies?  I am unaware of any country, culture or religion without violence in its past.  We write books and make movies that have truly frightening villains capable of unspeakable evil.  Perhaps that is one of our downfalls.  We view evil as so distinctly satanic that we miss the point.  Evil and violence are not an abrupt manifestation of the devil.  These things build over time and have seemingly innocent beginnings.  People grow up and are slowly turned into beasts without even recognizing it in themselves.  How else do we account for the imprisonment of the entire Japanese population of the US during WWII or the attempted genocide of European Jews or the current spate of suicide terrorism based on Wahhabis belief’s.  These are not acts carried out by demons from hell.  These are atrocities carried out by normal people.  People just like your friends and neighbors, like you.  It isn’t all that difficult to get a crowd of people excited enough to do something evil while all the same feeling they are on the path of righteousness, that they have good reasons to act as they are.