I have been struggling with Louis de Berniere's Birds without Wings. It is not an easy read, but there is much in it that is worthwhile. Pretty story it is not shaping up to be, but rather an epic novel of war and genocide. I came across this explanation of cause, effect and responsibility…… it is a long quote, but I think it gives much to think about at this unsettled time.
Where does it all begin? History has no beginnings, for everything that happens becomes the cause or pretext for what occurs afterwards, and this chain of cause and pretext stretches back to the palaeolithic age, when the first Cain of one tribe murdered the first Abel of another. All war is fratricide, and there is therefore an infinite chain of blame that winds its circuitous route back and forth across the path and under the feet of every people and every nation, so that a people who are the victims of one time become the victimisers a generation later, and newly liberated nations resort immediately to the means of their former oppressors. The triple contagions of nationalism, utopianism and religious absolutism effervesce together into an acid that corrodes the moral metal of a race, and it shamelessly and even proudly performs dees that it would deem vile if they were done by any other.
It makes me think…..when will we ever learn?