We in the West seem to have this idea that our society, though it is a violent one, nevertheless in general abhors violence. But if that were true, how come we have so much of it?
I think the opposite is the case: our society, though it claims to abhor violence, glorifies it. It is just that we are perhaps more subtle about it than were societies in former times.
Take, for example, our attachment to the idea of the survival of the fittest. According to Sumner, the Yale economist, for example, "millionaires are a product of natural selection, they may fairly be regarded as the naturally selected agents of society for certain works". This idea, which is at base a cult of violence, haunts our attitudes and our language. We believe, even if we purport not to, that society flourishes and functions through a fierce struggle between competing individuals, all pursuing their own goals.
How can we break this fascination that we have with what is really a very harmful and destructive idea of what it is to be human? In other words, the question is: how can a fragmented society make itself whole? How can we restore the bonds of union and communion in a culture permeated by possessive individualism and violence?
First we need to recognise our own capacity for violence and take responsibility for it. Violence isn't something that happens out there, in the Middle East, in Eastern Europe, in Northern Ireland, on certain streets, in certain homes. Violence is everywhere and the big acts of violence are simply the cumulative effect of all our violence to each other.
Violence is frequently expressed through the words we use to each other. We don't see our public representatives beating each other up, for example, but when we listen to or read Dail debates we are witnessing a scene where words are used loosely, with little apparent thought for their consequences. It is as if we have forgotten that speaking is also a moral act which must be undertaken with responsibility. It is as if we have lost the belief that words really show things as they are.
OUR words are often heavy with arrogance, and that is particularly true for political and religious institutions. What we need to build is a society that reveres language, but this requires a humility before the truth of the other person. Taking responsibility for language is intrinsically ethical.
It is only within such a society, where language is revered and used responsibly, that true forgiveness can be found, and a violent society can only be healed and made whole where there is repentance and forgiveness. One of the problems with this idea is that Christianity - in particular Catholicism - has been obsessed with guilt, and this unhealthy obsession has damaged so many people in the past that there is now a deep resistance to the idea of repentance. But just because repentance has been misused and misrepresented doesn't mean the idea should be discarded. It still has value for us, because without repentance there can be no forgiveness.
There is a problem even with the idea of forgiveness. After Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Kosovo, Omagh, Enniskillen, it is not surprising that people are hesitant about this. We cannot expect anyone to forget such horrors. And yet it is in these very extreme situations that we find the most startling examples of people who have not forgotten but who have been able to forgive. South Africa, for example, uniquely among countries recovering from deep divisions and decades of violence, offered the perpetrators of crime an opportunity to openly repent while at the same time allowing the victims to be heard and to seek reparation. In this way a weak and broken country became a light of hope to the rest of the world.
Our own society at the moment is obsessed with self-righteousness. We are concerned with denunciations, accusations, cynicism, jealousy, blaming, naming and shaming. Of course there are many, many people among us who have been wounded, abused and violated, people who have suffered violence in their families, in religious institutions, at the hands of terrorists or on the streets. Their pain is devastating, and their anger is justified. Forgiveness may seem too much to ask of them right now; even to suggest it may seem to trivialise the intensity of their hurt. The only appropriate action in such cases may be to drive out the perpetrator to protect the victim, and to see that justice is done.
But justice is one thing, and mercilessness is another, and it is mercilessness we are seeing in this society. Mercilessness and self-righteousness can no more lead to wholeness than can violence and abuse.
The deepest truth of our human nature is not that we are greedy and selfish and violent but that we long for peace and for community. But we can only attain this when we realise the good we seek is not our own private satisfaction but the common good. And the route of forgiveness is the route that will lead us out of our introverted little groups, away from the delusion of excessive individualism and violence into a more enlightened, just and peace-filled society.
John Waters returns from leave next week