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Before the crusaders and the period of medieval barbarism and megalomania the center of our civilization was placed in Byzantium and the lands of the Arab Caliphates. This was the period when a horde of crudely racist super-vandals carved out a bizarre trail of pillage, plunder and murder in which soldiers were burnt to death in their armor, some their entrails scorched out, others with their head and shoulders burnt off, making it possible to look down into the bulk of the breast and there take in an anatomy of the secrets of nature - dead men and horses, their bodies full of arrows.
It seems that aggression and violence are innate attributes of homo sapiens and largely irremovable. We have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent that we would have no difficulty exterminating one another to the last wo/man and child if necessary. The real solution to this problem lies in the minds of wo/men. However, it must be noted that human beings are not, and never have been, born aggressive, but learn it as a response to circumstances.
Generations
of wo/men have argued that the appropriate solution to human violence is
to channel innate aggression into cerebral or physical activities such
as sports and games. Chess being a game admonishes us to come with no
other weapon than that of an approving conscience.
It
educates individuals to see themselves as members, not of a tribe of
white wo/men or black who invent tribal prejudice, fear and suspicion of
alien race, culture, religion and ideas, which draw wo/men, as members
of a herd or mob to perform acts of collective lunacy which most of
them, as reasonable individuals sitting quietly at home with their
families would concede as being without sense or justice.
The
invention of a common enemy reinforces a tribe’s sense of unity, hence
wo/men kill one another without knowing why. They kill because of a
cultivated mob conviction.
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