ABSTRACT
Every person possesses some gauge of self-worth, evaluates himself or herself according to some standard, and has a sense of what makes life meaningful. These forms of self-understanding and appraisal organize day-to-day existence. The ethical flip side of a personal desperation to achieve political goals is the willingness to engage in violence to do so. Arrogance that asserts that “alone know the way to a society of justice, freedom and human fulfillment” paves the way for intimidation, deceit, humiliation of opponents, ostracism of those who disagree with the movement, needless splitting of political movements over small differences, and a painful inability to listen to anyone other. Ethnic or national strife has always contained a kind of irrationality: all those resources wasted, all those precious lives lost. Beyond the traumas of ethnic or national conflict, there are even more extreme social events that seem animated by a kind of collective madness.
