In the early 90’s, I had the great privilege to be able to spend half a year as an exchange student in wonderful Dublin [1]. Once in a while my friend and I were invited to an Irish family for dinner. We always enjoyed these invitations tremendously. The reason for this was - as you might have already guessed - rather not the really well cooked potatoes we were usually served, but the overwhelming kindness and generosity of our hosts.
Of course I knew about „the Troubles“, the Irish conflict. And I always wondered: how was it possible that exactly these exceptionally kind people were stuck in a seemingly endless violent conflict.
I used to meet my Swiss girlfriend in London (= cheap flight for both of us) during holidays whenever possible. Therefore I got a bit familiar with the British culture too during my exchange semester.
And at one of these invitations by an Irish family, I made the serious mistake to mention my confusing perception, that Irish and British culture seemed to be surprisingly similar. And a few seconds later I had my first encounter with the other side of the Irish soul: all the Irish on the table protested angrily, insisting that they shared absolutely nothing with the detested enemy. And I saw some hatred in their eyes which really scared me.
I was utterly confused.
And I decided - to get a more complete picture of Ireland - to visit Belfast too.
I arrived before 18:00 and checked into my hotel. But it was too early to go to bed. So I decided to stroll a bit through the city by foot (one of my most favorite activities when traveling).
But my excursion did not last long: after about five minutes walking on completely empty streets, I was sent back to my hotel room by a patrol of armed soldiers at gun-point. I had not been aware of the fact that a curfew was in place.
The next morning I decided to walk through the city centre. The sight was almost normal: lot’s of men, women and couples with shopping bags. But once in a while a patrol of soldiers disturbed this peaceful picture: they were walking in battle formation: separated by large distances, walking very close to the house walls and always checking the opposite row of houses, always the finger on the trigger of their assault rifles which were pointing to the other side of the street.
It was like if somebody had made a crazy art movie by overlaying two movies with mutually exclusive content.
I was still confused. Maybe confused on a slightly higher level, but still very confused.
So I started to read. I was told years before that the conflict was raging between catholics and protestants. But then I soon learned that the conflict was actually about much more worldly things. It was ultimately a long (!) story about suppression, segregation and cruelty.
So what then was the true role of religion in this conflict? Maybe it was just a coincidence that religion, which - of course - separated the two groups with different interests very well, was an ideal marker for group belonging. This might have, in a self reinforcing loop, strengthened the importance of religion.
But I believe there is another - maybe surprising - reason, why religion was so important. One which is easily overlooked because most people no longer believe in the good within humankind.
But I actually do. And I have also experienced it from so many Irish people. And if people are good (please assume too it’s true for now or read this blog post) and - at the same time - feel the need to kill their neighbor to survive, they have a serious problem. Nobody likes to harm or kill others. But the forgiveness - or even approval - of God might make things considerably easier.
Therefore it’s not religion which makes people aggressive, but it is - quite the other way round - an increasing need for aggression which is looking for emotional support from religion. And people are choosing exactly those parts of their religion (or religious movement) which can be perverted most easily for this purpose. No matter how much other, contradicting material is present in the religious text, a few lines - words of God after all - approving the atrocities are all that’s needed.
But it would be foolish to conclude that these religious texts support violence intrinsically. To give an example of three competing religions living mostly peacefully together: during the Moorish rule over south of Spain, christian and jewish citizens could often acquire considerable wealth and attain positions of high status in society.
Therefore, to say that we have a global problem with „violent religions“ is a very dangerous mistake. It’s dangerous because it suggests that we understand the root cause of the problem when we actually don’t.
“I think it's much more safe to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.” ― Me (after a famous quote by Richard Feynman)
But there are reasons why we stick so desperately to this simple views of good and evil. We have learned that every movie, every book, needs a hero and a villain. So, if some violence happens, there must be always a good guy (we usually choose the victim for this role) and the bad guy (often the winner of the first confrontation or the guy with the better initial position).
But it becomes more and more obvious that this simple model is ridiculously inadequate: no, there are definitely no heroes anymore in the Israel-Gaza war! Unless you live in a truth-proof propaganda bubble, you can easily find plenty of evidence for an abundance of horrible atrocities committed by both sides.
But: if there is no good side anymore, isn’t our situation completely hopeless?
No! Because if there are no good guys anymore, then this does not mean that everybody must be evil! It only means that we are all just humans. But it also means - and this is the important part - that there’s obviously something going terribly wrong with all of us.
And therefore: as long as we are delirious in silly dreams of our „heroes“ winning the war (and that all will be good again after their glorious victory), there is indeed absolutely no hope. Things can - and will - only get much worse.
Hope will reappear on the very day we realize that the horrors we witness every day on social media are not caused by bad people, but simply by processes we don’t understand yet (but could probably be understood - and consequently mitigated or even eliminated - if we made suitable efforts).
[1] I went to an English course there too (thank you UCD!). But unfortunately I had a bad hangover from Paddy’s Whiskey on the day punctuation rules were discussed.
Image: made by author