Sometimes eating another man's heart is just a form of expression

There is a video that has been making the rounds for the last few weeks of a Syrian rebel commander tearing the heart out of a dead government soldier, showing the heart for the camera, tearing a bite out of the heart, and swallowing.

The rebels were supposed to be the good side. When the war started, western audiences found themselves sympathizing with the rebels, who were perceived to be fighting against a government that tortured, shot at, shelled, and used nerve gas against its own people with impunity. As the war carried on, a small but growing number of Middle East watchers began to note a shift in rebel forces from moderate or secular fighters to extreme Sunni radicals, as foreign fighters, many linked to al-Qaeda, joined the rebels, recruited in refugee camps, and forced people into their ranks at gunpoint.

The video of a man eating the heart of a rebel is shocking, but it does not even come close to being among the worst atrocities committed by both sides in this war. Mass executions, rape, torture, forced conversions, and the use of chemical weapons (and some fear that biological weapons may also have been introduced) runs rampant.

The war in Syria is not the most brutal of the wars that have occurred in the last few decades. Wars in Liberia, the Congo, Somalia, Rwanda, Chechnya, and Algeria, among others, rival or even surpass the Syrian Civil War in terms of brutality. What makes this one unique though (although Algeria may fit into this category as well) is that Syria was not some uncivilized third world nation where cannibalism and murder was just a way of life. Syria lived under a brutal authoritarian regime, but after the crackdowns in Hama in 1982, Syria actually emerged as a quite civilized and safe country, provided you didn't act against the Assad regime.

Under this backdrop, I think that it is important to ask what it says about humanity that a civilized and cultured country, thrown into a violent and unstable situation, can produce such terrible atrocities. After the second World War, the “civilized” world said never again-- never again would we let the highest points of human culture and existence descend into such chaos and such madness. Never again would those who were accustomed to living in the safety and security of a modern society find themselves in the middle of a war zone. Never again would the advanced institutions that allow a society to thrive be allowed to disintegrate into violence. We said never again to a lot of things, yet here we are. The institutions created to prevent this, the liberal values that we all claim to hold, the supposed authority of the United Nations and the International Criminal Court, none of it has prevented a war where ordinary men, women, and children were turned into killers, murderers, rapists, and torturers, as well as refugees, nerve gas victims, and future PTSD patients.

What does it say about us as a species, that a once civilized man found it in himself to tear the heart out of a fellow human, and then to eat it? A common theme that many of our texts and class discussions have touched upon is about how we eat carcasses for sustenance, and how we need to delegitimize the lives of the dead animals to do so. Usually though, we do it because at some level it is necessary. It is simply impractical (and downright dangerous) to try to wean 7 billion people off of meat, so no matter how many sound arguments exist in favor of vegetarianism, the meat industry will be thriving for centuries to come. Eating meat for sustenance as if you weren't eating the dead body of a fellow being does require some mental gymnastics, but it will be a normal part of society for some time to come.

Cannibalism though, really exists on a different level. It is one thing to say that cannibalism makes sense in extreme situations-- when the alternative is starvation, or in a primitive society that believes in ritual cannibalism for religious purposes. What makes less sense, is the idea of cannibalism for no purpose-- just for the sake of it. The Syrian rebel commander who eats the heart is not doing so because he needs the food, or because he believes that it will somehow aid him in a supernatural way. He does it to make a point. He does it because sometimes, violence isn't a means to an end, but an end in itself. Violence can be as expressive of one's feelings and urges as music, art, or writing can be.

While cannibalism in the animal kingdom is fairly rare, in a way this instance of cannibalism is a reminder of where we came from. It is a reminder that no matter how we fashion ourselves as human beings, no matter how we try to separate ourselves from the animal kingdom, it is where we came from, and we have not managed to separate ourselves from our roots anywhere but our own intellectual retentions. It is a reminder that the same basic drives that lead a lioness to chase after an antelope, or a baboon to attack another baboon to exert dominance, are still present in all of us. We repress these drives as we go about our day to day lives. Violence has no real use at Bard College, and it is such a social faux pas that if anything, an expression of dominance would lead to ostracization from the greater community.

I must ask all of you though: if some assault rifles and artillery were introduced to your day to day lives, and if suddenly a war broke out that made dead bodies and the sound of gunfire a daily occurrence, how many of you would be able to resist the call to unleash your inner animal drives? How many of you would resist the call to express yourself in previously unknown ways in a new normal that consisted of constant fear and never ending violence? What would it take to turn you into the man who rips another man's heart out and eats it for the camera?

When we watch events go on around the world, we are watching ourselves under distant circumstances. Syrians, Liberians, Chechens, Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Hutus, Tutsis-- these people share 99.9% of our DNA. Biologically, there is almost nothing separating us from them. The only reason why it is us watching them tear their own societies apart on CNN and not the other way around is because we live in a stable society, and they don't. In some of these cases, they were even born in and grew up in a stable and secure society, yet two years of war tore apart the social fabrics that once held them together, and held them up as civilized human beings.

The ongoing civil war in Syria is a reflection of where humanity can end up very quickly when people lose their sense of civilization due to circumstances that they have no control over. Let it be a lesson on how fragile the world that we have built for ourselves is, how precious a society so peaceful and successful that something like a liberal arts degree is both sought after and attainable. Value your privileges, but don't forget how fleeting they may be.