Sorry for not getting back to you sooner, but I was down in Ethiopia and Somalia where internet access is not quite what it is in the States or Europe. Thank you very much for your comment – always a pleasure to receive quality comments…

I’m afraid that I have to agree with you in that there is an inherent predisposition in humanity for this type of behavior. One only need examine an event like the Stanford prison experiment to see the capacity of virtually anyone to turn into a monster. I’m sure one could debate whether this potential within us is environmental or has an evolutionary/biological explanation, but that this potential is present within us, I have no doubt.

The Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge and Rwanda are really in the big leagues of mass killings, but even in the past few years we have seen examples of ethnic cleansing that if they do not deserve the full “genocide” label, certainly flirt with it – Albanians versus Serbs in Kosovo, everyone versus everyone in Iraq, Christians versus Muslims versus tribal rebels in Sudan, a continuation of the Tutsi versus Hutu conflict in the eastern Congo (with the Lord’s Resistance Army mixed in), etc.

So, it is not as if one can claim that these atrocities are something we have outgrown or that they are a consequence of the Cold War or some other such incomplete explanation.

And given your knowledge of history, I obviously do not need to support your argument with the countless examples from our past.

Your observation about the frequency and scale of mass killings since the late 1800s was intriguing to me. One possible explanation is that population density and technology have made the killing easier and the mass media has made us more aware of the killing? For example: Imagine if the various campaigns of the Crusades had been televised and had involved the modern technology of war alongside the population densities of that region of the world present today.

I am a high school history teacher. I was teaching history at the time of this massacre. We, as a class, analyzed this event in great detail, the horror of it all not missed, to try to understand better human behavior and how this behavior has minifested itself through history…particularly in the time period between the late 1800′s to the present. A cliche question we examined was the result of the Jewish Holocaust: “could it happen again?” On the basis of what happened in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and then again in Rwanda, the obvious answer is yes, absolutely. Regardless of how sophisticated a society may be, if the circumstances are right, any group has the capacity to do what was done in Rwanda to the Tutsis.

In my opinion, it is part of human nature to do unspeakable atrocities like this.