'The internal world on the outside.
The genesis of violence and aggression.
No horror you can imagine has not already been done by someone to somebody else. Similarly there is no horror you could perform that has not been enacted in imagination or fantasy by somebody. Man is a dangerous animal. In this talk I describe the complicated interplay between the atrocities of the internal world and the expression of violence and aggression in external reality. What factors contribute to ordinary everyday violence by young people in our streets or to the pursuit of war by national leaders? .
To tell you the truth I had great difficulty knowing where to begin this project. How can one talk about the roots of violence and aggression in this connection, at Oswiecim/Auschwitz, without looking at the individual, the group or mob and at a Meta level, the leadership and administration of states and communities. And yet also how can we extract something meaningful from such a broad approach.
So to help me think of this whole area, to help me get some structure I developed these four examples, these four short examples. .
The first example is someone I work with, a young man of 28, Bill. The offences for which he is in prison are relatively slight, burglary but he has a long history of offences of robbery and violence from the age of about thirteen. He came to my notice because there was concern about his professed membership of certain neo fascist groups and his espousal of racist philosophy.
The second incident occurred quite recently on a Saturday evening in Oxford. I had just parked my car and was walking the short distance to the cinema I intended to visit. On the way I passed four young men. They were standing on one side of the road looking, in an agitated manner, at a Rolls Royce Motor car on the other side of the road. As I cautiously passed by I heard one of them say how about if we put a fucking big scratch along every surface.