Murakami on "Us versus them"

I am currently reading "Underground" (Vintage 2000), a non-fiction piece by Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, which tackles the actual events and aftermath of the Tokyo subway gassing on 20 March 1995 (The title would be italicized if I had that option on Blogger). If you haven't yet read anything by him, you should. This particular book is filled with dozens of personal accounts of the sarin poisoning by those victims that Murakami could track down, and who would agree to be interviewed. He also offers a personal analysis on the Japanese collective psyche and the affect that the gassing has had psychologically.

Interestingly, to me anyway, he offers a critique of the "Us versus them" mentality that I addressed just last night. The context is somewhat different, but he comments on the effects of a horrifying, violent experience on a social conscience, and the role the media plays.

Murakami writes:

"High-flown excesses aside, the polemic put forth by the media was quite straight-forward in structure. To them, the moral principle at stake in the gas attack was all too clear: 'good' versus 'evil', 'sanity' versus 'madness', 'health' versus 'disease'. It was an obvious exercise in opposites...

"Thus, to a greater or lesser degree, people all jumped onto the 'right', 'sane', 'normal' bandwagon. There was nothing complicated about it. That is, placed alongside the likes of Shoko Asahara and the Aum cult, compared to the deeds they had done, the overwhelming majority of Japanese were indeed 'right', 'sane' and 'healthy'. It could hardly have been a more open-and-shut case. The media merely played along with this consensus and accelerated its force." (page 196)

He continues:

"If we are to learn anything from this tragic event, we must look at what happened all over again, from different angles, in different ways. Something tells me things will only get worse if we don't wash it out of our metabolism. It's all too easy to say 'Aum was evil.' Nor does saying 'This had nothing to do with 'evil' or 'insanity' prove anything either. YET THE SPELL CAST BY THESE PHRASES IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO BREAK, THE WHOLE EMOTIONALLY CHARGED 'US' VERSUS 'THEM' VOCABULARY HAS BEEN DONE TO DEATH.

"No, what we need, it seems to me, are words coming from another direction, new words for a new narrative. Another narrative to purify this narrative." (page 197)

[I have capitalized that sentence for emphasis.]

There has always been hatred and violence, and--depending on your definition--terrorism. That is not to say that there has to be. But where has all the finger pointing and name-calling gotten us? Have things gotten better, or are they getting worse?

For me it comes down to this: Do we choose to believe that people are inherently evil, or do we attempt to identify and rectify an environment that creates and encourages violent behavior motivated by hate?

(That's right, ladies and gentlemen, I have returned to that old "nature or nurture" cliche. Perhaps things become cliche because there is some truth to them.)