THE BIGGER PICTURE: There are no "half-human beings" in this world. There is no one who is or was less a human to begin with. No one born anywhere in the world - of any skin colour, religion or cultural background - was conceived a sub-human.
By the time we are born, we are all whole and complete in every way that is human. Even if some societies insist that we are lesser, these are beliefs imposed on us, not true to us.
So how do we explain being forced to imagine the idea that hundreds of children could be held captive and gunned down in their school? As human beings, how can one force another to consider - worse yet, witness and experience - such a reality? Most importantly, how can one bring one's self to formulate the plan, put it into action, or pull the trigger? And how can one live with the memories and loss from it?
We are not born with any instinct or interest in torturing each other. So how does this begin, grow, and even gain momentum in groups? And, this is not the first time this has happened in history.
Our governments would have us believe that the people they are "fighting" - the terrorists - are semi-humans who are inherently evil and must be destroyed. The argument is dressed in well-pressed suits and carefully considered speeches. Still, it resonates a little too close to the propaganda on the other side.
The shared rhetoric of most of our western governments - the apparent "defenders of universal freedoms" - is that they respond in caring, loving ways to all humanity, and, most reluctantly, find themselves having to protect their people against the barbarians on the outside who have not yet evolved enough to see the wisdom of their efforts. Their unwavering image is as "reasonable" citizens wishing to "communicate" but forced to use violence. In reality, these governments are driven by fear and revenge (strangely similar to the groups resisting them).
And they have a lot to fear. If we explore the facts behind the rhetoric, we notice (perhaps remember) that these governments in fact gained their wealth and position through the dehumanisation of those outsiders. They have brutalised at least as many and likely more, as they have had access to institutionalised and "justified" means.
They, too, have tortured children and dislocated entire populations. Their strategies have not been limited to military targets - recall the US dropped atom bombs on two Japanese cities in order to "observe its impact on completely undamaged environments".
They also systematically raped women in Vietnam, and have trained fundamentalist guerrilla groups. British and Russian atrocities abound, as do Dutch, French, German and others. To now sit on the top of the hill and claim to be better human beings than those kicked to the bottom is disingenuous, to say the least.
The smokescreen of benevolent agendas, charity and protection from suffering is keeping us from discovering the real truth. The established pretence furthers the idea that we have "evil enemies" and very little we do will change that. They must be destroyed, and we can delight in the fact that we can now destroy them in mass from further away. Underneath the spin, no one appears to be truly greater or lesser than the other. The other, however, must still stare into the eyes of their victims before they destroy them.
Although it might make us feel better about ourselves in the short term, the current western ideology of superior evolution damages us. We all have the same capacities (expressed with diversity, but profoundly connecting, nonetheless).
Our comfort allows us to forget that humans are not born lesser, but forced to become lesser. It keeps us from fighting to understand the true complexities of our experience, and asking the real question: what turns a human being into a terrorist, be it government-supported or renegade?
No human seeks to destroy until we have been systematically treated as lesser - until we have been brutalised, demeaned and watched those we love be destroyed. It is the experience of cruelty that teaches us to be vicious.
Our country is one where the wounds of violence, both from the establishment and the resistance, are still part of contemporary experience. We hear the relevant governments condemn the resistance as barbaric and animalistic, shielding their own behaviour with the pretence of goodness.
However, until we are willing to recognise the experiences that have pushed some human beings to engage in such devastation - until we stop believing that the distant, sanitised devastation of our governments is less destructive, and find a willingness to hear the credibility of another group's grievances - we will never stop the violence long enough to recover from the loss of our children.
Shalini Sinha is an independent producer and journalist. She is a counsellor on equality issues and has lectured on women's studies in UCD. She presents RTÉ's intercultural programme, Mono.