Preface

If we are going to move forward together with these shocking stories, what use can we make of them? Can they help us answer questions like this: How do societies turn normal men into monsters? With more focus: What is the individual psychological processes and felt experience of becoming a monster? With yet more focus: Given that these monsters are so often men, what role does gender play in genocidal violence? Here, too, the answers revolve around key paradoxes, including the paradox of evil (Evil is demonic and other; it is also banal and common to us all) and the paradox of agency and responsibility (We are free and self-determining; we are also the products of circumstance).
Zooming back out: How does the outrageous suffering we see affect our comprehensive vision of being in the world, our "big picture" beliefs: our hopes for the human future; our final optimism or pessimism; our thoughts on altruism, transcendence, and even the dvine? Some of the familiar paradoxes here include the paradox of altruism (Altruism involves the sacrifice of our interests to benefit others; it also involves the satisfaction of our interests through benefiting others), the paradox of nihilism (To find our meaning we must face our meaninglessness), and the characteristically Christian version of the paradox of evil (How could God be both omnipotent and good and still permit evil?).
After such cruelty - cruelty that not only shocks our consciences but also destabilizes our understanding of the world - is apology possible? How can individuals or nations expect forgiveness for crimes beyond thinking? And how can they confess truthfully when memory is frail, self-protective, and self-serving, when history itself is tissued with lies? Indeed, what place is there truth at all in war, torture, and confession? Thinking through this range of related questions will require continually returning to be paradox of confession. Confession is a healing cultural form that we need; it is also a potentially damaging one.