Tom commented on POV on 03.09.10
Im looking at, and commenting on, the program about Sri Lanka and the experiences of a former Tamil Tiger in the context of my own experiences over this same period of time, that began for me when "Sri Lanka" still meant "Ceylon", a place that my uncle had briefly visited as a minor functionary in the WWIIera US Foreign Service staying just long enough to buy a few star sapphires that he showed us when he got back to Milbank, making him (and me, of course), somewhat conversant on happenings in that part of the world (?). The last half of the twentieth century was everywhere convulsed by Sri Lankas generic nightmare and regardless of where we look, we see the former torture chambers and mass graves of their victims, which gives me an obsessive compulsive inclination to try and figure out why we acted that way and how we can keep from acting that way again. A glance at the map will tell you that Sri Lanka (AKA Ceylon AKA Serendib AKA Taprobane) is an island that has been and always will be strategically important, and will therefore always be of interest to foreigners (with little or no genuine concern for the Sri Lankan people). Sri Lankans should not therefore be quick to completely blame themselves alone for their recent nightmare. It seems to me that the dilemma of the 21st century, especially when the conversation turns to "nation building," is to recognize that, on the one hand, while "multiethnic" INTRA national societies trying to share the same government tend to be politically unstable, making responsible democratic self government difficult if not impossible without real or imagined discrimination and injustice ethnically homogenious nation states, on the other hand, are equally prone to fight with the same neighbors, but do so through INTERnational warfare.. Empires have a vested interest in "divisity through diversity" because by keeping such groups fighting among themselves, they are much easier to control and govern (and, of course, to exploit) from the outside. Either way, domestic tranquility comes at a very high price. It also seems to me that as long as global population continues to increase sixfold or so every century with no guarantee ahead of time that technology and resources can sustain this increase, there can also be no guarantee that potentially dangerous people will not again withdraw into a lunatic world of political violence and ideological fanaticisms based on simplistic perceptions of the causes and cures of social problems, on personal alienation, on religion, on ethnicity etc, and that such nightmares therefore will probably continue to repeat themselves again and again until weapons technology renders the entire planet completely uninhabitable.