It is of critical importance to recognise that for people who regard themselves as having no recourse to better their lives, the exercise of violence proves an intoxicating surrogate. Shame - despite its origins in the self - is an excruciatingly public emotion. To feel it is to feel oneself a reprobate. Overcompensation through personal achievement is not an option. When a person feels judged - hounded - by the jury that is public opinion, the only way to exorcise that feeling is to eliminate the jury altogether. In the mind of the perpetrator, transferring one’s own suffering onto another human being becomes a viable - almost noble - moral calculus, turning the master-slave dialectic on its head.

This individualisation of trauma is typical of medical model thinking, but its unfortunate consequence is that our society is disinclined to regard the victims of structural violence as being the victims of trauma. Accordingly, the empathy we ordinarily show survivors of (individual) traumas is withheld from those who are victims of social trauma. It is no wonder, then, that we think nothing of confining offenders with the most traumatic social histories to the most traumatising places on earth.

Often in later years I heard men and women say that ‘people get what they deserve,’ and always my mind has swept back to our canyon-like existence. ‘Deserve’ is the word which the possessors use as a weapon against those they dispossess. The darkness of not-knowing—who can realize what that means unless he has lived through it! Those who speak of ‘deserving people’ are the most ignorant of all. Because the world of knowledge was far removed from us, we in our canyon reacted instead of thinking.

There are points in the process of becoming a chronic victim when people realize they’re lying to themselves. They realize the story they’re telling themselves isn’t quite true. They know they’re responsible. But facing reality and taking responsibility is hard. It’s uncomfortable. It’s so much easier to hide and to blame other people, circumstances, or luck.

That is, whereas our attitudes are often weak drivers of our behavior, our behavior is often a strong driver of our attitudes— our attitudes often change to fit or justify how we behave more than they cause behavior in the first place. For example, if we live segregated lives— the behavior— then prejudicial attitudes will likely arise to justify that segregation. So if building trust and reducing churn enables people to be comfortable with each other in diverse settings— think of the parents and teacher in the opening vignette— the prejudices that justified their separation may fade, replaced by attitudes that justify their coming together.