Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae

www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/11/un-myanmars-treatment-of-rohingya-textbook-example-of-ethnic-cleansing

When even Aung San Suu Kyi can't or won't speak out against this some folk wonder why some of us get a bit picky about even casual stereotyping. Personally, I monitor my own responses to things, trying to make sure they fit in with my values, not my prejudices. It doesn't always work, obviously, because apart from being a self-righteous prig, I'm also human; frail in courage, and aware of my frailty.

Good ol' Desmond Tutu, an honourable and decent chap, with a track record of burying his personal prejudices in favour of his values and beliefs, has actually written to Aung San Suu Kyi urging her to remember her heroism, and rekindle it in the cause of justice.

Now, the matter may appear to be complicated by the fact that the Rohingya are Muslim, and a number of generations previous hailed from Bengal. And the people of Myanmar are Buddhists, that most peaceful of religions. Also, the Bengalis were invited to what was then Burma by the British Empire, as the Empire also relocated many thousands of Indians throughout the world. (Which may be why the Indians were expelled from various countries in Africa, as the African nations adopted the fasces of nationalism in their quest for national identity. Such governments evidently so worried about Indian domination of business and commerce, that mere decades down the line they were happy to sell their natural resources to China for infrastructure development. It's almost like the British building the railways in India, but cleverer.)

Be that as it may, what do the panel think about those nice peaceful Buddhists committing acts of ethnic cleansing against those awful Muslim chaps? And is it time to round up all the Nobel peace prize winners and jail them, just on sus, of course, having profiled the observable criminal acts committed by some of the winners since Kissinger? Of course these are the exceptions; most peace prizes going to spectacularly great-souled folk like Malala Yousafzai or Desmond Tutu. But until recently I would have tried to shoehorn Aung San Suu Kyi into that group.

And in some respects this is why we monitor ourselves and each other as part of a community; to prevent ourselves from succumbing to our baser natures. Else we would rend and slash and slay our way though our short lives on our path to painful death.

Other people may be hell, as Sartre opined, but they sure as hell civilise us.