Boubacar Boris Diop’s riveting account of the 1994 Rwandan genocide should give pause to anyone tempted to place too much stock in humankind’s ability to keep the peace.  Tensions between two ethnic groups, the Tutsis and the Hutu, reached a tipping point, and for a span of around one-hundred days, members of the Tutsi tribe butchered the Hutu by the thousands.  It was, note some, as if the devil were on a rampage in the broad daylight.  The slaughter was extensive and vicious.  The machete was the weapon of choice. 

Diop’s book recounts the story of Cornelius Uvimana, a history teacher, who returns to Rwanda after working abroad to wrestle with the loss of his entire family to Hutu militia.  In many ways, the book is a meditation on the darkest impulses of humankind.  The Hutus regarded the Tutsis as cockroaches deserving to be wiped off the face of the earth.  They surely tried.  Bloodied bodies lay strewn about every corner of the country.  What Uvimana eventually comes to believe is that only our humanity can save us and that it his mission to bear witness to the massive atrocity that was the Tutsi genocide.  He will not let the world forget.  He would be the voice of the voiceless dead. 

Years ago, I assigned Murambi, The Book of Bones to an honors class and was struck by how the exchange of ideas evolved.  Yes, there were those who grieved over the events that took place between April and July of 1994 in a country located in central Africa; however, there was one student who shared with the class a startling idea.  If it is simply a matter of truth that we as a species are capable of such sudden brutality, then we should be resigned to that fact. That is who we are: ugly, nasty, cruel but undeniably human. What is more, according to this rubric, such acts of brutality can even be justified, rape included. If the objective is total annihilation, then, yes, the sexual violation of others is justified.  The Hutus were effective.  Why should they be blamed for their success? 

The student was clearly taking a pragmatic approach, sacrificing morality along the way. Diop’s appeal to humanity was naive. Did he not know what happened in the camps in Nazi-occupied Europe, the gulags in Soviet Russia, the killing fields in Cambodia?  Violence is a part of our collective DNA.  Why deny it?  To be sure, leaning into it could reveal more about who we are a species actually are. Aren’t we after the truth?  Isn’t that what it means to be educated? Cain killed Abel, after all. 

The current era is one where the very notion of there being an objective truth is coming under fire. This person has this truth; this other person has that truth. We have come to believe that we can imagine whatever we want and then speak it into existence in an instant, making unique realities along the way.  Issues arise, however, when these so-called realities clash, and they always will. Relativism is the secret sauce when it comes to conflict; indeed, it is the very thing that prevents justice from being served because everybody has their own measuring stick. What is wrong for him is right for her and on and on down the line. My honors student had his measuring stick for what was right and wrong.  The Hutus had theirs.  And both resulted in the justification of heinous behavior. 

The best way forward?  Clearly, justice is predicated on the rock-solid existence of objective truth.  This is the common measuring stick. This is the way to peace.  Perhaps this is how we recover our common humanity.  We do not build our society on opinion and whim, trend and passing fancy.  Our building blocks must be immutable – lofty, not base.  You see, dear listeners, my student was only partially correct.  Yes, the base instincts exist but so, too, do the noble proclivities – the righteous, the virtuous, the honorable.  We have only to calibrate our lives in such a way that we aim for one end or the other: a low opinion of humankind or a great dream of who we could become.