By INYOURFACENEWYORKER
Updated: Tue, 04 Oct 2011 09:08:36 UTC

I recently read Peter Balakian's book Black Dog of Fate, a memoir in which the author uncovers his Armenian past and discovers what happened to his family in the Armenian Genocide. I cringed at some of what I read. As someone having Jewish heritage and having heard more than my share about the Holocaust (primarily in Hebrew school as a kid), you'd think nothing would surprise me anymore.

But nothing ceases to amaze me. I have such a hard time wrapping my head around how in both genocides it wasn't enough for the perpetrators to shoot their victims in the head or gas them. No. They had to force the victims to undergo protracted torture, which included not only physical torture (such as starvation and beatings), but also mental torture in the form of humiliation. In one part of Black Dog of Fate, the author talks about how an ancestor's father was crucified, decapitated, and then left outside the house. In another, he talks about how a group of girls were forced to dance -- and smile while doing so -- before they were set on fire. And then there's the infamous Death March, one that went on for 60 days with no food and water, leaving the vast majority of the people involved dead. Women were raped and urinated on. People had horseshoes nailed to their feet and were forced to walk. And, as I learned from watching a documentary about Dr. Kevorkian (who was Armenian-American), fetuses were ripped out of the mother's womb and tossed around on bayonets as if in a game. Genitals were cut off priests and stuffed in their mouths. Heads were put on stakes along the road.

Of course, many of these same things happened in the Holocaust too. As for taunting and humiliation, I remember reading of one particular instance in which Hassidic Jews were forced to do ridiculous gymnastics for their Nazis' amusement.

I even read that there is evidence that the 9/11 hijackers taunted and humiliated their victims before killing them individually or crashing the planes.

The question is WHY? Genocide is sick to begin with, but why is torture so rampant? (I'm aware that America is guilty of this, but as wrong as it was, the motives were different, were about getting information out of people, but no doubt there was more to it than that). Why do people en masse enjoy watching other people suffer before killing them? Is this phenomenon universal in cultures at war? If so, then perhaps there is some evolutionary reason for it. But why? What is the reason? Why would natural selection have favored this?

TAGGED: ABUSE, BEHAVIOR, EVOLUTION, SOCIETY