Always 'on message' and never surprising...

One thing about people who are in the midst of a scrap is that they are all so bloody boring. We can blame the organism itself, I suppose, invariably draining the peripheral members of blood in order to keep the heart, brains and lungs alive. What works with the human body in cold water tends to be the ordre du jour as well for individuals and groups embroiled in conflict. They set priorities and decide to concentrate on only three or four things to the detriment of all else.

Known many divorcing people? Ever wished you had a large cork that you could jam into their mouths accompanied by a cartoonesque 'Ploink' when they start rattling on about the outgoing spouse ? Have you noticed the searching look in their eyes as they try and ferret out from you the only datum they require: Are you on my side or on the other side? Anything else you say - well sir, that's lost on them - an anecdote, story or reflection - an expression of joy or loss, anything winsome - it's all binned and the conversation is judged worthless unless they've acquired at least one useful increment in the case which they are building. Such individuals - the file-keepers, the wrongs-recorders, the letter-daters - they cut themselves off from any semblance of community in the long run - other than mutually-reinforcing groups of people who may have suffered the same fate.

As characters they become rather flat - always on message and never surprising.

Of particular concern is the way in which the world reduces itself, for such embattled folk, into only two shades. Like a mall security guard who is looking only for shoplifters, like an ocelot lying on a tree branch scanning the forest floor for something walking by which is edible - these folk aren't interested in the 'details'. There is simply dark and light. The job of the embattled warrior is not to 'describe' anything in its complexity it is to 'declare' in which corner it might be most usefully placed. The varied world we live in is rendered mere opportunity.

Nicholas Berdyaev describes such a narrowing of vision in a journal article he wrote in 1937

For the fanatic there does not exist a manifold world. This is a man, obsessed by one thing. He has a merciless and malevolent attitude towards all and everything except for this one thing.

If the opponents are best described as animals, dead stones or pagans then so be it. We have a job to do, which is to reduce the complex molecule into something simple and digestible. Unless the truth of a situation can be reduced to 'our truth' which is a 'useful truth' then we're not interested. Gone is the colour of life and the possibility for change - gone the possibility of the hidden being made real and or the subtle discovered in its previously unseen beauty. Gone now even the necessary repentence for anything other than a lack of vigour in pursuing the well trodden path towards a corporately determined enemy.