An artist or writer creates something that didn't exist before and births it into the world. A war-maker huddles in the opposite corner of the room destroying creations with some usually ill-defined ulterior motives. Art, buildings, workplaces, arms and infrastructure, dolls and livestock, children and friends and relatives, all of it taken away in a huge destructive exhalation of breath. This provides a level of grim satisfaction to the aggressor imagining that strategic progressive toward a goal is being achieved. Those I love, or that you love. sometimes even act as apologists for this behaviour, if the framing that's presented to them —usually disingenuously — is just right. It's a tragedy.

[Not that there is never a justification for war. But I think it should be conducted roughly the same way people describe abortion as a necessary evil - it should be "rare, safe, and legal".]

What accounts for these different types of people? What elements of the universe go into the creation of such radically opposing personalities and their approaches to the world? Are fundamentally gentle souls poisoned by violent upbringings and toxic cultures? And can souls inclined toward violence be redeemed? Recently I had a horrible thought I can barely say out loud.  Am I the only living member of my immediate family with a moral compass? Yes, an outrageous sentiment and probably miles off the truth. But still, there's evidence that's hard to ignore.

Why does my beloved older brother (who ran all the way home from elementary school the day he found out he had a new sibling) send me genocide apologist videos? How does my sweet, gentle mother excuse the slaughter of Arabs? And when did my sister start to parrot the talking points of toxic right-wing media?

Primo Levi, the Italian-Jewish holocaust survivor tragically never reconciled these two poles of the human psyche. And God knows he tried. So who am I to even ask such a fundamentally unresolvable question and expect a coherent answer? The good and evil is sprinkled in unequal amounts in us all. As it ever was. All we can do is try to create some beauty, promote truth when we can, and be an ally to the oppressed.