THE GIFTS OF HERESY

Those who are convinced they have a monopoly on The Truth always feel that they are only saving the world when they slaughter the heretics.

Only those who love their obvious enemies are supporting The Truth.

Within most cultures, both secular and religious, heretics provide the lifeblood of change that nourishes the very vibrancy of the traditions themselves. When often pilloried and frequently executed, they offer the essential antithesis of a collective consciousness, that is at times honoured, at times cast out. Here also is the uncomfortable presence in the wisdom held by the soldiers of all lands that in coming to fight their nemesis find an uncomfortable similarity. The necessary brutality of war is primarily a brutality of the spirit, where we force those who fight for us to dehumanize the enemy enough to be able to kill them.

The pinnacle of the warriors' way across all the world's tradition is the power of the kill with no such dehumanizing justification. And as so often happens in such extremes of warfare and meeting, the culture of the warrior is shared, leaving an inevitable blending in the manner that was probably the worst fear of those who instigated the war in the first place.
People speak to each other, thankfully.