They, our enemies and Us.

There’s always sides, clashing of Egos, who is right/ wrong, superior/ inferior, all the way throughout time.

The differences because we live in a world of duality, disparity, inequality as what Lao-Tze pondered about a considerable time ago. Both sides try to annihilate each other, feeding the fire of this vicious cycle of hate like love.

Hannibal Lecter wanted to destroy his enemies by eating their flesh but in a way he became his opposition by absorbing their flesh, transforming their essence into his. To defeat your enemy whether in War, your workplace, family etc, you must think and understand like them, in a way you symbolically absorb their thought processes and Mind and this is shown all too well in history, especially ancient Roman history. When the ancient Roman empire fought a bitter long war with its rival, Carthage and eventually won through treachery, great bloodshed etc., Rome decided to wipe out the ancient city of Carthage from the face of the planet by destroying every building, every weed, every item that belonged to Carthage and enslaving its people. Rome thought it destroyed its enemy completely but no, the very memory of Carthage is etched in her conscious mind, embedded there like a poison. Rome may have destroyed the physical aspect of the enemy but not its Idea as today we remember Carthage. Rome destroyed herself in the process because she was forced to adapt to defeat Hannibal Barca’s mind and armies who represented Carthage so she became one with the enemy.

It’s the same with the Troubles in Northern Ireland, where the feud between Protestants and Catholics escalated to the point where Britain was involved and more bloodshed and atrocities occurred. The late Protestant religious leader, Ian Paisley had made it his lifelong mission not to compromise with the Catholics over who should control Northern Ireland but eventually he gave in and cooperated with them in his later years prior to his death.

Hegelian dialectic, a system of thinking named after its creator who was a German Philosopher, organised a method of argument to resolve disagreements between one side, called the thesis and the opposition, called the anti-thesis. How these two positions are resolved is by combining the sides of Truth that they offer and bringing forth a new thesis called the Synthesis. It’s this same process that has happened in Northern Ireland and ancient Rome. The case with Hannibal Lecter is arguably true because what became of his enemies’ bodily matter was incorporated into his own protein structure, their presence having caused him to change no matter how small a change it was whether emotionally/ cognitively etc.

Enemies will change us (whether a person, thing, environment, at work etc) but for better or worse, that is where we have control. There is also the question of who becomes the dominant one after the process of assimilation/ Synthesis (like the North Americans of European descent) and the one who becomes a footnote, only to be a vague reminder of the events leading to Synthesis/ assimilation (like the Native Americans who are remembered for being the original Americans who had their lands taken away from them).