Violence never arrives announcing itself as violence. It comes wrapped in reasons and slogans—in duty, faith, law, nation—and asks first for moral consent. Only after that does it spill blood. What drives it is not a country or a creed, but the human ego: the restless centre that learns to convert harm into virtue. Long before violence becomes a flag or a scripture or a border, it begins as a sticky “I” that demands to be right, protected, exalted.
In early January 2026, Venezuela woke to the language of force. Explosions near Caracas, helicopters circling a guarded compound, and by the end of it Nicolás Maduro was no longer in his own capital. He was in American custody, headed for a New York courtroom. Washington called it law, enforced with military muscle. Caracas called it a violation of sovereignty. Slogans collided, flags argued, and ordinary people bent down to sweep glass, lift stones, and count bodies.
That same week in Bangladesh, a Hindu shopkeeper closed his pharmacy on New Year’s Eve and began the short walk home. He was stopped, stabbed, beaten, doused in petrol, and set on fire. To survive, he jumped into a pond. He died later. Another man, a garment worker, was beaten and burned alive over a blasphemy allegation that even the police reportedly found baseless. Since August 2024, minority groups say there have been more than 2,400 such incidents.
One scene wears the uniform of the state, the paperwork of law, the chain of command. The other appears as a neighbourhood crowd, fuelled by rumour and collective certainty. The scale differs, the method differs, the language differs. But the inner permission to hurt—the move that turns cruelty into duty—is painfully familiar.
The point is not to equalise outcomes. A state with aircraft carriers is not the same as a mob with petrol cans. Due process is not lynching. But recognising difference does not require blindness to similarity. In both cases, harm is made to feel necessary, even noble.
History is full of this disguise. Crusaders did not march declaring greed; they marched to “save” a sacred site. The Inquisition did not call itself terror; it called itself salvation. Colonial conquest was a “civilising mission.” Partition was “freedom.” The pattern persists because the ego borrows noble words to perform ignoble acts. The vocabulary changes; the grammar does not.
In Bangladesh, no one says, “We chose them because they are vulnerable.” They say, “We are defending faith,” “punishing blasphemy,” “protecting honour.” In Washington, no one says, “We are enforcing interests.” They say, “We are fighting narco-terrorism,” “restoring democracy,” “acting under constitutional authority.” The costume changes; the permission remains.
The danger is not hypocrisy—hypocrisy at least knows it is lying. The deeper danger is self-deception. The mob member can feel holy; the official can feel civilised. The ego keeps its heroic self-image intact while bodies burn and buildings collapse. Self-deception is cheaper than change. It lets violence and virtue coexist.
Violence also chooses carefully. It is rarely random. In Bangladesh, the targets are those with little protection: a worker, a shopkeeper, a minority family. In Venezuela, the target is a country that cannot retaliate in kind, cannot impose equivalent costs. Violence prefers the exposed. It calculates before it moralises. Righteousness is recruited to dress up asymmetry. Empires rarely “liberate” equals. Mobs rarely punish the well-armed. The imbalance is the condition that makes harm convenient; morality arrives later to make cowardice look like courage.
How does burning a neighbour begin to feel like sacred duty, and bombing a foreign capital like humanitarian service? Truth demands inquiry. Identity demands loyalty. When identity becomes sacred, inquiry becomes betrayal. Once inquiry ends, violence starts looking like common sense.
Identity draws a line between those who belong and those who do not. When the other becomes a symbol, harm stops feeling like harm and starts feeling like defence. Even killing begins to feel like hygiene. Fear of diminishment—of belief, of status, of power—turns cruelty into obligation. An enemy is the quickest way to make identity feel real.
We often draw a moral line between mobs and institutions. The mob looks primitive; the institution looks sophisticated. Procedure promises restraint, so we relax. We assume paperwork slows cruelty, that chains of command dilute it. Sometimes they do. Often they merely refine it. Visible violence repels; procedural violence reassures. Words like “precision” and “authority” do a great deal of moral work. Press conferences replace confessions of intent. Jurisdiction debates replace mourning.
A life lost is still a life lost. A civilian killed by policy does not become less dead because the method was orderly. Legality matters—but it does not automatically confer morality. Procedure does not purify intent. The real question is how easily the self converts harm into righteousness, and how quickly we excuse it when it is done by “our side.”
Selective morality is the loudest lie. Those who condemn attacks on minorities often fall silent when state aggression aligns with their camp. Those who defend sovereignty elsewhere minimise brutality when it serves their narrative. Outrage is plentiful; consistency is rare. If condemnation appears only when the perpetrator is the other, it is not ethics. It is allegiance.
The problem is not one country or another. The problem is the unexamined self. The self that needs enemies to feel alive, narratives to justify desire, identity to compensate for inner confusion, will produce violence whether it throws stones or commands states. Fear supplies the fuel. Identity selects the target. Power provides the means. Justification offers the alibi. Change the geography, update the costume—the script remains ancient.
Laws can restrain outcomes. Treaties can impose costs. Institutions can prevent some horrors. All of this matters—and none of it is sufficient. The impulse that recreates violence cannot be legislated out of existence. It must be seen as a reflex within oneself.
The beginning is small and personal. Watch righteous anger and ask which identity it protects. Notice the urge to excuse cruelty because it is done by “us.” Observe the satisfaction when an enemy suffers, and ask who is keeping score. Self-knowledge is not a luxury; it is the only response equal to the root.
The woman asleep in her apartment, the shopkeeper walking home on New Year’s Eve—they did not die because of a map or a flag. They died because stories made killing feel like something other than killing. The least we owe them is honest seeing. Until the ego learns to inquire into itself, the theatre will continue—and we will keep rearranging seats while it burns.
