‘And what, pray tell, brought a Knight Templar and that arrogant moron so close together?’ Ranomi asked, a single eyebrow raised sceptically.
‘War, of course,’ William answered.
‘They fought together?’ Chloe asked.
‘No, no. Against one another. But Sharaf made Zakaria what he is: one of us.’
‘How?’
‘Well, it’s a long story but the crux of it is this: he defeated Zakaria’s army in battle, executed most of Zakaria’s close friends by decapitation, and sold Zakaria into slavery.’
44
WILLIAM
Chloe stared at William, her eyes wide and her jaw hanging slack, while he simply continued sipping on his coffee, quite blasé about everything he’d just said.
‘So Sharaf isn’t just an asshole, he’s … he’s downright evil!’ she gasped. ‘He’s a murderer and, like, literally a slave trader!’
‘Was, lass, was. That was all in the past, a very long time ago. And life punished him for his sins, as surely as it’s punished all of us who have lived long and tragic lives.’
‘But he, he literally sold Zakaria into slavery!’ Chloe spluttered. ‘That’s just, that’s like Nazi-level evil, it’s—’
‘It’s history, lass. While we’re privileged enough today to be able to look back at history through the enlightened lens of hindsight, you can’t judge people from past ages by the standards we use today. Look, what he did was objectively evil and utterly wrong, and I’m not going to defend his past actions. What I’m trying to say, though, is that in those times, that’s pretty much how everyone behaved, and slavery, as disgusting as it was, was just what happened to the losers of battles and wars. As ludicrous as this may sound to you, what Sharaf did then doesn’t make him a monster – it simply means that he lived by the average cultural norms of his time, which is how the vast majority of people who have ever lived have operated.’
‘How … how can you say that?!’ she gasped, incredulous. ‘Are you seriously trying to justify—’
‘Not at all,’ William interrupted. ‘If you’d just let me finish before working yourself into a frenzy of indignation, you might learn something,’ he continued, flashing her a playful wink.
‘Um, okay,’ she said, not sounding too convinced.
‘You see Chloe, contrary to what many believe, I don’t think that most people are actively mean, violent or evil, necessarily. Even if they do happen to be part of societies, caught up in activities, ideologies and systems that are, by our standards, evil. Most humans, I think, are merely neutral individuals. Yes, they’re neither good nor evil, but instead they’re short-sighted, self-centred and genuinely unable to comprehend realities outside of the very narrow scope of what their society has imparted upon them, and what they have personally experienced in life. And these myopic viewpoints they hold to be their “truths” will be tinted, always, by the coloured and largely irremovable spectacles of whatever culture they belong to and were raised in; the spectacles that are put on in childhood, and rarely, if ever, taken off again.
The fact that most people are merely neutral creatures, colourless sponges, if you will, who simply absorb the water in which they’re raised, together with all its impurities and pollutants, without question is, if you really think about it, something quite terrifying. Because that’s how it was that Sharaf – who at his core, despite his arrogance and propensity for conflict, is not an evil person – came to slaughter an army and sell people into slavery. That’s how so many otherwise neutral people throughout history have unwittingly supported systems, cultures and traditions of extraordinary evil, brutality, and savagery. Sharaf, when he killed people, when he sold people into slavery, was merely regurgitating the views, actions and opinions he had been raised with, views that had been reinforced in him through the company he kept and the culture he grew up in. And now, after this admittedly long-winded rambling, which I do apologise for – it’s the whiskey in my coffee which is to blame, I do believe – comes the point I’ve been trying to make, in a somewhat roundabout manner. While we can’t judge too harshly the great mass of people throughout history who have mostly blundered their way through their little lives wearing the blinkers of their time and culture, and blinding themselves, from the cradle to the grave, of any views which might turn their entire worlds on their heads, we can and should celebrate the rare heroes who went against the grain, who ripped the cultural wool from their eyes, who peeled away the cataracts of tradition and blind obedience to the ghostly voices of the past, opened their eyes to new truths and said, “no more! Things have to change!”. Because those people, throughout the ages – rare, brave folk like you and your friends, with your Environmental Club – they’re the ones who are the real heroes of human history. Sharaf was an unfortunate product of his time – nothing more, nothing less – but he overcame the cultural conditioning and blind obeisance to tradition that made him what he was, and he rose above it, and became someone better. Look, don’t think I’m letting him off the hook, or suggesting that he wasn’t responsible at all for his choices and actions; he absolutely was, in a way, as are all of these people who quietly, unquestioningly do evil things because they’re sanctioned by their cultures, traditions and societies. I’m sure many of them knew, on some level, that what they were doing was wrong. Save your anger, though, for the systems that moulded them rather than the individuals themselves. Just remember that no matter how small you might feel as one individual among billions, lass, you absolutely can stand against the great horde, and you can make a difference. Hell, the only people in history who actually have made significant positive changes to humankind’s trajectory are those who have done exactly that. And thanks to people like them, people like you, Chloe, hopefully others will be able to
