Closing session [Zaid Bin Ra'ed]

Abstract

In 1936, an unknown British adventurer, and former pilot from the First World War - a man by the name of Cecil Lewis - published what was to be a classic book entitled Sagittarius Rising: essentially a thoughtful recollection of the author's wartime experiences. In one passage, Lewis makes reference to the inevitability of violence, war, and its attendant miseries: an inevitability brought on by what he called "the invincibility of man's stupidity". It is of course a rather grim and cynical perspective of the human political condition: one which may well be considered extreme by many of us - at least as a general assertion - but few would disagree that countless, shameful, stretches of human history are fettered with human stupidity. [excerpt]