Am I my brother’s keeper?
Text for Session 3, titled “Understanding to Break the Cycles of Violence”
In Genesis, the founding narrative of the three major monotheistic religions, humanity’s first act of violence is neither a war between civilizations nor a struggle for power or the hoarding of resources. It is a brother killing his brother. Cain kills Abel.
And then God asks that terrible question: ‘Where is your brother?’
Perhaps any reflection on violence begins here: in our inability to live in harmony. It is as though the fundamental problem facing human societies were less the hatred of the enemy than the difficulty in tolerating the existence of the other.
Abel becomes unbearable to Cain because he reflects back to him his frustration and jealousy. Violence often arises from this intimate experience of loss and rivalry. Freud understood this when he described the tension between Eros and Thanatos: the forces that bind and those that destroy. Civilisation never completely eradicates violence; it attempts to contain it, to redirect it, and sometimes to conceal it.
And perhaps we need to accept an uncomfortable truth: men do not wage war merely because they are socially compelled or economically driven to do so. They also wage war because it brings them pleasure, power and a sense of collective identity. Violence does not merely destroy; it also gives meaning.
Modern societies, however, believed they could neutralise these destructive impulses through the economy. Keynes wrote that it was better for human passions to be channelled into the pursuit of profit rather than military conquest: better the stock market than the battlefield.
But what kind of peace are we talking about when so many lives are structured around competition, the fear of falling behind and feelings of inadequacy? When human relationships themselves are shaped by competition?
Violence has not disappeared. It has simply taken on a different form. It becomes social when we accept the abandonment of certain areas; symbolic when we reduce individuals to their economic utility; and existential when a society breeds exhaustion and isolation.
Some forms of violence are visible only to those who suffer them. They are embedded in the way people look at one another, in institutions, and in inequalities that have become the norm. Felwine Sarr calls on us to move away from a civilisation based on accumulation and exploitation, and to rebuild forms of reciprocity and hospitality.
Perhaps this is what certain African traditions have sought to preserve through the Senegalese concept of teranga, where welcoming others is a way of inhabiting the world, or the South African concept of Ubuntu, which reminds us that the individual never exists in isolation. These ways of thinking are not based on the idea of a rational, autonomous individual, but on an awareness of shared vulnerability.
For fraternity cannot be imposed. It requires just institutions, but also a willingness to engage with others. Anne Dufourmantelle pointed out that hospitality always involves a risk: to welcome another person is to accept being unsettled by their presence.
Conversely, societies obsessed with controlling property and closing themselves off often end up producing exactly what they claim to be fighting against: more fear, loneliness and, consequently, violence.
Breaking these cycles therefore requires more than simply managing conflicts. Hannah Arendt spoke of the ‘right to have rights’: the idea that no human being should be deprived of a political existence on account of their nationality. Amartya Sen pointed out that a just society is not merely about economic growth, but about the possibility of living with dignity. Finally, Simone Weil reminded us that rootedness, recognition and attention are fundamental needs of the human soul.
The question put to Cain still echoes through our weary democracies: ‘Where is your brother?’
And perhaps the tragedy lies not so much in Cain killing Abel, but in that response which has become so familiar:
“Am I my brother’s keeper?”