On Violence, the Comfort of Not-Seeing, and the Limits of Morality
We Europeans have come to see ourselves as a civilisation that has overcome violence. Not entirely, and not absolutely, but in principle: war seems to belong to our past, or at least to the periphery of our experience. The implicit conviction is that what remains are conflicts that can be resolved through law, diplomacy and negotiation. This belief is not merely political or legal in nature, but also deeply existential. It shapes our self-perception and our view of the world.
Anyone born in Western Europe after the Second World War has no direct experience of violence as a constitutive force of existence. Sixty or seventy years of relative peace have produced a reality in which security is experienced not as something achieved, but as a starting point. We do not live with the possibility of loss, but with the expectation of continuity. It is precisely from within this expectation that we judge whatever takes place beyond us.
When we speak of war and violence, we therefore tend to speak in terms of rejection. ‘Never again’, ‘this is unacceptable’, ‘we condemn this in the strongest possible terms’, these are understandable proclamations, since no one longs for violence. At the same time, however, they fulfil a second function: they organise our inner lives and confirm that we are on the right side. Like the man who, after Mass, remarks that the priest preached against sin, we speak of violence: we are against it, and with that, the matter seems settled. We need look no further, for the verdict has already been delivered.
However, it is precisely this self-evidence that creates a void. What we reject, we rarely try to truly understand anymore. Violence is no longer a reality we examine from within; it is a phenomenon we condemn from outside. Violence is thereby pushed out of awareness and, unintentionally, out of our capacity to live with it. The Second World War, in that sense, did not so much acquaint us with the reality of violence as instil in us a moral reflex that places that reality outside ourselves. We know what happened, but we do not live with the thought that it could happen again, least of all in us.
Moral Superiority
Through this distance, a subtle sense of moral superiority grows within us, not as an obvious stance, but as something self-evident. We do not notice it because it feels like ordinary thinking. We are against violence and thereby implicitly find ourselves on the right side of history. Yet this position is less solid than it seems because it shields us from a difficult truth: that violence is not an exception, but a possibility inherent in the human condition.
When we consider geopolitical conflicts from this perspective, we interpret behaviour according to our own logic. We assume that, ultimately, people everywhere strive for safety, stability, and an improvement in their lives; that escalation is a means to an end; and that loss is to be avoided. However, this assumption is based on an implicit premise that does not apply everywhere. What if, elsewhere, the starting point is not preservation, but survival?
The Effect of Trauma
To understand this shift, it helps to pause for a moment and consider what trauma means psychologically. Specialists such as Franz Ruppert[i] and Bessel van der Kolk[ii] describe trauma not merely as an overwhelming event, but as a state in which the human system must adapt to something it cannot process. When someone is confronted with extreme threat or powerlessness, the experience cannot be integrated into ordinary life. Instead, a kind of inner split arises: one part of the person remains bound to the overwhelming experience, while another part takes over daily functioning, primarily to prevent the experience from being felt again.
This second part, often referred to as the ‘survival part’, no longer organises life around growth, relationships or the future, but rather around safety, control and avoiding pain. It is important to recognise that this is not a conscious choice, but a necessary adaptation. The body and nervous system remain attuned to threat even when no direct threat is present. Therefore, trauma is not a memory of the past, but a presence in the present; something that keeps repeating itself.
Here, a subtle but decisive shift takes place. Life is no longer lived to unfold, but to prevent collapse. What appears to be life from the outside is essentially functioning in psychic survival mode.
In that condition, loss takes on a different meaning. It is not a future risk to be avoided, but a reality that has already been experienced. Those who act from that experience play a different game. Not to win, but to avoid perishing once more.
Israel and Gaza
What has been said so far remains abstract until it is applied. In the present-day reality of Israel and Gaza, however, what is at stake becomes apparent.
Both societies carry a history in which loss and threat have become deeply ingrained. For Israel, this history encompasses the Shoah, successive wars and the events of 7 October 2023, while for Palestinians it encompasses the expulsion of 1948, occupation, blockade and repeated wars in Gaza. In both cases, these experiences have not been processed, yet they continue to influence present-day actions.
What differs is the structure within which that experience is held. In Israel, the logic of survival is embedded in institutions and state structures, as well as in an explicit orientation towards the future. There is construction, planning and thinking in terms of continuity. The prospect of continued existence remains a framework within which action is taken, despite the constant threat and the potential shift in the balance between preservation and hardening under persistent pressure.
In Gaza, no such structure exists. There, society has formed under conditions in which the capacity to envisage a preservable or buildable life has been systematically diminished, both physically and existentially. Without a state structure to ensure continuity and without an unobstructed view of the future, the prospect of a real continuation of life fades.
The fact that both societies bear a history of trauma does not simply make them comparable; it explains why a logic of survival plays a role in both contexts, albeit in fundamentally different ways.
The difference in structure is precisely where the difference in horizon lies, in what can still be preserved and what passes out of view. When that horizon disappears in Gaza as a structural reality and in less explicit forms elsewhere where survival pressure persists, the structure of action changes. Not only is loss factored in, but the very orientation towards continued existence is also under pressure. What was originally intended to protect against powerlessness can then become entrenched. The boundary between survival and self-loss begins to blur and action takes on a relationship with death that is no longer purely defensive.
Self-sacrifice, escalation, and seeking confrontation can then take on a meaning that is no longer primarily directed towards life, but towards ending an unbearable state. Within a shame culture, this movement is reversed into an affirmation that resembles life precisely at the moment it ends.
In this shift, we recognise what Sigmund Freud[iii] termed the death drive (Thanatos): the notion that, under extreme duress, the inclination towards dissolution can supersede the inclination towards preservation. Melanie Klein[iv] added that such destructive impulses often function as a defence against unbearable anxiety; destruction is not an end in itself, but a means of maintaining a tolerable internal state.
To an outside observer, this may appear excessive or unintelligible, but within this logic, it is coherent and not arbitrary.
This description is neither an equation nor a justification, but an attempt to highlight differences in psychic logic that are often overlooked in the debate.
Powerless Morality
In the European response to these dynamics, a confusion that is rarely openly named becomes visible. We assume that being morally right grants us something else: strength. We oppose something, and therefore feel equal to it, as if moral judgment carries authority in itself and authority carries strength in itself.
However, authority and strength are not the same. This does not mean that morality is meaningless or that it provides no direction; however, it does mean that its effectiveness is limited by the conditions under which it can function. Being morally right has no effect on someone who does not allow themselves to be guided by morality. A treaty does not bind someone who has nothing left to lose. It is precisely at this point that our position becomes more vulnerable than it appears when we forget the difference.
This is because whoever acts from a logic of survival has crossed a boundary that we have not. Their own death is no longer the end to be avoided at all costs for them, but a way out of something that has become more unbearable than death itself. What looks like courage or fanaticism from the outside is often, from the inside, a flight; a ‘suicide’ that cannot be understood as such and that, within a culture of shame, is transformed into a ‘heroic death’, giving existence one last meaning before it ceases. Their actions are not aimed at winning in the conventional sense; they choose death to escape an unbearable life.
This is precisely the asymmetry that we do not grasp. For the modern Western individual, death is the ultimate limit, the deepest fear around which our entire life is organised in terms of healthcare, technology and risk avoidance. We cannot imagine anyone passing that horizon without being insane. And precisely because we cannot imagine it, we cannot see what lies beyond. We interpret behaviour as irrationality or extremism, as something that must surely yield to sufficient pressure. However, those who have overcome their fear of death are beyond our reach.
You cannot defeat such a person in the ways we traditionally understand defeat: through pressure, sanctions, negotiation or the gradual weighing of one interest against another. You cannot persuade or bind them. In the hard logic of conflict, annihilation is the only remaining option. This is not a recommendation, but a description of a situation in which our usual tools are ineffective. Franz Ruppert has described this situation clearly: a survival dynamic leaves no room for dialogue because dialogue requires a sense of future, which survival lacks.
Societies that understand this logic act accordingly. Israel is the closest example, not because its policy is always correct, but because it stems from a history in which equating moral right with actual strength has had existential consequences. We have not learned that lesson. We continue to speak from a position in which moral right seems to naturally lead to power, and we fail to recognise that precisely when clarity is needed, we are clinging to an illusion.
This comfort of not seeing then turns out not only to be a moral comfort, but also a comfort born of overestimation. We assume that being right and being strong are the same. In this equation, it becomes clear how little we still perceive.
Law without Ground
What holds for the individual moral reflex also holds, on a larger scale, for the legal framework within which we have cast that reflex. International law is, in a sense, the institutional expression of our moral self-image: what we perceive as judgement has been enshrined as a universal rule. For this very reason, it inherits the same limitations. Anyone who asks why the above dynamics do not stop and why no moment of reasonableness sets in presupposes that the legal framework could enforce that return. However, those who have nothing left to lose do not play by the rules of those who want to preserve everything, and those who let themselves be bound by no framework are not affected by any framework.
These frameworks are based on a peculiarity of modern consciousness: the tendency to order the world through abstract, universal principles. International law is a striking example of this tendency. On paper, it is an impressive structure of treaties, conventions, and norms that restrain violence and bind states to rules. It presents itself as universal and rational, as if the world were ultimately a legal order yet to be realised.
However, this construction presupposes a community that does not exist. There is no shared will, no jointly upheld order and no common understanding of what is at stake. Instead, there are different realities, each with their own experiences of loss, threat and existence. In this way, international law becomes detached from the foundations on which law normally rests, beginning to float not because it is incorrect, but because it extends beyond the conditions in which it can function.
Here, the so-called ‘pretension-powerlessness paradox’ of modern consciousness becomes apparent. We formulate universal rules for a non-universal world, ordering reality through principles that only operate under specific conditions. Consequently, international law becomes a normative framework and a psychological structure that enables us to interpret the world without fully engaging with it. We invoke rules, meaning we need to see less, and we formulate norms, meaning we need to feel less.
In this way, the appeal to international law can become a matter of convenience. This is not because the law itself is problematic, but because it relieves us of the more difficult task of genuinely feeling our way into worlds in which security is not a given but something that must be earned. Moral superiority is therefore no sign of moral maturity, but rather a form of protection against confronting a reality that challenges our own assumptions. We look and believe we are seeing, but what we see is ourselves above all else.
This creates a curious situation. We want to order the world according to principles that can only exist under conditions that we no longer recognise. For this very reason, we lose the capacity to see where these principles are not applicable. What is intended as organisation then becomes a form of denial.
This takes us back to the beginning. It is understandable that we want to preserve what we have built, but preservation is not a given. It is a state that rests on historical, political and existential conditions, and when we forget these conditions and continue to act as if our logic is universal, we risk losing what we want to protect.
Not through weakness, but through denial of reality.
A more realistic stance might begin with the simple insight that we do not live outside the reality of violence, but only at a distance from it. This distance is not guaranteed, but must be protected. Those who dare to face this reality will see things differently, not only regarding others, but also themselves. They may lose some of the reassuring certainty that they are opposed to something, but they will gain a better understanding of what is actually taking place.
[i] Franz Ruppert, psychotherapist and author of Trauma, Angst und Liebe (2010). [ii] Bessel van der Kolk, psychiatrist, The Body Keeps the Score (2014). [iii] Sigmund Freud, Jenseits des Lustprinzips (1920). [iv] Melanie Klein, 'Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms' (1946).