Unrestrained murderousness inevitably becomes self-destructive mania

Evidence

Hobbes limits the sovereign’s power over killing – and as such sovereignty – by reserving to every rational being the right to protect oneself against all impending danger. Iraq and Israel-Palestine offer ample evidence of the sociological generalization of the Hobbesian limit case. One can only add, generalizing Gilad Atzmon’s deep insight, that these are not simply cases of neighbors not loving neighbors. Those so ready to inflict so much pain on others cannot possibly “like themselves either.” The implication of becoming murderous, with no reservation, no self-consciousness, no restraint, can only be a mania of the most debilitating, distorting, self-destructive sort. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 705

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the reader’s material on ritual sacrifice where killers destroy themselves; also resonates with settler-colonial self-destruction themes. — connects to: Cornered destructiveness stops distinguishing self-destruction from outward violence — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 118