That has been a huge part of my PTSD struggle. And, hell, maybe it still is. But, lately I've taken a great deal of solace in two facts.
Fact 1: Among the first games children play, on their own and with no guidance from society or their parents, is some form of war. They bash cars together, they bash dinosaurs together, they bash each other. We are, at heart and in our very nature, cruel and violent creatures. If we accept that as truth, then the presence of those capabilities can no longer be what we use as the definition of monster. Now it has to be something different.
Fact 2: I have never done such things without cause. And--by my reckoning--good cause, at that.
These things change my perception of me, and what it means to really be a monster.
It would be lovely if we lived in a world where we were all able to simply muzzle our instincts and live hand-in-hand with our fellow man. But that is not anything even remotely close to reality.
Reality is that, "We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."
The difference between a slavering wolf in the night and a beloved guard dog is, more than anything else, whether or not you're a part of its pack.
A couple of interesting facts there mate. With fact 1 you are dead to rights. When we are children we either learned from books or from tv about good and evil, cowboys and indians, superheros and villians. When I was a child it was Germany V USA.
But all of that is play. It is so easy to pull the trigger of a toy gun, or even laser skirmish, but to pull the trigger on a real gun pointing at a real person when you know it is going to kill them usually takes training. We are trained to act instinctively to a situation and not hesitate. Hesitate and you are dead. Them or Us. I have know of people who have frozen up in the heat of battle, they just could not do it.
By rights human nature should have us friendly with our fellow man unless they encroach upon our private property or hurt our family members. It's almost like a pack mentality. But throw some training in and it is all different.
We are not monsters. We were trained to pull a trigger, press a button, use a knife, throw a grenade. We were trained and told that if we did not do it, they would do it to us.
Let us look at a policeman. His job is law enforcement. He is a family man with three children and a beautiful wife. During his daytime shift a bank robber runs at him with a weapon drawn, the policeman draws his weapon and shoots him dead.
Is he a monster or a warrior doing his job.