Mirrors of a lost humanity

The stark image of a pile of bodies, the mutilation, the loss, the struggle, the humiliation, the sacrifice—all of this in a single space.
But what does this mean? Where could such a vast and disturbing situation come from?
This is the representation of what could be, this is the representation of the capacity of the human being when it strays from its quest to be a complete being. This is the complete annihilation of the concept of humanity, and this occurs when we allow ourselves to be driven by the most primitive instincts, those that only appear when we set aside our individual identity and build ourselves solely with a collective identity.
Human beings have two paths through which they construct themselves as individuals: the path to individuation or self-knowledge, and the path to externalization or collective states.
Regarding the latter, it should be emphasized that we are all constructed from elements we find in others, in what is presented to us as a life context, and which we learn to mimic over the course of our lives. We learn to speak the language of our parents and peers, we learn to act according to the established norms of the society around us, and we learn the rules and stipulations imposed by the contexts in which we are born. But this has a time limit; we can't always evoke our identity construction based on what we are told, what we see or learn in society. We have to reach a point where we question all of this, a point that requires understanding who we really are and gradually learning to cope with the difficulties and paradigms we face. This leads us to become complex individuals, to beings who understand and learn to discern between what is important and what is not, and how we can take what we have learned and use it to become better and more complete.
But this is a long process, and we often fail to complete it, and in one way or another, we can fall prey to the rebellion of our identity at the hands of the collective. When, whether due to psychological deficiencies, traumas, experiences, contexts, etc., people are unable to search for their identity, all they have left is to search for it in what is established, in what is socially constructed, and forge it within it, abandoning the process of individuation and becoming just another cog in a collective chimera.
When you let yourself be carried away by collective identity, there are no doubts, no questioning of established actions or ideas, everything is already given, there is no sacrifice or effort to be made. You simply let yourself be carried away by the tide and end up sinking in the mighty river that is collective ideas.
Rationality disappears because by not questioning anything, we only fervently believe in the dogmas provided by the collective, and this is dangerous, since these always come from a purpose, and that is control, power. So when everything you've built, or everything that's been built for you, for example, is threatened, the only thing left for you is to defend that reality. Therefore, by maintaining the hegemony of what we understand as our identity, we are capable of ending this imminent danger. This leads to an ability to create enemies, dehumanize them, and believe them to be inferior, to unleash our primitive survival instincts—perhaps not physical survival, but possibly emotional, social, and psychological survival.
Unfortunately, these acts can cause our most sadistic side to emerge. Justifying these acts in the way they are committed gives us a sense of well-being that we unconsciously enjoy and find comforting because it is approved by our beliefs or identity.
We have clear examples such as wars, massacres, killings, genocides, the Inquisition, etc. These are just moments in human history that give us a glimpse into the human capacity and how understanding it leads us to understand the need to move toward a process of individuation, where self-knowledge, understanding, and acceptance of our individuality give us the strength to avoid falling into disgrace, and thus see ourselves reflected in the possibilities to be able to find our lost humanity.​

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