Free Acid Song by Bernard Beckett

people, more than anything?’ Richard asked.
    ‘You seriously think that can be answered in a sentence?’
    ‘I can answer it in a word. Tribalism. You and me. Us and them. Insider and outsider. Take me anywhere through time and space, point to any conflict, and at the heart of it I’ll show you an in-group first defining and then attacking an out-group. Before we can strike we must find a way to camouflage the most unpalatable of truths: that the closer you stand, the more valuable your life is to me. So Christian slaughters Muslim, white slaughters black, north– erner attacks southerner, Japan invades Korea, Kenya falls apart; and every time it’s the ability to paint the Other as different that makes the conflict plausible. And do I feel fear at the possibility that yet another badge of difference is to be made available to those who have no desire to properly examine it? Who wouldn’t?’
    Even now, when his intention had been to lend support, Richard could not resist an argument. He took great pleasure in the way flapping edges of thought could so quickly be folded and tucked beneath the shape of the proposition in question. And he took a certain pride in it too.
    The injured man waited, chewed silently on some segment of his swollen cheek, and fashioned a smile from amongst the wreckage.
    ‘Well me, I suppose, as you ask. You gave me a word, let me give you one in return. Ignorance.’
    And again his friend paused, cheap but effective.
    ‘That conflict is based around identity is surely nothing more than a consequence of definition. Without readily identifiable sides, there is no conflict. You claim it is the availability of these badges, as you put it, that facilitate conflict, and here I disagree.
    ‘Finding difference will never be difficult; in the heat of conflict difference need not be substantive. An accent, a birthplace, a circumcision, which end you break your egg. Yes, go to any time, any place of conflict, and you will find, unsurprisingly, the conditions of conflict. But ask this. What are the conditions we find when conflict has been supressed? What of the powerful who do not take slaves, the men who do not rape women, the countries that do not declare war? I would suggest to you that the common thread is not the absence of identifiable difference, but the slow, miraculous progress of the great project of Enlightenment. Where ideas are not suppressed, where knowledge is not jealously guarded,
that
is where peace has a chance of taking hold. And so, when our every instinct is to hide a study away because its findings might be difficult, that’s when I feel fear, Richard.’
    ‘I’m not sure you’re wrong.’ Richard sipped at his whisky. ‘And I very much hope you’re not.’
    ‘But?’
    ‘But some of the most remarkable peace has been wrought from societies that see themselves as homogenous.’
    William raised an eyebrow in acknowledgement. He too took a taste from his glass, a signal of a truce of sorts.
    ‘If you’re right, and people’s fears are unfounded, isn’t there still a way of easing them? Can’t you, I don’t know, suggest a joint study?How about offering to make your work available to your critics, to work with them in designing the next phase of the study? You don’t have to make any public statements. You don’t have to recant. They’ll say enough by themselves. You know, “we are suspicious of the data as it is currently being interpreted, and are working with Professor Harding to design a study which we hope will show how these anomalies have been generated.”’
    ‘They’re not anomalies.’
    ‘They might be. You said so yourself.’
    ‘It’s possible yes, but it’s not likely. You’re suggesting we spend the next ten years wasting time and money following up on the least likely of the available explanations. That’s the same as burying the data.’
    ‘No it’s not. It’s out there now. It’s available to anybody who wants to look at it.’
    ‘But