Our species is capable of
horrific cruelty that defies any claim of having a conscience, and yet we can
be willing to override our otherwise intractable instinctual urge for
self-preservation for an ethical principle; that is to say, a person can choose
to lay down one’s life for another person. Our biological nature—how we are
hardwired—includes both vicious aggressiveness resembling that of chimps and
yet the ability to “act on principle” in selfless love. In the
Albanian film, The Bride and the Curfew (1978), these two facets of
human nature are on display, in direct contact as it were, such that the sheer
breadth in human nature is made transparent. The two poles are personified by
the Nazi military commander and Shpresa, the young Albanian woman living who
assassinates a Nazi solder in her Nazi-occupied village.
The full essay is at "The Bride and the Curfew."
