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The Blessed Realm	By : susanna Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male > Naruto/Sasuke Views: 1746 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: Disclaimer: Naruto, his friends and the world he lives in don't belong to me but to Masashi Kishimoto. I write this story only for my pleasure and I don't make any money with it.

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Chapter One Hundred Thirty-Three: Another kind of logic
“So how do you think did the hatred against the Uchiha come into existence?” Sasuke asked.
“I told you there's no rational reasons why people turned against the Uchiha clan. There's a few points, as not opening the police to other clans, that may be interpreted as explanations, but they did not cause the hatred. There would have been other solutions, just as when at the time of Madara's fight against the First Hokage people did not turn against the whole clan but accepted that Madara had acted on his own and without the support of his clan, meaning they could not be held responsible. So if you look for causes for the hatred against the Uchiha you need to look for the irrational causes: for reasons that have nothing to do with the Uchiha clan's actions themselves, but rather with the psychological condition of those who developed the hatred.”
Sasuke looked at him, waiting for what was to come.
“I believe that the hatred against the Uchiha cannot be explained without taking into account the Second and Third Ninja World War and the devastations and loss of power they caused to Konoha and Fire Country. People suffered not only from their own wounds and from losing precious people, but also from the humiliation of no longer being the most powerful ninja village on the continent. Yet instead of asking themselves which of their own actions, e.g. starting a war, might have caused the suffering, they sought for someone else to blame for the defeat, of for the messy draw after the Second Ninja World War.”
“But why the Uchiha?” Sasuke asked. “They were part of Konoha just as anyone else.”
“I think that this cannot be explained without referring to the kyuubi. At the heart of the debates about the reasons for the defeat after the Third Ninja World War, or the draw after the Second Ninja World War, there has always been the kyuubi. People discussed whether using it might have prevented the defeat, or whether using it more excessively might have gained them a clear victory in the Second Ninja World War.”
“But what has this to do with the Uchiha?” Sasuke asked, though he already suspected what the answer would be.
“The Uchiha were needed to control the kyuubi as a backup for the jinchuuriki. The decision to use the kyuubi would have implied that some of them would have had to obtain the Mangekyou Sharingan, or even better the Permanent Mangekyou Sharingan. At the time of the Second Ninja World War there were still some old clan members alive who had obtained it before the foundation of Konoha, when Madara was still head of clan. You may know that Madara was the first member of the clan to awake the Mangekyou, and then even the Permanent Mangekyou Sharingan.”
“I do.”
“He managed to persuade a few of his fellow clan members to follow his example. Not everyone of course, nor even the majority. It was rather the exception than the rule that someone decided to acquire the Mangekyou. It's only acquired at extremely high costs, as you may know.”
“I know,” Sasuke answered. He did not intend to tell the man that he himself had obtained the Mangekyou, though without wanting it.
“Nobody obtained the Mangekyou or the Permanent Mangekyou after the foundation of Konoha. The Uchiha were glad that with peace being established between their own clan and Senju and with Madara being removed from his position as head of clan there was no need for the Mangekyou any more. Those who had obtained it were regarded with distrust for what they had done in order to obtain it. Some of them managed to dispel the distrust by publicly regretting what they had done. All of them, whether they had publicly renounced their actions or not, were needed however to keep the kyuubi in check during the Second Ninja World War. A couple of them died during the war, others died from old age, and only one of them was still alive during the Third Ninja World War, and he was too old to be asked to participate. There was no question of using the kyuubi then, though already in the last years of the Second Ninja World War there had been considerable problems with keeping it under control. It was clear that if Konoha wanted to use it again some Uchiha would have to acquire the Mangekyou in order to control it.”
Both Sasuke and Naruto shivered.
“The matter was discussed in the Clan Council and in the Jounin Council and in private discussions between the Sandaime and the councillors and the leaders of the Uchiha clan, but the result was always the same: the Uchiha refused to allow their children to acquire the Mangekyou, and most of all they refused to regard their younger children as providers of eyes for their older siblings so that they could obtain the Permanent Mangekyou Sharingan. They had been glad when Madara was no longer with them, telling them that they needed get their hands dirty and sacrifice their children, for the wellbeing and honour of their clan as a whole, and they did not want these times to return. The rest of the village accused them of being selfish.
The Uchiha reacted to this by suggesting arrangements to make their kids play with other kids, so that the Uchiha kids might become best friends with kids from other clans, meaning that some kids from other clans would have had to be killed to allow some elite Uchiha kids to obtain the Mangekyou.
The Uchiha hoped that like this the other clans would see the cruelty of what they demanded from the Uchiha and drop their demand, yet instead they told their children to withdraw from Uchiha children and not play with them any more, and then they continued to accuse the Uchiha of being selfish. They were beyond logic at that time already: thinking only of simple explanations for the suffering and humiliation they felt after the Third Ninja World War: The defeat happened because Konoha did not use the kyuubi,and they did not use the kyuubi because the Uchiha refused to obtain the Mangekyou Sharingan and let their children be killed or blinded for it. So for people who thought on these lines the solution was simple too: The Uchiha should agree to kill or blind some of their children so that others might obtain the Mangekyou or the Permanent Mangekyou Sharingan, and then they might again act as a backup for the jinchuuriki, so that Konoha could use the kyuubi again, and then all of Konoha's problems would be solved. It does not work of course: after all, Konoha's problems started at a time when it still provided over the kyuubi's power.”
“I thought my clan was blamed for the kyuubi's attack against Konoha some seventeen years ago,” Sasuke said. “But not for the draw of the Second Ninja World War and the defeat in the Third Ninja World War.”
“It began long before the kyuubi's attack. There's always a long history behind the ostracization and scapegoating of a group of people. Of course, after the kyuubi's attack people soon claimed that it had been the Uchiha's fault, but this was mainly because even before people believed that the Uchiha were guilty of everything, or at least that they might be guilty of anything. They were accused of having created some Mangekyou Sharingan users in secret, with the intention of using the kyuubi for their own selfish purposes.”
“But why should they have done this?” Sasuke asked. “They suffered from the kyuubi's attack just as anyone else.”
“Don't look for logic,” the Ph.D. Student said. “Or at least: don't look for the ordinary kind of logic. The mechanisms that lead to the scapegoating, ostracizing and finally the murder of a whole group of people follow their own logic, which is completely separated from reality and does not care about inconsistencies. The Uchiha were not able to see through that kind of logic. They were simply confused by the situation, and by the accusations against them. They had got the impression that other clans had approved of their decision that no child should be slayed or blinded any more, and to remove Madara from his position as head of clan which he had used to promote this way of acquiring power. They did not understand that again they were expected to kill and blind their children, only that now the grand whole that had to be protected was the village, not the clan. They had not noticed the change of ideology. They had realized that bonds of loyalty between clan members had been weakened, and replaced by more formal relationships between people who were not related to each other, but had not perceived that new imperatives of loyalty had been created: the new bond that united people and made them feel as parts of one big whole was now the village, not the clan.”
“There's nothing bad about being loyal to your clan,” Sasuke said. “People here care for their families too, and do a lot for them."
“No, of course not. But people here normally don't slay or blind their children. Though to be just: this has never been normal among the Uchiha either, and those who did it under Madara's influence were regarded with suspicion. Normally in a clan, or a family, the demand that people give priority to the clan's needs and sacrifice their own wellbeing for the benefit of all is balanced by the fact that everybody is loved and cared for by the rest of the family. Only in a more abstract society it may happen that people don't just share their time or their money but also sacrifice their lives. Normally people ask those they don't care about to sacrifice themselves, not their own precious people. You can't organize a large society of hundreds or even thousands of millions of people as if it were a family, with mutual bonds of love as the glue that keeps the society from falling apart. People simply don't have that many friends. So if you organize a larger society you need something else: mutual respect, acknowledgement of the rights of the individual, but also a sense of solidarity. If you try to organize a large society according to principles that are appropriate for a family you don't get a large family, but a perversion: some kind of monster.”
The words went over the heads both of Sasuke and Naruto, though all in all they believed they had got much better at understanding the political discourse of Music Town than when they had just arrived.
“What about Danzou?” Sasuke asked. “I always held him responsible for the murder of my clan, and also for the ghettoization after the kyuubi's attack.”
“That's too simple,” the Ph.D. Student said. “You're correct in that Danzou is one of the most important proponents of the idea that the village as the whole is more important than the parts, while the individuals are just like the cells of an organism that have to sacrifice themselves for the whole body if necessary. There's a big caveat however: It's not certain whether Danzou actually believes in what he proclaims, or whether he just uses other people's belief in it to remain in office to satisfy his own needs for power, wealth, importance or whatever. It's not unusual at all: Throughout history you can find examples of leaders who exploited their followers' convictions in order to stay at the top and enjoy a life in luxury, without believing in the ideology they promoted. There's others, however, who believe in what they say, and think it's everyone's, including their own, duty to sacrifice themselves for their convictions. Of course normally when push comes to shove they think that they are more important than other people, meaning it's other people's duty to sacrifice themselves, while they only have to sacrifice themselves in principle. As a rule, this kind of politician is more dangerous than the other: First because their actions are not mitigated by other, more selfish, but also more human motives, and second because their so-called idealism makes it more difficult for the population to recognize them as evil, as they can't go by common criteria as selfishness or hypocrisy.
So, well, I think that Danzou is one of those who believe in their own ideology, even though he doesn't mind that he profits from it. Still I think it's too simple to put the blame only on him: If there had not been large parts of the population who believed that the village as a whole had to take priority over the life and wellbeing of individual citizens Danzou would not have risen to power. Putting the blame all on Danzou just means that you, too, are looking for a single culprit and hope that everything would be fine if only Danzou were gone. It doesn't work like that. You would not have changed the ideology, or people's way of thinking.”
“So you think I'm not much better than Danzou?”
“I did not say that. Of course you're better than him. You're not responsible for the ghettoization and murder of a whole family. But scapegoating or the desire for simple solutions are ways of thinking we are all prone to, and we have to remain critical of ourselves not to fall into these traps.”
“So it's no one's fault, and it's just people's tendency to blame someone else for their own mistakes that caused my family's death.”
“No, of course not. Of course Danzou is responsible for the murder he ordered, and people in Konoha are responsible for scapegoating the Uchiha. It's just a tendency within all of us, and we should be aware of it, and not give in to it. It's not single individuals like Danzou who are responsible for all the evil in the world, and they should not be demonized. He could not have achieved what he did if he had not had the support of the population of Konoha.”
Sasuke swallowed. “You know, when I first heard that my brother had not turned crazy but that he had been ordered to murder our family by the administration of Konoha my first impulse was to take revenge against the whole population of Konoha. Only with time, and while I learnt how people in Music Town thought about these matters, I changed my opinion and turned my hatred only against Danzou, and my aim was to take him out of office and put him to trial. And now you say he's not the only one to blame.”
“Of course he should be put to trial,” the Ph.D.student said. “That he could not have committed his crimes without other people supporting him does not m1ea0n that he should not be held responsible for what he did. It only means that probably there's others who should be held responsible too. Though it will be difficult to put people on trial for something as vague as scapegoating your family. You can't punish them for not talking to the Uchiha. Also it's never been all the people in Konoha who ostracized them or blamed them for the defeat in the Third Ninja World War: There have always been controversies about whether or not to use the kyuubi and establish a new jinchuuriki, and public opinion on the Uchiha was split accordingly. Sometimes it were a bit more, sometimes a bit less than fifty percent who demanded that some of them should obtain the Mangekyou Sharingan, and of course, at that time the Fourth Hokage was still alive, who was against a new jinchuuriki or using the kyuubi again, and for that reason always sided with the Uchiha when they refused to kill or slay their children. Only after the kyuubi's attack the general opinion turned against your family in a way that was irreversible. It's a complicated affair,and there's no simple solutions. - But I think you need a break: it must be painful to you to hear all this.”
“It's okay,” Sasuke replied. “It's a lot, and your words sound cool, and confusing, but they are like ice on a wound: They hurt, but they stop the inflammation. They make me think. It's okay.”
“We'll have a break all the same,” the Ph.D.student replied. “It's lunch time after all.”

A/N: Thanks again for your reviews and your plusses! You can find my answers at http://www2.adult-fanfiction.org/forum/index.php/topic/14965-blessed-realm/ .It is now possible to access the thread without registration at the forums.
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The Blessed Realm