According to the poet, C. S. Lewis, each one of us “contains a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears, a harem of fondled hatreds” and predicts what will happen when millions of these messy bundles of contradictory neuroses bump up against one another in society.”

Lewis’s “neuroses” are, in fact. automatic instincts that are individually provoked by specific circumstances. All of these are laid down in ‘old brain’ deep in our heads long before our rational frontal lobes evolved. One important product of the latter, only recently discovered by biological science, includes the notion of ‘fair play’ or justice. Although this is a ‘still small voice’ most of the time, it is permanent — always with us — and can, increasingly with experience, overcome an instinct that may become disruptive. As historians generally report, and despite any current gloom, mankind is gradually becoming more peaceful as time goes on.