Rodney King, witnessing the riots in LA that were touched off by the "not guilty" verdicts for the police officers who were charged with brutality against him, asked the profound question: "Can't we all just get along?"

It's becoming increasingly obvious to me that the answer is, "No."

I am one of the board members for my home owners' association, and I see how little, itty bitty, minor differences of opinion can lead people to do very hostile things toward each other. What starts off as an honest disagreement over who should be allowed to park where becomes a feud involving threats, intimidation, and "coalition building" of neighbors against neighbors. It's surreal to see. In the once case that is currently on my mind, both parties are generally reasonable folks who just want to live and let live. Until their desires clash, and then it's dog eat dog.

Our home owners association has, oh, about one hundred forty units. Something like that. There's usually one (and only one) feud going on in our neighborhood at any given time (I've been on the board now for roughly four years). The feud always ends the same way: first, one party moves out, and then the other party moves out, too. Then, somebody else gets upset with some other somebody, and another feud is born.

I attended a science fiction writers convention recently, and author Stephen Barnes commented on the reason racism persists in science fiction in particular and throughout America in general. He gave one theory that I found particularly resonant. He speculated that nasty behavior in groups is often the result of ever-so-minor tendencies among individuals that aggregate into something larger. In other words, most people are actually quite tolerant folks. Left to their own devices, most people will behave well in most situations. However, there might be one area where any given person will *tend* to not be as tolerant. One area where there is a distinct "us versus them" feeling.

When you gather a large group of people, these small tendencies toward intolerance will tend to aggregate around some particular issue, cohere, and become more obvious. More pronounced. Quiet disagreement or dislike becomes overt resistance or animosity, which in turn becomes outright hostility and hatred as the group gets larger still.

(Keep in mind, this idea is my extrapolation of one part of what I heard Mr. Barnes say, and may not actually represent his views.)

This is not to say that all large groups must inevitably tend toward violence (although, now that I think about it, a case can be made for just that). But, rather, the idea is that the larger the group, the more likely some manner of intolerance will be expressed.

Mr. Barnes also made another observation, which is even more pertinent. Let us suppose that most people are basically good. Mr. Barnes asked us to consider that, say, nine out of ten people are good, but I'll go further: let's suppose that 99 out of every 100 people are basically good. What does that leave us with? It leaves us with the one out of a hundred who are inherently -- to borrow Mr. Barnes eloquent terminology -- assholes.

So. You have a hundred people. A microcosm of humanity. For the sake of argument, we'll say that 99 are decent folks. One is an asshole. Never mind that the substantial majority of these people will tend to be good, there's still going to be trouble in River City because that one guy is gonna stir up trouble. That one guy is going to cause problems. And he *will*, I assure you, even get some of his basically good neighbors to occasionally do basically bad things.

And this brings us to an item I saw in the news today which is proof positive that we will never, ever, see "world peace." NEVER. This news article I read on cnn.com talks about an online game called "The Sims Online." This game boasts a community of 100,000 players. The object of the game is to pilot your virtual character through simulated cites, acquire simulated jobs and simulated families, and make simulated friends. There are no guns in Simland. But, as the article explains, there are nonetheless malcontents within this simulated land who gang up and harass their simulated neighbors. It's like a Sim Mafia. They target players, raid their accounts, and/or use the rules of the game to bring the target's score down (through the use of "red links").

As the article goes on to describe, the Sim Thugs have done enough damage to enough people that now there's a Sim Vigilante group (they call themselves the "Sim Shadow Government" -- think of it!) that boasts around a thousand members. Even the nice, friendly environment like Sims Online has it's own Sim Department of Homeland Security, thanks to the Sim Terrorists.

And that's the point. If an online game where you've essentially got grownups playing with Barbie Houses -- where you only score points by making friends (simulated, of course) -- can't escape this kind of virtual violence, how can we expect in the real world to circumvent real violence?

World peace is a noble goal. But as long as kids still fight each other in school playgrounds, nations will keep going to war. It is as inevitable as a Sim Mafia in the Sims Online; as enduring as bickering neighbors in otherwise quiet housing developments.