We watch the news and ask how is it possible that anyone could cause such pain, could inflict such damage without provocation, without self-defence. We naturally separate the actions of a dictator and his army from those of our colleagues, family, and friends. That is a crazy man, over there, out of reach, out of touch. He is a murderer, a criminal, and insane. But I am not.

We are the most homogeneous species on the planet, our DNA more similar between any two of us than any insect, rodent, bird or mammal. When we point to another, we are in fact pointing to our self, for in us is the foundation for them; and in each of them is a nearly identical copy of us.

When Vladimir Putin sends the Russian military into neighboring Ukraine, it is our DNA that makes this unfathomable move possible, for inside each of us is the capability to wield deadly force in defense of an ideal. Each of us is a killer, a murderer, a soldier and a thief. We may not in this lifetime express that capacity, but it is there, waiting as a latent thought, a bad dream, or a quest for power in a world in which we all feel powerless, and seek more than we deserve.

I am Putin. I am Kim Jong-un. I am Chairman Mao, Andrew Jackson, and Hitler too. And there is a part of me that resembles Trump for in my chemistry and makeup is the desire to mock those I do not understand and to build a narrative that reinforces what I want to believe, not that which is based in fact and reality. To kill another human, through direct conflict or remote action seems impossible, but there are times where if I am honest, I could pull the trigger.

I am Gandhi, Mother Teresa, King, Mandela, and the people of Poland who receive refugees into their homes. My wiring and chemical make-up is all of these too. Yet for some reason, I find it more difficult, more challenging to move as they did and do, to hold strong to my values, to let go of anger and pain such that I can again see a path forward in which we all benefit as one. They are in me too, their DNA very much my own, voices waiting to be heard.

I am a multi-generational being, the product of my grandparents survival of the Great Depression and my parents deliberate integration of the ’60s psychology that gives children a say in the path to their destination. Generation to generation our epigenetic code carries forward a layer of protection for our children, our children’s children, and theirs too. The families that survive the devastation in Ukraine will carry trauma in the marrow of their bone. Some will respond with PTSD or life-long anxiety, others no apparent effect at all. Some will return to the life taken from them, others will start a new. And in the next generation will be a random mix of powerful programming that will give birth to a new host of dictators, peace keepers, and everyone in between.

It is not yet known if times of war beget warriors to follow or a cultural shift toward peace that is sustained. Perhaps in the future we will have this clarity, and while NATO fears nuclear retaliation and the Pope cries out “Stop this massacre!” a mathematician will calculate the impact on a global scale dictated not by the cost of reconstruction nor the lives lost to bombs dropped, but by the number of dictators and illicit rulers who will inevitably rise from the ashes only to do it all over again.