**Sean:** They were right.
Eljara looks at the photographs.
People marching.
Workers demanding safer conditions.
Women refusing roles chosen for them.
People once forced into silence finally speaking openly.
**Eljara:** About many things, yes.
**Sean:** Then where’s the monster?
**Eljara:** Look at what happens after being right.
More photographs.
Former allies arguing.
Groups splitting.
New boundaries being drawn.
Who belongs.
Who doesn’t.
Who is committed enough.
Who betrayed the cause.
**Sean:** They started together.
**Eljara:** Most groups do.
**Sean:** Fighting something that needed fighting.
**Eljara:** Sometimes.
**Sean:** And then they started fighting each other.
**Eljara:** Sometimes.
Sean studies the photographs.
**Sean:** Mind.
Us and them.
Friend and enemy.
Right and wrong.
Eljara points towards a confrontation.
**Eljara:** Body.
Eventually ideas acquire hands.
Sean looks at the meetings, marches and communities.
**Sean:** Spirit.
**Eljara:** Belonging. Purpose. Meaning. The certainty that what you’re doing matters.
**Sean:** Nothing wrong with that.
**Eljara:** Nothing at all.
A pause.
**Eljara:** Until belonging requires an enemy.
Until doubt becomes betrayal.
Until disagreement becomes corruption.
Until being right about the cause convinces you that you must also be right about the method.
**Sean:** So we haven’t changed.
**Eljara:** Of course we have.
Rights expanded.
Laws changed.
People once forced into hiding can live openly.
Things once accepted became unacceptable.
**Sean:** So we’re better.
**Eljara:** In important ways.
**Sean:** But?
**Eljara:** Better rules don’t necessarily mean we’ve redesigned the animal living by them.
Sean slowly draws a circle around several photographs with his finger.
**Sean:** At first the circle protects people.
He makes it smaller.
**Sean:** Then somebody asks who really belongs inside.
Different decade.
Different cause.
Different people.
The circle remains.
**Sean:** We look at our grandparents and know which mistakes we’d never make.
**Eljara:** History doesn’t test us with yesterday’s questions.
**Sean:** That’s why we’re so good at answering them.
**Eljara:** Precisely.
### CTA
The old witch hunt doesn’t need to survive unchanged.
It only needs new names, new boundaries and people certain that this time the line is justified.
Enter **Pulp Cthulhu Noir**, where defeating yesterday’s monsters does not make anyone immune to tomorrow’s.
https://startplaying.games/gm/dunchan
Go deeper into **Inner Fire** and the historical, psychological and narrative research behind Mythveil’s 1950s noir.
https://www.patreon.com/c/mythveilchronicles_bydunchanhuntergames
**We can see where previous generations drew their lines between “us” and “them”. Which lines do we draw today that our grandchildren may struggle to understand?**