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To continue this tangent, I've often looked at the recent civil unrests in Europe -- Yugoslavia comes specifically to mind -- and wondered how these people who formerly lived next to each other fairly peaceably for generations could suddenly come to the point of burning their neighbors' houses down.

Yugoslavia is a completely different matter, in so far that this was not the case of civil unrest, but aggressive war of one country against its neighbors and former members of the same union (although your question of how one could burn one's neighbor's house under any circumstances is still relevant in our case and bothers me, too, of course). You should have followed Milosevic's rise to power in late 80's: the similarity with Mussolini (more than Hitler) was uncanny.

There were no "centuries of hatred" between Serbs and Croats one often reads about (which makes it even more difficult to understand the bloodshed). The first conatact we had was when Serb refugees fleeing the Turks ware given some land in exchange for military duty in the border regions (a short Wikipedia article). But then, what possesed Italians and Germans in 1920's an 30's?

Blah, the layer of civilization is so thin...