CONSIDER this. A few nights ago a Belfast woman and her sister were asleep when the front door of their flat was smashed in. The woman's baby daughter had been sickly and they had brought her into their bed. When the gang burst into the bedroom wielding baseball bats they cared nothing for the baby.

The attackers pummelled their terrified victims, paying no heed to the fact a baby was in the bed. The mother was battered unconscious. When she came to, she discovered her baby's hand had been so badly injured that surgeons had to amputate a finger. The story was reported extensively in the Northern Ireland media, invariably with the rider: ''The attack was not understood to be sectarian.''

Oh, we are meant to think, that's OK then. A young mother is battered senseless by a gang of intruders and her baby girl will now go through life with nine fingers, but that's not a problem because the attack wasn't sectarian. Assuredly, when the wee lass starts trying to count to 10 she'll take great comfort from the fact the thugs didn't hate her mum because of her religion.

It was not an isolated incident. Gangs attack homes all the time in Northern Ireland and sometimes the incidents are obviously related to the Troubles. Protestant gangsters are still burning out Catholics from their areas, or bullying schoolchildren passing through.

The Provies are more subtle. Courting the international media and laying claim to be the victims of the saga, they tend to avoid such crude tactics. But Republican violence - from the sniper's bullet to the bomb this week which wrecked Markethill - is seen by the Protestant community as sectarian. ''This was a case of hit a Prod,'' said the owner of a chemist's shop wrecked by the bomb on Tuesday.

While these attacks hog the headlines, other low-grade violence rumbles on. The formal punishment beatings which marred the last ceasefire are not being carried out, but the break-ins and assaults carry on with the supposedly reassuring rider that they were ''not sectarian''.

This tells us a lot about the impact of the past 30 years on daily life in the north of Ireland. This writer has been there often enough through different periods and levels of tension to know it is startlingly easy to stop noticing things like armed checkpoints and security forces on the streets. When a British soldier points a rifle straight at you, it is as well to be sanguine about it and recognise he is doing his job, finding his range, and the safety catch is on.

However, the latest spate of violent attacks demonstrate that something grim has happened to what is considered acceptable behaviour. It is wrong that lovers or neighbours come to think it acceptable to solve normal disagreements by beating each other or maiming babies.

It means social norms have shifted, and they will be difficult to shift back. Let us just suppose the next eight months of talks produce some modest advance. Personally, this observer sees that as unlikely, but let's just imagine there is a breakthrough.

What then? You are looking at a society so scarred and damaged it will have great difficulty learning to function again on a non-war-footing. It seems a shame to be pessimistic at such a time, with Unionists finally entering the same building, if not the same room, as their Republican foes.

But the reality is they are miles apart. Tony Blair has difficulty understanding that. He used to get exasperated by Scottish journalists getting into details about sovereignty and other constitutional niceties. He had no patience for what he called ''theological debates''.

He was pragmatic and broad-brushed in his approach to Scotland, and the same applies to his view of Ireland. He fully expects a devolved Stormont with proportional representation to produce a workable settlement, while strong and symbolic Belfast-Dublin bodies will satisfy Nationalist aspirations.

It would be good to think that. But just as the pragmatic and rationalist Mr Blair did not understand the Scots' view of sovereignty, he most certainly underestimates the division in the Six Counties. Many middle-class Catholics want to remain in the UK. Many middle-class Protestants would happily sign up for cross-border institutions.

But too many on both sides will refuse, demanding either nothing short of a united Ireland or insisting on a consolidated Ulster where the majority insists on continuating the link to Westminster. These two views are not capable of being reconciled.

Neither Tony Blair's impatience nor Mo Mowlam's doggedness is going to change that. And the brutalisation and emotional scarring brought about by the events of the past three decades runs too deep.

It is possible to have good friends on both sides of this divide. It is possible for them both to have strong and valid opinions. Maybe the partition should never have been conceded. Certainly the Unionist community is able to argue it has a right not to be forced into an all-Ireland settlement. Clearly, not just Unionists but many Nationalists dislike aspects of the Southern state and will be further discouraged if Dana becomes president, with her theocratic instincts honed in Birmingham, Alabama.

But the most worrying thing is that disagreement in the north of Ireland is rarely sorted out across the table. Even if the politicians start to behave that way, the culture has changed. If some minor local feud makes it acceptable to take a baseball bat to a baby girl, then a whole new way of thinking is needed.