war never changes
Every day I like to check the news in the afternoon for the latest, and though it does get tiring, I think it's worth being up to date on the things going on around us. You'll see the sort of daily or trending headlines surrounding Ukraine, Israel and Gaza, Iran, Yemen, parts of Africa, and all these conflict zones competing for the front page alongside other noteworthy updates on what Trump is babbling about today, how the economy is doing, or insane natural disasters. For some, a lot of these things are quite distant from us. For others, these are things that are affecting your daily life. For this post, I will refer specifically to conflict zones.
I have the privilege of belonging to the former camp where I live in a fairly peaceful part of the world with little worry to about beyond my daily struggles and how the price of my favourite sweets just rose by 20% in the past 2 months. The economy isn't doing very well but we find the means to keep on going, to be content and to find pockets of life where we can thrive. Sure, looming over us is the complexity of global trade with China and how it's impacting the entirety of the developing world as the west recalibrates its relationship with the Middle Kingdom, but what do I care? Well, I care a lot, but it's not something that affects my personal life. I stress about the coming Monday when Friday arrives and count the days till Friday arrives once we're sitting comfortably on Wednesday.
That is, until I heard the news about a week ago that clashes broke out along the entirety of the border between Thailand and Cambodia last week. Dozens of civilians killed, hospitals destroyed, hundreds of thousands evacuated from the border. I was glued to the news as fighting intensified across the entire border over some ancient bricks and the ego of the pettiest politicians on this side of the globe. Day and night, the grim reaper placed his hand on the shoulders of those sent to meet their demise. When the fighting finally ended with the unconditional yet not so immediate ceasefire, people on both sides of the border had suffered immensely for seemingly no real reason. Even now, I dare not lift my hopes in preparation of grimmer news to come.
Even though I'm still a distant observer in my Bangkok bedroom, this is an event that affects the people I personally know and communities that I've visited in the past. I myself am a army reservist, by choice, because the alternative would either be conscription or enlistment - I will be inevitably called to arms soon enough. I'm not ready to throw down my life for politicians who never even cared for me until they were ready to cast it down. Yet nationalist sentiment amongst the people I know, bloodthirsty, savage, indiscriminate - my mother, my relatives, coworkers, so on. All keen to point fingers, all too eager to kick it off again. Little do they know the true consequences of what they wish for.
I often reflect on how and why countries go to war on a whim, how wars shouldn't be in the interest of the people who elect the governments who do choose to fight. Press the right buttons though and it all unravels in a heartbeat. War, after all, is part of human nature. It's how we used to solve our problems in the past, and likely how we'll continue solving our future problems too. Though we have drastically reduced global conflict and advanced our society to immense technological leaps, we haven't found the solution to the key - us.
It is my sincere hope that the madness ends - for my girlfriend and those I care about. For me.
We fought over something petty, but I'm sure we'd do it again.
War never changes.
All my blog posts are drafted on my 1975 Olympia Traveller de Luxe