So, you
get caught in a sort of lethargy, an incomprehensible tiredness,
and you wait for something to give you a start from that sleepiness.
Possibly something nice. It’s only human to hope—even
when there’s no point, isn’t it?
The other day, I started writing an essay about globalization,
and I gave up. Really, there’s nothing to say that hasn’t
already been said. You can only take some old themes and elaborate
them in a new way. I had no desire to do that. And then some
bad things happened…Actually, these are always the same
bad things that keep happening over and over again, just in
new ways. Maybe there is some point in writing about
them, after all: to adjust to their new modalities.
Anyway, moved by these ugly events, I gave up the essay and,
against my will, I got back to my most hated theme: the war.
But then, since we mentioned globalization, let’s start
from there. If everything has been globalized—and it has—why
do the majority of people think that the wars have been left
out? That they haven’t become ours, the “heritage”
of all of us. Why do we always treat them as somebody else’s,
until they knock on our door? To be more precise, why do we
pretend not to hear them knocking stubbornly at our door?
Do we think that hurriedly installed locks or sophisticated
security systems will keep the unwanted guests outside? Let’s
switch to singular, because all the wars have so many things
in common that there’s simply no point in using the plural.
There, we do not realize that the war is not knocking at the
door because the locks are preventing it from entering; it plays
with our ingenuousness. The war is a curious creature. It’s
interested in knowing the limits of human blindness. And when
it realizes that it has no limits, it gets sick and tired of
its elementary decency (which it always respects in the beginning)
and goes back to its original nature.
To get one thing straight, it’s not pretending to be something
else in the beginning. On the contrary! But it’s probably
a little amused by the fact that people call it all sorts of
names—but the right one. And its name is war. Nothing especially
difficult to remember or understand. At least it seems so. And
when we finally call it the right name—and we have to,
sooner or later—it’s already too late for some people.
On the other hand, if we want to be honest with it and ourselves,
we have to admit that its reaction is quite logical. Namely,
utter underestimation that's close to provocation of something
so powerful, impetuous and arrogant has to end badly. And, naturally,
annoyed by such an amount of absurd ignorance, it oozes into
our small world with unbearable easiness, becoming its master.
First, it breaks all the locks, turns off all the security systems,
and then exposes our helplessness to the point that our lives
become reduced to a moment. It can last an hour, a day, a year…depending
on the mood of this new master of our lives. And the war is
certainly the worst of all masters. And why should it
be any better, with so many subjects humbly waiting for its
arrival?
They say that the war also has its masters. I doubt that.
Who are they? Simple yes men cold-heartedly used just like the
innocent victims of these yes men, themselves. Let's just remember,
for a moment, some of the greatest “masters” of war.
For example Attila or Hitler, all the same. Let's remember how
they ended. That's not the way masters end, only servants. After
all, if we think for a minute, of where those masters came from,
who created them...we did. With our earlier described
behavior. It's unbelievable how much can be done by not doing
anything, isn’t it?
I went off topic. After all, I didn't have any particular theme
or intention; I just wanted to say, by the way, that the war
will always be, whenever it likes, the absolute master of our
lives, until we're courageous enough to call it by its right
name. On time.
