War

It is a fact that war of any kind inspires many stories whilst war in reality inspires not that much- it causes death and destruction and a lot of silent suffering for generations to come. We are able to sublimate our tendency to fight into stories of heroins and heroes, fairytales, magical lands and unknown creatures.

This capacity is our given way out of actual violence and destruction- our way out of war. At the moment there is a closure going on of many humanity university degrees. These degrees support languages and the arts which supports, imagination and storytelling- maybe these closures are not a coincidence, maybe they are a way to silence our imaginations, to silence our way out of destruction into creation.

It is worrying that young people get the message from the older leading generation that such degrees are ‚useless‘, that they will not equip them with skills to earn enough money to live from or bring enough success or fulfilment.

I am however, bound to hope that young people themselves will realise that they might not want to fight against each other, they have had the experience through the internet that they can talk with each other all over the world, empathising with difference and curious about each other’s lives. They might realise that they need to keep on believing in their capacity to imagine violence in stories as a way to not be violent in reality.

They might demand to study the stories of war- of which there are so many- in order to avoid a war which will sacrifice their young lives for no particular good reason. Which no war ever had anyways- only in stories. Fighting for freedom is maybe the biggest illusion of mankind when that fight becomes a war instead of a negotiation based on empathy and understanding of the motivations of the aggressors.

Post Views : 19