What do I actually give a shit about?
I don’t think I give a real shit about what is happening politically in most of the war zones around the world today; tired and jaded I find the repetition of man’s constant failure to find a better way exhausting.
War, according to Hollywood, brings out the best in us. We become brothers in arms, sisters of mercy, communities with a common bond (death and depravation being demoted in favour of rabbit pie and heartwarming family gatherings).
Is that so?
Anyone who has spoken to someone who has first hand experience of a war will know this is not true. Firstly most people who have actually fought in a war are, more often than not, loathe to talk about it. They will tell you about their friendships, their loves, the places they visited, the bartering they did in the Suez canal on their return, how great Stoke Mandeville was in helping their recovery, but they will omit to share the feeling of blind white fear they felt the first time they raised their gun in a ‘be or be killed’ moment; the moment they lost their humanity.
I do give an enormous shit about the daily effects of any war on the human condition. The way we behave towards each other when placed under impossible stress. Note I say ‘placed’.
I give a shit about boy soldiers desensitised by atrocities perpetuated against them by men who are barely more than boys themselves; sons all, who will now never know what it is to feel compassion.
I give a shit about the women who have to raise a child that is the product of gang rape, knowing not whether to love or hate the daily reminder of their war.
I give a shit about the children who have to watch their mothers being raped and their fathers bludgeoned to death by men their fathers used to play football with.
I give a shit about the orphans destined to grow up in refugee camps who duck at the sound of a firework and who will never feel their mother’s arms around them. (I also give a great shit about the people who give up their lives to take care of them.)
I give a shit about the depravity that the lost men of war believe is acceptable, murder, rape, paedophilia, necrophilia and cannibalism, and the lasting scars this will leave on the next generation.
I give a shit for the old men and women who have seen all this before and are now too frail and feeble to stand up and say “It’s wrong! It doesn’t achieve anything!”
I also give a shit about the lost art, the lost architecture, the lost books, the lost music, the lost dance; the things that raise us to a higher level that war raises to the ground and buries in the rubble of the dead.
So no, I don’t give a shit about who rules the world and I am not going to pin my flag to any political or religious cause that could lead to war.
And do you know what? The people who will start the wars don’t give a shit that I give a shit about anything. I don’t matter one jot.
All I would say to anyone who still has the right to vote is “Be careful what you wish for.”