War dominates the headlines again, but behind the geopolitics lies something much simpler: human exhaustion.
People are tired of conflict, tired of anger, tired of lives lost and hope destroyed. The cost of war is not just measured in military terms. It is measured in grief, fear, forced migration and the destruction of human well-being.
In this short reflection, I ask a simple question: why do we keep accepting war as inevitable?
And why is hope so often the first casualty?
This video is about the duty of care we owe to every human being, regardless of nationality, religion, race or politics.
Because if hope disappears, everything else follows.
This is the audio version:
This is the transcript. I do, of course, know that you might have read this already, as I posted it here yesterday. I did, however, think it was worthwhile sharing this on YouTube today because of the very positive reaction it got on both Substack (where the number of comments exceeded the rate of reaction on this blog) and on Twitter, where, so far, 4,300 people have reposted the post and 10,000 have liked it, making it my most successful post there for some time. We thought that you would make it a suitable YouTube post as well.
I am tired.
Tired of war.
Tired of anger.
Tired of death.
Tired of lives lost.
Tired of hope destroyed.
Tired of unnecessary grief.
Tired of the destruction of well-being.
Tired of forced migration.
Tired of tears.
Tired of children living in tents, denied the childhood they deserve.
I'm tired of the political excuses offered for war.
I'm tired of racial hatred.
I'm tired of human lust for power wrapped up in theocracy.
I'm tired of talk of defence that excuses aggression.
I'm tired of biased reporting.
I'm tired of being told that people who have died on one side of a dispute are lives lost and that on the other, they are just killed.
I'm tired of a failure to recognise that any life lost unnecessarily is just that: it is a life lost unnecessarily.
I'm tired of the belief that war will ever solve anything.
I'm tired of the assumption that after war, everything will go back to normal.
I'm tired of the cost of conflict always being borne by anyone but those who started it.
I'm tired of those who think we don't have a duty of care to everyone, whoever they are, wherever they come from, whatever they believe, whatever their skin colour, whatever their gender, whatever their age.
I'm tired of those who think that others don't matter.
Most of all, I'm tired of those who destroy hope.
I live in hope.
Hope of a better day.
Hope of a better life for everyone.
Hope that I might live to see that.
Hope that everyone might then share hope.
Is that too much to hope for?
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I would add tired of (and disgusted by) small, incompetent, selfish, narcissistic people who revel in visiting harm, fear, war, pain, starvation on fellow humans whilst being a long way away from any form of ‘front line’, i.e., Trump, Hegseth et al. They are stains on humanity and utterly beneath contempt.
War: a failure (of imagination) to consider alternatives.
(war is usually initiated by those for whom war will have no consequence – a cursory look at heads of state shows the reality of this).
And yet, now is not the time to be tired at all: it is a time to watch what happens.
The other big worry is the environmental impact of this war – not even mentioned on the BBC but raised the other day commendably by the Guardian.
I would sum this war up in one word: Greed. This is a war of pleonexia as far as I am concerned – the huge land and property deals to be done in an enlarged Israel for example and who knows – getting Western hands on Iran’s oil, nice big fat defence contracts all around etc.
Because the dirty fact is that although there is never enough money to care about people and solve their problems, there is always enough money – endless in fact – for war – real ones and fake ones like this unfortunately.
And there is also a religious undertow to this as well which I find distasteful. So there is some form of Judeo-Christian orthodoxy emerging against Islam (which given Christian violence against Jews over the years I find surprising – is this a post-Nazi Christian guilt trip?). And then you have Muslims, Christians and Jews ripping up the planet their God made for them. What sort of respect for your creator and your prophets is that?
The truth is what I allude to above: the new God in town is man made money. Woe be to all of us. Seriously. ‘Tragic’ does not come close to describing it at all. Stand firm, stand tall and watch I’m afraid. This is war only in method. In reality, this is asset stripping, big time.