I had spent just under a week in London. The morning of my first full day there I wandered through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, passing under Wellington Arch on my way to Buckingham Palace. As the arch presented itself, I turned to my right and saw the Royal Artillery Memorial standing opposite.
The monument was built to commemorate the artillery soldiers who had fought in the first great war. Atop it stood a cannon in white marble, and I saw three bronze statues below, to the front and either side. Two of them were powerful, masculine figures who carried about them the accoutrements of a fully equipped World War One soldier. They both held an erect posture meant to project bravery and military might.
The third man was dead.
Without warning I fell into uncontrolled sobbing. I thought of the millions who have died in the service of politicians whose delusional sense of self-importance determined their deaths were necessary. Why were their lives so carelessly cut short?
I have been to the fields of Verdun and walked through the trenches that inflicted miserable disease and suffering upon young Frenchmen and their German so-called enemies. Have enough of their lives been stamped out in a terror-stricken wasteland for all the empires to secure glory yet?
I have been to the internment camp at Dachau, and I have seen the ovens there that consumed the bodies of dead Jewish prisoners in the fire of unrestrained hatred. Have enough bodies been burned to extinguish the threat of dissimilar beliefs yet?
I have listened to a Croatian man tell me of the genocidal massacres that shook his childhood in the city where I found God. Have enough mass graves been filled to anhialate cross-cultural malice yet?
I have played with the Middle Eastern refugees who left home and family to escape the bombs of American imperialism. Have enough refugees been scattered worldwide to decommission the weapons of mass destruction yet?
I have spoken to the Ukrainians who are now leaving their country for Poland and Czechia to escape Putin’s war. Have enough cities crumbled for the Russian tyrant to gain the world's cowering respect yet?
Nobody likes to think, at least not farther forward than the next news cycle.
Why are we so ready and willing to believe the fool who wants to tell us that some new cause is noble?
Nobody likes to think.
What would you feel if you had seen and heard the horror of which man is capable? What might you have learned if you had spoken to those who have suffered yourself? Why haven’t you opened your eyes to it already?
Nobody likes to feel.
Why does man so easily forget the awesome chaos he has subjected himself to and choose to hate his brother for fear of what he does not, or rather will not understand? How much is lost in translation because we refuse to speak the language of emotion? Why must we avoid our pain, instead allowing it to brew and escalate into a fury that can only be satisfied by total destruction?
It’s easier to just be numb. At least for now. It’s easier until you have to wake up tomorrow.
Nobody likes to feel, because feeling deeply hurts.
You wonder how I can cry over a statue? Friend it’s not just a statue. It’s the exaltation of stalwart and unflinching hatred as a primordial good! How many have died needlessly? When you stand in nationalist fervor to assert that terrifying the world through the militant projection of so-called power is a base requirement for functional society, how do you know you aren’t creating the very conditions that murdered your countrymen? And if they have fallen to pride, who is to say it won’t take you and your children as well? You ask how can I cry. How can you not?
There may be a time to take up arms in defense of good. But I'm not convinced that striking fear into anyone who could possibly be against you is more sophisticated than thinly-veiled malice. Does loudly broadcasting yourself as a threat do any better than render your country a target or tyrant to every other whose aims appear to collide with your own? International conflict seems rarely to be more than a drunken brawl on horrific scale. Everything is a circle. If you give the world fear it will destroy you.