Peace has always been an illusion. Conflict is a natural state of being for human. We wage war with our own inner selves, our inner demons. We are at odds in our interpersonal relationships, sometimes fighting losing battles against things larger than ourselves. Peace has always been a temporary state.
I, like many of my generation, have only thought of conflict being far away and inconsequential to my way of life. For twenty years we had been occupying Afghanistan, but the cost of that was so unimportant that I carried on, thinking that things were fine.
With the war in Ukraine, China’s increasingly open hostility toward Taiwan, and numerous others waiting and watching to see what the United States, and the West at large, will do, I realize now that I lived at the end of a gilded age. Life is going to get much harder now, and I must harden myself with it.
A Place 4Politics 