Kill from Home

More convenient, better benefits

We all profess to want peace, but most of us won’t lift a finger to bring it about. Some people just feel it’s futile: war’s always been there, and always will be. Yet some things have always been there and these days are not: Like the fever of childbirth, or slavery.

Other people want peace too, but the obstacles to it are just too great. The factories, the bases, the educational institutions dedicated to teaching war. Yet there were also blacksmiths, livery stables and horse-trading depots all over the world. There still are a few, but no one would call it inevitable.

For most it isn’t like that: they want peace, but it’s a matter of priorities, that usually go like this:

Food

Clothing

Shelter

Career

Family Fun and Function

Connectivity

Golf

Peace.

In the past century, things have changed. With the exception of sieges, most wars were fought out in the fields, be they Omaha Beach, Waterloo, or Kurukshetra. There was often a warrior class or caste that conducted and participated in battles. But the airplane, missiles, and now drones have changed all that. Two critical factors now make wars worse. first, hostilities are not one-to-one, they’re one-to-many, and secondly, killing is now a fully impersonal business.

Here she is, in northern Nebraska, coffee cup and plants. She’ll have lunch at 12:15, but in the meantime she’s directing a drone over a war zone. Sometimes she doesn’t come in to the office. She can kill from home. And poetically, it’s other people’s homes she’s blowing up. It’s their food, clothing and shelter, to say nothing of their careers, families and connectivity.

So for many in the current world, peace is really right up there with the top priorities.