Who are problems and battles for?. Why do people go to war? It is a.

Everyday, I awake to a frightening yet now-familiar rhythm: notifications on my devices with headlines of cities shelled, kids displaced, medical facilities destroyed, depriving areas, households spread, source of incomes overthrew, people eliminated– typically in wars and crises justified by identities and grievances that those experiencing them hardly comprehend, not to mention support. And daily, the same concern consumes my ideas: Why do we maintain doing this to each other?

I often flashback to a lady I spoke with while operating in South Sudan during its civil war. She had run away with her newborn kid after her health center was assaulted. Her words remain to haunt me. When asked if she had a message for political leaders, she looked at me steadily and claimed:

“Who are they defending? I do not understand that they are fighting for. It is not for me. It is not for my children … If they state it is for me they are dealing with, after that tell them I don’t think so.”

Her question mirrors one posed centuries earlier by Blaise Pascal– and demands to be asked once more today. Pascal, a 17 th-century theorist and theologian, saw plainly what still evades us:

“What can be much more outrageous than killing a man merely since he was born on the other side of a river, and his ruler disagrees with mine, even though I have no quarrel with him?”

Building difference, manufacturing violence

Pascal’s reflection uncovers the moral absurdity of battle: that people are conditioned to kill each other not out of personal complaint, but due to abstract obligations– territory, flag, ethnic culture, or belief– usually imposed by those in power. His framework tests the reasoning of “warranted” dispute by asking a more basic concern: On what basis do we claim the right to take another’s life?

In today’s conflicts– from Ukraine to Gaza, Sudan to Congo (DRC), Yemen to Myanmar– the very same logic plays out. Individuals experience and die not as a result of direct enmity however as a result of state and political-level decisions, nationalist unsupported claims, or inherited hostilities. Rulers/leaders (or what goes for them) and opinion-leading elites are the arbiters of that we view as opponent or kin, and this is specifically the impression Pascal critiqued.

George Orwell, in 1984 , demonstrated how routines keep control by producing adversaries. Albert Camus, in his essay The Rebel , alerts how also honorable causes end up being hazardous when ideological purity eclipses human empathy. In each instance, identity is not naturally fierce– it is made violent by just how we are shown to value it, and by those who benefit from our loyalty to it.

Do we truly dislike each various other or are we hung out to?

I created an item in 2008 labelled Male from Someplace In-between , prompted by the racist strikes in South Africa, where Black South Africans strongly turned against fellow Black Africans. Despite such scary, lots of asked: Just how could this happen? Just how could individuals that share so much alike inflict such harm on one another?

I discovered just how our very early socialisation teaches us who we are– and who we are not. We discover to value our household, clan, tribe, and country. We likewise find out– occasionally quietly– to wonder about those outside these boundaries.

Households, clans, tribes, countries, political association, and religious beliefs give us belonging,– it is an advantage– yet these can be the basis for conflict when weaponised by power structures. What happens is that we are made to think that we have a solitary identity– with the effect being that we need to combat to protect it or make sure that it is the leading pressure.

Shared mankind instead of a single identification

From my personal fact we are not simply one thing. We are lots of points at once. The identifications we inherit issue. Yet they are not single or fixed.

What am I? Bakweri, Metta, Sawa, Beti, Anglophone, Francophone, from Buea and Yaoundé– Cameroonian, African, resident, resident, migrant, help worker, mediator, reporter, tranquility studies specialist? My family members covers continents and faiths: British relatives, American in-laws, fans of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and traditional African faiths. This tapestry of identities must soften borders in the mind.

My point? Battle does not start with bombs and bullets. It begins with mental borders– when we reduce ourselves or others to a single identification, it becomes easier to dehumanise, to hate, to validate injury.

In a world where identities stoke conflict, we must look past labels– Right, Left, Progressive, Conservative– and see the humanity within. We need to turn down the misconception that difference threatens. Rather, let’s aid take down stories that divide, and support an intricate identification rooted in our shared humanity, not acquired and made fear.

Zombie and the viewpoint of peace

Fela Kuti’s songs resolved styles of anxiety and physical violence. The legendary Nigerian musician’s Afrobeat music is a normal component of my listening experience. 2 tracks especially deal with problems of identity, violence, power and control that the globe is wrestling with today.

In Zombie , Fela satirises soldiers that act on command without independent thought. He highlights the idea that a soldier’s actions are determined by orders rather than individual sentence, hence resembling Pascal’s thoughts on the absurdity that human beings can kill other human beings on instruction, lowering the individual to a tool executing violence.

“Zombie no go go unless you inform am to go … Zombie no go think unless you tell am to believe …,” Fela sings.

Fela’s criticism extends past the soldier to the systemic frameworks that change people into enforcers of physical violence, resembling Pascal’s wondering about of rulers that wage wars in support of individuals without these individuals’s permission.

Fela’s song and the question positioned by the female I spoke with in South Sudan– “That are they fighting for?”– act as a wider honest questions. It tests the variation between decision-makers who launch battles or order repressive actions and the regular individuals who endure the repercussions.

Water has no enemy

Fela’s Water No Obtain Enemy — an extra poetic yet no much less effective piece uses the metaphor of water to mention global, vital life– the kind of liquid, calm, unresisting identity that sustains instead of separates.

Water, like our common mankind, transcends built divisions. It has no fixed identity, no loyalty to boundaries or flags, and yet it is essential to all. To fight water is to eliminate life itself.

This acknowledgment is not a contact us to desert identity, yet to resist its instrumentalisation. To recognize that we bring histories, yes– but also possibilities.

There’s need to stop briefly, to assume before following the leader that presumes that she or he is releasing a war to secure ‘our country’, ‘our people’, ‘our borders’– no matter just how sweet-sounding their unsupported claims may be. Humanity must learn to be like water– resisting disgust, rejecting division, and streaming toward peace– also in a globe full of zombies.