Forgotten war

I’ve just finished watching a documentary on the war in Afghanistan. What a disgrace that we do not keep it more in our minds and hearts. We, the collective we, go on with our lives, planning, dreaming, as though we were not involved in a war. This is not breaking news. Most of us are simply numb, I guess. When I say most of us, of course I don’t refer to the thousands of friends and family members of our combatants in harm’s way.

So why write about this now? I write because this is indicative of a bigger societal problem facing us during this critical century. As a society, we have become desensitized by a barrage of situations around the world. There are wars, kidnappings, robberies, murders and other disasters at every corner. As I write, there are at least ten ongoing ‘crisis’ and that’s just in my media bubble. Imagine how much is going on worldwide.

The moral of the story is prioritization. We need to prioritize our focus and our responses. We need to bring what matters to the fore and stop chasing after all the small scrapes. In fact, if we regain our focus, we may very well cure several cause and effect problems. Take, for instance, the US national debt. Would we not spend less if we focussed on our priorities and accepted that some excess projects should be abandoned or, at least, postponed?

No need to keep going on this topic for now. It just hit me that we are numb and that’s not good.