And so it has happened again…. Iraq first, now Pakistan…

Do we need any more proof that terrorism knows no barriers, no boundaries, no gps coordinates? It selects no gender, no age, no race, no sexual orientation – it kills humans. H U M A N S.

Do we really need to spell that out? Really?

Well, sometimes it seems we do – it’s quite incredible how centric on our area of the world we are. And yet, we can always distill this to understand it further. Let’s take it local, start with a village: two band clubs pitted against each other. Move out. One village pitted against its neighbour. Move out. One area, pitted against another, one zone against the other, North versus South. Finally, one island against the other – Malta versus Gozo. And then? Then it’s Malta against the Continent. How ridiculous does that already sound?! Move out again – it’s Europe against Asia/Africa/America etc. And what happens if we move out again? Why, it’s the WORLD against…

So my first question is: why can’t we just skip to the final stage already??? At this point, I’m nearly hoping for an alien invasion!

And secondly – notice the one word that reoccurs time and time again in that paragraph? Yup, it’s the word ‘against’. No, that’s not a coincidence. It’s what is really happening. We are succumbing to divisiveness, to the us-versus-them mentality, whoever the “them” flavour-of-the-month happens to be. And we are allowing it. We continue to buy in to these seemingly innocent protestations, to this rhetoric that may seem innocuous but is anything but. Because it’s intent is one and one alone – to build up walls. To continue to foster division. To continue to search out the differences and mark them as something ugly, rather than something to be explored for the betterment of humanity. And this has culminated in the likes of Donald Drumpf who LITERALLY wants to build  a wall.

Walls won’t stop the desperate, walls won’t solve divisiveness, they will simply foster it further, fomenting discord, unease, disparity. People will want to climb that wall. A wall, whether literal or figurative, will simply not solve any problem. Rather, it will make the angry angrier, the poor poorer, the weak weaker.

This is what we should fear. This is what we need to address. This is what we need to wake up to before we really descend into chaos and the moving out truly becomes moving in until it’s back to every village for itself.

Further reading: Once again, I have to recommend this excellent piece.