THE THREAT

Beginning of the 2020's

I was in my early thirties. Although I had a thriving career, my life felt empty. I was still playing someone else to be part of a group, a society that didn't want to know me. I started work early in the morning, obeyed orders all day, I sometimes gave orders myself when I was given the authority to do so. Then, I returned home in the late afternoon to eat and sit quietly in front of the small screen of my mobile phone. I often read books or newspapers. I didn't like television or films. However, I made it a point to follow the news every day; only the one from safe and reliable sources of course. I had to stay on top of information in my world because I couldn't reach the top of it. As a very busy and committed military member, I cared little about the vagaries of the economy. After all, hadn't we seen so many others before that? Threats, more threats, and even more threats. Then finally, everything always went back to normal: Those who had too much would end up having even more. The melancholy and boredom of my daily life distracted me from thinking beyond my own worries or those of my loved ones. I was lonely and sad while others my age and younger were busy looking for the right man, woman, or both to pair up with. Then, they would go on pretending on social media that their life was a success.

Why and how had the news from safe and reliable sources failed to warn me of what would happen to my family?

Today, I have a small idea, but as for all of you standing on the other side of the timeline of humanity, would you be ready to hear it?

I hope this passage won't bore or upset you too much. Perhaps you have already gone through the facts that I am about to relate. Where are you on the timeline of the mankind of the 21st century?

For me, those facts occurred in real time on the small flat screen of my mobile phone about sixty years ago. I experienced some of those events on the field also because of my profession in the Polish Forces. At that time, I was very worried about the impacts of the greedy men's wars on the planet. On the other hand, I had few concerns about those same impacts on ourselves. I had forgotten Alegria's words of wisdom: "Men's ideology and their ideological wars force them to activate their most basic survival instincts, but what war never teaches them is how to go back to a state of normal life when there are no more enemies and the massacres are over."

I was then listening to the news from safe and reliable sources convinced that I was only a mere extra or detached spectator in this big-budget action film with spectacular special effects which the leaders of my world were staging to entertain us.

But, to distract us from what?

Nobody seemed to ask that question. As for me, I continued to listen completely anesthetised by the succession of aborted relationships and separations by caesarean section in my life.

Like a good middle child, I made sure not to choose one side or the other so as not to offend anyone. Pro-war, Anti-peace; Pro- the-well-being of the collective, Anti-the-well-being of the individual; Pro-science, Anti-nature, or vice versa, I never asserted any point of view on issues that were dividing my hierarchical superiors, my society, people around me, and my family. I was even ready to stop thinking all together if this could spare me the obligation to choose, decide, and defend what I believed in.

So please, don't take the sarcastic tone of my voice here personally, because it isn't addressed to you. On the contrary, it bears witness to my own pain. Once again, I would choose to betray those I loved as well as my most cherished values ​​to follow a supposedly beneficial all-powerful authority that wanted to reshape me in its image.

***

A couple of years passed and China was still making the world talk. No one liked her, but everyone wanted to trade with her and her billions of children. It was said that her appetite was even more ferocious than the Americans'. In Cuba, everybody knew that there was no appetite more ferocious than the American appetite. Like a black hole, the latter sucked up every penny in its path.

By the early 2020's, we had already seen four threatening viral infections and several scientists were talking about future pandemics. The latter arrived unexpectedly, and the whole world was deeply traumatised. So much so that rich countries allowed themselves to fall into a global totalitarian regime led by big pharmaceutical companies. Horrified by the idea of ​​dying infected by an unknown virus, rich societies were willing to live indefinitely in oppression and fear. People obediently offered as a pledge their own freedom, their human lives, and democratic values ​​to the very same people who wanted them forever dependent, sick, and addicted. Such is the stupidity of mankind driven by fear.

While the planet continued to heat up and the economy of rich countries kept going up and down, internal and religious conflicts tossed the populations of the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa between seas and refugee camps. Some poor countries sank into the abyss of oblivion while others managed to harvest the crumbs of a system that wanted them to remain beggars. Big American companies pocketed billion after billion without paying taxes while the working population kept being taxed more and more.

The alleged unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by Russian army troops in 2022 sent the whole of Europe into a cold sweat for over two years as the world watched from afar with panting hearts. Was the Russian president going to press the nuclear button? The media spoke of the possibility of a third world war. As if the world of the 2020's resembled that of the colonial world of the middle of the 20th century, where men from Africa, Asia, America and the Caribbean had to fall into the war of Europe like people fall into the sea when the boat is sinking. For those with dark skin, and all those who didn't have the status of man, losing their lives for values ​​that were denied to them by law still made sense; they had already lost everything. They weren't allies, they were ammunition during the first and second world war of Europe. That's all they were. 

However, in the 21st century, things had become very different then. All men, even dark-skinned ones, were individuals and independent. Now, Money consisted of the one and only ruling law, everyone thought for themselves, and God only provided for those who had the means to pay for his blessings. What was most surprising for Europe during the Russo-Ukrainian conflict was to realise much too late that Russia no longer needed Europe to ensure the stability of its currency or its economy. On the other hand, Europe and all its population depended on Russia for cooking food, running their engines, heating their homes in the winter, etc. Why hadn't they thought of that before launching their series of sanctions leading the rest of the world hunting Russian witches ? It became more and more obvious to European populations that the real witches were hiding everywhere, not just in Russia. The witches were concocting devilish plans with the financial collaboration of the world's elite. 

Who of the witches or the rich and influential men made up the devilish plans first? 

The question didn't really matter as to the outcome for the European populations: more inflation, more job loss, more social instability, and even more divisions and conflicts.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine reawakened fears in Poland stemming from still gaping wounds. The country had become the graveyard of the Second World War, an emblem of Jewish extermination with its concentration camps. But above all, the Polish nation had been abandoned to the hands of the Soviet Union by the victorious West. Everyone still alive to remember had told the new generation about the horrors of those times. The Polish Forces threw themselves heart and soul into a conflict they saw as the great opportunity for revenge. Germany had never compensated Poland destroyed at 80% during the war. Undeniably, Russia would pay with its blood for the trauma of the post-war years. With each Polish military member who left to help the resistance in Ukraine, the history of Eastern Europe was being rewritten with a trembling but determined hand. As with Feliz and my father, I often wondered whether the relentless involvement of the Polish Forces in the conflict originated from past national fears or future national ones. The present of the country and of its people who had just recovered from more than fifty years of misery remained secondary.

So, all the beautiful promises of the conferences on climate change went up in bombs and smoke of coal to dissuade Russia from continuing the war in Ukraine. This was supposedly to avoid attacking Russia while saving Ukraine. Once again, the conflict of men's egos had caused millions of ordinary people to invent themselves as soldiers or refugees overnight. Many of them arrived in Poland, mostly women, children, and people of retirement age, but also young men.

Nevertheless, this still didn't constitute our war: the rich countries' war. That one would come the following year, calculated and stealthy like all the finest wars. 

How can any war ever be fine? 

When the war reminds mankind of the impact of their choices on the planet and all the lives that the latter sustains.