In various ways, philosophers and thinkers have said that life is absurd and futile, and that its culmination in death attests to its absurdity and affirms its futility.
But what about when death is not merely an event that brings life to an end but is the very essence of life?
This question is not delirium masking as contemplation. It is an attempt to characterize the conditions of this region mired in wars, both civil and uncivil, or dealing with war as an eminent possibility. Today, in Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, approximately 160 million people find themselves embroiled in one of the two options. And who knows what belligerent surprises could blow up in our faces tomorrow, in this or that Arab country?
Nations could fight for a year, or two or three years, and this has happened frequently throughout history, and it continues today. As for remaining in a state of war, year after year and generation after generation, this might be a “civilizational” hallmark exclusive to us. Indeed, as far as those who had fought them are concerned, the “Hundred Years’ War” and the “Forty Years’ War” have become a thing of the past. As for us, war oscillates between being a present and being a future.
The fact is that fighting one’s enemy so long as one is alive means killing one’s people so long as one is alive. They can be killed in an array of ways: from being made to continuously swallow death in drips, to having to endure the persecution of oppressive regimes and their prisons, violence, poverty, and disease, to internal and external displacement, and all the individual and collective suffering that come with it. As for those among them qualified as living, in addition to their misery, they are robbed of their ability to decide their future or determine the course of their lives, leaving them half dead. And for these numerous victims, life will never be anything but “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” as Hobbes famously put it.
However, among the many factors responsible for this generalized hell on earth, two are more significant than any others. One is political authorities lacking any legitimacy seeking to derive legitimacy through some conflict or other, and the second is societies that are not willing to be societies and are determined to remain spiteful warring communities. In both cases, we see a magnification of “causes” characterized as fateful that lead only to the erosion of the future and engender nothing but pain. These two factors, which are often mutually reinforcing, are readily and abundantly available in our region.
Turning life into killing and fighting nullifies, or rather trivializes, demands for a legitimate regime. Instead of intercommunal infighting being presented as madness and chaos, it is rendered a desire for salvation or glorious liberation.
Amid this state of affairs, one thing that remains astonishing is that the expanding scale of war, i.e. the broadening scale of death, is coupled with decreasing contemplation of war. One still scarcely reads a text on the virtues of peace or the vices of violence, and rarely do we see efforts, conferences, or research symposiums to address this dire question.
As for examining the history of this violence, its roots, assigning blame for it, and thinking of exits or paths to end it, they are not on the agenda for any of us. Indeed, above all, the bickering of conflicting parties dominates the discussion: “They started it;” “No, they did.” And while each of the factions amplifies the toxicity of the others, fueling their fanaticism and obstinacy, the polemical dispute over how things began does nothing to change the conclusion that will be shared in practice: broad misery for all.
Of course, as in all wars, we have a lexicon supporting and justifying the killing. It goes back in history to emphasize its inevitability and seeks help from interests and geopolitics, as well as honor and dignity, to entrench this inevitability. If a political actor attempts to put an end to the fighting, usually foreign actors, we put these efforts down to “ulterior motives, “proceed as we were, and go on killing and being killed.
Peace is already frail in our culture, we who have never had a single robust anti-war movement advocating peace. The most prominent example remains the Communists’ ‘Peace Partisans,’ which was established in keeping with the Soviets’ Cold War customs. However, the prominent action by those ‘Partisans’ in Iraq was the massacres which they exchanged with the Arab nationalists in Mosul in 1959. With the Oslo Accords in 1993, there only emerged the bare minimum of serious literature in defense of or opposition to this peace.
As for the proponents of seeing life as conflict, who are swayed by either blind loyalties, oversight, frivolity, or personal benefit, they overlook the fact that this costs them a basic element of their humanity - one that should be taken for granted - preferring life over death. And when they defend their choice with the pretext that they see death as the path to life, they do nothing but add a morbid chapter to the history of mythology.
No cause, no matter how noble, can justify turning life into a burden on living. This is a blatant, ongoing crime - a crime that repulses every atom in the bodies of those who love life and freedom and want it for themselves and others.
