I am going to break the golden rule that I should keep my personal views to myself at all times. I suppose this rule evolved because knowing where someone stands on certain matters might offend people with different opinions, and blogs like these should be about work and work-related views.

Well, I don't care. The professional world we live in is so detached from the human condition by now, that I need to draw a line. Not a day goes by where I don't think about world events and the personal tragedy associated with them. The buck stops here. I no longer want to blog about "fun stuff" without exposing that other side of me.

The article that led to all this is an interview with Robert Fisk. Which made me realize that today, wars are waged by proxy - the actors are a bunch of young kids we don't know, and the witnesses tell stories we hear little about. Soldiers and reporters (oh, and some collateral damage). With our televisions and computers as the ultimate proxy.

I try to imagine the reality on the ground in a conflict zone such as the middle-east, from any perspective. And I can't really. Imagine growing up or growing old in such a context. Day to day, for years on end. The mind boggles. When I merely broke my leg a few months back, an immense safety net of family, friends, medical care, compassion, personal attention, and empathy unfolded itself. Then, in accurate lock-step with my recovery, that same safety net retreated, going on standby again just as automatically. Life is darn good here, not according to some metric, but because of the knowledge that no matter what happens, life will still eventually work out ok. It's hard to imagine two situations further apart than life over here and life over there. The horror being that much of this is due to armed, man-made, conflict. Why, with all our culture and technology, are we as a whole still living in medieval times?

The injustice on this planet is obscene.