Pistis ponders uncertainty, war fog, tragedy, failure (weekending March 12th 2022)

‽istis ponders uncertainty, truth, facts, war fog, tragedy, failure… (weekending March 12th 2022)

This week ‽istis tries to imagine:

• life when the air raid sirens wail;
• life packed densely into a train with carry-only belongings on complicated journeys to hoped-for safety - fathers left behind;
• life in a freezing, mud-stuck, fuel-less tank;
• life on watch at a checkpoint on the edge of a city being surrounded - holding a gun for only the second or third week;
• life hurrying to a remaining shop past a body of a neighbour in the street;
• life in a bunker in a metro station - no natural light, patchy electricity supply - keeping things charged including the atmosphere, still just-about-enough water and food, makeshift schooling and a creche full of frightened and traumatised children cared for by frightened and traumatised adults, songs despite, speculative chat, grief and overwhelming stress and uncertainty as to what it is like and will be like outside;
• life imagined from underground, a sort of 'Schrödinger space', an Easter liminal place between the now and the not yet, where anything is possible and all is uncertain in principle, in theory and in practice - where both peace and destruction, ceasefire and gun shot, retreat and advance co-exist somewhere, possibly right now above and outside, as the Pandora Box of warfare continues to open up...

Perhaps, possibly, maybe such a foundation of uncertainty is a rock upon which shared meanings and agreement about 'truth' and 'fact' flounder - still a first casualty in the fog‽

• Liberation - oppression

• Invasion - special military operation

• Patriot - Nazi

• Children’s hospital - makeshift army base 

• Soldiers embedded with civilians - volunteers protecting their homes and families 

• This couldn’t happen in a civilised state - Europe the epicentre of modern world conflicts for centuries

• Democracy - autocracy

• National flag - false flag

• Offence - defence

So, who and what can we trust? 

And that denial of a working common basis for meaning, for dialogue, for hope

• alongside and never forgetting the death and the overwhelming grief…
• alongside and never forgetting the pain and injury…
• alongside and never forgetting the loss of families, homes and livelihoods and the ties that weave a rich and magnificent social tapestry of ‘we, not of ‘us’ and ‘them’, where we are more than the sum of our parts, where we are connected, where we are interdependent, where we are more alike than different

perhaps, possibly may be that is also something of the awful, awful tragedy and the utter, utter pathetic failure that is war. 

© Pistis                                                                                                                    

NB: further reflections and comments linked to this week’s theme and past blog entries to be found on Twitter: replies, retweets (which don’t necessarily indicate approval, sometimes the very opposite!) and ‘likes’: @Pistis_wonders. ‘Follows’ and respectful comment and dialogue welcome...