There once was a street. On one side were lots of nice houses and in the biggest and best one lived the War family. On the other side were lots of not-so-nice houses and the Terror family lived in one of the worst. The Wars and the Terrors were both pretty odd families with strange ways of doing things but because the Wars had the best house everyone else wanted to be like them. People would do all sorts of things for the Wars like bake cakes, mow their lawn and write nice articles about them in the local press. Sometimes the Wars would say ‘thank you’ to these people or even give them some cash or, best of all, invite them to one of their cocktail parties. The Terrors never did anything for the Wars because they didn’t like them and, naturally, the Wars hated the Terrors in return.
Now, it just so happened that the Terrors lived near a petrol station at which the Wars liked to fill their big cars. To get to the petrol station the Wars would drive their cars over the Terror’s front yard, absolutely ruining the grass. Then, as they waited for an attendant to fill their tank, they’d eat junk food and throw their rubbish into the Terror’s back yard. Sometimes the War children would use their catapults to shoot rocks at the Terror’s windows, just to teach ’em a lesson for not being friendly. One time Mr Terror got so angry he shouted at one of the War kids. The next day Mr War bashed the guy’s letterbox in with a baseball bat. He also did a deal with the manager at the petrol station, making sure all his friends could get served first whilst the Terrors would have to wait until the end. Sometimes the Terrors would sneak over to the petrol station to fill up but if they were caught Mr War would get very angry. He’d get his sons to patrol the petrol station and get his mate at the local press to write articles describing how awful the Terrors were – I mean, have you seen the state of their back yard!?
One night one of the Terror kids was so angry that he set fire to the War’s kennel, killing the dog. The Wars were outraged and decided to retaliate but catapults weren’t going to be enough this time so they made some Molotov cocktails with the bottles left over from their drinks parties. Then the War kids got in their cars and started driving up and down the street throwing their homemade bombs. They weren’t the best of aims and they often missed their target, hitting other houses instead. Sometimes the War’s neighbours would join in and throw their own bombs as well. The Terrors thought the Molotov cocktails were such good ideas that they started making their own, which they threw at the War’s cars. So the Wars bought bigger cars and bigger bottles. The Terrors knew that the odds were stacked against them but they took great pleasure in scaring the people across the street and forcing the Wars to spend loads of cash on new cars (in truth, the War family bank account wasn’t looking too good but Mr War never liked to mention that). Meanwhile, the neighbours on the nice side of the street got scared and built higher fences around their houses whilst the neighbours on the nasty side couldn’t afford fences so they just hoped the flaming cocktails wouldn’t hit their homes.
The fighting went on and on and it still goes on today. And if you ever happened to be walking down this street, which I wouldn’t recommend, you might overhear Mr Terror talking to his family over dinner and this is what you’d hear him saying: “Those Wars are the worst, they are evil, vicious people and we must use all the resources we’ve got to fight them. Our ultimate goal should be one thing and one thing only – to terrify them.” If you were then to cross the road you would hear Mr War talking to his family as well. Save for one word you’d hear him saying exactly the same thing.
This post is inspired by Noam Chomsky’s book ‘Who Rules The World’. I never condone terrorism of any sought and with this post I simply want to make the point that violence breeds only suffering and more violence. Similar points are captured in Lily Allen’s song.
humanconditioned 