Written by: Siddhartha Krishnan | 2 Min Read
(Here is a short YouTube video adaptation of this piece – click this link)
THERE IS NO WAR THAT ENDS ALL WARS.
History has never witnessed such a thing.
We have always been at war in one form or another because war is sustained by a story.
And stories are powerful.
Just like religion, gods, ideology, money, and institutions. They exist because we collectively believe in them. They are sustained by shared faith.
And human beings do not surrender faith easily.
Not the right.
Not the left.
Not anyone who has built identity around belief.
In any conflict, labels may suggest ideological differences between warring parties.
Yet they all lean toward the same hunger. Power.
Because it was never truly about God.
It was never about religion.
It was never even about righteousness.
More often than not, it has been about control.
Those who seek power understand the force of narrative. They invoke religion, race, caste, nationalism,
and fear. They tell stories potent enough to move millions.
Stories that blind.
Stories that divide.
Stories that convince ordinary people to defend the very structures that exploit them.
Because when belief is weaponized, truth becomes collateral damage.
No war ends because one side wins. Wars truly end when the people who fuel them refuse to participate in the story any longer.
When they pause, question and see through the script.
Wars end only when enough people wake up and recognize the machinery behind it.
Not when leaders decide.
When people do.
In all this, if humanity is to find any method in the madness,
it must do something far more difficult than winning wars.
It must unite.
It must search for one reason,
one greater story,
one truth large enough
to rise above the smaller stories that divide us.
A story powerful enough to end all wars.
But what could that story be?
And is it even possible?
(Here is a short YouTube video adaptation of this piece – click this link)
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About the author:
Siddhartha Krishnan is the author of ‘Two and a Half Rainbows – A Collection of Short Stories’. An enthusiastic blogger he shares his essays, travelogues, book and movie reviews on his blog (www.whatsonsidsmind.com).
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