Reflections on Peace, Philosophy, and Life
We usually reserve the word self-harm for the clinical realm. It describes a person who, in one way or another, knowingly damages their own wellbeing. They may cut themselves, refuse care, or pursue behaviours that worsen their suffering. The defining feature is awareness: they know the behaviour is harmful, but they do it anyway.
I often think this term belongs not only in psychiatry textbooks, but on the desks of whole governments.
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There are moments when the news becomes almost impossible to watch. Reports of torture, arbitrary detention, humiliation, and the systematic destruction of homes in Gaza appear day after day. Entire neighbourhoods have been flattened. Families who once lived ordinary lives now live under tents, or not at all. The scale of suffering is staggering — and yet what troubles me equally is the silence that surrounds it.
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There used to be a British game show called Take Your Pick. Contestants were faced with a simple choice: take the money offered by the host or gamble it for the contents of a mystery box. The box might contain a luxury holiday or a brand-new car — or it might hold a rubber duck, a tin of beans, or some other “booby prize.”
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There’s a lot of talk about trust — in politics, in business, in relationships. It’s one of those words that everyone uses, but few really stop to examine. “You have to trust me.” “I don’t trust the government.” “Trust has to be earned.” The word gets tossed around as if we all knew what it meant. But do we?
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There is a symmetry in madness: the distortions that unhinge an individual also, when amplified, unravel civilizations. In Cosmos, Carl Sagan warned that advanced life may extinguish itself before reaching the stars—because technology without understanding is lethal. The same stages that mark a mind’s collapse seem to map disturbingly well onto humanity’s current trajectory.
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