The Last Girl
Invaluable Lessons in War and Life
The Iran War was a wake up call.
It was also a reminder to Vikid, that he had a sense of premonition. 3 months before each world changing event, he would grow weak with a looming depression. He told people about it, but they couldn't understand, he always knew when something was cooking up. It happened with Covid, this time was no different.
It was also a form of recalibration and a separator of wheat & chaff. You got to see human behaviour when affronted with real danger. You got to understand who were friends, who were selfless and who would do anything to survive.
It became clear that friendship, well… it's mostly an illusion. Family, by that I mean extended family, is another one.
Times of stress, test all relationships, at the fundament.
Most people (but not all) will drop you without the slightest hesitation. They will party afterwards and send you consolation messages, to rub it in. This is not theory, it has been witnessed.
It also taught Vikid about loyalty, or the real lack of it in present society. People to talk a big game, it's all show. When push comes to shove, it's mainly shove.
It is nothing new, we had seen much of it during Covid, the main difference being in Covid, there was nowhere to escape to, the problem was global. The virus was invisible, an unknown and everywhere.
With this conflict, the rockets and drones don't need diagrams, no media pundits and no mediating scientists, the explosions can be heard and felt viscerally. As one friend likes to call it, the fireworks… can be seen in all their glory.
The other lesson one can take, almost like an anthropologist, or a data analyst, is the study of how propaganda, news, and information flows affect public perception. How perception leads to action.
You can literally talk to people and know which information diet they are on and what they've paid attention to over their lives.
It doesn't matter if you are a CEO or a clerk. The skills you have developed in doing your “job” are a small little sliver of what we call reality. Your ability to network and make small talk while sipping wine at lush buffets makes you no more qualified at understanding what is going on than a taxi driver. A degree certificate has little value.
This has been the result of the great leveling, called the Internet. Everyone has access to the same information. And when you travel to other countries, it has no effect, if you are not tuned in to what is happening on the ground. For that you need to spend genuine time with people, listening to what they say, rather than trying to teach them your lofty ideas or partying in Club Med.
Saying all of this, Vikid does suggest that you read or listen to “The Last Girl” by Nadia Murad.
It's a captivating memoir by a Yazidi girl from Kocho, in the Sinjar province of Iraq. It covers a short year of her life facing the genocide of her community, her capture and escape.
But it is so much more than just a memoir, it's a fascinating snapshot of who the Yazidis are, of war’s merciless calculus and most of all, what the ideology behind ISIS results in. What ideology first does to the human mind and then how it metastasizes into the surrounding reality.
This book will give you a much more complete idea about what is happening now, in Iran and why what is happening, is happening. It will strengthen your resolve in the battle between good and evil which rages in every human heart.
Ultimately, it may give you the strength to make sure nothing like this ever happens close to where you are living. For that alone, this book is invaluable.
Your information diet is your choice. Choose wisely.
And that's,