“Most of the cruelty in the world is just misplaced energy.”

-Zadie Smith, On Beauty

My grandma, aged 93, remarked the other day, while we were watching a news story on the Gaza conflict, about how all those buildings were being laid to waste. She didn’t say anything about the children and the women. Just the buildings.

Colorful belongings of refugees are in stark contrast with the ravages of war in Gaza (Image from ibtimes.co.uk)

No, my grandma isn’t senile, she is perfectly fine and healthy, thank you very much. Her comment wasn’t one of indifference. The human spirit is always the direct casualty of war—that much is obvious. But if she happens to throw a comment on the fate of buildings, she’s very much entitled to her opinion. She’s 93 after all, and over her lifetime she’s experienced her own share of wars—World War II to be exact—as senseless and devastating as the ones we are still having after all these years.

* * *

We don’t usually lament the fate of buildings in wartime. It’s not proper to do so, of course, when so many civilian lives have been lost in the violence. We mourn the helpless, innocent men and women, children and elderlies, not the rubble and ruin.

And yet, once upon a time those buildings and infrastructures meant something in everyone’s lives. Hospitals, schools, utility companies, supermarkets are usually first to be deliberately destroyed, instantly crippling a nation’s network of life.

Ground Zero of the World Trade Center

When the World Trade Center was struck in 2001 by that errant plane and collapsed on its own weight, it was the worst unimaginable horror, a horror that changed an entire nation, and probably the rest of the world, in a single day. Terrorism doesn’t just topple buildings, it chillingly disrupts and destroys lives. The new WTC might be a testament of America’s steadfastness, but as history has pointed out, even strong, massive skyscrapers like that can come falling down when bad intentions prevail.

When the U.S. invaded Baghdad in 2003, the US troops wisely spared the National Museum of Iraq, containing artifacts from one of the oldest civilizations in the world, the Mesopotamians (the museum was looted anyway). But everything else was bombed and ravaged.

So, come to think of it, my grandma’s comment wasn’t exactly out of line—those buildings that used to house bustling lives and dreams, cultures and economies become instantly reduced to debris, becoming the default backdrop for years to come. And all because of our ego.

* * *

It used to be that nature took care of leveling our cities. Earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, typhoons. My grandma thinks these inevitable forces are nature’s way of keeping us in check.

And yet humans have willfully joined in the equation. With our bombs, we compete with nature. We wage war against each other, destroying all that is precious to each one of us. Our bombs, atomic or otherwise, may never be as powerful as any of the forces nature can handily dish out, but a bomb is a bomb.

War is expensive, no doubt. The forces that be uphold the status quo of violence at all costs. Sadly, war comes at the expense of those who least deserve its consequences. All that misplaced energy and funds could have been directed to something more worthwhile, more productive. Cancer research for instance, or diabetes research, or more homes and schools for the poor. Anything but wanton destruction.

In the end, I could recite to my grandma thisnifty Q&A about the Gaza conflict (which more or less explains the matter without diminishing or simplifying the issue), but would that really solve anything? I could tell her about it all, the whys and hows, but I’m worried she might not get it. I don’t either.

War has never made sense.