A Romantic Encounter Spoiled by the First Gulf War

Can we be the people who build a new world instead of obsessing over the old? (DN 4.15)

I know exactly where I was at the moment the first Persian Gulf War started:

I was making out with a girl from college.

I begin with this event from my romantic past not to share a salacious story, but to illustrate an essential point. By providing the details, I hope to engender thoughts about what really matters in life.

The backstory

I went to the University of St. Andrews for my first year of college. At first, I thought I might stay for all four, but I changed my mind for reasons I won’t bore you with here.

While there, I had a friend whose name I will change to…Holly. I change her name not because Holly and I have anything to be ashamed of, but because it would be tacky to mention her real name, and there’s just no need. During that freshman year, Holly and I were just friends. Indeed, I met her because she briefly dated one of my housemates.

Fast forward a couple of years. My sister, for reasons unrelated to my own time in Scotland, had met and was about to marry a Scot, and I had returned to the UK to attend her wedding. I landed in London and took a few extra days to travel north and visit some of my St. Andrews friends along the way.

The first was a gal with whom I did have a (brief and tortured) romantic history. Other than a cool trip to the Uffington White Horse, that visit was just as brief and tortured as our romantic past had been, and by the end, I was really looking forward to my next stop, which was to stay the night at Holly’s parents’ home in Gloucestershire.

I do not recall having any specific plans to make a play for Holly’s affections. She was nice and very pretty, and I was sure I wouldn’t say no, but I wasn’t intending to make a full-court press. As it turned out, however, Holly was.

After briefly meeting her parents, we went up to her room. Candles were already lit. The only smalltalk I remember was her mentioning something about Enya’s second album, which was staged and ready to go in her CD player. She hit play, and we started kissing.

Making out with an Enya album playing may seem trite here in the 2020s, but 35 years ago, it seemed like the height of romance. Add in the candles (and was there incense? I don’t recall now), and it was quite the scene.

When you are older and married, sex becomes warm, familiar, and usually quite efficient. It starts when you have a baby or toddler and need to get it done (and maybe also do the dishes and laundry, if you can) during those precious minutes when baby is asleep. Later, you just get really good at it (and there is still the matter of the dishes and laundry).

But when you are young, you take your time, and that is what we did. The kissing went on and on. I am pretty sure I remember another of Enya’s albums starting to play after the first one was done. But then a voice came from downstairs—a woman’s voice, in what I recall now as a rather singsong RP English accent:

“Holly, darling, the war has started.”

Holly’s parents were glued to the BBC or CNN or whatever news station from which English people were getting their breathless war coverage back in those days. And they wanted us to go down and watch with them.

I was in no condition to do that. Holly didn’t want to go either, but she had no good excuse not to—at least not one that would have seemed good to her parents. I do not remember her exact words, but it was something like, If I don’t go, my mother will think I’m a bloody great slut.

So just like that, our magical night ended—because of the stupid war, and people’s stupid need to watch 24-7 coverage of stupid wars on stupid cable news stations. By the time she came back, it was late. My passion had been replaced by an unpleasant ache, and she’d just spent hours with her parents watching war on TV. The moment had passed.

I am not sad that I missed an opportunity to have a relationship with Holly. I am delightfully, deliciously, happily married and pleased with the direction my life has taken. But Holly and I did miss an opportunity to continue a magical moment. The way it was headed was not towards sex, but lovemaking. (At least I am pretty sure that is where it would have ended up.) When I look back at my life, which includes a reasonable amount of such encounters, this one was really quite beautiful. We weren’t just fooling around—we were weaving a spell.

And why did it end? Because of war on TV.

But war is important. It’s big news. It matters.

Are you sure?

Are you absolutely sure it matters more than what Holly and I were doing?

Bunker busters

Fast forward to last week. As many of you know, I just got back from a trip through New England with my wife, our son, and his girlfriend. (Yes, our teenager and his gal actually want to travel with us older folks. Weirdos.) Our last stop was to spend a few days with my parents in Connecticut. And while we were there, the Trump Administration dropped bunker-busting bombs on three Iranian nuclear sites.

My parents are lovely and very interesting people, but politically, they are mainstream normies, and very left-wing. They know my wife and I are not, and we have enjoyed a pleasant detente and moratorium on political discussion for many years.

On any given day, they are glued to CNN and MSNBC, but they do try to avoid that when we’re around. However, like addicts, they just can’t help themselves, and they sneak in little glimpses when we’re not in the room. With military action pending, they gave up all pretense, and when the news of the bombings broke, my dad was eager to talk about it. It’s big news, after all.

I was upstairs with my wife—not fooling around, just talking and packing a few things for a visit to a beach the next day. But it still gave me flashbacks to that start of the First Gulf War. And it got me to thinking…

There’s always a damn war. If I vote for Bush, there’s war. If I vote for Clinton, there’s war. When is there not a war? What can I do to stop it? And how does knowing every detail change anything? How does that make my life better?

For that matter, when is there not “big news” to keep us glued to cable channels? What really changes, from week to week, year to year, decade to decade? The names and places only.

Back in 2015, I was listening to an audiobook recording of Winston Churchill’s A History of the English-Speaking Peoples on a long drive, when I had a revelation. Churchill was talking about some nasty behavior in Parliament in the eighteenth century and it suddenly hit me—when it comes to politics and “big news,” nothing ever changes. Same $hit, different century.

My parents are in their 80s. Everything they get so exercised about on a daily basis—everything that pokes their anger buttons as they watch another hour of cable news—will still be happening after they pass on. So why bother? What is all this adding to their lives?

Endless lies and rational ignorance

My dad was also eager to talk about the various ways that the Trump Administration was “lying” about this or that. (Apparently, the news was so “big” that he temporarily forgot about our moratorium on such discussions.) I stopped him—not because I wanted to defend the Trump Administration, but because I just don’t want to hear any of it anymore.

“How can I possibly know whether that is true, or not true?” I said to him. Governments lie all the time. No matter how much I dig, no matter whose ‘side’ I listen to, I can never be sure I am getting the truth.

So why bother? What is the point?

All of our supposed knowledge about this event or that…all of our action…all of our anger…what is it getting us? Does anything change?

I know that changes are possible on the margins, and as I have stated before, I respect the fact that those changes can be important. But the war machine marches merrily on. Tax rates change, but taxation is still theft, extortion, and slavery. Governments are still morally impermissible violations of individual human consent, and politicians are still ǎ$$holes.

You have every right and reason to be angry about it, but what does dwelling within it get you?

Breaking up with the system

• Dwelling within it (whatever it is)…

• Watching breathless coverage of it on TV…

• Learning every last little detail of it (as if it were ever actually possible to know the real truth)…

serves very little purpose in our lives. It doesn’t substantially change anything. It doesn’t make you happier. As my wise, talented, beautiful friend

Jacqueline Rendell

said, it’s just “Another day devoted to not building, creating, dreaming what comes next.”

When we dwell within the system, we feed the system. We do not benefit ourselves; we benefit the system. We benefit our oppressors.

I understand why it feels like we must engage. The system is the problem, and we are wired to fight and solve problems. But the evidence of history (and an honest assessment of life experience) is clear: the system never really changes. Fighting it, dwelling within it, and obsessing over it don’t do anything except make us miserable.

In developing our distributed nation concept, I have proposed that we escape the system. That we make a life for ourselves in the interstitial spaces outside the system. That we build a world in the cracks, and then widen those cracks over the next 100 years until we can fully declare our independence.

In this chapter, titled simply Who, we are discussing the kinds of people we ought to aspire to be. As a part of that, I propose that we should try to be the sort of people who devote our days to “building, creating, dreaming what comes next” rather than obsessing over things we cannot change. I believe that will help us achieve our objectives, and it will also benefit each of us emotionally and in our personal lives.

And if you cannot manage that, then at very least…

Don’t interrupt kids when they are making out in a candlelit room, just so they can watch another stupid war on TV.

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Cover page | Preface | Introduction 1 | Introduction 2 | Introduction 3 |

(Part I) Why: 1.0 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | 1.6 | 1.7 | 1.8 | 1.9 | 1.10 | 1.11 | 1.12 | 1.13 | 1.14 | 1.15 | 1.16 | 1.17 | 1.18 | 1.19 | 1.20 | 1.21 |1.22

(Part II) What: 2.0 | 2.1 | 2.2 | 2.3 | 2.4 | 2.5 | 2.6 | 2.7 | 2.8 | 2.9 | 2.10 I 2.11 | 2.12 | 2.13 | 2.14 | 2.15 | 2.16 | 2.17 | 2.XX | 2.18 | 2.19 | 2.20 | 2.21 | | Where: 3.0 | 3.1 | 3.2 | 3.3 | 3.4 | 3.5 | 3.6 | 3.7 | 3.8 | 3.9 | 3.10 | 3.11 | 3.12 | 3.13 || Who: 4.0 | 4.1 | 4.2 | 4.3 | 4.4 | 4.5 | 4.XX | 4.XY | 4.6 | 4.7 | 4.8 | 4.9 | 4.10 | 4.11 | 4.12 | 4.XZ | 4.13 | 4.YX | 4.14 | 4.15