There should be a simple answer. A life, any life, is worth far more than a profit margin, a bit of land, a nugget of gold, an insulted ego.
But there is no simple answer. And for many in this world, there is no answer at all. Or rather, the answer is not much, if anything.
Life always gets cheaper during conflicts, and innumerable nations seem hell bent on escalating conflicts for any number of reasons, and never the ones that are publicly stated. And when the lives on the other side of the aggressive divide are a different religion, a different race, then the value of each diminishes further.
But step away from zones of immediate conflict, and there is still a disparity of value. The antagonism and hatred generated by extremist tendencies across those countries ‘at peace’, means that there are sections in every community where fear is the mainstay. Difference is despised, demonised, denied the comfort of safety.
This year, in the US, there have now been more mass shootings than there have been days. And every victim has been innocent. Every life valued less than the influence exerted by the National Rifle Association, because every citizen has the right to be able to kill another.
The hatred is generated at the top, is stirred until it cannot be contained, and the aftermath is blamed on everything but the rhetoric and the inability to value life above power.
And here? We are less blatant perhaps, although the subtlety is rapidly fading. Human trafficking, religious and racial bigotry, the continued devaluing of women. It all reduces one life against another.
And the political buffoons denigrating Europe and Europeans. It goes on and on.
The price of a life these days? A long way below the vanity of the powerful, and the blindness of the misguided and disregarded.
And all we can do is hold each that we care for as close as we can. And retain the value of all as the same. And spread the word. One life at a time.
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