An Atlantic Thought

Is it possible for a generation to go through life without experiencing "war"? In a sense, people of my age have already experienced the Gulf war(s), a bunch of attritional conflicts and tense moments, all distant enough to be a television series. But if you're an Indian of my age, then we have never experienced conflict that deeply affected us. The Kargil battle/war/conflict was localised and sorry to say, did not affect my daily life in any significant way.

If it sounds dangerously close to what Tyler Durden says

We are the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no great war, or great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives.

then probably he was speaking for me, for us as well.

The Americans were scarred by Vietnam; the Europeans by WW2. So they talked about it in their movies, their music, their books. We still refuse to talk much about the Partition or our other wounds. As a generation, we aren't collectively cauterized by much.

Do we need large, pointless, personal confrontations to provide our lives with meaning and to turn us further into cynical wrecks? Perhaps by the law of averages, things will not remain so rosy (am I feeling guilty about prosperity?). Perhaps we will live in interesting times, even when we grow old enough to have formed a long and comfortable marriage with the placid.