Peering round the edge from the void – 1974
The trauma of war has haunted human history. It is a tale of robber barons and power. Right from the beginning of the human story it has been a tale of aggression and violence. I wouldn’t mind betting that the first tool conceived by human beings was a weapon.
As humans grew in numbers so did the size of their violence. It went from intertribal conflict to full fledged warfare between nations. With the advent of technology we invented industrial slaughter. We now have the means for global destruction and the desire to use violence to impose our views has not diminished. Civilisation is a thin veneer over a seething mass of raging emotions and psychological confusion. It hides a barbarity not displayed by any other species. We are the most savage of all.
In the hundred years since the war to end all wars we have practiced genocide, torture and slaughter on levels unimaginable.
My abiding memory is of the little naked girl running down the road as an expanding boiling orange ball of burning napalm engulfed her and seared the skin off her.
My orange and red man is peering round the side of Lucy, the first mother, at the horror we have created. His face glows with the incandescent flames of a nuclear holocaust.