In my lifetime, the life on planet Earth went through considerable degradation. Me and my fellow inhabitants had good times but bad times too. I chose education and science as my career. I will unfold how I experienced the evolution around me that brought us in this mess and the considerable fear that many young people are experiencing today. In some cases, it is a constant nightmare but certainly not for all.
As far as I remember and since I started to be aware of the world around me, and the growing inconvenient reality of the majority of people around me, I sank in an internal black-hole inside myself. This is although me, my family and the nearest friends around me were relatively in good shape and economically much better off than many others around us. We had many dreams and imagination for better future because of our own favorable conditions and the “State” still had enough resources to offer free and good education standards for the citizens. But only for those that were aware of the needs for education, had the motivation and could afford to go to school.
A black-hole that held me tight inside myself as an eternal prisoner with an intensive internal and never ending dialogue with myself. What for good sake was going on around me, how would such masses of people with complex and inherited socio-economic inequalities could manage to change their realities with yet unsolved political instabilities driven by the distant past of regional and global conflicts. Was this the life I am going to have for the rest of my life and for many years ahead? Although one could solve own problems but yet could not escape the environments around. As children at that time, the fifties, we were not allowed to speak out our-minds, even if we did so, the responses were not helpful to understand the complex reality around us. Realizing problems and conflicts without finding ways to solve them, or at least possibilities to change them, was a very source of constant fear. This made me, and the nearest people around me, much more frustrated and scared, also from diverse unknowns of both the near and distant future. For the lucky new generations of the nineties, even if modern life came up with different modern difficulties, they still had the internet to communicate, to debate, discuss and understand the world much better than me and my generation at that time of the fifties and the sixties.
To be born in the middle of wars, conflits, misery, poverty and above all illiteracy, ignorance and conservatism was not fun at all. Though these conditions, the life was still easy and enjoyable as these were not felt as suffering but rather challenges and every small positive outcome brought with it some happiness. I was still lucky to have a better start of life than many other around me, also many millions far from me on the same planet Earth. At the age of eleven is was the time for me to be brought in a big war right in every place in my city and its streets “Port-Said”, the Suez War (https://medium.com/@harrystead17/how-the-suez-crisis-set-the-sun-on-the-british-empire-4b8771807f30). I lived with my family in Port-Said in 1956 and during this war the city became cut off and isolated from the rest of the whole world for more than three month, no food, no water, no electricity, no school, no hospitals, no transportation ……. no civil life at all. It was a huge and enormous battle every day, every hour and every minute inside the city of Port-Said exactly in every street and all corner of the city. Many destructions, fires, shootings, crimes, rapes and killing. This was a daily experience for us and for all who remained living in Port-Said. Naturally, some people left and escaped the hell. The rest of the world was just running as usual with the exception that I, my fellow citizens, had to pay the price for observing how the Sues crisis sat the sun on the British Empire. No one imagined that this would or even could be so “the empire on which the sun never sets“. I did not understand and still I do not find any logic reason why such crisis couldn’t be solved with any other peaceful means. What the aggressive Sues War achieved by the invaders was just nothing other than bringing more damage not only to my world but for many others as well. There were definitely many victims but I was extremely lucky to survive this war. I remember the tragedies of the heavy bombing of the city and some houses around us were totally destroyed. At that time the war also added more conflicts to the rest of the world. An emotional actions of the most powerful countries that have nothing to offer other than destruction and damage. As a child and a global citizen (at that time we did not think as global citizens, it was only global politics) was just to accept wars caused by disintegrating empires that still tried to gain their lost power but ended up in polarizing the world to smaller separate powers. I, as the rest of the world, have just to accept such cruel behavior from the most powerful countries in the world.
I will continue unfolding my story in small parts and how the wars on plants earth made us blind and to forget about our basic needs on planet earth. Probably, the evil in us was much stronger than we could have ever imagined. Time was needed to dismantle such evil with the price of more destructions before we get time to deal with our needs without the constant fear that kept us in the captivity of insecurity.
