Where Are We in 2026?
How long does it take to awaken conscience when it sleeps soundly? Millions of refugees, fields of ruins, unearthed mass graves, massacred human beings, raped women, explosions on every screen, weapons and war in every conversation… How can we stir the conscience of paranoid “decision‑makers” as well as carefree “followers” to stop the world’s mad races?
Without a Compass
One might have thought that “globalization” would unite humanity with its billions of dollars, parcels, barrels, tourists and cars going back and forth, but in reality universal conscience moves forward like a sleepwalker, without the compass of laws protecting the common good from greedy predators.
Once, immense marches for peace marked the century; today we march for our salaries, our privileges, our ideological choices, but we lack a voice strong enough to call us into the streets, filling the squares and shouting:
“PEACE, PEACE, PEACE”
Armistice
Great leaders of the world, please, forget your paranoid outbursts, jump into your big planes, occupy the carpeted lounges of the modern Towers of Babel to speak at last only of the one progress that matters: PEACE — wanting it, seeking it, praising it, digging it, building it, sustaining it… Otherwise, ultimately, what is the point of this so‑called progress? Producing more weapons, guarding ever‑higher piles of gold, spreading soothing balms over the most bleeding wounds, polluting ever more, raising again and again the walls of borders? Leaders of this world, wake up, wake us up — the nightmare is becoming unbearable.
Prophecy
Where have the pacifists gone, the great consciences, the citizens of the world, the committed artists, wonders the old man that I am? I see only children as prophets now — those who die without having lived, those who survive in the dust, those who play in the schoolyard, those who kiss us morning and evening — endlessly trying to ask us for another future.
As soon as we stop our cruel adult games and give them a little peace, they play together — Black or white, rich or poor, religious or not at all — they are brothers in the human family, playing to grow and dream of another world. When will we stop poisoning everything with the venom of violence?
Perhaps I am only an old fool dreaming with his eyes open… But, by heaven, may all the dreaming fools of every age flood the squares and streets, shouting endlessly:
PEACE! PEACE! PEACE!
Michel Seyrat
Photo: © MEGHDAD MADADI / TASNIM NEWS / AFP
