Tiny Islands

I had an idea for a short story a while ago. I often have these ideas, which, I believe, would make for a captivating story. When I get an idea, I have a hard time letting it go, even if I know it's a bad one. One of these lightbulbs is a story about tiny, warring islands. This concept got me to thinking, and I think I may have inadvertently thought up an allegory on life.

Tiny Islands There exists a world, far away from the one we know, covered by tiny islands. The islands are not vast as their people are not large, and they are located close together, but a greater void could not be realized between them. Each tiny island has at least one tiny person as its inhabitant, and every island was at war with the other. No one knew why the fighting began, but since it's what they've always done, it's how they've always continued.

Every so often an island would fall, but with no one to mourn the fallen, their history was wiped from existence as if it had never existed at all. When the inhabitant(s) of an island perished, so too did their island. Sunken into a pockmarked sea, returned to the earth, hastened to an aqueous grave.

New islands would spontaneously pop up without reason or pattern, adding to the chaos of an ever-changing world. Like the solid bits in a boiling cauldron, churning to the top just to be pulled back down, over and over again. And, keeping with tradition, that island's inhabitants began warring with their neighbors. No one ever really knew how these islands kept appearing nor where the people came from, just that they existed and needed to continue the turn of that wheel into oblivion.

There was no prize either for defeating a neighbor, just the innate feeling of triumph that you can sit securely on your island and the urge to fight another day. Did anyone ever experience any real security from all of this warring, this endless slaughter? No, but that didn't matter because they were all consumed with the singular purpose of defeating all that was around them.

You may also wonder, what joys could be had in such a world? Joy, if you could call it that, was only experienced in the fleeting throes of triumph and faded as quickly as it was attained. What purpose was there to such a forlorn world? Well, no one knew, but one person began to wonder...

And scene!

Back to reality; bear with me. As I was pondering this, I realized this wasn't just a fantasy concept—it was an unintentional mirror of reality. The tiny island allegory applies perfectly to the world we are actually living in.

Humanity has been engaged in constant warfare throughout the entirety of recorded history. I'm no historian, but I would wager that there isn't a point that is completely free of conflict or war. Just look at the past 100 years of American history. Hell, look at the past 250 years! I believe that there's only a 5-year stretch in our complete history where we haven't been involved in war or conflict. Almost my entire adult life was spent in the middle of multiple wars, which included physically fighting in one. I still don't know to this day what we were fighting for. I know what I was fighting for, but damn, what was the point of Iraq?

Sure, there's the official narrative, 9/11, weapons of mass destruction (that didn't exist), and the list goes on. But it's all bullshit. Not to go off on a tangent, but I can definitively tell you that Iraq was not fought over supposed WMDs. I can also tell you that we weren't in Afghanistan for approximately 20 years because we were stamping out terrorism. Hell, we should've pulled chalks and come home when Osama Bin Laden was killed. At that point we were effective in predominantly eradicating Al Qaeda. So what was the purpose of another 10 years of death and destruction? What was the point?

This concept isn't novel. We have been pointlessly warring forever with no real end in sight. God, we are a petty species.

But we don't just build these islands with physical borders and weapons; we do it digitally, too. The next allegorical mechanism at play here is current Internet culture. Dependent upon where you spend your time, people come out of the ether just to attack strangers on the Internet and then disappear as if they never existed. This isolationist culture that we've created just by separating people by their politics or their identity or their station in life puts people on tiny islands. We are all so close yet so far away when it comes to basic human interaction. Respectful discourse is the product of a bygone era. Now it's just strangers yelling at each other on the Internet.

That got heavy fast, but that's where the journey led today. I'm not really exploring unique ideas here, but I do think it's fun to see where the writing process goes. Writing is a journey that can take you places you never expected, and if I effectively do my job, the reader comes along with me. I don't honestly have a point today but more of a glimpse at how my brain works before offering you a semi-polished product. I suppose this is about the journey instead of the destination, as they say. Thanks for riding shotgun, and don't steal my idea.

Dad out.