COMMENT | Worked up over last week’s confrontation between India and Pakistan, a friend messaged me. “Do you think that this time it could lead to something catastrophic?” he asked. “I worry about the world you know … terrorism, nuclear exchanges, climate change. What sort of future, if any, are we giving our children? Could this escalate to the point where we are all wiped out?”

On the one hand, I sympathised. It’s really easy to get overwhelmed by the seemingly endless strife around us. And that’s even if you are sitting in a newsroom where part of your job is to be desensitised to it all. And these are very real issues. I am certainly not advocating apathy about the environment or mass organised violence.

But on the other hand, my reply to him was … ‘it’s always been like this...