The Lost Boys

Shadows of War, page 184:
…The children take great exception to the common statements that children born and bred in war are a “lost generation”….

Illusion, the children respond. We know how we came to live this way. We can see who has and who doesn’t, who gives and who takes. We know we take better care of each other here [on the streets] than any of us would find in the places we ran from….

It seems quite wrong to deny that people, even in conflict and poverty, have lost control of their lives. Every movie asserts just this: that we are either screaming women, lost weeping children, or Rambo, in the face of conflict. The opposite seems to be true…people rise to occasions more often than not, and this is part of what I find so fascinating about conflict studies. Extreme situations bring out and amplify those skills and abilities that make us human beings, both for good and bad.