In 2026, more than 130 active armed conflicts have been recorded worldwide, twice as many as 15 years earlier. This is the highest number since 1946. And a sad reflection of a world that has become more fragmented and unstable than at any point since the end of the Cold War.
Yet this issue of Purple is not only about armed conflict. It is about the wars that surround us: the war between the rich and the poor, between men and women, between the left and the right, and between races. It is about the war against children, the war humans inflict upon animals, plants, and the planet, and the war between “the ones who say there is a war / And the ones who say there isn’t,” as in Leonard Cohen’s song, “There Is a War.”
There is also a permanent conflict within myself. Within all of…