was commissioned by Duckie! for Tate Britain. The work was created against the backdrop of two major conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There was widespread sentiment that these wars were essentially colonial in motivation and illegal according to international law.

The artwork reflects on the connection between violence, belief and masculinity, and the importance of differentiating between similar sounding ideas like 'security' and 'liberty', particularly in fear-filled and politically volatile times.

Popular comment of the period suggested that Western populations should be prepared to sacrifice some liberties in return for greater security. This line of thinking seems more in the interests of governments than the populations they serve; there is no evidence that the sacrifice of one aspect of civil life leads to the attainment of the other.

At the time of the creation of this work, Firrell was looking for an example of what Hemingway called 'one true sentence' and seemed to the artist to fit the bill.

"I felt there was a problem with writing because of narrative – because it unfolds in time necessarily, and I was jealous of the painters where everything in painting is available in a single field. Simply, I wanted to make words work like a picture and that led me to writing aphorisms. When I wrote , I wrote something of immense truthfulness and importance with all of its meaning entirely available in a single field."

The text reappears with dramatic consequences in 2019's billboard series