Watching the World Wrecking

I had hoped at least some of our species had learned enough from the big one that we may avoid a repeat. Time will tell, but it's definitely not 100% clear at this point.

This isn't something just happening to others. This is a real-time experiment being run in whether or not humans as a concern can avoid pointless megadeaths whilst continuing to play our monkey status game.

the vast majority of people in the world do not need to get so emotionally invested in things happening in the world that /they can't affect/.

Nobody benefits from stressing about things beyond their control. Instead of doomscrolling ukraine updates, send in a donation if you can but otherwise move on. The only thing you're accomplishing by continuing to read the news on the situation, is upsetting yourself.

However, I don't think it's productive to ignore the problems in the world, even though the economy is ascendant, as Pinker is inclined to do. But we should generally try to focus on where we can make a difference.

Stephen Pinker is a very nice man with a soothing voice and a very curly haircut. And he attended Harvard. And has a warm and fuzzy message of optimism in his best selling mass market book, which has angels in the title.

Pixar should make a character based on him. Practically a real life Dumbledore. Surely everything will pan out just so.

Meanwhile, the "sate of the world" is such that he wrote his prognostications over a decade ago when the US was still the single remaining superpower in a unipolar world steeped in the longest stretch of relatively violence free global economic expansion. And at the moment they ring hollow.

Of course we all wish for the positive trends to continue indefinitely, but the night is in fact dark and full of terrors. It really is. Baseless optimism is simply the flip side of the doomer-ism you deride.

Everything is still on the line. Everything.

America is one of the leading forces of the world getting destroyed. America also has the power to fundamentally shift the world.

Americans don't get to say we can't do anything about it. Literally out of everyone in the world were the only ones that can make a lasting difference.

If you do that, war is the last thing you want.

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/cham...

We've certainly seen that in Germany during WW2, when the people _wanted_ to believe that 'they were the good guys' and absolute victory was imminent, when in reality Germany was responsible for a shit-ton of unnecessary deaths and the front line was already in the next town over.

I watched a Russian elderly lady, who appeared like a decent person, respond to a western journalist. She said that she knew for sure that the news from the West were untrue "when they said that Russians troops were shelling Kiev and Kharkov - which is impossible".

Many Russians - most in fact - consider that Ukraine is historically a part of Russia. Which is untrue, but that's "common knowledge". So Ukrainians are their cousins, their brethren.

Hence the syllogism: if Putin has sent the Russian army to Ukraine, then:

1/ it doesn't make sense to kill civilians and shell cities to the ground

2/ the attack must have valid reasons ("Nazism", existential threat to Russia by joining the USA' side through NATO, ...)

When you are in such representations, believing Putin's propaganda is quite rational.

By the way, we should also be more skeptical of what we are told on our own channels. Our media are relying all the time information they get from the US government, the British intelligence and the Ukrainian government WITHOUT any possible way to cross-check them.

No journalist can cross check the idea that Putin is being lied to by his generals, by his entourage and by the FSB. It is quite possible ; it would explain a lot of what happened during the last month ; it is logical since despotism reign by fear - and truly we have all seen how fearful these people appeared to be during the televised Russian security council.

But our journalists are relying what our governments and the Ukrainian government say, without verification. Most mention that fact, directly or indirectly ("according to...") - but they five credit to this narrative anyway by propaging it.

Russians are wrong to support this unprovoked and atrocious invasion of Ukraine - but they are rational, not gullible or escaping a disturbing reality because it's easier to cope with, even unconsciously.

Humans are rational. Russians are rational and we are too in the West.

A good reading about this: "the Savage Mind", 1962, by the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. He demonstrates that Natives' way of thinking in the Amazonia was as rational then as we are today, as were people in the Middle Age or ancient Greeks or ... jihadists from All Qaeda.

Not that I like it - but just let's stop with the ideas that people we disagree with are not rational.

Even Flat Earthers are rational people! It sounds absurd at first but it's really not. The Enlightenment movement of the XVIIIth century was precisely of discuting everything that was proclaimed as a Truth in common knowledge or by authorities (the Catholic Church, ...).

It's not irrational to think that Earth is flat. Most of our day-to-day experience tend to prove this idea. Demonstrating that Earth is a globe is not that easy. It's easy to make simple experiments that hint that Earth is not flat, but explanations can be found to explain the discrepancies. Really proving to people that Earth is round without a mediation like films from space is not easy. Of course, the Flat Earthers are prone to detect conspiracies everywhere, so they discard the films as fabricated. Which is not irrational. The proof needs either a direct experience in which Flat Earthers would have total control, or a decent level in Mathematics and Physics. Most of people who are right to think that Earth is a globe don't know how to replicate the proof of it. They believe what Science says - which is a very rational attitude.

The only way to change the mind of most Russians is to find people they trust (for any reason), send those to Ukraine with cameras and have them do their independent reporting. Showing the atrocious results of Putin's invasion, eg massive civilian casualties, destruction of whole cities, war crimes, ..., will create the emotion that humans need to reconsider what their rationality led them to think.

Humans don't change their mind when confronted to a "rational presentation of facts". They need a strong motivation to accept to reconsider. Only emotions can provoke the shock required.

Many experimental psychology studies have demonstrated that "rational demonstrations" by scientists to whatever-believers (antivax, ultra-nationalists, jihadists, flat Earthers) lead to ... the reinforcement of their beliefs.

Our rationality is driven by our emotions. Which doesn't mean that we are not rational. Many scientists complain that they are perceived as super cold people, which they are absolutely not. But their very core of their job is to chase their own biases all day long. And that's a difficult task. Hence the crisis of reproducibility in many fields of Science, where the "publish or perish" tyranny nudges scientists to get results all the time. Some of them are just manipulators, of course, but the crisis of reproducibility is much deeper.

As you say, it's better translated as "murder", which leaves open a wide range of killing.

> If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.

I think instead of foisting the most iron age-y least charitable interpretation imaginable you ought to realize that people have had a couple thousand years to develop a body of laws and thought around this.

Ask a Rabbi. They'll say of course not. Ask another, they'll also say of course not but they might provide you a completely different explanation as to why not.

Ukrainian Nazis, while still ultra-right-wing and probably not nice people, trace their ideological lineage to WW2 Nazis not by believing in Hitler's vision (which would be dumb, Slavs were supposed to be genocided to make living space for more Germans) but because the Nazis treated (some of) Ukrainians better than the Soviets (some of the time). So they wear Nazi symbols but don't necessarily subscribe to clean race and taking over the world "for us better people" and genociding everyone else. Even the craziest Ukrainian Nazi is probably not looking to invade Poland and replace Poles with "superior Ukrainians".

Meanwhile the Russian Z's are running aggressive war, consider themselves superior culture and want to take over most of Europe. They are doing war crimes left and right and their stated goal is a genocide of Ukraine (see "Ukraine is not a country, Ukrainians aren't people" statements from Putin) and rule of Europe.

Genocide is of something Russians are fond of doing pretty often, see Holodomor and mass deportations and Russification for "more hard" and "softer" approaches. Oh and they're doing those things again right this moment - kidnapping people to Russia and attacking Ukrainian food stores and targeting fucking maternity wards of hospitals.

So you could argue that despite swastikas on clothes, the Russians are "the true Nazis" here. What makes a Nazi, symbols or genocidal aggressive war backed by ideology of racial superiority?

Normally, I'd say fuck all Nazis, but I can give a lot of leeway to people fighting to protect their homeland from genocidal murderous raping horde. Especially as repeating "but there are Ukrainian Nazis!" only helps Russia, and why the fuck would you want to help Russia?

That said there are at least two key differences between Ukraine and previous conflicts.

1. Historically conflicts in Europe are the ones who go out of hand and become world-wide conflicts. I actually believe many in the west hoped that Russia would take over Ukraine quickly, install a puppet government and things could go back to the low intensity latent conflict. 2. Ukraine was an elected democratic government which really did not do much to easily paint them as "bad" guys. That's quite a contrast to Serbia, Iraq or Afghanistan.

I'm not defending previous Western aggression, to be clear and have been highly critical of US foreign policy (as a side note one should criticise them for the behaviour in Latin America much more than the Middle East). That said it is very clear to me who the bad guys are here. A Russian student of mine said to me, "the Ukrainians are not just fighting for themselves there also fighting for us Russians to get rid of putin)

All war is bad. So this war is bad too. It is, above all, one war too many, like each war is. And therefore must be stopped no matter what. That is regardless of how many wars Europe, US, Israel, Arabia or even Polynesia have started recently. All of those were bad. All of those had to stop ASAP. Just as this one.

It reads as the author is more preoccupied in broadcasting his grief towards the “great evil powers” than the actual suffering caused by war.

Given that one side promises to defend them against attacks, and the other side attacks them, I know what I would choose were I in their position.

I privately raised an eyebrow at the time, but I later understood what he meant and probably what the media is saying: they might be coming for us next, i.e. other culturally christian countries.

We tolerated/ignored the Syrian conflict because we could not see ourselves in them.

Invading a country with most white, christian people: news

I don’t think there’s any single global conspiracy, just some deeply seated bias in our systems. But when media outlets, governments, and other organizations all individually try to take advantage of or fall into the biases, you get what smells like global conspiracy.

The big question is why we aren't capable of acting together to stop this war (and the others you are mentioned) without falling in the imperialist trap that Afghanistan was for the last 20 years. How can we stop the murdering Russian/Saudi/Talian regimes if their people can't seem to find the power to do it themselves?

Edit: lol, messed up the distances. Kiew to Berlin is pretty much Rome to Berlin. Anyway, the point was: this war is too damn close to ignore.

(Covid certainly isn't over when you look at the statistics in Europe btw)

Ukraine is a pawn, unfortunately. A strategic middle ground wedge point from which NATO hopes to box Russia in and prevent it from redeveloping as a peer competitor. Russia wants to be a peer competitor so that it can have self-sovereignty, and dominating oil fields and the Black Sea is critical for them to achieve that. China does too, that's why it wants Taiwan, as a strategic location in the south China Sea.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, etc. these were all deemed strategic geography by the neo-cons and neo-libs that run the United States. They're playing chess with other people's homelands. The goal, from their perspective, is to contain threats (Iran, North Korea, etc) and prevent other great powers and peer competitors from emerging unless they agree to cede some sovereignty.

The thought is that these sort of behavior will prevent another world war. If you can spread democracy around, after all, it's extremely rare that two democracies that actively trade with each other do war with each other. But I think this grand experiment has proven to be a failure. Not all countries have the culture for democracy. And culture matters a great deal. For these countries, introducing democracy (or puppet democracy, as the CIA is wont to do) is often simply destabilizing.

I honestly hate my country's meddling around the world. I think it was something we reluctantly took on in the wake of WW2, but the whole military-industrial-technocratic-espionage apparatus that has developed in our country as a result of decades of this sort of policy has undermined our own democracy at home. And we're rapidly approaching a new world in which we are far from the 40s where we had 45% of the world GDP. And we've wrecked more countries than we've helped, in my opinion.

But at the same time, I am kinda anxious about a world where the U.S. leaves a vacuum for others to fill. We really won't have a choice, in the near future, though. The financial gravity of this situation will hit us sooner or later, and we'll have to scale back. We've already ceded ground to the Russians and Chinese on hypersonic, EMP, and submarine weaponry.

And I feel for the people stuck in the middle. The world is reverting back to a multi-polar state of affairs. I hope we do not repeat the 1930s and 40s as a result.

But there are geopolitical consideration which means that this war is of much higher interest to the west than any other war going on. Both EU and NATO has large combined land borders with Russian and Ukraine, and a war on their border is deeply problematic for both organizations, and their members. Which both organizations, and their members actions after the attack bears proof of.

If you look at Europe, the political changes around security policy and that many European countries that have prided themselves on not shipping weapons to war zone have reversed their long standing policies on not doing that, is staggering, and it is clear a seismic shift in policies is happening in Europe.

Then there is the fact that this is the fastest growing refuge crises since the second world war.

All of these and many other considerations is the reason why the war is the story now. It might seem unfair and racist, and in some sense it is, but it isn't the medias fault. The war in Ukraine is the big story because it affects more and has bigger implications.

Btw. Just to be crystal clear, I'm not arguing that the lack of interest in other wars are just, or right. I'm just arguing why there is a difference, and what the reasons for them are.

You don’t even have to do much work to understand that this is simply not true. 97 people were killed in Iraq, but probably tens of thousands of people were killed in Ukraine in the last month. It’s a two orders of magnitude difference just between these two numbers.

I honestly don’t understand how anyone can not see this unless they are actively trying not to see.

I am from Romania, I don't watch TV, I don read news, but this was is different, nobody forced their media into me, I am going and checking to see what is happening. It is a bias and you can accuse me that I am not a robot and I care for people that are very similar to me (similar past, same religion, similar political insignificance compared with the giants).

So from my perspective some media gives us what we want, they are using their professional team to go and film,talk to people and verify the existing stories that we already find on social media but add their "cofimed or unconfirmed" label on that.

Btw I remember as kid I was watching TV with my grand=father, watching news from Chechnya war, and watching their leader speeches, I could not understand things then but I knew who were the patriots too, so at least here in Romania we always had an interest on who around us are Russians killing now and speculating are we next, or maybe our brothers in Modldova are next...

His country began a war of aggression, with not even an attempt at reasonable pretence[0], against a country with people you could probably describe as having a sibling or cousin like relationship with his, for an attempt at an analogy, it would be like Australia invading New Zealand, or the USA invading Canada.

And it's causing schisms with his family members still in his country due to the heavy propaganda they ingest.

That's a fair bit of change there, mate. I'm assuming you read the same article I did, if so, not sure how your conclusion was "Screens bad".

[0]: Before we hit the whataboutism, GW Bush's government tried hard to convince the UN that they had evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Putin just yelled "Nazis!" and went for it.

If you're living in the US, maybe it's a good thing you guys hear what goes on around the world. I think foreign news taking up so little time in the US was always fascinating to me and really contributes to many of the wrong prejudices that are held about the rest of the world IMO (although news about war is probably not the best at reducing those) .