Month: March 2022

Falling Down

crimson

Today, I will talk about this Ukraine situation. I live in Canada, and so the predominant viewpoint of the situation is that it is a war. That Russia invaded Ukraine without any good reason and has been committing crimes against humanity. That it is up to us (the rest of the world) to step up and defend Ukraine and stop the evil Russian empire from continuing it’s reign of terror. Within this viewpoint it also is understood that the Russian people may not be directly responsible for what is going on; that it is their leader, Vladimir Putin, and his friends who should be held directly accountable for these heinous acts. This is why among the responses made thus far, sanctions have been placed upon Putin and the other oligarchs.

This is one viewpoint. It is extremely easy for me to learn and understand this viewpoint because it is held by those in my immediate vicinity. It is this viewpoint that is presented to me by almost all media sources I have access to. But this is simply one side of the story. It is the other side of the story, the side I have no access to, that I wish I could understand.

While I do not know the other side, I have a theory what it might look like. This viewpoint starts with the Soviet Union, and goes back to the end of World War I. After that worldwide war, the nations of the area were joined together through various contracts, agreements, and treaties to become a unified whole. As they say, many standing together are much stronger than individuals doing the same. The Soviet Union was something like the United States, in that it was a set of individual communities who agreed to work together and follow a singular leadership, particularly with regard to worldwide issues. Of course the Soviet Union did things a bit differently than the United States in this regard, and back in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight.

After that point, it seemed like those nations became their own independent entities, fighting for their own sovereignty and their own ideals. Unfortunately, no nation is an island. The affairs of each nation is influenced greatly by its neighbors. Simply take a look at the goings-ons in Afghanistan for the past 20 years.

There was not much press given to Ukraine over here in Canada until about 2014, when the government changed and the new president was someone whom Putin did not like so much. The new president was not so sympathetic to Russian ways. And so, around that time, the relationship between Russia and Ukraine deteriorated significantly and then steadily more until recent events. In other words, the conflict that is currently taking place in Ukraine is not some random, isolated incident. It is a conflict that has been brewing for at least the past 8 years, and likely much, much longer.

In truth, in Canada, there was not much attention paid to Ukraine since the events of 2014. For the most part, attention only was paid since the “war” began, about 3 weeks ago. This makes it very difficult for me to understand the other side.

I think the situation between Russia and Ukraine is much like the situation between a parent and their teenaged offspring. When a child is particularly young, parents have a great deal of influence and control over their actions and choices. If a young child behaves in a manner that the parent considers inappropriate, the parent takes actions to correct the behavior. Discipline and punishments of various types can occur; when I was a child, spanking was considered an appropriate punishment to correct behavior. However, as the child grows, the sorts of discipline and punishment that will successfully correct behavior changes. That which worked before no longer works. The teenager becomes better at resisting corrective action.

When the Soviet Union ceased to be, Russia acted much like a parent toward the other nations in the area. Russia set policy and guided how those other nations ought to behave. Unfortunately for Russia, over time those other nations grew and developed stronger self identities. Nations like Ukraine decided to follow a different path than the one Russia had set forth. Instead of a totalitarian style of government, ruled with an iron fist, Ukraine seemed to prefer a more democratic style of government. This is where the conflicts are rooted.

Russia wants Ukraine to behave more like Russia. Russia would like Ukraine to do things in ways that Russia considers appropriate. And when Ukraine does not agree, deciding to do things in different ways, Russia feels compelled to apply some sort of corrective action to get Ukraine back in line. As all the previous efforts in this regard continued to be met with limited success, Russia escalated their discipline and punishments.

It is believed, here in Canada, that Russia believed the invasion of Ukraine would have completed swiftly and with very little resistance. If this is true, then Russia must have believed that the government in Ukraine did not speak for the Ukrainian people. The Russians must have believed that the government in Ukraine was much like the government in Russia: totalitarian in nature. After all, the Russian government seems to make a great effort at controlling the people of Russia, instead of responding to and reflecting the will of those people.

In Russia, it seems like the nation is controlled by a select few atop a pyramid-like structure. The Russian government is run by a few people who make decisions based on their own interests. The remainder of the nation, all the rest of the people, are made to follow the desires of these few in the government. Propaganda and a strong police and military seem to be the tools utilized by the Russian government to maintain order.

In Ukraine, however, it seems like the nation was being controlled by the people. The Ukrainian government was elected by the people, and reflected the interests of the people as a whole. The government had no need of controlling the people, because the people were the one’s in charge. I admit this is speculative at best, but the severe resistance Russia has met when trying to quickly invade Ukraine would seem to support this conclusion. The people of Ukraine support the decisions of their government, and so were not willing to simply allow the Russian military to walk in and remove that government. Instead, the people fought hard to protect their government and their elected president.

I believe that Putin invaded Ukraine as an escalated effort to try and apply corrective action to the Ukrainian government. I believe Putin believed that the Ukrainian people were more like the Russian people, and that they would not fight to support their Ukrainian government. Clearly he was mistaken, if this is what he believed. But this further reveals a great problem for Russia as well. It suggests the Russian people do not support their Russian government. That if Putin ever released the heel of his boot from the neck of the Russian people, even just a little, the Russian people might rise up and remove him from power, much as the Russian people did to their Tsars back just before the creation of the Soviet Union.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter who is correct regarding the story of what is happening. Whether it is a war, or whether it is a parent disciplining their child, the situation has captured the attention of the world community as a whole now. Now, the nations of the world have decided to throw their opinions into the ring and influence the outcome of the event. Russia has, thus far, decided to continue to escalate their actions in their attempt to discipline Ukraine into submission. Unfortunately, the rest of the world no longer agrees that this is appropriate. Like the parent who decides to take their child over their knee in the middle of a public street, all the people around are now deciding to call the police about child abuse.

Apocalyptic Thoughts

crimson

It is hard not to think about the end of days with all that is going on. Just over a year ago, in the United States, there was an attempted coup. Just over a month ago, something similar happened here in Canada, in the guise of a protest in the capital. And then, hot on the heels, Russia invades Ukraine. Couple all this with a global pandemic and also the climate change crisis, both which have taken a back seat to these various more exciting events. It is like the world is out to get the human race, in some sense.

I have to acknowledge here that several of the things I’ve raised as being significant events are really only significant to people in my region of the world. The events of the United States and Canada are of particular interest to citizens of the United States and Canada, and not necessarily to others in the world. If an insurrection occurs in the Western countries, does anyone in China really worry about it? I truly cannot say; I do not live in those areas, nor do I know what those citizens think about. So, it might be more accurate to suggest that these thoughts that I am having are particular to my situation.

That in mind, it seems to me that the occurrences that ought to be getting the greatest amount of attention are those which truly affect the greatest number of humans. In other words, a global pandemic and the climate change crisis. Of those, the pandemic is not necessarily an extinction level event. Even if the virus happened to kill people with an efficiency unheard of, there would still be those who were resistant and even immune to its direct effects. And this particular virus seems to be peaking at around 5 to 10% at most. So a lot of people can and will die as a result of this disease, but far, far from eliminating the entire human species.

This leaves the climate change crisis. Here is an ongoing event that I personally have been aware of since my childhood in the mid 1980s. An early “book report” I did was on the hole in the ozone layer of the Earth, a topic that gets very little attention presently. Climate change affects every single living creature on this planet, not simply the humans. Climate change has been slowly causing catastrophic events to occur with increasing frequency over the past 20 years, at minimum. However, climate change doesn’t affect us all equally or directly. Climate change is the cause of strange and severe weather patterns and other occurrences.

In other words, like the wind, no one sees climate change itself, only the effects it has on the world around us. Do we doubt there is a wind because we cannot see it? It would be lunacy to suggest the wind does not exist; what else is causing all those trees to swing around so violently…

Despite the severity of the climate change crisis (or whatever other name one wishes to give to this ongoing event), it repeatedly gets a back seat to other “more pressing” concerns. It seems it is better to focus on something that might kill a few of us now, than something that will kill all of us later. After all, the thing killing some of us now is doing so right now, and we have barely any time to react. The thing killing us later is doing so later, so we still have time to do something about it, right?

Unfortunately, this is not how this particular event works. As I learned about the ozone layer issue, those choices we make today will manifest in changes to our world in the years to come. A reduction in chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) use today will be reflected in a reduced concentration of CFCs in the upper atmosphere years later. In other words, the choices we make today will not take effect for a while. When looking at climate change in general, the scales of time reflected in the cause/effect relationship are much, much greater.

It is likely too late to “fix” anything at this point. We are seeing the increasingly severe weather patterns presently, and still there are those in power who insist on no budging, claiming that climate change is simply a hoax. Denying the evidence that literally pounds them in their faces. Those who are in the position to possibly do something have instead decided to start wars with neighboring states and focus on economic solutions to the worlds problems.

As a species, we are under the delusion that if we can just do a little more, we can alleviate the situation. The fact is, the answer we need to follow is that we need to do less. We need to curb our activities. We need to reduce the things we do, including reducing the number of children we bring into this world. There are already far too many humans on this planet, and their increased activities simply further perpetuate the problems. The answer is less, not more. We need to change our collective culture to be about doing less.

Unfortunately, those who may heed my warning and attempt the strategy I propose will not survive. Those who have chosen the option to purposefully handicap themselves when faced against those who choose not to handicap themselves. Those who decide that climate change is a hoax, or perhaps they do believe but do not wish to allow it to unfocus them from “more important matters,” will very easily overcome those who believe. This isn’t really all that complicated an equation to see.

What this all distills down to is the very real fact that those who wish to attempt to rectify the situation will always be overwhelmed by those who simply don’t care. In the end, those who wish to sacrifice all of us for their petty interests will always win against those who try to make their impact less in an attempt to “save the world.” And so, unfortunately, as math simply does not lie, in the end, the human race is simply on a slow road to its own demise. And then I have to ask myself, as I’m sure so many already do, whether it is even worth bothering. Why chose to limit myself in a world where no one else seems to be limiting themselves. The end result isn’t going to change.