Empathy is limited by Dunbar’s number. Your brain physiologically cannot empathize with more than 150 people. The tragedies of thousands of people on the other side of the world or in a nearby city are just white noise to your processor.
The Great African War, which has been ongoing with interruptions and has cost 5 million lives, with 2 million people fleeing the combat zone again in 2017, evokes nothing from the average Ukrainian or European.
Even you, reading these lines, are honestly and absolutely indifferent. Most have never heard of it, will scroll past, and forget. Some units running through the savannah, my ass.
But NATO, close the sky over Ukraine! Did they close it over Turkey, which recently faced ballistic attacks from Iran a couple of times?
And it’s not because NATO is a paper tiger, as a certain orange-haired brawler says. It’s just that states, like predators, if they can growl, no one rushes to risk their eyes.
When Turkey taunted Ladim Ladimich with the tasty F-16 with ice cream effect and shot down a Su aircraft, he didn’t rush to bomb anything either. Nor did the sultan stay offended for long and now quietly allows the shadow fleet to pass through the straits and take pilots for money.
Like how all the Bin Salmans and very militant princes of the UAE are sitting tight now. Because America might withdraw its bases, as it has done when things got expensive, but Iran remains. And its people aren’t going anywhere, who might remember how the elites bombed with the crusaders and Jews against their Muslim brothers. So they sit and wait, as they always have, when empires came to the region: whose corpse will first float down the Euphrates.
And there’s no NATO. There are national armies that protect the interests of their citizens. And the law is the will of the ruling class, brought to the absolute, of the most economically active population, protecting its assets. From whom? From you, username. The pyramid always stands on the broadest base.
You compete for resources, status, and mates not with your neighbor, but with the best representatives of the entire species, thanks to globalization. When did the world completely go crazy? When every technical school girl got a smartphone, and realized that “Bon-Bon” candies and a glass of “Desna” cognac weren’t the pinnacle of Maslow’s pyramid, as it was for her mom with a student from Cuba. And she’s a goddess and breathes with her womb, therefore deserving at least 101 roses, like a dancer from Dubai.
And you, username, by the way, compete with Abramovich and Johnny Depp. Who too, as it turns out, are lousy men: their wives won’t defecate in bed and leave, taking a good chunk of the billions.
So all these technical school girls choose and vote. And in NATO countries, it’s the same. Who in the EU right now would vote to participate in a war for, damn it, the historical lands of some world’s end?
The last countries with imperial ambitions, their atavisms and rudiments, are France and Britain. Britain’s mayor of London is Muslim, and they cut sheep for Ramadan at the abbey, they can’t go to war with Iran. And France doesn’t sell weapons to Israel because of the tear of a Palestinian child, boo-hoo, while Persian girls were killed at school.
To the question “what about the Jewish kids on the 7th?”, Dunbar’s number kicks in.
Justice doesn’t exist. It’s a concept invented to calm children. The universe is absolutely indifferent to whether you’re a righteous person or a serial killer. Putin will live in comfort with the best doses of medicine, while millions will bang their heads on karma and boomerang, dying of cancer because they can’t afford chemo.
Your safety is held by the thin film of the social contract. If you cut off electricity for three days and remove the police, your intellectual neighbor will come for your food with a crowbar. Maintaining safety and justice requires constant violence.
Traditions are the pressure of the dead. Most social norms are decisions made by dead people under conditions that no longer exist.
No one knows what they’re doing. Presidents, billionaires, gurus, bloggers, party leaders — they’re all just improvising in chaos, making a smart face. As am I now.
There’s only one conclusion, and it’s damn liberating. Stop waiting for the cavalry from over the hill. Don’t count on historical justice, NATO, karma, or that the good guys will win in the end.
Build your own fortress. Concentrate your resources, increase your capital, protect your pack, and filter external noise.
Your zone of responsibility is your skills, your bank account, and those you have tamed. Everything else is just Brownian motion on which the smart make money, and the foolish lose their nerves and health.
Illustration: Artstation
