Many of the immediate and reactionary changes that occurred in the wake of the corona virus only needed a few months to slowly creep their way into our everyday lives and become routine for a lot of us. I'm noticing that those habits are dying hard, even though people are seeing through the theater of it all. But they are going away.
Yes, this album is the music for tonight. Specifically the last, and title, track, a twenty minute epic that kind of reminds me of something that Pink Floyd might do. It's one song that is sort of really more than one song. Or it's a song with movements like a classical composition.
The lyrics are what have me invested in their music. All of the words are coming from a place of absolute maturity. Possibly because of the way our society is shaped, I think it takes until at least fifty years old when you can finally look back and start to analyze life from the perspective of the twilight of mortality.
It feels like much of the world is staring at their own mortal twilight right now. There is a lot of emotional investment across the globe in what's going on overseas. Granted, I do feel for the Ukrainian people, but it's hard for me to not be jaded by all of it. Seems like we've been involved in some type of war--off and on--my entire life. I still have memories of Desert Storm being broadcast on the nightly news. Life went on for us here though.
The United States really doesn't have a reason to get involved, and everyone admits that. It would be a horrible idea for us to become involved at this point... At least not directly with boots on the ground. That's what's so interesting about what's going on right now. We're waging war in an entirely new and novel way. This is the first time that megacorporations have been able to wield a supreme sword against a nation-state. It's interesting because it most likely will have a profound effect on the Russian economy in the not too distant future, even if they're able to secure Ukraine and stop the hemorrhaging from the lease payments on the pipeline that was originally Russian, before the Ukrainians started taxing it.
Clearly, this conflict is about natural resources, and the control of those resources. Putin is definitely a madman though, there would have been much better ways to go about reclaiming that lost control and power, or the raw resources themselves. I think that is precisely why China is staying out of it right now, economics are a priority for the rest of the world right now. And that might be why our politicians haven't drummed up a reason for us to get involved yet. It's quite depressing to wake up every day and see stocks tanking, only after you even got into stocks eighteen months ago. It's been rough.
I do have issues with cancel culture, but I think there is a difference between someone holding an opinion and someone who is genuinely trying to disrupt society and commit genocide. One can be tolerated, the other one is definitely questionable, if not outright condemnable. I would hope the later, but some of you reading this may be psychopaths, and not agree with me that aggressively taking over your neighbor is not appropriate behavior for civilized human beings.
Just recently I spent some time watching an interview/speech with the Russian ambassador to Japan. The whole thing was in English... Neutral territory I suppose. It was interesting to hear that there are ethnic Russians in the east of the country that do not want to be part of modern day Ukraine, seems that those people would much rather be a part of Russia. And this whole notion of "denazification" really intrigues me. I know it's propaganda, but exactly are the examples that the Russian government are using?
Regardless, all of it is anti-freedom. I just wish I understood the "why" in the same way that the US government explained Iraq and Afghanistan to us. It will be interesting to read what the survivors from both sides have to say about what they experienced. You know, many years from now when this whole matter has cooled down. I don't think anything ever gets permanently censored, it just goes underground for a while.
Anecdotally speaking, I know someone who knows someone whose family is in Luhansk right now. From what I hear, they are actively cheering on the Russians to take control. Most of my life I've heard that Ukrainians may speak a similar language, but that they are a different people all together. I've never been to eastern Europe or Russia, so I don't really know. It's easy to imagine that there are different enough ethnic differences between the people that the current geographical lines make sense, but maybe they don't?
When I finished my last post I wanted to delve into eco-tourism or Free Market Environmentalism, but I'm not sure that I'm in the right headspace for that tonight.
If nothing else, I will continue to monitor the situation. It's hard not to be concerned with the global influence this conflict will have, or the consequences it may carry with it.
"A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed. We are one planet. One of the great revelations of the age of space exploration is the image of the earth finite and lonely, somehow vulnerable, bearing t he entire human species through the oceans of space and time." ~ Carl Sagan
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