Is this what human civilization has spent thousands of years culminating towards? Apocalyptic power in the hands of unhinged mobsters hell-bent on settling old scores?
So we thought we knew what terrible and terrifying in the 21st century meant. We thought we already had our rude awakening from “end of history” delusions after the fall of the Berlin Wall. We thought we had learned that democracy, peace and prosperity were not the inexorable equilibrium state of human affairs. We thought we were already wise to the fact that the internet doesn’t exist to spread truth and wisdom. And any delusions of anyone staying safe at home seemed to end with a global pandemic that’s already killed some 18 million people.
And now a megalomaniacal sociopath with nukes shows us how naive we still were. We only thought the prospect of an actual apocalypse was behind us. Yes, the old Cold War was terrifying, but at least it was managed by cooler heads deliberating in committee. And they understood when to stand down. Putin may or may not have once been what many used to claim he was: a well-informed calculator, craftily playing a long brutal game of 3d chess. Either way, today he’s not. Attacking nuclear power stations and maternity hospitals, ranting on TV against traitors and spies is, as many have pointed out, the late stage meltdown of a classic tyrant ruling through fear and greed. The consensus now is that Putin’s become isolated, paranoid and reckless; so much so that those around him know this but are too terrified to stop him. And no analyst I’ve heard or read (I’ve been going through a lot of them lately) has great confidence he hasn’t already gone Captain-Queeg-Crazy.
And unfortunately, it’s not just Putin. According to the same analysts, many in his innermost circle are just as rabid, paranoid and echo-chamber-conspiracy-crazed. They all see Russia in what journalist Julie Ioffe calls an eschatological struggle — literally a fight to the death and end of the world if need be. And whatever mental state is required to target civilians in their homes and shelters, it clearly goes far down the chain of command in the world’s 2nd largest military. Finally, despite thousands of anti-war demonstrators in Moscow and St. Petersburg, most Western estimates are that two-thirds or more of the Russian people are still with Putin’s program. As Russian journalist Alexander Nevzorov was recently quoted(1):
“In the last twenty years, Russia has been busy with absolutely nothing except for making rockets, tanks, bombs, propaganda, military parades and flaunting its own military might. Everything else life-related was abandoned. Within the womb of Russia a perfect war machine grew.”
But it’s not just Russia that presents a terrifying prospect for the future. China’s government with the world’s 3rd largest military has long gone into Sci-Fi-dystopia-mode. But at least, or so we’re told, it’s still run by sober-minded engineers and technocrats interested in building, not destroying. The world’s largest investor in renewable energy presumably cares about the future, the argument goes. Maybe so. But there are also signs that President-For-Life Xi Jinping has also changed the world’s risk profile more than the world bargained for. Certainly his geopolitical obsessions and anti-Western grievances closely mirror those of Putin. If the West becomes confrontational, the Chinese economy tanks and internal unrest grows, is it only a matter of time before they devolve into their own paranoid bunker mentality?
And finally, of course it’s not just Russia and China. Until recently the world’s largest military was in the hands of a transparently infantile sociopath. This one spent his time tweeting from the toilet, nursing grievances against all who wouldn’t recognize his stable genius. Fortunately, it was so transparent that his own staff and military chiefs made contingency plans to thwart the worst case scenario. In other words, the world got lucky in Trump’s first term. But how much longer will that luck hold when 70 million Americans voted in the last election for more of the same? And if his transparently authoritarian party manages to control the next presidential election? In the words of the always-sober-minded national security expert Fiona Hill, that could mean “another president, just like Vladimir Putin, might decide to stay in power indefinitely.”
So is this what human civilization has spent thousands of years culminating towards? Apocalyptic power in the hands of unhinged mobsters hell-bent on settling old scores? And we thought pandemics, climate change and killer robots were the greatest dangers facing our species. Had we only known how so last year that was.
The physicist Albert A Bartlett once said our greatest failing as a species is not understanding the exponential function. That’s normally meant in the context of macroeconomics. Human civilization is addicted to unsustainable growth, regardless of the cost (capitalism, of course, literally designs it to be exponential via compound interest). That failing is why, for example, we’re currently careening towards a global climate catastrophe but still mostly worry about our 401k plans.
But Bartlett’s point also applies more broadly. We’re generally blind to the signs that things have gotten out of control. We’re lulled by the gradual phases of exponential change and don’t register when we’re on the vertical part of the hockey stick. That also applies to power structures in society. And it’s a lesson we never seem to learn, no matter how much war, repression and destitution rains down on us. Perhaps that’s because our civilization works on a simple principle: we grant enormous power to a few people while the rest of us hope to somehow benefit from their machinations.
The Russian oligarchs with their yachts and villas are only the most glaring example these days. Their wealth and fate were always tied to Putin. But let’s face it. It’s not just the oligarchs. Before sanctions, the Russian economy really did benefit under Putin (thanks mostly to its gargantuan fossil fuel reserves of course, but that’s a minor detail). And Putin gave the people something just as potent: stability and a promise to make Russia great again. As Moscow-based commentator Misha Firer, who often writes with a special scathing humor and compares today’s Moscow with Berlin of 1939, writes “On a deep level, Russians understand that the regime is all they have to hold this country together, and many cling to propaganda because it gives them a sense of purpose and meaning”
And again, it’s not just the Russians, or for that matter, the Chinese or the Americans. And it’s not just our politicians and captains of industry. It is literally all of us in ways big and small who have benefited. Europe may be heartbroken over the tragedy in Ukraine and is welcoming as many refugees as it can. But it’s still funding the war to the tune of a billion euros a day for Russian oil and gas. (In a remarkable and laudable display of frankness, the current German Vice-Chancellor said recently on TV “we are no angels” and Europe has only itself to blame for its current dependence.) Australia only recently stopped exporting an essential military material, aluminum ore, to Russia. And London is not known as Londongrad for nothing.
Those are just three random examples that came to mind while writing this. More generally and throughout history, the world has always been happy to do business with brutal authoritarian stability, as long as stability is the operative word. That’s often as true within countries as between them. Even Americans who were no fans of Trump accepted children in cages as long as the stock market kept going up. We always tell ourselves the deal is worth it; the compromise is temporary; that the risk is manageable because it’s easier than facing the truth. The truth is that the fundamental bargain that put us where we are today: they rule while we reap — was never sustainable.
To be sure, that bargain can indeed work out well over foreseeable stretches of time. Since the end of WWII during the Great Acceleration, average human lifespan, health and wealth have improved dramatically. Miracle technologies gave us both vaccines and the ability to curse them on our iPhone’s social media feed. They let us have fresh avocado toast delivered to our home office by just speaking to our AI spy-bot. But, on top of the planet-warping environmental costs, we conveniently forgot how much concentration of wealth and power is behind these miracles. Even when the top 0.1% own as much as the bottom 90%. Even when they have the power to write their own laws to make their kleptocracy and autocracy legal. Even when any mobster behind a president’s desk can wage war and blow up the world on a whim.
And so we have no idea how to react when the alarm bells go off that the powerful have gone stark raving power mad. In that we are all guilty and susceptible to one degree or another. Again Misha Firer: “Don’t hold it against Russians. If not them, it would be some other people and country. Fascism never goes away.”
One important point about autocracy. It’s a misunderstanding to call it “tribal” or “stone age“. In fact our addiction to hierarchy and strong leaders is not human nature. It’s demonstrably one of the many diseases of civilization. For our first 300,000 years or so on Earth, humans are believed to have lived in small, reasonably egalitarian societies. Survival in those conditions could have only been through group cooperation. Leadership must have been temporary and situational, filling a need for competency in the moment. There was certainly no room for the bloated charisma and self-aggrandizing social shenanigans we today take for granted. One of the few peoples left on Earth to still have a connection to this tradition are the San of the Kalahari in Southern Africa. Ethnically and culturally they are among the oldest population of humans remaining, with a heritage going back to the Paleolithic. Their numbers may be small and they may have never conquered territory. But their society was the most sustainable in the story of our species. As one San elder once explained their rejection of “dear leaders” to an anthropologist: “We refuse one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill somebody.”
No, there’s no point in romanticizing the Paleolithic or wishing it back. Civilization is wonderful if we can keep it. I’m as happy as anyone to grab the refrigerator door first thing in the morning instead of a spear. But the Paleolithic had at least one thing going for it. Megalomaniacs and sociopaths must have led a lonely, hard-scrabble existence. Perhaps some took pity on them, but by and large they could have only scraped by on the margins of society. It’s civilization that first enabled them to thrive. Particularly our modern world gives them the powers of a super-predator at an all-you-can-eat prey buffet. We celebrate them, promote them to run our corporations and countries, command armies and endless resources. In our technological 21st century the accumulation of power and wealth has become absurd beyond words. But of course we the people are the ones who enabled them. And until things actually do go wrong on the vertical part of the exponential, we’re generally too vested in what we’ve gained to be bothered. That’s not cynicism, just a simple acknowledgment of who we are. We all have only a limited time on Earth to live our lives and chase our dreams. Few are eager to sacrifice their existence fighting for lost causes, no matter how just they may be. And so we swam along for millennia until we got to where we are now.
Where we are includes the fact that humankind is already facing enough existential crises even without nuclear war. For that matter, even without pandemics. Climate change, Earth’s 6th Great Extinction, demographic time bombs up and down the population pyramid and unrestricted AI are all enormous threats for which our civilization has no real solutions to. Each alone counts as a challenge of the century. All are driven by 8 billion souls going with the flow of civilization’s relentless feedback loop of technology, society and the environment. Taking them all together, then, it’s hard not to have a thoroughly bleak picture of the future. So much so that betting on human civilization to survive this century feels, to me at least, like betting against a crooked casino with your last food stamps.
Which finally brings up the issue of hope and why Ukraine is now suddenly such a shining light for it. Hope is a difficult concept to bring up in this context. At this moment, missiles are leveling apartment buildings, hospitals and shelters. Nuclear power stations have been attacked. People are dying of dehydration, children vanish under collapsed bomb shelters. There are (as yet unconfirmed) reports of hostage-taking and forcing refugees to Russian gulags. And most analysts see things only getting worse from here. Whole cities are now set to be erased to appease Putin’s frustration; chemical and biological attacks may be more a matter of when, not if. Even tactical nukes are no longer dismissed out of hand as they were just three weeks ago. And as if millions of lives around the world weren’t threatened enough already, a global hunger crisis looms due to the loss of grains and fertilizers from the region. So yes, the word “hope” can feel like a really terrible joke.
Nevertheless if we the world look closely, we might also see the most inspiring and hopeful moment of our terrifying century. Because if the world didn’t expect Putin to go into full Genghis-Khan-mode, it surely didn’t expect to see how the Ukrainians have responded.
To see the bravery of ordinary Ukrainians taking to the streets to face tanks, missiles and machine guns has left many around the world, including me, speechless and tearful with admiration. It is extraordinary on a historic scale. (Not to forget the courage of tens of thousands of Russians who, at least until recently, managed to protest.)
Since the Enlightenment, everyone claims to fight for “liberty” — either for their own sake or for some oppressed people. And it’s always for “the people”. At least that’s what those doing the fighting and dying believe, since there’s no other way to motivate them. But scratch the surface and there is almost always a more sobering reality. The real fight will be over territory, resources, religion, race, cultural grievances, historic grudges or cult ideologies. And “the people” almost always turns out to be some elite — either the old elite or an aspiring new one. The American Revolution was a fight for liberty for sure, but also for a landed slave-owning elite that didn’t want to pay taxes. The French Revolution had high minded ideals among educated urbanites — for about a day and a half before devolving into a murderous mess lasting generations. And we all know how the glorious history of war and revolution in the name of “the people” and “liberty” has turned out ever since.
That’s what makes the Ukrainian’s fight almost singular in history. For once, an entire population has risen to fight for what’s actually good about human civilization, not for what’s bad about it. And this time, for once, “the people” really means the people. They’re not a mob caught up in a cult of conspiracy theories or ancient grievances. They aren’t driven by a hatred of some “other”, brainwashed with fake news, or following a corrupt promise to restore some imagined greatness of the past.
Yes, of course there are fascists and neonazis among them. Just like in almost every other country in the world these days. Welcome to deeply flawed democracy in the 21st century. But overwhelmingly, for once, we’re seeing ordinary people fighting for actual liberty. President Volodymyr Zelensky may be the heroic face of the hour and deserves enormous respect. But no one is fighting for or because of him. As he himself has said, the real heroes this time are all the people. Men, women, young and old. Shopkeepers, bakers, lawyers, engineers, students, teachers, artists, homemakers, grandparents and farmers who until the invasion were just going about the ordinary business of life. Fighting a war is the last thing they ever imagined doing. For almost a month now they’ve been exhausted, hungry, thirsty, wounded, scared and dying every day. But they’ve chosen to stay and fight anyway.
The word “heroism” is all too easily abused for all the wrong reasons and so I’m generally not a fan of the term. But if the concept finds any meaning at all, it finds it here.That an entire population is willing to fight and die for their right to an enlightened civil society is frankly breathtaking to behold. In their act of collective heroism, the Ukrainians are showing the world that a civilization worthy of the name might still be possible. They’ve already shown us that nations are still capable of electing and standing by leaders who say things like this: “I don’t want you to hang portraits of me in your offices. Because a president is not an icon, an idol or a portrait. Hang pictures of your children instead. And before you make any decision, look into their eyes.”
Here in the more established democracies we’ve grown all too complacent and frankly lazy about protecting what we say we care about. The light of our enlightened civic spirit has sadly gotten pretty dim over time. But it’s incandescent in those Ukrainians who willingly stay when they clearly had easier options. The artist and writer Yevgenia Belorusets is based in Berlin, but decided to stay home in Kiev. She tries to blog daily (published by the German magazine Der Spiegel) about life under siege. She writes of fear, about looking after her parents, about art and hoping she can one day dance in the streets again. As she wrote March 2 in her diary “There are values that are bigger than Ukraine that must be defended. There are situations in which resistance means salvation.” (author’s rough translation)
We can hear that same spirit in the now famous Ukrainian military band from Odessa. As of this writing Russian warships are approaching the coast and the naval barrage may start anytime. But in the meantime the world has been treated to this hearty quintet standing in front of sand bags protecting their beloved and historic opera house. All the while playing the ultimate icon of chill, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”.
How long this spirit will last no one can say. At some point, mass slaughter and bitter guerrilla warfare will make pure seething hatred the driving force on all sides. Already there are reports (also unconfirmed) of torturing Russian POWs. At some point, fewer will care what the original conflict was about or how far it escalates. Maybe that’s where we are all headed. Every day the calls from even serious analysts and policymakers for NATO to directly intervene seem to grow. Everyone knows the risks involved; and that the worst case scenario is literally the end of everything. But at some point, even that calculus may not matter. If the alternative is watching another Holodomor unfold — Stalin’s execution and starvation of millions — the once unthinkable may well become inevitable.
As I’ve written about here, we appear to be on course for a Mad Max century; a barely habitable planet of violence, destitution and technology. At the time I, like most with similar worries, assumed that such a world be at least several decades away. Maybe that was too optimistic. Perhaps, as some have suggested, WWIII has already begun and Ukraine is just the opening battle. Historian Yaroslav Hrytsak, like many Ukrainians, understandably feels this way. No one can yet say that they’re wrong, which, yes, feels like utter insanity to realize. But this is where we are now.
But if this horror is a disease of civilization, it still doesn’t have to be an inevitable one. Anthropologist Jared Diamond once famously claimed that civilization was the greatest mistake in human history. Maybe he was right. Nevertheless, our current condition is not necessarily a disease of our progress. As I’ve written about here, the real diseases of civilization are the warped stories we buy into about ourselves. And the most virulent of these diseases is our fetish for following “dear leaders”.
Repeatedly this century, Ukrainians have shown us that civilization still has the capacity to cure itself of this particular disease. From the beginning, their country has been a flawed democracy, struggling with its Soviet legacy, with corruption, a dangerous neighbor and even its own identity. But through two revolutions and now a major war they’ve shown that caring for democratic civil society means something. And they’ve stayed remarkably dogged in resisting those who want to lead us again and again into dystopian destruction. As the San might say: by rejecting those who boast. Ukraine’s fight is thus a critical teaching moment for the world. And it might be one of the last chances civilization gets this century. In the spirit of hoping we can all learn in time: Slava Ukraini.
Footnotes
(1) The quote is from Misha Firer’s Quora feed citing Alexander Nevzorov’s Instagram account, which is now blocked in Russia. According to a March 23 posting by Dimitri Vulis of “Truth About Russia”, criminal proceedings have begun against Nevzorov.
