There is no eden at the bottom of the ocean

Note: This essay includes sources, which are listed below because I believe it’s important for people to have access to this information first-hand. If anyone needs translating, please drop me a message!

The familiar narrative of our reality ends abruptly, mid-sentence, with no ceremonious conclusions or formalities, but rather with a forceful, commanding, dictatorial full stop. On the next page looms a new chapter, albeit in different ink. For as long as we live, there will always be a before and an after. I pray to whatever divine presence in the skies that things will get better, but I know, for a fact, that they will never be the same. And the events currently unfolding should concern everyone, because as Yuval Noah Harari rightfully points out, what’s at stake in Ukraine is the direction of modern history[1].

On the 24th of February, Putin put on his diver suit, loaded us on to a raft, and plunged a knife deep into its rubber flesh. Deflating like a collapsed lung, heavy and limp, it yearns for the bottom of the ocean. We feel the floor shriveling under our weight, and water entering the raft, its cold biting, swallowing us piece by piece, first the ankles, then the knees, the hips. The end is looming for all except the madman at the helm, smirking with sick satisfaction at the chaos of his making. Most people on this raft are fighting tooth and nail to stay afloat, paddling, extending their necks for air. And then there is a fraction who is holding tight to the seams with conviction that at the murky depth of the ocean lies the new Eden.  

Only there is no Eden at the bottom of the ocean. Despite the promises, it’s clear to most that only darkness awaits, oppressive and blunt. But some continue to believe, so they are sinking willfully, with a sense of destiny. You cannot stop their descent, even if that means you are coming with them. 

They are a product of information warfare that has been smouldering beneath our feet for decades. The true wrath of its heat is only becoming evident now.

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Hannah Arendt’s concept of banality of evil in Eichmann in Jerusalem won’t leave my head. Her thesis argued that malevolent acts stem from ordinary people failing to reflect on the consequences of their actions and behaviors, especially when it comes to orders from above. Thus, evil is routinised, mechanized, and most importantly, systematized via each human cog into a wider network that guarantees its perpetuation and simultaneously diffuses the sense of individual responsibility. I initially subscribed to this postulate when analyzing the internal events in Russia, but the more I read, observe, ponder, the less convincing this seems, predominantly due to the lack of nuance, even when fear as the motivating factor is brought into the equation. Perhaps the banality of evil kicks in when the noxious state of affairs becomes just that – banal, solidified, the norm. However, the current situation is still in flux, with what I hope is the majority cursing this war, and a terrifying section of population so zombified and indoctrinated, they flat-out refuse to engage with the facts that contradict their world view. They don’t believe their own eyes when shown footage, when told about the atrocities in Ukraine. The capacity of a human being to ignore, to denounce their own senses to preserve the coherence of their reality must be the cruelest defense mechanism. There are stories of mothers rejecting their own children and threating to turn them in for standing up to the regime, friends accusing friends of photoshopping images of blown-up buildings. This is the stuff of dystopias; and if we don’t understand why and how human beings arrive to this state, psychologically and culturally, if we don’t collectively comprehend its danger, I am sorry to say, but we are absolutely doomed.

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Dogmatic information creates the fervent. The idealogues. Those that are ready to put an abstraction, be it personal glory, or empire, or religion, ahead of individual. Amnesiacs, cultists, peripherally-blind, immune to external perspectives. People who claim there is one objective truth and it’s theirs. When ideologies, holistic and all-encompassing, drive us, we forget how to relate to each other; ironically thinking big shrinks our being, and a small world is a hateful one, and a hateful world is a lost one. The mixture of ideology, hatred, and power is especially flammable, and once set on fire, it is difficult to extinguish; I am afraid it’s already burning bright on the streets of Moscow. In one of the last podcasts on Echo of Moscow prior to liquidation, Alexander Nevzorov states, “We can see that 95% of the police force exist in this changed state of being. The police force is a great indicator for measuring the prevalence of Putinism in the country. Notice the hatred, the anger with which they beat and twist those who are proclaim the innocent, childlike words - “No to War”. Do you know what they growl back through the visor of their helmets, when they knee on yet another student? They growl “Yes to War.” Ask those that may have already been released following the first set of arrests. They beat these youngster as if they were beating their personal worst enemies. As if they caught their own wives with them…”[2]

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And then there is fear, an extraordinarily powerful tool of control. So many acquiesce to being a rotten cog in a rotten machine due to it. It’s not an excuse; after all, we collectively condemn cowardice and revere bravery, especially in the face of adversity. It is, however, an explanation as to why Putin’s entourage is loyally nodding at his every caprice. Glued to his feet by the putrid slime of fear, they shake and stutter at the thought of crossing their master. Sergey Naryshkin, the Director of Foreign Intelligence Service, recoiled like a snail when Putin questioned his tacit suggestion to engage in dialogue prior to the invasion[3]. Dictators know that fear yields obedience, which is why a terrified population is the most malleable, the easiest to control. The Russian government is carrying out a repression campaign of unfathomable proportions to intimidate the public into submission. All independent media is blocked or liquidated. Facebook and Twitter are banned. The spread of “misinformation” (obviously misinformation is anything that does not align to the governmental account of the events) is punishable by 15 years in prison. 

The latest post from one of the MPs discussing the newly signed law states: “Blogger or not – it doesn’t matter. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Everyone is accountable for their words. We have rights, yes. But why does everyone forget about civil duty? Responsibility for the country, for its well-being, for our children – it’s on everyone’s shoulders. Except it’s not a burden to carry.”[4]

The hypocrisy of mentioning the well-being of humanity, of children after plunging the world into the kind of havoc most of us, in our lifetime, have yet to see. After killing civilians. 

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Fear and persistent brainwashing have emptied the public, some of it at least, of the knowledge that we had a duty to carry in our bones – that war is a great evil. We wore it neatly pinned to our school blouses, a loop of orange and brown. We recited it in our thoughts, the horrors told by the veterans. We ate it with our dinner, stomachs turning from the stories of people boiling leather boots to get nutrients. My mother’s worst fear as a child was that her dad would be conscripted. My mother’s greatest pride was that her daughter could not fathom that. 

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Let this be a reminder that to preserve peace we cannot, ever, afford to be complacent. I lamented the arrogance of Fukayama’s thesis that the history ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union countless times, accusing it of myopia. And look at me now, guilty of the very same hubris with the proclamations that war, in its traditional sense, is an archaic concept. Peace is not a natural by-product of existence; it must be nurtured, taught, reinforced. We must never, ever again take it for granted. 

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQqthbvYE8M&t=1245s

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAtov0TvFZk&t=3304s (for the specific excerpt, go to 54:42)

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdUxcz4o0u4

[4] https://www.instagram.com/p/Cat1dfwOt09/