Ukraine and Human Nature: Poo-Tee-Weet.

In my more Hubert Humphrey youth, I used to believe that there really WAS an arc of history bent toward “progress.” I believed that most human beings, at bottom, just wanted to be left alone to live their lives in peace, that most people had no desire to harm others. Well, I gave up that naïveté about the same time I gave up religion. But still, it took me a damned long time, despite all the overwhelming evidence, to realize that—at any given moment—at least half of humankind does NOT want peace and security, but rather YEARNS for the excitement of anger, violence and conflict—with family, neighbors, co-workers, people of other colors, faiths, nationalities. And that the boundaries between peace-lovers and conflict-lovers are not fixed in either space or time: the same average joe might, depending upon external events and his own psychological state, transform overnight from a Milquetoast to a Minotaur. So, I conclude, sadly, that there is nothing meaningful to say about the war in Ukraine, or about human nature itself, except—as Vonnegut’s canary incoherently chirrups at the end of Slaughterhouse Five: “poo-tee-weet.” 

Here’s a picture of the “Tsar Cannon” in Moscow. (It was never actually used in battle: too big). So it goes.