Essays

War and world order

I’ll start with a quote from a poem I wrote at the end of the 20th century:

On the square
of the twentieth century
there is a stone heart –
one for all.


Why does humanity, or rather, a separate part of it, and to be more precise, a well-fed part of it, do not want, do not have any desire to consider someone else’s tragedy, someone else’s pain, as their own.
And the world has changed. It is an illusion that we are different and that it is possible to isolate ourselves from others, our own kind, by existing borders.
In fact, the Internet has long erased these boundaries, and time has rolled over them like a skating rink. And do not think that every nation has its own home.
No, no one has such a house today, but there is only one communal apartment for everyone, and it not only has a shared kitchen, but sorry for the details, and a shared toilet.
And no matter how paradoxical it may sound, the Ukrainian proverb “my hut is on the edge” turned out to be absolutely prophetic, although it was not interpreted correctly at communist time.  In fact, this proverb has only one meaning: the owner of this hut is destined to be the first to meet both friend and enemy.
This is what happened to Ukraine.
And how to convey to the politicians of the leading countries that it is impossible, living in the present, to live in the past. It is clear that we do not want to lose the acquired comfort, but after all, our life consists not only of acquisitions, it consists primarily of losses, and the more we lose, the more we gain.
And what about democracy, peppered with a unanimous vote on fundamental issues? Yes, of course, about the impasse.
It’s just time to wake up those who are not being bombed, we have not been sleeping for a long time.
And finally, a quote from our sages: “A palace around which there are no guards cannot be compared with a Palace around which there are guards.”