A terrible sickening feeling…

…Year of the Tiger and not being the first time in history that an unrepentant tyrant has marched upon the brutalised bodies of the innocent and certainly not the first time that imperialistic misanthropes have enthusiastically misled their own people into a monumental catastrophe, it is the potentially global nature of this disaster that so deeply troubles me. I understand that to Vladimir Putin everything in the world is about Vladimir Putin but the extent of the selfish hubris on display is only rivalled by the sheer lack of comprehension of the consequences for his own foolish gambits. Beyond this, the rest of us look on in sheer horror at the spiral of escalation and wonder, with a sickening feeling in our stomach, just how is it that a whole world might once more have arrived at such a terrible historical juncture in which, held to ransom by the foolishness of one man’s pathological, power-hungry greed, we all find ourselves potentially one act of anger or reflexive miscalculation away from global annihilation.

It was a very lonely, vast Cosmos before we got here and it may indeed be even more lonely if (or when) we all leave. The significance of this context and existential measure is that if we might actually and all as life on Earth be the only sentient matter in the Universe, if Putin invokes the nuclear option his actions will not only be of unprecedented human and planetary absurdity but they will echo in eternity as the most monumentally stupid act that can or will ever occur, anywhere. He is intelligent in a very limited kind of way but whether or not he is stupid is yet to be determined. Being clever is about far more than war and, indeed, if this does turn out to be humanity’s final act of sound and fury then perhaps it is our shared guilt and inalienable stupidity to have ever have allowed such an evil idea of a man (along with all his enabling oligarchic sycophants) to percolate to such a dangerous position of power.

As a matter of logical necessity there is always at least one way to win in any situation and if we can define wining as obtaining the sustainable continuity and manifest freedom in a planetary survival of peace and transcendent compassion, there has to be a way out of this terrible conflict before it becomes too late. I feel sick to the core but I have not entirely lost hope. Invoking love may be a cliché at times like this but it genuinely is all we need.