Kostya's Boring Codec World

Late (and still great) Sir Pterry was a writer who wrote great footnotes as well as the books to contain them (name any other author who put a footnote even into the book title!). And while Thief of Time probably was not written for this particular footnote, it would’ve not been half as good without it:

Every society needs a cry like that, but only in a very few do they come out with the complete, unvarnished version, which is “Remember-the-Atrocity-Committed-Against-Us-Last-Time-That-Will-Excuse-the-Atrocity-That-We’re-About-to-Commit-Today! And So On! Hurrah!”

I think this describes the best the situation observed in this world as well: too many groups (from individuals to communities spanning many nations) think they were greatly wronged in the past and this excuses whatever they’re going to do. In the best case it’s merely against the perceived/appointed enemies, in the worst case it’s against everybody. Of course since those people think they’re right (or don’t think at all) they don’t want to understand that their enemies are likely to retaliate in the same way with the same reasoning.

The classic example would be Christianity with its usual claim about great persecutions during Diocletian times (not paying attention to how many religions were there and practiced legally while only a couple of them were forbidden—probably for being too peaceful). That apparently gave them right to pursue the competitors opponents in equally or even more cruel ways; and of course that has not stopped when neither the original opponents nor the Roman Empire were around.

Another classic example would be Israel. I whole-heartedly agree that Jews should not have been killed or persecuted just for being different (neither in 1938-1945 nor in other time periods) and they deserve their own state. What I don’t agree is that their tragedy gives them the right to behave in the same way as it was done unto them back in the day. Yet paradoxically enough currently Israel has an anti-Semitic government in both senses, hostile both to Palestinians and Jews except of very special sort (who don’t want to defend Israel by themselves). At least they’re not talking expanding their Lebensraum, otherwise the similarity would too much to bear. And no friendly country does not do much against it because of the unfortunate associations (even with a token ICC verdict against Netanyahu some European countries openly declared they won’t comply because it would be anti-Semitism). Mind you, I don’t have anything against the population itself beside the fact they elected this government (more than once) which may lead their country to destruction by pissing off allies and courting with enemies. But I’ll talk about USA a bit later.

Moving to Europe, there’s a Catholic version of Israel called Poland. Since most of the people do not have a reason to learn about it, here’s a short version: the golden years of it were when the Kingdom of Poland united with Grand Duchy of Lithuania forming Rzeczpospolita (essentially the word “republic” or “commonwealth” translated into Polish). With that union they got a lot of Ukrainian lands whose agricultural output was responsible for a good deal of Rzeczpospolita wealth. And yet, unlike Lithuanians, they treated Ukrainians badly for being of a different branch of Christianity (and maybe not having their own state). Eventually Ukrainians started an uprising, ending up with their own republic and dealing a mortal blow to Rzeczpospolita in a Pyrrhic victory—the weakened Poland was eventually conquered and split up between two European empires (Austro-Hungarian and German) and russia. Wiser people would’ve made some conclusions about tolerance and treating own population decently, Poles instead found no fault with them (because nobody does) and decided that it’s a martyrdom they have to bear because they’re special. So the next times they re-instated their republic it went the same way: mistreating non-Poles, suffering from the mistakes, only reinforcing them in their idea of martyr nation. And nowadays it looks like they’ve not learned anything, still holding 80-year old grudges against Ukrainians (because they dared to kill occupational Polish officers and settlers on Ukrainian territory) fuelling them into anti-Semitism level of hate. If you look you can see the news in any given week about Poles either beating Ukrainians for speaking Ukrainian (which sounds not that different from Polish BTW) or other Poles for mistaking them for Ukrainians. And those notions are instigated predominantly by their current president and the main opposition party who, unlike the government and many ordinary Poles, do not even formally condemn such behaviour.

And finally let’s talk about USA. It is hard to argue that they suffered any injustice beside being forced to pay taxes (some claim that taxes were rather the pretext and the real reason was prohibition of trade with French colonies from which rum distilleries in British colonies obtained cheap and abundant molasses; in either case it was about the money and unwillingness to give them away). So in order to be less ashamed about it they threw it some ideas about liberty and human rights in general (no slaves need apply) and started an uprising. Apparently this combination of being the first democratic republic (if you don’t count the ones appearing in Europe a century before) and reluctance to pay money gave them the main two pretexts for doing anything: being the missionaries of democracy (which compelled them to occupy various other lands at different times, democratic or not, as well as trying to annex Canada) and paying for something being a great offence. Or maybe rather “we could smuggle our greed under a pretence of higher moral ideals, we can do it again”. No wonder they spawn the ideologies like effective altruism (aka “I know better what to do with my money, don’t make me pay taxes”). I’ve started writing this post before the current USian president made a claim that he wants European countries to pay for the past military aid that Ukraine received for free before his term, but it’s definitely not against the trend. Timeo Danaos…

The sad thing those examples show is that such behaviour is not self-destructive (enough) and it can mutually subsist on the similar behaviour from the other side (think about the classic example of long-lasting blood feud from Romeo and Juliet Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) but its substrate (people infected with those ideas) will suffer even if they feel great and superior to everybody else. I’d recommend scepticism and clear thinking but I know that people don’t like to think in general, let alone about the things that would make them feel bad and less important.