Algebra differs from arithmetic in that it deals with abstract variables rather than specific numbers. This allows for a deeper understanding of concepts, the ability to identify patterns, and the capacity to predict outcomes.
The text describes a country with a complex linguistic and cultural divide, likely referring to Ukraine. The eastern part of the country is more industrially developed and speaks Russian, while the western part is less developed in business terms and speaks Ukrainian. The capital, Kyiv, is located in the eastern part but predominantly uses the Ukrainian language. Historically, the two halves of the country were part of different empires, and there have been periods when one half imposed its language on the other. The head of state struggles to communicate in the language of one half, and there are significant differences in voting patterns and cultural expressions between the two regions. The mention of the largest Jewish diaspora in the largest city of the eastern half further supports this identification.
It’s incorrect to think about Belgium in this way. Ukraine, it turns out, is not a unique country. However, unlike more mature states that have realized there’s no point in trying to “unify” the country, Ukraine still clings to a naive idea of a “unitary” state, of a “single and indivisible” nation. In Belgium, they don’t even attempt to “glue” the country together. There is Wallonia and there is Flanders. Each half has its own way of life and its own fate. In Ukraine, all the efforts and money spent on maintaining the illusion of national unity go down the drain simply because that unity doesn’t exist, no matter how much some patriots may wish for it. Imposing one language in regions that speak another, laws that standardize the linguistic landscape—from the Constitution to the “Advertising Law”—can all be summed up by a simple saying: “Spitting against the wind.” Moreover, the more this artificial tension is created, the more painful the rupture will be. And if the tension is released, there will be no rupture at all.
The East of Ukraine is ideologically tied to Russia not because they are all traitors and “katsaps.” It’s simply that they feel uncomfortable when their Russian-speaking children are forced to learn Ukrainian in school. They are upset when Pushkin is categorized as “foreign literature.” It hurts them that Russian gets only one lesson a week, and that’s on Friday, alongside labor and life safety lessons—considered “less important” subjects. Children grow up illiterate. They don’t speak Ukrainian as their native language, but they also struggle to read and write in Russian. And considering that language is a tool for thinking—we all think in words, not images—it turns out that the next generation is growing up less intelligent, not smarter than the previous one. This is already evident. Will people be happy and confident when their children are less intelligent than they are?
Just as Western Ukraine seeks not to join the European Union but to have visa-free travel to Europe, Eastern Ukraine is not striving for Russia; it simply wants to preserve its culture and is willing to lose a lot in order to have the right to teach its children in its own language, watch television and read newspapers in its own language, and to litigate and be judged in its own language.
Why is it considered correct to have “automatic” thinking: If it’s Ukraine, then everyone should speak Ukrainian? Why is there no Belgian language at all? Why isn’t there a Canadian, Swiss, Kenyan, or Ugandan language? Where does this insecurity and lack of freedom come from? Where does this desire for recognition come from: “Well, let’s agree, we are one nation”?
If the East wants the Russian language, let it have it. If the West wants to travel to the EU without visas, let them have that too. There’s no need to drag the whole country into any kind of slavery—be it European or Russian—for either of these. To make the dog stop… to break down Off the leash, you need to unclip that leash from her. It’s not that she won’t run away now because there’s nothing to escape from. The point is that she won’t want to run away. She won’t feel the need to break free if she already has freedom. A owner who walks their dog on a leash is actually being walked by that dog. But an owner who has unclipped the dog has built a relationship with the animal where the dog’s concern is not getting lost but returning home to a tasty bowl and a warm bed.
Why then does the government not take such obvious actions, not loosen the reins? And why do people continue to believe in the “unity” of the nation? The answer to the second question is simple: People are taught this. They are taught this in state-sponsored schools that instill the necessary zombie programming into the minds of innocent children, they are taught this on television and in newspapers. The cognitive dissonance caused by the gap between reality and what they are taught, what generates “public opinion,” what propaganda tells them, creates this ugly inferiority complex in people, directing them towards actions that require either a correction of reality or a correction of their perception of that reality. We are not who we think we are. We are different, and as many believe, we are worse than we imagine ourselves to be. Our minds have been filled with unfounded assertions that a united country is better, that life will be worse for everyone if they live in a smaller country or in a country where the central government has less power. We have been instilled with patriotic values, and we continue to love not just our homeland, the place where we were born, but the entire country spanning 2000 kilometers in diameter for reasons that are unclear. Why are people taught this, and why is their consciousness distorted? It is clear—this is taught because it benefits those in power. So now we need to answer only the first question: Why is this beneficial to those in power?
To answer this question, we need to look at smaller-scale analogies. Imagine a village that needs to build a well. One well for everyone. It is assumed that, in this case, everyone will somehow magically come together and dig the well collectively. But in practice, it’s usually just one person or a few who really want it that do the digging, while the rest benefit from the well for free. And if there’s a task that could be solved collectively but is beyond the capabilities of those who “want it the most,” it will never be solved simply because it’s more economically sensible not to participate in creating a public good, since everyone can still use it for free later on. You can’t put a code lock on the well, right?
Society solved the problem of creating public goods quite simply – it learned to apply violence. Communities that employed internal violence turned out to be more effective compared to those that existed without it. Violence proved necessary to go with a club to every household and collect money for building a well. Naturally, to carry out this violence, it was essential to organize an apparatus of violence, which is also a public good and is therefore funded by the community through this same violence.
However, society almost never agrees to the use of violence against itself voluntarily. Typically, a bandit would simply come to a peaceful village and say, “Alright, everyone – freeze, everything you have is now mine.” This is what is known as a “visiting bandit.” He would rob everything clean. But bandits also underwent their own evolution, and the most successful among them turned out to be the “stationary bandit.” This was the one who realized, after having plundered everything around him, that the best haul could be obtained not by taking everything, but by taking as much as possible while allowing people to recover and produce even more by the next tax collection period. The most advanced bandit, in order to get people to willingly give him their earnings, started to offer them more than they gave him, all while ensuring he didn’t end up at a loss.
An advanced bandit, sitting by the campfire and gnawing on the thigh bone of a freshly stolen cow from the village, thought that his gang members would be willing to pay 1 coin each for the right to warm themselves by the fire. The fire costs 10 coins, and there are 20 members. If I collect 1 coin from each of them, I can set up the fire and keep half for myself. Moreover, they will give me this money willingly. And if they give it to me willingly, I will need to spend less on maintaining the apparatus of violence, and I will earn even more.
Thus, the advanced bandit became an administrator of public goods, having received from the people an almost voluntary right to exercise violence over them, while continuing to appropriate a large portion of the community’s labor output. Being more effective than his neighboring thugs and gaining the ability to use the freed-up army for expansion, this advanced bandit began to seize more and more territory, all the while receiving full support from the conquered population, until he eventually encountered another equally advanced bandit.
The effect of scale didn’t take long to manifest. First, people began to ask the bandit for public goods instead of trying to obtain them on their own. This gave the bandit another opportunity: if the village of Zaznobino wants a road to the village of Uletovo and everyone is willing to pay one coin for it, then the village of Uletovo wants the same and is also ready to pay for it. The bandit will collect money from everyone and build the road, taking not half of the collected funds, but three-quarters. And everyone will be satisfied. Secondly, to create an even greater illusion of voluntariness, the bandit set up a democracy and said, “You can even choose me if you don’t like me as a usurper.” In this “democracy,” the bandit now only needs to ensure the loyalty of a majority of those who show up at the polls, rather than the entire population. The rest can be robbed even more, all while spinning tales about how the bandit was chosen by a democratic majority—just look at the ballots.
Moreover, the advanced bandit essentially usurps the monopoly on providing public goods to the population and will arrange for people to have “free” education, healthcare, public order, and so on. The more public goods he administers, the better it is for the bandit himself, but not for the people. People will even stop asking themselves simple questions: “Why am I not financing my local police officer along with my neighbors, but rather the Ministry of Internal Affairs? Who does the police officer work for?”, “How can a judge be independent if his salary is paid by a bandit and not by the community in which he serves as a judge?”, “Who, if not me, is to blame for the elevator not working and the lights in the stairwell being out?”
Now it becomes clear to us that “united Ukraine” is simply a guarantee for the authorities to extract more money from the controlled territory, without heavily burdening themselves with giving back a portion of the plundered wealth to the people, and using democracy as a tool to legitimize their power. In other words, it’s a means of saving resources on maintaining the police apparatus.
“Democracy” is a very good tool for exploitation. Although Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, demonstrated this back in 1785, and Nobel laureate Kenneth Joseph Arrow summarized and mathematically proved it in 1951, elections where voters cast a single vote for one candidate will never, under any circumstances, lead to a decision that satisfies the majority of voters. His theorem is aptly named the “impossibility of collective choice theorem.” For optimal collective decision-making, simple voting is not enough; ranking is required. But a bandit will never allow that. He will resort to blackmail: “Either vote for me, or vote for someone unknown; they won’t be elected anyway.”
But Ukraine is not united, either historically or politically. There is the South, there is Bukovina, there is Crimea, there is Transcarpathia, there is Volhynia, there is Donbas, and there is the Center. The most successful countries, when looking at the level of happiness and satisfaction of their citizens, are either federations with a high degree of local authority or simply small countries. In such countries, it is harder to steal a lot, and officials have to share more with the people. In these countries, reputational relationships work, and an official is more likely to resign than to continue occupying their comfortable position in disgrace. These are the kinds of countries Ukrainians want to live in, dreaming of immigration. But for some reason, they do not strive to make Ukraine such a country.
We don’t just have an “inferiority complex.” We’re like a fly banging against a window, unaware that we could simply fly to the side and find an open window. We waste our energy and resources maintaining a myth instead of focusing on our own well-being. We believe that by changing the government, we’ll automatically change the elevator in our building. In reality, we just need to take away the territory from the bandit who collects tribute from us.