A victory achieved through violence is equivalent to defeat, as it is short-lived.
Mahatma Gandhi
the entrance. In trying to keep customers inside, we would ultimately prevent new ones from coming in. This metaphor illustrates the futility of trying to control the course of history; just as a store cannot thrive by blocking its doors, individuals cannot shape history by attempting to manipulate its flow. Instead, they must recognize their role within the larger narrative, whether as instruments of change or as obstacles that history will inevitably overcome. Text for translation: entrance. Текст для перевода: ..
The whole world is woven from opposites: without light, there is no shadow; without falls, there are no rises. How would we understand our attractiveness if we had no experience of rejection from the opposite sex? How would we feel if we were desired as partners by absolutely everyone? Would we even care about the person in front of us if we could satisfy anyone? In our lives, we often confuse symptoms with the causes of phenomena. Seeing customers leave the store without buying anything, we close the doors. Noticing that relations with a neighboring country are cooling, we try to revive them by scheduling new meetings and heating up the phone lines. We waste time on futile pursuits, but the real reason for the cooling of relations, which is likely within us, remains unaddressed, and next time we will face the same story, just with a different partner or alliance.
Faced with the categorical unwillingness of people in eastern Ukraine or Crimea to live together with the rest of the country, the authorities begin a struggle to retain them. Those in power imagine that if they do “something special,” the hearts of the residents of Donbas will melt. Caught up in the struggle as a process, enjoying the adrenaline rush, the fighters lose sight of the fact that it is extremely difficult to win the favor of people who don’t need you at all. It’s hard to sell Christmas trees in February, vodka to Muslims, lard to Jews, the Quran to Hutsuls, or trembita horns to miners. If you try to do this, you will inevitably encounter objections, and they will be the most unyielding ones.
Imagine a situation where an alien spaceship, wanting to land in a city that the aliens believe has more potential contacts, finds a relatively flat area and lands there. This area turns out to be a dog park. The alien steps out of its flying saucer, looks at the people with their dogs, and wonders who among them are the intelligent beings. Who is walking whom on a leash? Who has the freedom to sniff every bush, and who is patiently waiting, tethered by a leash? Is the leash a tool for controlling the dog, or does it control the human?
If you approach a person walking a dog on a leash and ask why they do it, you might hear something like, “So it doesn’t run away.” In other words, the person assumes that thousands of years of cohabitation haven’t taught the dog to behave around humans the same way it would around another pack member—by accompanying, not doing anything unusual, and not acting against the leader. In reality, by tying themselves to the dog with a leash, the human allows the dog to delegate important decisions regarding navigation, danger detection, and actions to avoid it or achieve a goal. The dog no longer has to think about whether it should chase a cat. It now knows it should always try to do so, and if it shouldn’t, it simply won’t be let off the leash. Act! The Führer thinks for you.
As a result, instead of having a companion on a walk, the person ends up with a mindless creature that constantly pulls on the leash and tries to break free. Such a dog doesn’t know how to cross the street, doesn’t understand the meaning of a curb, and can’t find its owner or way home on its own. By trying to keep the dog close, the owner essentially provokes its escape—not a rational escape, but a random loss.
On the other hand, an owner who gives up the leash gains freedom from the dog. It is no longer their problem to keep the dog close. The alien, observing a person walking a dog without a leash, would immediately understand who is following whom and who is leading whom on the walk. Paradoxically, by choosing not to worry about keeping the dog nearby, the owner has solved this problem more elegantly and with less stress. The word “no” is the first step toward freedom.
One of the most well-known books on sales and negotiations is Jim Camp’s “Start with No.” In any negotiation, the party that cannot say “no” is the loser. The other side will get everything they want, and on their own terms. Any form of violence or resistance is ineffective; it exacerbates the problem and, in most cases, targets the symptom rather than the cause. The fight against drugs does not address the reasons why people start using them. The battle against illegal arms trade leaves people defenseless against, surprise, armed criminals. The struggle for equality leads to discrimination, and the fight against corruption only adds another corrupt official. The fight against terrorism results in the entire population living in fear, to the point where they no longer bring shampoo or nail clippers on board airplanes, while the freedoms of the people, which terrorists are supposedly threatening, are restricted. When a person or a group decides to “fight for something,” they are likely unaware of the underlying causes of the phenomenon and, importantly, they will probably focus on the process of fighting rather than on eliminating the issue itself.
Unitary Ukraine – unnatural Education is needed by everyone except the residents of this country. It is needed by the vampires in power, it is needed by Europe to have a thicker “buffer” with Russia. It is needed by Russia to constantly provoke, or rather, to fabricate problems in Ukraine. Do people want federalization? Sure! Announce that the issue will be put to a referendum, that we will prepare for a year, that opponents must develop their positions and conduct campaigns to inform the public. After the referendum, allow a reasonable period for the transition. But no, we will fight! And what happened? The Crimeans quickly and in a panic fled to a neighboring country, fearing that they would not be allowed to exercise their right to self-determination. Would this have been the outcome if the central authority had given up the fight? Would Crimea have broken free if there had been no leash to begin with? Does anyone want referendums in Southeast Ukraine? Sure, but only like this – immediately, before Mr. Kiselev has had a chance to work on people’s minds. And that’s it. The question is closed. It’s unlikely that a serious majority would want to jump to the “older brother” when freedom is just on the other side of the border. But if you start fighting and “holding on,” then we will get full-scale protests. And the presence of Southeast Ukraine in Ukraine is not beneficial to anyone. Putin doesn’t want it – he is not interested in a strong and prosperous Ukraine. The current authorities don’t want it – why would they want a ballast electorate? The residents of those regions themselves don’t want it, as in many respects they simply do not align with the West. So who is this fight for, then?
Every person with enough life experience will tell you that desperately wanting something only pushes it further away. It’s like trying to reach for a water lily while sitting in a boat. By splashing your hand in the water and creating waves, you push the flower away instead of drawing it closer. In contrast, when you try to swim away from a jellyfish, you create a low-pressure area behind you that pulls the water—and the jellyfish—along with it, so it ends up following you precisely because you’re trying to escape. But the moment you sincerely stop wanting something, tell yourself “no,” and truly believe it, that very thing will come to you on its own.