kravietz 🦇 on Nostr: A very interesting social debate in #Ukraine started by Oleksiy Tolkachov[^1] that ...
A very interesting social debate in #Ukraine started by Oleksiy Tolkachov[^1] that coincides with a much smaller debate we have in #Poland Fediverse[^2] on the same subject.
Tolkachov wrote a very controversial statement: “Ukrainians earned this war”, and he goes on to explain that #Russia invasion was a result of decades of decay of Ukraine’s statehood: corruption, theft, selfishness, excessive haggling instead of cooperation. I encourage you to read his whole post, but here’s the key part, translated:
The current war is a natural consequence of 30 years of our mismanagement, negligence, selfishness, theft, moral degradation and rot. We have ruined a country that in 1991 was only 5-7 times less than China in terms of GDP. Everything was squandered, squandered, stolen, destroyed. Nothing and no one was valued. Why? Because “grab for yourself”, selfishness, cunning, “not giving a shit about everyone” became the moral credo of our people.
And I took the freedom to translate his original phrase (“Українці заслужили цю війну!”) into English in the way I see its real meaning (“earned”). People who just read clickbait titles raised a significant shitstorm based on another meaning of the word (“deserve”), arguing “nobody deserves a war”.
The whole debate (just as our little Polish debate) is really about responsibility for your own actions. You build a house in a flood basin that is known to be flooded every 5 years. You get flooded. Did you deserve it? Nobody deserves such a disaster from moral point of view. But choices have consequences, and they don’t care about morality. So I’d say your choice clearly earned you a disaster. There was a cause, and an effect. If you like memes, the “Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party” parable just is about that.[^3]
And inaction has consequences too. Inaction is a kind of action, or choice, on its own. The miserable state of Ukrainian army and law enforcement in 2014 when Russians took Crimea was earned in the same way, by collective indifference and selfishness. Fortunately, at the same time enough of Ukrainian society found enough motivation to mobilise itself and completely reverse the course of history modelled by Putin according to Russian social patterns.[^3] Unfortunately, even at war time there’s people in Ukraine who steal humanitarian help, take and give bribes or even steal donations for the army. Fortunately, the Ukrainian state now also has enough determination to prosecute these and speak about them openly.
Which is why I’m optimistic and confident about its future, just as I was confident about the pushback it would give to Russian invasion on its eve.
[^1]: https://www.facebook.com/oleksiy.tolkachov/posts/pfbid03yRHD88uFdajPJxCikEhQggyRWxGAio17L93xjRWBU7DtEiCTDJwoBrjPA6jdEGDl
[^2]: https://agora.echelon.pl/notice/AYFkSEtaUCMfqqWkgS
[^3]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Leopards_Eating_People%27s_Faces_Party
[^4]: https://agora.echelon.pl/notice/AYHgdLJsvkhZSbmpuK
Tolkachov wrote a very controversial statement: “Ukrainians earned this war”, and he goes on to explain that #Russia invasion was a result of decades of decay of Ukraine’s statehood: corruption, theft, selfishness, excessive haggling instead of cooperation. I encourage you to read his whole post, but here’s the key part, translated:
The current war is a natural consequence of 30 years of our mismanagement, negligence, selfishness, theft, moral degradation and rot. We have ruined a country that in 1991 was only 5-7 times less than China in terms of GDP. Everything was squandered, squandered, stolen, destroyed. Nothing and no one was valued. Why? Because “grab for yourself”, selfishness, cunning, “not giving a shit about everyone” became the moral credo of our people.
And I took the freedom to translate his original phrase (“Українці заслужили цю війну!”) into English in the way I see its real meaning (“earned”). People who just read clickbait titles raised a significant shitstorm based on another meaning of the word (“deserve”), arguing “nobody deserves a war”.
The whole debate (just as our little Polish debate) is really about responsibility for your own actions. You build a house in a flood basin that is known to be flooded every 5 years. You get flooded. Did you deserve it? Nobody deserves such a disaster from moral point of view. But choices have consequences, and they don’t care about morality. So I’d say your choice clearly earned you a disaster. There was a cause, and an effect. If you like memes, the “Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party” parable just is about that.[^3]
And inaction has consequences too. Inaction is a kind of action, or choice, on its own. The miserable state of Ukrainian army and law enforcement in 2014 when Russians took Crimea was earned in the same way, by collective indifference and selfishness. Fortunately, at the same time enough of Ukrainian society found enough motivation to mobilise itself and completely reverse the course of history modelled by Putin according to Russian social patterns.[^3] Unfortunately, even at war time there’s people in Ukraine who steal humanitarian help, take and give bribes or even steal donations for the army. Fortunately, the Ukrainian state now also has enough determination to prosecute these and speak about them openly.
Which is why I’m optimistic and confident about its future, just as I was confident about the pushback it would give to Russian invasion on its eve.
[^1]: https://www.facebook.com/oleksiy.tolkachov/posts/pfbid03yRHD88uFdajPJxCikEhQggyRWxGAio17L93xjRWBU7DtEiCTDJwoBrjPA6jdEGDl
[^2]: https://agora.echelon.pl/notice/AYFkSEtaUCMfqqWkgS
[^3]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Leopards_Eating_People%27s_Faces_Party
[^4]: https://agora.echelon.pl/notice/AYHgdLJsvkhZSbmpuK