Externally, all wars are the same: flags, slogans, heroes, cripples, and victory marches. In all wars, people die and calls for unity for victory over the enemy, for the defense of the homeland are heard. Each time, soldiers on the opposite side of the field, city, or trench are called the enemy, and the homeland is the place where fire coordination is carried out. But are these soldiers really our true enemies, and is that exactly where the homeland is?
Imagine that you are the owner of a company producing equipment for metallurgical plants, and I am the owner of one of those plants. You live and work in Kharkiv, and my plant is in Donetsk. You make equipment for me, and I buy it from you. With your electronics, I produce and sell metal sheets and rebar. Tell me, why would I want to fight with you?
Furthermore, why would I need to defend myself from you? What are our motives to arm ourselves and blow each other up? What is the economic sense in this? Work is ongoing, enterprises are functioning, people are getting paid, production capacities are growing, profits are increasing, new technologies are being implemented. Why do we need to fight?
Any war, apart from economic and competitive, is not needed by us, producers of goods and services. Moreover, it only harms us.
The thing is, the proposed picture lacks another important element - the state. They will not let us work and trade peacefully. States will be formed around us. They will convince us that we are potential enemies to each other, that you only think about how to rob me, while I dream of your factory in ruins. They will call me Ukrainian, and you Russian. I will have a yellow-blue flag, you will have a tricolor. I will have my own national history, you will have yours. And to deliver my goods to you, I will have to go through border control and pay customs. They will divide us and surround us with a fence.
Those who do this, namely our states, will need war.
War is necessary for the state for self-preservation. In most cases, its main enemy is its own people (there are exceptions, but they are rare). In order for us to continue working for the benefit of officials from the state apparatus, we need to constantly be convinced of the value of this apparatus. Otherwise, sooner or later, we will get into two bulldozers and demolish this fence, built between us, along with customs and a checkpoint.
To prevent this from happening, to avoid riots and revolutions, it is necessary to support and strengthen the value of the concept of “Homeland”. We all must understand that this land is “ours”, but beyond that fence, a kilometer away, it is “not ours”. And since the Homeland is so valuable, it must be protected. An army is needed, war is needed, heroes are needed, sacrifices are needed, monuments are needed, memorials are needed, military-patriotic events are needed. And, of course, you have to pay for defending the Homeland.
War is needed by officials and not needed by us. If we understand this, we will stop celebrating heroes, stop laying flowers at their monuments, stop hanging national flags on the facades of buildings and car windshields. We will understand that the flag, the anthem, patriotism, and national consciousness are tools of manipulation invented by states against their own people.
The more visible these tools are and the more the state talks about patriotism, the more strained its relationship with its own people becomes. The less trust it deserves.
Translated by ChatGPT gpt-3.5-turbo/42 on 2024-04-20 at 17:39
