The advent of nuclear weapons and ICBMs flips this precondition on its head. We no longer need to defeat enemy forces to inflict shocking and monstrous pain upon our enemies, nor upon any nation of the world, nor upon even the entire world. America and Russia both have the hair-trigger capability to launch thermonuclear weapons to any point on the globe. It takes 60 seconds to launch an ICBM, about 10 minutes for SLBMs, and a few hours for strategic bombers to reach their targets. 3,000 thermonuclear weapons can be detonated in anger in the time it takes to commute to work.
Our psychology did not evolve for this environment, and in fact it had not evolved from the previous state of affairs at all because there are still people alive who witnessed the first detonations of nuclear weapons! A single generation!
We don’t know if we can survive this state of affairs. Our time is marked by “for the first time in history” and “unprecedented.”
Nuclear weapons are uniquely unique. We manage to avoid self-extermination through having relatively cool heads in charge of these decisions, but that is a cultural norm, not a universal guarantee.
If you assume there any chance at all that someone willing to use these ever ends up in control of this capability, on a long enough timeline that is essentially guaranteed to happen.
So while I do worry that there might be a bigger war, I also realize that the picture painted by the news, or the "promises" that different country leaders make, are meant to serve two goals: (1) keeping the general public in constant fear, and (2) making them (the leader) appear strong/decisive in a regional/international arena.
This is what the authoritarians want. It’s not actually hard to understand the major trends are in the world, with accurate information available, but that’s bad for their interests and so they spread the message you’re repeating now to make people more likely to support them. We saw this dramatically in the United States where the ability to answer basic factual questions correctly inversely correlated with supporting the winning candidate, or earlier support for Brexit, but it’s been a staple of living in countries like Russia or Hungary, and a key part of the fossil fuel industry’s effort not to get stuck with the bill for climate change.
There’s plenty of legitimate criticism of organizations like the NYT or BBC, but if you follow them you’ll have a much more accurate understanding of the world than someone who consumes Murdoch media or, worse, whatever’s floating around social media. There is objective truth in the world, and every study shows a significant gradient here.
The objective truth in the 70s was, "smoking is good for you". Since then, the narrative changed. Politics, and even s̶c̶i̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ scientific research (to a degree) -- are subjective, despite what world leaders or politicians want you to believe. You can manipulate the data in a way that suits you or your agenda, you can buy scientific researches, etc. It's happening right now in all major, and minor conflicts.
Statements like "objective truth" tend to remind me of the grumpy old engineer who thinks that his way of doing things "is the only correct way", and rejects any modern approach to software engineering.
Now, I don't say you should ignore all statements, or news source. You should be informed enough to a degree you think is relevant for you, while understanding that there will be no objective truth, and unless you have a motivation (be it power, money, or something else) to continue to believe in your established world view, you need to be willing to revisit your "objective truth" every once in a while.
As far as the news are concerned, they just want viewers / advertising customers / money in most cases.
While I don't discourage people to seek information, and reach conclusions, in today's world, unless you are directly involved in the conflict/decision-making, the chance for you to get accurate information is an extremely hard task. News either take things out of context, or simply lack professionalism due to poor journalism, lack of time and or desire to perform thorough deep dives, etc. Social media is filled with fake information, both as a tool in the information war, as well as by "influencers" who keep reposting everything that brings them views.
And in the end, the saying "history is written by the victors", was, is, and forever will be - true.
To answer your question directly though, I think we have multiple generations that have grown up believing that anything they see on the internet is not actually real or is happening to somebody else. That includes war. The idea of a global conflict is just a Netflix plot or something, not anything that could actually happen. Few people have met a combat veteran or war refugee, but lots of people have played Call of Duty. That's their reference point. It's just not real.
Consider this, even with all the condemnation of Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, the sanctions, the shipment of arms. We are still using Soyuz spacecraft launched from Russia to go to the space station. We still share resources for all of that, including lots of money. That means there is a limit to the outrage, when it comes to economic and structural needs.
Once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, all of his neighbors came around to commiserate. They said, “We are so sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is most unfortunate.” The farmer said, “Maybe.”
The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it, and in the evening everybody came back and said, “Oh, isn’t that lucky. What a great turn of events. You now have eight horses!” The farmer again said, “Maybe.”
The following day his son tried to break one of the horses, and while riding it, he was thrown and broke his leg. The neighbors then said, “Oh dear, that’s too bad,” and the farmer responded, “Maybe.”
The next day the conscription officers came around to conscript people into the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. Again all the neighbors came around and said, “Isn’t that great!” Again, he said, “Maybe.”
The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad — because you never know what will be the consequence of the misfortune; or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune.
— Alan Watts
Worst part is, apparently, lots of politicians at the wheel also believe "it won't come to this".
Reality is going to hit like a truck.
The potential is there. If it can happen, given enough time, it surely will. But the odds of happening in a specific moment, at least while tensions are not higher than when it didn't happened anything in the past, may be seen as lower.
Reality is different than what it used to be in the 60-70's. But that also means that new factors can be in play, for good and bad.
In any case, I think is more sure to be afraid of climate change. It won't blow up tomorrow, but is something that is escalating up, and it may be trigger for more negative things, including, but not limited to, world conflicts.
I grew up with this kind of stuff being in the news all the time. I tend to try to avoid the news now or only visit it quite sporadically. It's good not to worry about things you have no control over. Of course your world could come to an end at anytime in multiple ways. Try and keep a healthy body and mind and develop yourself and your relationships, what else can you do? Maybe investigate meditation and mindfulness.
No kidding
we are in a world conflict. the west has used it for war profiteering as they send all their old weapons to ukraine so they can buy new ones from their friendly local defense contractor.
AFAICT this is not a serious problem. Russia is in many cases fighting with junkyard scrapings. https://x.com/Jonpy99/status/1860694569102258607
Putin wins if the war ends and he wins if it continues. The only way he doesn't win if he no longer gets to play the game.
And reddit, and twitter -- especially twitter
I should keep more water, but I'm too lazy. I have only probably only two days that is too few.
If I had time, I'd pick some iodine pills. They are small and have a long shelf life.
Anything else is too difficult or too far from my control.
I'll try to do the same with the pills, sounds reasonable and low-effort
For example, when we got the usual half extra salary in July, one year we used it to buy liquid laundry soap for the whole year instead of keeping the money in the bank. It has a good shelf life and high price to volume ratio.
This may sound weird but being afraid or worrying about something that I don't have much influence on is a waste of time and energy.
Yes, I do vote and are engaged in local politics, but ultimately it is up to the leaders we elect to make the decisions. But in critical situations it may be actions that does not favor me at all.
And I am fine with that, I go on with my life, while preparing as best as I can to handle whatever the future throws in my way.
What's closer to the truth? Tweets or real life conversations? I mean on one hand, there's less of a filter online and anonymity makes people dare say things they would otherwise not. It creates an interesting dynamic where other people hear those utterances and think just what you think: Why are people not afraid anymore? On the other hand, there's also a HUGE amount of bots and third parties influencing online discourse. I think it will only become apparent after say ~10-20 more years, on which scale online manipulation is actually taking place. It's insane.
Why do you think either is close to the truth?
I hope someday if life becomes multi planetary, there will be a way to just step away from any fight and just go live wherever you want to.
Yet you need to acknowledge, that the risk of nuclear exchange isn't 0%, just for the fact that the weapons exist, and that is completely out of our control.
Russia is doing what it wants, and they've been escalating this war since the invasion started in 2014, so it's not like they don't have agency and a mind of their own.
No one is trying to annex Russia, there's no external existential threat to them. Could they use nukes still? Yes, they could. Will they choose to seize to exist, and lose 100% of their territory, by nuking the US to try to get a fraction of that land? Doubtfully, and if they choose to do so, it would be out of our control anyway and would be a matter of time.
There will be long wars and short peace from now on for undefined time.
Whether it will be wars on the periphery or a global war depends on which stage western democracies will wake up and collectively realise the reality of the situation.
Those two worldwide wars were quasi-colonial wars. Powers of the time were competing to become as powerful economically and militarily as possible.
However, the war didn't end with WWII, since at any time there were around 20/30 wars in a quickly changing landscape. It's just that were not done in the Western world (except in the Balkans in the 1990').
Since that time there have been mostly two types of military conflicts by regional actors:
* Low-intensity conflicts (the multiple "liberation" armies, religious wars or warlords as in central Africa)
* Conflict between main powers via proxy.
For what it's worth, I believe that instead of starting a war and an occupation, when the Taliban said they were ready to give ObL up on condition the US provide some evidence he was behind WTC, they could've simply been taken up on their offer. (Similar goes for "WMD")
More at my web site (in profile, no sales and low stylistic ambition), if you click on "Things I want to say" (about 1/2-way down), then "On peace amid commotion" (also about 1/2-way down), then skim that page and click at least the last link. Then read the entire page and click the links that seem most interesting.
However, the status quo of a frequent limited conflicts has significant profit potential, so you'll still see these happening.
Back in the mid 90's my high school physics teacher made us watch it.
It is probably the most realistic depiction of what would happen if a nuclear war broke out.
They did so by deploying an incredible hybrid and cyber warfare machine, outsmarting what little defenses the West put up. They turned our democracies against us, weaponizing hundreds of millions of simpletons. In the 90s we dreamt that the Internet would galvanize democracy. It became an amazing weapon of subversion instead.
Russia leveraged kooky franchisees on the extremes of the political spectrum. Aware that they did not belong in politics otherwise, they were all too happy to cooperate.
In 2000 Trump sought the nomination of the Reform party and lost [1]. He was unable to leverage his money and Russian support into securing a primary win of a 2% party. Fifteen years and billions of rubles later, the Russian hype machine had been fully built out. He was guided to the 2016 Republican nomination with the precision of a hypersonic missile.
A similar story played itself out in virtually all other Western countries. Beware of the usual exceptionalist apologies - Trump, Orban, Le Pen, Farage are all cookie-cutter stories.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_2000_presidential...
Why bother being afraid if you can't do anything about? I have enough more immediate stressors to consume all my worry bandwidth that there's not enough left over for such things. Also, the inherent self preservation of people is always a factor. I mean, I have very deep concerns about the damage the second Trump administration will reek on US (and the rest of the world for that matter), but I am not afraid he'll press the red button. He'd have as much to lose as the rest of us. Same goes for Putin and Xi.
It was ingrained in my memory that there is a large chance of nuclear warfare in mainland Europe. But I witnessed how Europe fairly quickly tbh dismantled its self defence capabilities by incompetent leadership.
At the same time, Russia has attacked multiple of its neighbours over the years, and the USA has started multiple fraudulent wars to sustain its hegemony.
I guess I’m jaded?
Can Putin end the world if he will be afraid enough of losing? Maybe. Can you stop it? No. Then why would you care?
