THE APE IN THE KREMLIN


 

Ancient and medieval history is littered with tyrants, Caesars, Kings, despots happy to lay waste to a province, destroy a city, killing innocent civilians to make a point. Sadly, the 20th century saw, in Europe a return to such barbarity. Still, after Nuremberg, after Auschwitz and Soviet and Nazi crimes there was a belief that the kind of war fought in Europe from 1939 – 1945 was a thing relegated to history.

But the world cannot be changed by magical thinking or the supposed healing power of time. We remain great apes sharing 99% of our genes. Evolution has yet to reach the stage when cooperation is universally seen as better than competition and conflict. And in a line from hunter gatherers through Genghis Khan, Ivan the terrible to Hitler Stalin there have always been great apes like Putin who will wage war, destroy cities, and murder women and children on a whim.

We need to climb down from the pedestal of ‘civilization’ we have erected for ourselves and address the question of how we are going to prevent the mad alpha Apes from getting into positions of power, since if we do not, eventually, they will destroy us all.

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