When I started this blog, I thought the world was mad enough, hence the title Reflections on Absurdity. How was I to know that humanity would descend so rapidly into even more madness, to fuel aggression and hatred in so many ways, in so many places? The problem seems to be alienation, or in another term, exclusion.
Wherever we look, we find people suffering that awful feeling of not being taken seriously, not fitting into the pattern of things. Everyone from poor Mr Putin who didn't think NATO could be so insensitive as to park their bombers and tanks at his garden gate, to the disturbed individuals whose "difference" leads them to believe that salvation is in the barrel of a gun, or at the edge of a butcher's knife.
What mystifies me is that if you are one who truly believes in the invalidity of another point of view, your comfort surely is that that other way will become untenable, will hold the seeds of its own destruction. Why do you need to hasten the process with over the top aggression?
This brings me to the enlightened figure of Yanis Varoufakis, recently appointed Finance Minister in Greece, with an impossible task before him. Mr Varoufakis is a self-confessed Marxist, but what he calls an "erratic" one. He deviates in some regards from Marx's own canon of beliefs but is sure of one basic Marxist tenet, namely that capitalism continues to demonstrate its inherent self-destructiveness.
This being so, he declares that he doesn't need to bring down the system, unhinge the eurozone, lead his country into a battlefield -- ends that he could potentially bring about (as he says of himself, if he weren't scared, he would be dangerous ...). But no, the Europe that he dislikes so much will disintegrate in its own time. The enemy will fall into the pit of their own making. Of that, he has no doubt.
So please withdraw the heavy artillery from Ukraine, Mr Putin, please ISIS let the infidel wander blindly into their own hell without adding more infernal ingredients, please Germany give a little slack to the new Greek government, and please everyone, from Chelsea supporters to Marine Le Pen, let everyone get on the same Metro train, or we shall be paying more than just the train fare for a long time to come.
CJM February 2015
