Veronika Voss, 2019-09-13

Here comes the messanger

Photo by Nick Fewings

The New Cold War

Hello.

Welcome to the new Cold War.

This sounds like the beginning of a really good song.

Unfortunately it isn’t.

The world we knew from the stories of our parents is coming back to haunt us.

After 30 years of a geopolitical miracle, when the US has been an unquestionable dominant, things are about to change.

This change is not necessarily a bad thing. But as we stand at this global crossroad, we must answer the question of what world we want to live in.

It will either be a world of long-lasting autocratic leaders, and a system that gives the people enough freedom to stay content, but not enough to go out of line.

A system where your will is channeled to fuel the "prosperity" of your country, with unquestionable loyalty to its leaders and decisions.

A system where you do not live in your country.

You are grown.

Or it will be a world where freedom and prosperity lays on the shoulders of brave, smart individuals.

A system that empowers creativity and goodness.

A system where you do not live in a country, but on Earth.

You are human.

These two systems have nothing to do with the liberal-vs-conservative or capitalism-vs-communism distinctions of today.

The path before us can lead humanity either to the greatest version of ourselves, where we go beyond our wildest dreams – or to the misery of existing on the brink of annihilation.

There is no middle ground, unfortunately.

Because you see, in the middle, with some good things, and some bad, the bad stuff always wins the news cycle. And from there down we go, deeper into the daily despair.

Eventually we reach the path to annihilation all the same.

What’s curious, these days it’s hard to tell who’s on which side.

Much like in the Are we the baddies skit, except that these days no one is blatantly sticking skulls everywhere, which makes things even harder to decipher :P

I mean, come on.

The USA is the only country that dropped not one, but TWO nuclear bombs onto large civilian cities.

They also toppled democratically elected officials in Iran ’53, Chile ’73 and India ’84.

That we know of.

They invaded Panama, because that country wanted its canal back.

They invaded Iraq again, because some Saudis flew into the WTC and then their leader hid in a Pakistani villa ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Not to mention the UK that helped them countless times. Especially when Mr Blair lied at the UN about Saddam’s WMDs.

But that’s ok, because the West has freedom and capitalism.

And for individuals, I guess that’s better than living in an autocratic country, where you can go to jail for joking about your president via Twitter.

Like, in Turkey. Or China. Or Russia. Or Iran.

Look, the shit these countries did over the years is bad. But is it that worse than the US?

If you take the iconic Tiananmen Square massacre as an example. Did the US ever kill its own citizens on its own soil?

Well... Kent State. Ruby Ridge. The police!

But at least US has freedom and capitalism, right?

What about, say, Israel? Oh my, how much terrible things they did in Palestine.

But then again, Palestine made Hamas that blew up so many times. Violence sparks violence.

Other countries are no better, like Myanmar. And Somalia. And France. And Germany. And...

So to be fair, you should consider all countries on Earth as well. Depending how far back you want to look, every nation did horrible things sometime in the past.

Maybe these atrocities is what makes us equal after all.

And on the surface, the choice we have today is between a world that is either bad or worse.

And THAT could be our greatest chance.

The thick red line that cleanses us from our terrible past.

Because luckily, there’s this little thing called Climate Change coming – that some, of course, deny because they don’t like change.

Still, this "little" thing IS coming – and sets us, the humanity, against a force that is far stronger and far more unstoppable than even the entire US Army and its nukes.

But here’s the thing – today we are more together than ever.

The internet lets us connect despite borders.

And bitcoin lets us trade without borders.

And we don’t need any more politicians.

And we don’t want any more wars.

We do have real impact through social media pressure, like never before.

The future is more ours than ever, despite many times it feels otherwise.

Our parents had a lot less influence. Yet they teared down the Iron Curtain.

And we have so much more.

We are at the verge of a brave new world.

Be brave.