It’s practically impossible to discuss any subject with people who seriously say “we won WW2”… 🤦♂️
Unfortunately, it’s not merely a trivial expression of frustration from debates going nowhere, but more of a practical validation of old scientific concerns of why communication with aliens may not be possible: not because you can’t find a common channel or language, but because when you do, the underlying concepts are drastically incompatible.
There’s a whole majority of Russian society that don’t seem to have a concept of individual choice or decision. More precisely, they do, but it’s limited to whether you want to go fishing or walking, you want sausage or scrambled eggs, beer A or beer B.
But the decision whether you want to speak language A or B, vote for X or Y, consider Z a hero or not is entirely relied upon a collective decision. Even contemplating a choice in these fields is considered non-compliant.
This collective thinking is not exclusive to Russia, I’ve facepalmed at a British drunk explaining to me all seriously that “we make the best cars here” or Polish drunk ranting about how “we won football match with X”, but only in Russia it has entirely replaced the whole huge chunk of civic thinking.
A British drunk may rant against Labour, Tories, LibDems or Greens, EU, Farage, and he’s entirely honest in his personal feelings.
In Russia they may honestly rant which brand of beer is better, but “we won WW2” is an axiom whose position is so sacred that if you dispute any part of it (“we”, “won”, “WW2” - each of these is disputable from historic point of view), you will be collectively pecked to death at instant.
@kravietz most people are not aware of this though.
And with a similar logic one might say that Germans share no responsibility for the Holocaust and WW2. Because the general public can be detached from the perpetrators and the government.
And of course I am as a person not responsible for the Holocaust. But since Germany exists there is some kind responsibility and guilt. Mainly the responsibility that it shall not happen again.
Responsibility for some past events is a slightly different thing than glory. Responsibility hints that we learned the lesson, we won’t let that happen again. Taking glory for our father’s achievements at the same time serves nothing but vanity and ego boosting, which in turn leads to superiority complex and wasting of your own potential because why take any effort if you’ve already proven your worth by the mere fact of being a son of a father who did something?
@kravietz
> Taking glory for our father’s achievements
There is proper use even for that! If we put it this way: our predecessors have accomplished great things, and look what we're doing now — we're not worthy of our fathers, we have to stop!
That's the right kind of nationalism, I'm pretty sure if Russia had one, what we have now would've never happened, but unfortunately we've never had it — it always gets replaced by state-produced surrogate of it 😩
@t_mkdf
