Before setting forth upon the special operation, Putin was a popular figure in European ultranationalist circles. At the same time, he courted the EU to set up massive infrastructure deals. It seems safe to say that bit of dual theater is gone.

Or if it is not dead, what does that look like?

I ask it that way because the world has changed, whatever his intentions are.

lgor Girkin on Lyman:

“Why the withdrawal from Lyman was not secured in advance by introducing forces into the ‘corridor’ sufficient to hold it and cover the withdrawal – I have no answer to that,” he added.

He said that if Russian forces are not able to withdraw from Lyman, “a relatively insignificant tactical defeat” would turn into “a huge moral success” for Ukraine.

If their command gave a crap about force protection, they would have had them retreat while they could do it in order.

Another factor on Lyman is whether the Russians can retreat. If not, it won't encourage others to hold fast in precarious conditions.

So going nuclear in a delimited tactical fashion wouldn’t be to win in Ukraine and then declare hostilities over. — apokrisis

I don't know what Putin's ambitions are. But if he thought using tactical nukes would give him Ukraine, I think he would use them.

I hear what you are saying how their use would require a frantic discussion amongst those who oppose Putin. On the other hand, the incremental levels of support of Ukraine from the West do have the strategic benefit of matching emerging threats with emerging counter measures. The US., in particular, is saying they will suppress this fire, in whatever form it takes. The more 'tactical' a method is used by the Russians, the more the suppressing of that fire supports the tactics the Ukrainians are currently employing.

Suddenly, clearing Ukrainian air space would not look so provocative.

I see you like Vexler. I agree with his argument that the whole 'NATO as a threat narrative' is a scam. It boils down to complaining that they won't let Putin be an asshole without consequences.

I’m not following. How could lobbing a few tactical nukes in the current war - now framed as a legitimate defence of mother Russian territory - make any difference to the strategic arsenal of subs, missiles and cruise missiles? — apokrisis

I am not convinced that the line between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons is a thing. Thankfully, we don't have any precedent to guide us in the matter. If the Russians start shelling civilians with small nukes instead of with cluster bombs and the like, suppressing that fire will draw NATO and company to become more directly involved. They have said as much. That has a strategic tang to it.

The reason I related its use to the logic of MAD is that once one introduces nukes into the battlespace, it doesn't make sense to send just a few. You need to use as many as you can before the response comes. It is what Zappa referred to as a One-Shot Deal.

Yes, that is why I thought a 'proportional' response would employ 'conventional' weapons. What if that response wiped out strategic use of nuclear weapons by Russia?

MAD only works if you can deliver the destruction on command.

I don't know how deep the support may go toward supporting the use of weapons of mass destruction in the Putin regime. But I am pretty sure that there is not any room to try one thing first and then see how others react. The best chance one has, as the aggressor, is to wipe out the opposing response at the same time one attacks. Otherwise, you are toast.

If they were used for a tactical advantage, then some units would have to advance through the corridor provided. There is no evidence that the existing forces are equipped to do that. The prevailing winds tend to go from west to east. Not good for Russia.

If it was a strategic strike, then wiping out Kyiv would certainly change the calculus. But that would probably prompt NATO and company to strike all of the other Russian weapons with conventional forces. And if the Russians know that would happen then the strike would have to get in front of all the instruments of Mutually Assured Destruction by a preemptive strike from the mother of preemptive strikes.

Those passages are good to compare with Dostoievski's concern for the monsters he depicts who become destructive through their isolation and denouncement of their given circumstances.

Kierkegaard challenges the self-sufficiency of the normative whereas Dostoievski looks at the evil of completely abandoning it.

This topic reminds me of the time when I was at school, reading Aquinas' argument regarding what was a just war. The reaction of one of my colleagues will always stay with me. "With this, the patience with suffering has been abandoned."

I haven't seen any improvements upon the observation.

Søren Kierkegaard is an Existentialist because he accepts, as fully as Sartre or Camus, the absurdity of the world. But he does not begin with the postulate of the non-existence of God, but with the principle that nothing in the world, nothing available to sense or reason, provides any knowledge or reason to believe in God. — javi2541997

I think this misrepresents Kierkegaard attempts to understand the human condition in the terms of sin and redemption. In The Concept of Anxiety, he argues for a psychology that fits our experiences in life.

In Philosophical Fragments, he says that the condition for knowing truth is either given to us or we have it by nature. By arguing that the former is the view of Christianity, he is not saying that is in conflict with nature as expressed in the Augustinian vision of a war between cities. Kierkegaard is a follower of Pascal who notes the scandal of reason in the Christian view but also claims it is the best explanation for our condition.

From that point of view, I don't read Kierkegaard as an anti-modernist. He belongs more in the 'same as it ever was' camp.

Not a convincing argument that your view should prevail over others.

Infesting ad hominem response.

What about you? Stand and deliver, my dear friend.

So, if you did not want to end up like that, what are the alttenatives?

The devil advocate in me would like to argue both sides of that question.

What I meant to say about Orwell is that he had become aware of a certain process and intended to hold all to it. So, if that statement exhausts a number of possibilities, what is left?

I am helping. I read Orwell as saying we need a countervailing cluster of claims to oppose pure rhetoric.

A world, and we live in it.

1984 is an over-the-top personal story told against the background of a process that integrated the resistance against the State with the agenda being opposed. Nobody likes having the stuff they are resisting actually helping the opponent.

So the first thing Orwell is asking is if there is another process.

In short there's literally nothing to translate! Transalators can rest easy if it's whether they did a good job or not that worries them. — Agent Smith

This statement is absurd. You want to claim that the differences that are made in meaning are not important to regard on the basis of an ad hominem observation of your presumptions regarding the motivations of those who work on the texts.

This approach suggests you have a secret access to the text that cannot be verified by any actual labor in that regard.

Very compelling resemblances.

All that is needed to complete the picture is the Rasputin in the story.

The logic of conscription has always been put forward on the basis of an existential threat, as the expression goes.

The reference to the American experience in Vietnam brings that more into question than explains anything. Mobilizing a population to fight is a sort of referendum. That worked for some groups better than others.

I hear what you are saying about actual numbers of deployment. It is pretty scary what the Russians are trying to accomplish.

I was just pointing to what happens when conscription enters the picture. People who could care less start caring more. Putin tried to avoid that element. Now he is deep in the shit of it.

The whole thing is beginning to look like the war on Vietnam by the Americans. People who were happy not knowing jack about other people were forced to pay attention through personal loss.

Taoism was developed as a conversation with Confucius who put the 'human' experience at the center of what could be known. That conversation involved epistemology, logic, and metaphysics. The inner chapters of Zhuangzi are focused upon the limits of language and opinion to deliver what they seem to promise. The paradox of using language to point beyond it was often discussed.

In some ways, Zhuangzi's approach is similar to Kant's table of antimonies, where the different possible theses are ranged against each other because of the rules of our thinking rather than a result of something beyond it.

So, does Russon mean to say that recognizing perspective as a necessary element is not a rejection of a shared reality?

Which writing did the quote come from?

The fact is Putin actually says it, even if we can debate how much he really believes it. — apokrisis

And he says it while doing fist bumps with the head of the Russian Orthodox church. If the intention was substantially different from what was stated, the erasure of Ukrainian identity is a lot of collateral damage.

I figure Occam can keep his switch blade in the pocket on this one.

I wasn't thinking of it as either us or the monolith as originators. 180 Proof made a distinction between ways of seeing it as an agent. It is different to see it as an instrument working toward an end from its appearance pointing to a condition that precedes us and the monolith. The monolith's quality of seeming completely formed not telling the whole story.

Very interesting take. It makes me realize I have been looking at it through a Hegel/teleological lens.

If the disturbing factor is the same throughout, the monolith is like the attempts to measure time against place as with Stonehenge or the orientation of Egyptian monuments. The question of simulation becomes one of who is making up who.

Important in the context of the story because it is what gives the impetus to having an Odyssey.

You did not include the moon stuff in your description.

Interesting. Clarke's expectation.

The idea is undercut because it uses the means of verification that are being denied in order to promote the proposition.

Regarding violence, it is present in the prehistory, moon discovery, and the space voyage scenes. There was much establishment of a tense cold war problem in the moon scenes. HAL kills the whole crew except for one. Kubrick seems to be linking an element to each progression rather than transcending it.

I think the way the monolith is so clearly an artifact where there should not be one is part of the relationship it has in each encounter.

It is a communication device in both the scene with the hominids and the uncovering it of it on the moon. It is not clear what was imparted to the hominids, but it sends a traceable signal to the outer solar system after the moon discovery. Whatever its purpose, it is acting as a lure some kind to both groups.

In case of the moon discovery, it is also a 'motion sensing' device. Informing its maker that the project was showing results.

To the extent that encounters with the monolith has 'made' us into something, the crisis with the AI named HAL show us another collision of the natural with the artificial.

I'd also have preferred the OP would have referenced the Amish as an example of the intentional ludite as opposed to Ted Kaczynski. It's not necessary that every radical be malevolent. — Hanover

That is why I brought up communitarians as wanting to preserve something they already had rather than making it all about breaking the system.

I have not been following all the interchanges here, but I am curious where the taking of Kiev 'free of cost' idea refers to. Who spoke the quote marks, "for free."?

The experience of our system is not only a theoretical construct but a result of actual events. And with that resul in view, I read your statement:

It seems to me that various anti-modern, anti-tech movements such as Greens & Neo-Luddites for at least the last half-century or so have mostly ignored the other driver of (mass) alienation which is overpopulation. — 180 Proof

Rather than argue that such a problem is strictly about investment in a particular theory, I think that the 'technological' is not something that happens by itself.

The various models of capitalism involve ever expanding markets for the process to establish an expectation of future returns. That limit provides no model for the problem of Malthusian limits to what can support a population. That problem persists regardless of how resources are directed toward sustainability if those models do not include population growth itself.

I am sorry, I don't understand that emoticon as an expression of thought.