As a child I always read the end of books first. I sensed that wasn’t cool, but the thrill of not knowing was just too much for me. It wasn’t until I knew where the story was going that I could enjoy the details in peace.
Ideally I would still like to do that: not to get upset about the outcome, but to be able to give all the attention to the side paths. I can barely even watch football matches. The fact that everything is still possible, everything is open, is too eerie. A pass to the left or a pass to the right: it can mean the difference between winning and losing.
I studied history, and the great thing about that field is that you don’t moving targets have to do. You collect and arrange historical facts: like a sculptor you carve a shape from raw material. In short, you have some control.
The war in Ukraine is the opposite: nothing stands still. How can you move so much in one week? The abyss of the future is dizzying, especially when the supposedly ‘unthinkable’ happens again and again. Does the word unthinkable actually mean anything at all?
In the media this week we saw how experts lost their balance and tried to find it again. Harvard political scientist Joshua Kertzer asked fellow scientists in International Relations on Twitter on Tuesday: “What has the war in Ukraine changed your mind about?” More than a hundred people responded. One had underestimated European unity, the other the role of individuals. He himself, writes Kertzer, now looks at Putin differently: he no longer sees him as pragmatic and risk-averse.
Many journalists also zoomed in on the 1,274 cubic centimeters of Putin’s brain. One interpreter after another descended into the caverns of his soul in search of an answer to the question: is he rational? Or was he once rational and now suddenly not anymore? What is rationality really? Is it necessarily irrational to act against your own economic interest? In Business Insider I read that there are two “schools of thought” exist in the US security services: one thinks Putin has gone mad, the other he pretends he has gone mad. I had to laugh at the word thought: a nice euphemism for guesswork.
But hey, what else can we do but guess? Two years ago, when the corona crisis started, we also felt our way on the slippery rocks of a new reality. And this new situation is even scarier: the future is even more uncertain, it worst case scenario still more horrible, and the influence of us ordinary people still less. Moreover, even for those who do have influence, it does not seem clear what the best strategy is, which leads to the least bloodshed and the most freedom, now and in the future. In the pandemic you could try something out; trial and error is now more risky.
In The unbearable lightness of existence of Milan Kundera, the protagonist, Tomas, must decide whether to continue with the woman he just met. “There is no way to determine which decision is better, because there is no comparison,” Kundera writes. “We experience everything for the first time and unprepared, just like an actor who plays a piece on the fist.” Life is like making a sketch, Kundera writes; unfortunately the sketch is also the final product.
Kundera’s work revolves around contingency, the opposite of necessity. I usually like that idea, no matter how attached I am to control. Contingency means freedom: our fate is not fixed, man himself shapes history. Without contingency there would be no interesting literature, no football, life as we know it would be unimaginable. But with so much at stake, that open future is also a scary idea.
Someday, when we know how this ends, we will interpret these terrifying days in light of the outcome. But now we’re stuck, trapped in the present.
Floor Rusman ([email protected]) is editor of NRC
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 5 March 2022
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of March 5, 2022