410—Wars Through the Lens of CosmoErotic Humanism: Opening Our Hearts to Ukraine

How can we respond with Outrageous Love to wars raging in other countries?

Dr. Elena Maslova-Levin’s recent talk at One Mountain Many Paths is important for many reasons. It models the deployment of the categories of CosmoErotic humanism by a world-class original scholar, artist and human being to the living, pulsing, excruciatingly painful reality of the polis in this very moment of time. Her arguments speak for themselves, but as you read, also pay attention to this crucial new form of discourse — writing, and thinking, and feeling — that takes places as an expression of the CosmoErotic Universe in person, as the writer, Elena, clarifies the field of ErosValue and ErosDesire, as they appear in the terrible theater of war, demanding, with humility and audacity, our attention, energy, and action. This writing understands that there is no split whatsoever between policy and Eros. Indeed, a policy of Ethos can only emerge from the field of Eros. 

Marc Gafni 
Center for World Philosophy and Religion

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Wars through the lens of CosmoErotic Humanism: opening our hearts to Ukraine

By Elena Maslova-Levin

In the August Symphony of CosmoErotic Humanism, we are exploring how to live CosmoErotic Humanism, how to bring its principles and values in our daily life, and respond to its challenges as Homo Amor. 

This is easier said than done, especially if the outrageous pain is not right in front of us — nor even in the daily news vying for our attention. 

• How can we respond with Outrageous Love to wars raging in other countries? 

• How can we accurately understand what’s going on in today’s information ecology, with its abundance of fake news and covert and not so covert propaganda? 

• Does this understanding — the stories we tell (or don’t tell) ourselves about these distant events — even matter? 

We will explore these questions by looking at the Russian aggression against Ukraine — a war that has been raging on for more than 900 days, and which makes it painfully clear that our attitude — our attention, our inner response, our ability to live the New Story of Value — matter so much that they can actually decide the outcome of the war and change the course of history.

What is the evolutionary leap called for by this crisis?

When a crisis or a breakdown happens, a natural human longing is to go back to how it was ‘before’; to somehow return to how it used to be, so we can live again as though the crisis never even happened. But even if we manage to do that (which is not always possible), the crisis would be in some form; I think we all know this on the individual, personal level. But the only way out is always through, which basically means each crisis calls us to evolve — or, in more practical words, to learn some lesson (or lessons). In the framework of CosmoErotic Humanism, every crisis is a crisis of intimacy — and it wants to birth the next level of intimacy. 

We tend to experience something like that in the situation of collective crises, for example, when a war erupts — whether it affects us directly or not — the longing is for it to end somehow; to return to the pre-war peace, however fragile it was (at least that was what was happening to me in the first weeks of the Russian-Ukrainian war). Just like in personal situations, we refuse to see (or cannot see) that it is this very past that generated the crisis in the first place. And just like in the individual realm, even if we manage to end it somehow, the crisis will come back, probably more mighty and destructive than before, unless we respond to its call to evolve — unless we learn its lessons. 

For example, the push to force Ukraine into a negotiated settlement with Russia (‘peace in exchange for territories’) — which you must have heard of if you are tracking this situation at all — is fueled by this longing: to return to the seeming certainty and security of the ‘before’, to the existing ‘world order’. But the conditions of ‘peace for territories’ offered by Russia (at least before Ukraine recently captured some of Russian territories) amount to Ukraine’s capitulation: they involve not only surrender of the territories currently occupied by Russia (or even more), but also cutting Ukraine off from any future international military help (even in the limited form it is offered now, let alone the opportunity to join NATO), and severe limits on the size and equipment of the Ukrainian standing army. In other words, in exchange for ‘peace’ Ukraine is supposed to agree to make itself completely helpless before the next Russian attempt to swallow it whole, while Russia gets new territories and an opportunity to prepare for the next assault (because its proposals also involve lifting economic sanctions). In other words, this kind of peace would create ideal conditions for a repetition of the same crisis (sooner rather than later).  

In this respect, like in many others, the war in Ukraine brings some universal patterns into a sharp, clarified focus. 

The question is, what are the lessons we are to learn, collectively and each of us individually?  

Or: what evolutionary leap is called for?
Or, through the lens of CosmoErotic Humanism: how do we live from the New Story in response to this crisis?

Two more specific dimensions of CosmoErotic Humanisms in particular came into focus as I contemplated these questions:

• The notion of Unique Obligation.

• The right relationship between the part and the whole.

Pollution of the noosphere

My first working answer to these questions was simply this: one should pay attention to what’s going on, to the facts — basically, closely following the news (rather than turning away from them). This would clarify the situation and show us where our help is needed.  

But there are many problems with this answer:

• Human attention is limited; we cannot pay close attention to everything going on in the world. Following the news can very easily become a distraction from something more important (personally, I am very liable to this).

• Reality is messy: it not only reveals, but also obscures the deeper patterns and stories it is shaped by. 

For example, in this presentation, I can make sure that I share only truth and nothing but truth, but I can never share all truth. Try as I might, it will always be a selection of facts; it will always be filtered through my perspective, and my language, and my story — and another person can present a different set of facts that would better fit another story. Yes, as an honest (although not impartial) observer, I can also include facts that don’t seem to fit with my story; but this, too, will be a selection colored by interpretation. 

We cannot escape this limitation of the human mind: ‘facts’ are always built from language and dependent on the story and perspective. This is the truth of post-modernism. 

Think of it in terms of the familiar triad of pre-tragic, tragic and post-tragic:

• At the pre-tragic level, facts are simply facts. White is white, black is black.

• At the tragic level, we see that there are no ‘objective facts’, no ‘all truth’ — so any idea of informed opinion begins to seem like a delusion. We find ourselves in the ‘post-truth’ world.

• The question is: how do we lift ourselves up to the post-tragic? How do we cut through the messiness of reality to see the deepest underlying patterns?

Dealing ‘in plain facts’ would have been a delusion even if lived in a pristine information ecosystem with only honest, transparent actors, with everyone reporting agenda-less truth, at least as they see it. But we don’t. Apart from the “organic” messiness, we are literally in the information war zone. Our minds — the public opinion of the West — is one of the major battlefields of this war, because the stories living in our minds matter enormously, as we will discuss shortly. Filling the information space with multiple ‘facts’ and ‘stories’ about any event — some of them completely fake, some closer to reality — is one of the most effective weapons of this war. 

I realized that this pollution of the noosphere has become so bad that actually paying attention to the news can be worse for true understanding than not paying attention. Perhaps it would be better just to stay with the initial moral clarity: there is an aggressor and a victim, and no news can possibly change that. 

I invite you to explore together how we can live the New Story — how we can apply and embody the First Principles and First Values given these limitations, in this complex and messy world. 

How do we find a post-tragic relationship to the messiness of reality? 
How should we respond to a war in a faraway land?

War in a faraway land

Before this war erupted, my overall strategy (one of my “first values & first principles”, I might say) was, to simplify it a bit:

• Make love, not war. I am always for peace, so against all wars — and thus, against any military-industrial complexes, any kind of sending weapons into war zones, etc. 

This strategy was shattered by this war — and this was the first war where I understood the situation a bit less superficially than usually. I realized it was a ‘lazy’ strategy, which allowed me to have an opinion about a situation without really looking into it. 

By the way, as things stand now, a consistent application of this strategy would mean I have to vote for Trump in the upcoming election; it would also mean Russia’s victory over Ukraine, which would lead to extreme suffering for millions of Ukrainians and further degradation of Russia, let alone what it would mean for America. 

For Ukraine, this is not just about territory or even abstract issues of dictatorship and colonization versus democracy and independence. Right now, there are at least eight thousand Ukrainian POWs in Russian prisons. This group includes not only soldiers taken prisoner in battles, but also civilians from occupied territories suspected of helping the Armed Forces of Ukraine in some way (justly or unjustly). It is not just that the Geneva conventions do not apply to any of them; no international human rights organizations or Russian lawyers are allowed any access to them. While Russian inmates have at least some rights, the Ukrainians don’t. They are being tortured, beaten, raped, starved. In many cases, they are put under a special regime called “freezing”, which amounts to disappearance from the face of the earth — nobody can get any information about them. Those who were lucky enough to become part of prisoner exchanges with Russia often look like the prisoners of Auschwitz in photographs from WWII. This is just a glimpse into what awaits Ukraine if Russia is allowed to have its way.

To say the least, my “first principle and first value”, my lazy strategy was challenged; this was my first lesson. 

But what are the alternatives? 

I cannot conceivably know the situation as directly and carnally in other cases, nor follow each war with this kind of attention. Just like most of you cannot know the whole Ukraine-Russia situation and its history in all their messy details. Marc’s generally good advice (read two books ‘on each side’ before you can have an opinion) doesn’t really work here either — it takes considerable time for books to be researched and written; they cannot reflect unfolding news in real time. Beyond that, in my experience, it is usually not enough to read four books.  

To decide that — given that I cannot possibly form an informed opinion — it is simply not my business is obviously not a Homo amor solution. ‘Not my business’ is as far from intimacy with the whole as it can get. And simply turning my attention away from the news feels like another version of the same approach. 

So what is the solution? CosmoErotic Humanisms gives us one guiding principle that is today’s code:

THIS WEEK'S EVOLUTIONARY LOVE CODE
We live in the world of outrageous pain. The only response 
is Outrageous Love.

Is Ukraine protecting us from WWIII?

To get a clearer picture of what’s going on, let us zoom out and look at the beginnings of the first two world wars:

1. WWI: all countries jump into the war with minimal provocation; what follows is senseless loss of life, chaos, brutality, etc., which undermined the inner integrity of some countries (Russia, and to a less extent Germany, collapsed internally) and taught others to try and avoid wars at all costs.

2. WWII — the beginning of WWII is marked by the tale of two British prime-ministers, Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill: in trying to avoid a new war with Germany and ensure peace, Chamberlain cedes Czechoslovakia to Germany, leaving Czechoslovakia without any kind of international support. They surrender, including all their industries, which dramatically helps Germany equip itself for WWII. Chamberlain’s approach is remembered by history as a huge mistake.

What is going on now?

Not unlike Germany after WWI, Russia, after its loss in the cold war, felt that it had lost its rightful place on the world stage (as a major player and one of the ‘poles’ of power). Rather than using its unexpected riches from exuberant oil and gas prices and economic cooperation with the West into cultural, economical, and technological growth, it decided to regain its place through military might — first with relatively minor incursions in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 — testing the West’s willingness to defend the world order. The West generally responds in the Chamberlain-like fashion, following the general policy of appeasement (including, for example, Obama’s ‘reset’ policy, right after the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008).

In February 2022, Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, hoping for an easy take-over, for Kyiv falling into its hands in two-three days. In many ways, this is a replay of the German take-over of Czechoslovakia, or so Russia hopes. It will give it the additional resources for further actions — e.g. against Baltic countries; and probably more.  

The collective West is prepared, again, to respond in the Chamberlain-like way (evacuating its embassies in advance; all experts predicting Ukraine’s fall). However, two factors intervene:

• Ukraine fights back (with resilience and valor which are surprising only to those who don’t know anything at all about Ukraine).

• The public opinion in Europe (and to a lesser extent here in America) is aroused by this blatant violation of value (One Mountain dedicates four weeks to this topic, taking this time away from articulating the New Story).

As a result, the West (primarily, Joe Biden and Boris Johnson, who probably wanted to be more Churchill-like than Chamberlain-like) finally rejects — at least in part — its Chamberlain-style policy of appeasement, and helps Ukraine out with resources and weapons — but with making it a priority that American & European soldiers aren’t involved.

The West is helping Ukraine, but just barely enough to prevent the Russian takeover; it takes an enormous amount of time to decide to deliver each next type of weaponry (because we are wary of crossing Putin’s “red lines”, which we invent ourselves), and then even more time to actually deliver them in meaningful quantities. 

The public and the press gradually grow “tired” of the war, and turn their attention away. The story of David and Goliath is supposed to end quickly with David’s victory; but this particular Goliath doubles down, despite the enormous loss of human lives and degradation of its own economy, and the fight continues — for over two and a half years now. Ukraine suffers and bleeds out, but mostly holds its ground.

Imagine this scenario playing out in the late thirties of the last century:

• Czechoslovakia decides to fight, and Chamberlain decides to help it out to some extent (so as not to cross Hitler’s red lines, and to the extent supported by the public opinion). And so the fight continues for years, Czechoslovakia bleeds out and suffers. The public turns its attention away: it doesn’t know that Czechoslovakia is protecting it from WWII. It doesn’t know the alternative, so it begins to feel like a local conflict which has little, if anything, to do with them.  

Are we actually in this kind of situation? Is it potentially the beginning of WWIII (a violent eruption of the meta-crisis), and Ukraine is protecting us from it? 

I don’t know, but I think it is possible. We can tentatively assume, for example, that Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine are fragments of the same bigger picture (at least we know that some Hamas leaders visited Moscow just before the October 7^th attack, one of its purposes being to distract the West’s attention from the events in Ukraine, as it indeed happened).

War in Ukraine as a war of stories

At the deepest, mythic level, war in Ukraine is a war of stories — rather than simply a war between two countries (let alone a local conflict). I wouldn’t call it a war between good and evil — not because this isn’t true, but because I want to be more specific: it is a war between the Past and the Future — or, to put it in other words, between the old story and the new story. Or: between the idea that we are slaves of the past and the idea that a different future is possible. 

Reducing this to utter simplicity, we might say that Ukraine is on the side of the Future — indeed, the war wouldn’t have started if Ukraine hadn't chosen a future different from its past; it has a vision of its future Russia doesn’t like. Russia, on the other hand, is on the side of the Past — it is not by accident that Putin’s justifications of the war tended to start in about the tenth century AD. By this logic, once a colony of whatever empire, always a colony — that’s why Ukraine has to surrender.  

Of course, the old story and the New Story are also fighting within Ukraine, and within Russia — but this is outside the scope of today’s conversation. A more relevant question, in the context of our August symphony is: what about us — be it America, or the collective West? Which story are we living?

Well, this is the question, isn’t it?

Within the West, these two stories — the old story and the New story — are fighting it out, too. As a collective (or multiple collectives), we are not unified — 

• E.g. Hungary blocking the EU’s decisions.

• Within America, we have a polarization along all-too-familiar lines — now almost fully clarified and articulated in the presidential race.

But if we look at it through the lens of this war, this is not quite our familiar left-right polarization. For example, The New York Times consistently speaks from the voice of the past (which is not exactly identical to the narrative promoted by Russia, but way too close to it).

Whenever I would encounter what are essentially Russia’s talking points in unexpected places, like The New York Times, or a book recommended by Marc, by David Ray Griffin, a Whiteheadian scholar he respects, or a Noam Chomsky interview, I would wonder what’s actually happening  Many pro-Ukrainian observers are quick to deduce that they are all Russian assets, but I think this is, overall, too simple an explanation. 

They are simply seeing — and speaking — from the past, and this story filters and colors their perspective of reality — their choice of facts and interpretations; and this makes them, in many instances, willing victims of the Russian information war. Let’s face it — for the vast majority of Americans, the past story doesn’t include Ukraine at all; in this past story, Russia and the Soviet Union are essentially the same thing. 

Being anchored in the past — interpreting the present in terms of the past — is natural for human beings; that’s how we function in normal circumstances. It takes unusual circumstances to break away from the past and respond to the pull of the future — and even then, it takes personal effort, which comes easier to some, more difficult to others.  

This means that this fight between stories, very obviously, takes place within every one of us. 

It became crystal clear to me — clearer than ever — just in this past week or ten days, when Ukraine began its Kursk offensive, invading Russia proper. The Ukrainians maintained complete radio silence about their plans and progress, so facts were few and far between. Everyone had very limited information, certainly not enough for any serious analysis. Yet almost everybody had an opinion, and these two stories — the old story anchored in the past, the new story anchored in the future — came into sharp focus, because they made people discern two very different pictures. Some saw a reckless mistake; others, a potential strategic turn in the whole war.

The story living in us matters. It shapes reality

At the core of what we are doing here is the idea that a new story can change the course of history; that the story we are living — the story living in us and through us — matters. This, too, is brought into focus by this war. The story matters painfully — it may, in fact, determine the outcome of the war.

Here is an example: 

One popular narrative (here in America at least) goes like this: it is a war of attrition, and thus it will be decided by the overall difference in resources. Since Russia is a much larger country and has much more resources, it is bound to win anyway, so Ukraine should seek a settlement (on Russia’s terms — in other words, it should capitulate). I heard Noam Chomsky say in an interview, literally, Russia has infinite resources (even as he does acknowledge that, morally, Ukraine is right and Russia is wrong). If this is so, sending weapons to Ukraine means fueling the war, and we should stop doing that. (Obviously, this narrative is very much promoted by the Russian information-war efforts.) 

Sounds reasonable, but only in the context of ‘it’s not our business’ story — that is, only if we consider the war in isolation, as a local conflict. If it is our business — that is, if we are truly world-centric, if the collective West is really on the side Ukraine, and actually helps Ukraine (as, in a sense, it does), then we should really be comparing Russia’s resources with our collective resources. In this case, it is our resources that are infinite in comparison to Russia, so it is Ukraine that is destined for victory.  

If we live from the new story — the story of all of us being in this together — then the resources on the side of life, and freedom, and future are almost infinitely more than those on the side of oppression, imperialism, and death. We, together with Ukraine, are bound to triumph in this war, and Russia is bound to collapse in some way (just like the Soviet Union collapsed under the pressure of arms race of the cold war, which was also a war of attrition of sorts).

But if we take the perspective that it is a local conflict somewhere out there in the east, in the sphere of influence of a powerful Russia with its infinite resources — than Ukraine is bound to lose, and all we can possibly do is help negotiate its capitulation as soon as possible (which is basically Trump’s solution). 

Which story is more accurate? Is Russia winning or losing? 

One can easily muster a selection of facts to support both, because reality is messy, and wars are even messier. Neither is true, and both are true — they are at war, and we cannot be certain of the outcome.

But this is less important than their capacity to generate reality; both are, very straightforwardly, self-fulfilling prophecies. The outcome of the war directly depends on our capacity and willingness to live the New Story.

The very minimum of our responsibility is to hold the new story — to be on the side of life — even if, at times, it might be difficult in the face of daily news. 

Just like we are committed to hold the New Story of Value in the face of the meta-crisis.

Just like it is a mother’s responsibility to hold the hope of health for her sick child, even on bad days.

Are we living the New Story?

I have formulated four “checkpoints” to test whether (and when) I — you, we — am/are — responding to this war from the New Story.

Moral equivalence checkpoint

Morally, the right is clearly on the Ukrainian side, and Russia is undeniably in violation of value. This is the moment of utter moral clarity that aroused the public opinion in the very beginning of the war. 

Alternative stories:

• The situation is so muddied and complicated that moral equivalence is the only reasonable approach (we cannot really form an opinion; we cannot judge because we don’t understand). This is the pattern of finding failings in a victim of rape, so as to avoid getting involved. 

• Morally, Russia is in the right, for example, because Russia had/has legitimate security concerns (e.g., because of the NATO expansion). But if Russia had really felt threatened by NATO, would it have left its western borders completely undefended, as Ukraine demonstrated recently to the whole world by its Kursk offensive?

Can David defeat Goliath? 

Ukraine is capable of defending itself and defeating Russian aggression, but only if we (= the collective West) help it with all kinds of resources, including military resources (as we have just discussed).

The alternative story is that Russia will win anyway, because it has “infinite resources”, and it has never been defeated, so helping Ukraine only prolongs the war and leads to loss of life. 

Let me tell you a recent joke inspired by the Kursk offensive:

“Frightened by the Ukrainian offensive in the Kursk region of Russia, Putin invokes the ghost of Stalin, and asks:

• The Nazis are approaching Kursk once again, what should I do? [Because he calls Ukrainians Nazis.]

Stalin answers:

• Well, do what I did, send the best Ukrainian troops there, and ask the Americans to send you weapons.” 

The moral of this story is very simple. The myth that Russia cannot be defeated comes from two wars: the Napoleon invasion, and the Hitler invasion (it did collapse as a result of WWI, resulting in the revolution of 1917 and years of civil war). In both these cases:

• Russia was a victim of the invasion; and indeed it is so large that it is difficult to occupy.

• Russia was in alliance with the West, or at least some of the western countries.

• Ukraine (with its remarkable talent for fighting) was integrated into Russia. Although there were no ‘Ukrainian troops’ per se, Ukrainians played a major role in the Soviet army.

None of these conditions apply now:

• Nobody intends to occupy Russia now. All it has to do is to withdraw from Ukraine, and the war will end.

• Even though the West could help Ukraine more, it is certainly not in alliance with Russia.

• Ukrainians are fighting on the other side.

Moral obligation: the collective

We (= the collective West) have a moral obligation to help Ukraine in any way we can. We are all in this together. 

Alternative stories:

• It is Russia’s sphere of interest anyway, so we should leave the whole situation alone. 

  • As we have already discussed, this is a clear expression of the old story. It reflects the human addiction to the past, and when all is said and done, for most Westerners, the past doesn’t include any Ukraine at all, whereas Russia has ‘always’ been there. 

• If Russia feels threatened, it will unleash nuclear war, we shouldn’t ‘poke the bear’. 

  • But the West and Ukraine (especially Ukraine) have been crossing Russian supposed ‘red lines’ one after another, and this didn’t happen. If Russia had been prepared to launch any kind of nuclear attack, it would have done it by now. 

• We (= the West) are so imperfect (or downright morally corrupt) anyway that it is not our business to interfere in other nations' wars. We (especially we-America) have involved ourselves in so many seemingly right causes with disastrous consequences (Afghanistan being the latest one) that we should really stop doing this and mind our own business.  

  • But are past sins an excuse for committing new ones? 

• If we stop helping Ukraine, the war will end — and value is on the side of peace anyway (wars are universally bad).

  • I have already addressed that in the beginning. If we stop helping Ukraine, there is nothing to stop Russia from swallowing it whole, with disastrous consequences to Ukrainians.

Moral obligation: individual

I have a moral obligation to be (in some sense) on Ukraine’s side in this war, and help it in any way I can — even if just by holding and living the new story. 

Alternatives:

• There is no way I can get a clear and accurate picture of what’s going on, so I am not in a position to have an opinion about the matter (or interfere in one way or another). It is irresponsible to take sides in such a situation. I can simply be on the side of peace — that is, against all wars and weaponry and military-industrial complexes. 

• My attitude to this war doesn’t matter anyway. (Ukraine is not in my unique sphere of intimacy and influence). 

• I don’t have a unique obligation in this situation, so even paying attention to it may be morally wrong because it takes my attention away from my unique obligations; for example, in articulating (helping articulate) the New Story of Value, which is the only response to the meta-crisis. 

According to CosmoErotic Humanism, a unique obligation is an absolute moral obligation that arises when

• I see the need (but if I don’t follow the news, I don’t even see it).

• The need is real (there are, I think, no doubts about that). 

• I am uniquely capable of fulfilling this need. 

None of us individually is ‘uniquely capable’ of fulfilling Ukraine’s need, so we have no unique obligations here (except maybe for me — arguably, I have a unique capacity to speak about this war to this community, and thus plays my role in keeping our hearts open to her need). Does it mean we have no moral obligation to help? 

The problem is: there are so many important causes that would collapse if we only fulfilled our unique obligations, situations where our non-unique help is desperately needed. Essentially, every charity in the world would collapse the moment we decide to limit ourselves to our unique obligations and stop making our small, non-unique donations.

Collective Unique Selves

In describing global events, we inevitably talk in terms of collectives (mostly nation-states, but sometimes smaller collectives — like states or provinces, or larger collectives — like ‘the collective West’). Some formulations in CosmoErotic Humanism suggest that these indeed are (at least potentially) Unique Selves, with their own instruments to play and songs to sing. 

In doing so, we inevitably gloss over many, many complexities and distinctions, let alone the fact that we have limited knowledge about how the will of these collective entities (and their thinking processes) work. It may seem more appropriate to talk instead of individuals or groups that seem to be making decisions on behalf of collective selves — Putin, Zelensky, Biden (or — the Biden administration), Macron, Johnson, etc. There is another danger here though: forgetting our own moral obligations and responsibilities as participants (constituents) of these collective wholes. 

Russia shows us this danger: ‘delegating’ the will and responsibility to the leader willingly, inevitably brings about loss of freedom and, ultimately, moral degradation. When I hear an American say ‘I am not political’, I shudder internally, because I’ve seen where this road leads. Isn’t it strange: if you don’t trust the government, is it really a good reason to delegate all important decisions on behalf of the collective to it? It is just another version of ‘not our business’ story. 

On the other hand, Ukraine — especially in the first period of the war — showed us how the will of a leader and the wills of individuals taking responsibility for the whole can merge harmoniously to lift up the collective: 

1. President Zelensky accepting the unique obligation of a noble king in dark times with valor and abandon. 

2. Hundreds of thousands of individuals accepting the moral obligation of the moment even though for many of them — poets, ballet dancers, musicians — taking up arms was very far from the unique expression of their unique gifts; they were not uniquely capable of responding to Ukraine’s need in her darkest hour, and yet without them, the resistance would have been impossible.

Had either of these ingredients been absent, Ukraine wouldn't be able to respond as effectively as it did.

Unique Obligation of a Collective Self

But what about the West, and more specifically, our own countries (in my case and for many of you, America)?

Here is what I realized while working on this presentation, that is, looking at the Russia-Ukraine war through the lens of CosmoErotic humanism:

While the idea of Unique Obligation doesn’t seem to apply, in this case, to each of us as individuals, it does very much apply to the US.

After WWII, a new world order was established, essentially based on some balance of power between NATO and the Warsaw pact (also known as “the cold war”), the threat of mutual destruction (nuclear weapons), and the mutual agreement never to violate the established international borders. With the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact (in the late eighties), and then the Soviet Union (in 1991), this world order was shattered. 

In many ways, the responsibility to sustain whatever remains on it fell on America, with all its imperfections. Europe was essentially so relieved that it didn’t need to fear the Soviet Union anymore that it rapidly demilitarized — and preferred not to notice the rise of the new danger (with the exception of the Eastern European countries who know this danger too well, and so they rushed to join NATO). In many ways, we have been living in Pax Americana — the (more or less) peace ensured by America’s military power. This worked precisely to the extent that the US could act world-centrically and honorably (which is very, very far from always).

It probably shouldn’t be this way, and there are many downsides to this state of affairs, but the result is that America has a Unique Obligation to fully support Ukraine in this war:

• The US sees the need of Ukraine.

• This need is as real as can be.

• The US is uniquely capable of fulfilling this need, because it is the only country that currently has enough military resources to do so.

Does it fulfill this obligation? To some extent, but not quite.

Our initial question then can be clarified as: 

• What does living the New Story mean for a (tiny) particle of the whole that is currently not quite fulfilling its Unique Obligation?

In a sense, this brings living the New Story to the more familiar ground of political activism (like, for example, writing letters to our representatives).

Are we truly world-centric?

I began this presentation with the question: what are the lessons we need to learn from this crisis?

For me, the main lesson was that I am not fully world-centric — not as world-centric as I thought myself to be.

We usually put a very low threshold on what it means to be world-centric: Ethnocentrism means that killing someone outside my circle of ethnocentric intimacy is completely different from murdering someone within (the latter is prohibited, the former is OK). In this sense, I of course pass the test; murder is murder.  

But what if we ask ourselves how we are actually affected by mass murders or wars in faraway countries (if at all)? 

This war pushed me to admit that I was less affected, for example, by the tragedy of Aleppo than by the tragedy of Mariupol (even though Russia was responsible in both cases). The tragedy of Mariupol feels like mine in a more real, carnal sense. I cannot justifiably call this circle of intimacy ethnocentric (because I am not Ukrainian), but it is evidently narrower than the whole world.

What if you ask yourself whether the tragedies of Mariupol and Aleppo touched you as deeply and profoundly as, say, 9/11 (if you are an American)? Or, if you are in Europe, in the same way as you would have been touched by a brutal destruction, followed by rape and torture — of, say, Manchester, Cologne, Rotterdam, Florence — some city in your native land? Some city you know intimately?

If your honest answer is yes, then you are more world-centric than I am. 

We like to think that the so-called center of gravity of modern Western democracies is world-centric (this is one of the dignities of modernity), but here is a major lesson of this war:

Had it been true, it is not just that our collective response to the war in Ukraine would have been different, but this war would never have happened. If Russia knew that we (collectively) would respond to this war as if it were waged against us (which it actually is, in ultimate analysis), it wouldn’t dare to try to invade Ukraine, because the collective resources of the West are incomparably more than Russia’s. 

But it is not really true, at least not fully — that’s why, for example, Biden’s priority not to let American troops be involved in this war in any way feels right to him and so many Americans. American lives matter more to Americans than Ukrainian lives — this is just the way it is. 

The ‘center of gravity’ of the collective is directly determined by the center of gravity of individuals, even though each individual’s contribution might seem to be minuscule. Living the New Story means, then, doing our best to transcend these remnants of ethnocentricity. How? To begin with, by noticing them, making them ‘object’: noticing when we act and feel from the ethnocentric level of consciousness. 

Because truly shifting to world-centric intimacy — both individually and collectively — is, I think, precisely the evolutionary leap called for by this crisis. 

Dr. Elena Maslova-Levin is a scholar and an artist. She is an author (as Elena Maslova) of three books and multiple academic papers on endangered languages of Siberia and linguistic typology, and two books and several online courses on “synergistic seeing”, the visual art’s capacity to help us see through one another’s eyes and cleanse the doors of perception. In her paintings and teachings, she approaches art as a grand collective inquiry into the nature of reality, probing the edges between painting, poetry, and philosophy. Her mostimportant series is “Sonnets in colour”, a “translation” of Shakespeare’s sonnets into the medium of painting. She holds a doctorate in linguistics from the Russian Academy of Science and a post-doctoral qualification from University of Bielefeld, Germany. She is co-authored Glory to the Heroes: the First Four Weeks of the Russia Ukraine War: For the Sake of Value and the Arousal of the West Beyond Moral Equivalence, with Dr. Marc Gafni.

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