On Vulgar Materialism

Or, sufficiently advanced cynicism is indistinguishable from naïveté.

The most stubborn facts are those of the spirit, not those of the physical world. — Jean Gottmann, Geography and International Relations In 1914, before the First World War, there was this belief : “a European war would be economically disastrous, the moneyed classes won’t let it happen”. Europe went to war anyways, and the war was in fact an economic disaster as everyone knew it would be. Why were those people wrong? Because the rich were not in control : the Tsar and the Kaiser and the Emperor were in control. I thought of this in 2022, in the lead up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when

saved by

• Derek Yen
• Information Flow
• Jaeho Lee
• Peter Bennett
• Aarya Gadekar

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