Ukraine. An emotional statement.
Out of darkness comes light, but this time, out of darkness came even more dark matter.
The war in Ukraine is made of dark matter. It is a war. Invasion doesn’t capture the hatred, the destruction, and the sheer audacity to violate a sovereign nation. Russia has violated its neighboring country, an independent, inviolable democratic state. And it’s inexcusable and indefensible.
So, emotions are running high. Cable news are competing by reporting hard facts with interspersing human stories and emotional segments of what the people of Ukraine are going through. Hard-core reporting, showing tank convoys, missiles hitting apartment buildings, and air support being deployed over large cities. Civilians being targeted, killed, forced to leave their country in droves, in panic. The international community is responding with hardware based on emotional – and no doubt practical – support, and offering shelter in other European countries. NATO and EU are stepping up, not only with rhetoric but with weapons. We see protests in Russian and numerous cities in the world; the gatherings of leaders across continents; and the UN assembling in a special session. The emotional pull is visceral and the industry built on and surrounding these feeling is stepping accordingly. Donations are pouring in. The international community is feeling the trauma of earlier conflicts, close and far away.
But in stressful times, we seem to conflate emotional awareness with objective sensibility. Emotions are the first line of defense when we are in distress, alerting the fight-and-flight (together with freeze and fawn) reactions that are deeply embedded in our brains. When the adrenaline has died down a bit, the rational mind takes over, often diminishing the emotion that warned us of danger in the first place. Emotional responses are utilized to mine sympathy and empathy, and many NGOs are holding on to that level of stress to gather support; money, clothing food and other essentials for people who are fleeing war, assault, all the while protecting children and other vulnerable groups.
The state of the emotional industry, so called in these pages for its dedication to helping and assisting those not so fortunate, is obvious and battle-ready. We are mobilizing our forces, internal and external, to protect those that are dear to us, keeping the cortisol levels remain high.
An industry that runs on emotional fuel is bound to run out of energy at some point. But it is an energy that is vital to activate humanity to care. We are all walking around checking our social media feeds, seeing flags and flowers in the colors of the sky and the sun while media is hawking children, animals, the elderly, any group that will tug at those heart strings for people to open up their hearts and their wallets. People are flocking to the large international NGOs websites to donate. This is all good! The emotional response is driving humanity forward, towards awareness, towards empathy, unity. There are unlimited benefits to the emotions we are feeling. But we are also obliged to mitigate them, when in the end, a balance between what is reasonable, possible and true, is paramount.
The past week has been nauseating. I am 4,500 miles, 7,200 km away from the destruction of a nation and still, the experience seeing the bombing and the devastation wrought by a madman, is gut wrenching; as this just as well could be Stockholm, Helsinki, or Riga. Or anywhere on the globe, as we have seen, time and time again. But relief will return.
And there will be light. Again.
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