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OP-ED: Let’s stop acting like evil animals

By Nick Jacobs 4 min read
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What is the secret of Ukraine? It’s a country with seaports and incredible, valuable natural resources. It’s also a country that allowed its citizens to know freedom, and, once you’ve been free, that freedom is something that is very hard to live without. Unfortunately, it just happens to border a large land mass named Russia, and the man who is currently running Russia is an aging, macho man who is filled with delusional memories of the former USSR. He probably goes to sleep every night believing he has been placed on this earth to restore that USSR empire.

Not unlike other delusional small in stature men who have chosen that empire building path, Vladimir Putin is a heartless, blood-thirsty egomaniac who sees himself as so much more than he is. Similar to Attila the Hun, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler, his ego has taken him down a road that may or may not lead to not only his personal demise but also to the destruction of his beloved country.

My wife’s family is Ukrainian. Their church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, sat a few doors down from the Russian Orthodox Church in Carnegie, Pa., and never the twain shall meet. There was always a subtle tension between the Ukrainian and the Russian Church, and I’m sure it was because there was a lot of history between Ukraine and Russia dating back to the Ottoman Empire and beyond.

The most recent events, however, seem to be due to this one man, his ego, and his desire to leave an historic legacy for himself. There are those who believe that, as he approaches age 70, Putin is making this move to prove he is still vital by attempting to fulfill his own warped vision of what was once the USSR. Another viewpoint is he is trying to forestall his own personal, unavoidable exit from both leadership and humanity.

We humans persistently work to deny our relationship with our human destiny, but we also work endlessly to deny that we are also animals. As the human animal, we’ve made a career of destroying each other, our environment, and potentially eventually our world.

When we recognize that man is just a little higher reasoning version of some of our animal cousins, it helps to sort things out. This knowledge aids us in understanding what might otherwise be some very dangerous situations.

We have a chemical called adrenaline that is released in our bodies when our amygdala alerts us to do so. It’s intended to fire up our reptilian brain to help us run away from saber-toothed tigers. Ever wonder what causes road rage? Did it really matter that much that someone cut you off or got ahead of you in the merge lane? Did it matter enough to get out of your car, pull out a gun and shoot that person?

It’s this animal stuff that we’re seeing way too much of lately. It’s the same insolence that fuels leaders like Putin. Yes, of course there’s some thinking involved, but it’s based on stupid irrational fear or lies. Worse yet, it’s based on insecurities and distorted egos. Because we have the ability to think on a higher level, we human mammals can come up with really devastating ways to hurt or kill each other, and we usually do it for irrational reasons.

We’re animals. Let’s try to stop acting like the bad ones and just admit that all of that extra hair we have was put there to protect us from the cold a long time ago. But things have changed. Putin is his own version of an evil animal who hopefully end up in a cage of his own making.

With COVID currently in decline when we were beginning to see the sun, we are now faced with this unknown international future due to one small man.

Nick Jacobs of Windber is a health-care consultant and author of two books.

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