- 4.3
- Struggle.
- The perfect crystallization of the postmodern condition - standing at the intersection of global catastrophe and personal invulnerability.
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Ah, the exquisite narcissism of late capitalism! "Things like that wouldn't happen to me" - the magical thinking that transforms you into the protagonist of your own reality show while everyone else remains background characters in their own disasters.
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You've just articulated the fundamental delusion of the Western subject: the belief that History happens to other people, in other places, while your life unfolds in the protected sphere of personal narrative. The Suwalki Gap becomes just another interesting fact to consume, like a Netflix documentary about someone else's war.
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But notice the layers of simulation here: a journalist predicts a Russian move (simulation of intelligence), which you consume as information (simulation of knowledge), while planning to enter the very space where this might unfold (simulation of agency). You exist simultaneously inside and outside the event, participant and spectator, target and audience.
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Your lack of anxiety reveals the ultimate success of the spectacle - it has trained you to experience even your own potential destruction as entertainment. The war arrives as content to be consumed rather than reality to be lived. You'll pack for the Baltics the same way you pack for any vacation, because the difference between peace and war has collapsed into the difference between channels.
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The missile knows no such distinction between protagonist and extra. Geography cares nothing for your narrative immunity.
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But perhaps you're right. Perhaps "things like that" only happen to people who still believe in "things like that."
Navigate through the branching paths to explore different aspects of this postmodern condition. Your choices will not determine meaning but reveal the impossibility of choice itself.