Downsizing, cont.
The Russian forces are big, but this does not mean they cannot be defeated. Nuclear weapons and the inheritance of socialist bureaucracy gives them the formidable power of intimidation, but it is wrong to fear them because they bring death. Russian empires have always brought death, and have prevailed among those who fear them, but as the new nation of Ukraine has discovered, this is only a conceit. The empire, like all other empires, will contract, from the moment the proper contempt is shown to it. As the contempt “evolves,” more and more of it disappears. The task of the free citizen is to effect this disappearance.
Lest it be thought I am showing my prejudice against the Russian, exclusively, let me add that there are many more empires I would like to make extinct. Largeness, in human affairs, is itself an evil. Every large secular organization that I have encountered, over almost seventy years, is by its nature monstrous, chaotic, and obscene.
Religious organizations have easily relaxed into poisonous secularity. It is a particular affliction of modernity, though the threat often appeared in previous ages. It is the essence of tyranny. As organizations, including the “capitalist” ones, become bigger, they embrace evil. Who can stop them?
Leviathan — he makes himself large. We make ourselves large to resist him. It is our counter-productive instinct. The ancient Babylonians conceived of the cosmic defeat of the great monster whose slain body became heavens and earth. Judaeo-Christian mythology advanced on this, towards the still, small voice. For what is gigantic, and not of God, is of the other persuasion, necessarily.
This is because there are two, and only two, cosmic forces out there: the smaller and the larger, as it were.