Talking

 So it's a 'good news/bad news' day on the Ukraine situation.

Finding that the famous Little Mermaid port rock in Denmark had its

base painted to the colors of the Russian flag was bad news. And,

hopefully, not a portend of things to come. Equally disturbing to one who 

fears escalation in this conflict, the news that there had been ground 

fighting on Russian territories.

Je pourrais  m'étendre sur le sujet but, by now, everyone knows the drill.

Which brings me to the bit of good news: Representative Blinken and Ambassador

Lavrov actually spoke to each other - if only for ten minutes - at a UN disarmement

meeting. For the first time since the beginning of this conflict. This is very good

news, to my mind.

Nobody budged an inch, many would reply, but it makes me hopefull anyway. 

Philosophy has taught us, since Antiquity, that human truth does not emerge full

blown or quantifiable; it is the result of dialogue, a dialectic, which looks at pieces

of evidence in ever shifting context. Things get resolved through a process: 'I

hadn't seen it like that!' It is social; this is how humans think.

Modern philosophy did try to pin the dialectic in a model of thesis, antithesis, synthesis

ie a form of Rationalism. But these is too much going on; not the least of which is that this

ignores emotion, which layers and colours meaning. And ultimately, one wants to take action!

This is no time to feel hopeless. And a side nod to the teenage gangs in both Russia and 

Ukraine that have staged Anime fights from Web groups. The young are bored with it all; they 

want to live as peers.

So let's keep talking...