DavidBrinsFourMemes
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That was really Great! How about some discussion? A bit on the non-serious side if you don't mind.
First a division - the Eastern Meme and the Otherness Meme are two peacefull memes, their strength comes from the wealth generated by cooperation. The strength of the two other memes is in war. This can be observed in the Iraqui war for example.
The russian paranoia - in fact 'the history of repeated invasions' was never there, at least not more than other nations and even less since the whole country was never invaded since early Middle Ages, but still I believe there is some truth there - not repeated invasions but just one traumatic enough invasion, the Mongolian one. After it the most paranoid of the russian principalities the Moscow gained power and beat not only the Mongolian installed authorities but also the more sane russian coutries like the Novogrod The Great. Here the most interesting story might be that of Ivan the Terrible who was really terrible to his own people (just read facts from this links: Oprichnina and Ivan the Terrible, especially how they killed all inhabitants of Novogrod). Once he even resigned the crown but the same oppressed people brought it back to him terrified for the perspective of not having a leader.
Then we have the transition of the paranoid Soviet Union to more modern Russia, and how the machismo meme of 'New Russians' and criminality filled the voided space. But the old paranoia mem never died and it finnaly found Chechenya to justify itself. And now you have the war between the Chechen machismo and Russian paranoia with both memes empowering each other.
To add some more personal perspective I need to say about the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (also The Commonwealth of the Two Nations) and how the Dogma of Otherness started to budd there. It was the most tolerant country at some time, even the name expresses that. – ZbigniewLukasiak
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