Why does a rattlesnake rattle?

It’s actually an interesting evolutionary mechanism, because being venomous doesn’t help you if a cow steps on you. Yes, you bite and kill the cow that stepped on you, but you’re still dead. However, if you warn the cow before it steps on you, then the cows can learn to avoid you altogether, thus saving both. A combination of warning and fear is, therefore, an evolutionary mechanism developed to avoid mutually assured destruction.

I keep thinking that one of the main contributing factor to our present geopolitical situation is the role of the “New Age” literature of the 1990s, which emphasised “positive thinking” and recommended things such as ignoring the things that frighten you until they leave. I guess this is useful strategy for making children unafraid of imaginary monsters under their bed, but it’s a terrible thing to tell a cow faced with a rattlesnake.

Also, such idiotic literature seems to have contributed to the anti-pragmatic mindset of, well, everybody, because instead of playing the normal and expected game where you weigh costs against benefits and then avoid actions with a poor cost/benefit ratio, people today adhere to “principles”, which are mostly pulled out of someone’s arse because they obviously have no deeper religious or spiritual background, ignore warning signs and react in petulant and spiteful manner where this is almost guaranteed to result in terrible consequences, they are taught “not to compromise”, to “follow their heart”, to just look at the ideals and ignore reality, because if you impose your wishes upon reality hard enough, “the entire Universe will change to accommodate you”. This all sounds like terrible nonsense, and indeed it is, but I assure you, I read it all in multiple places in the New Age literature, and saw it in all sorts of lectures by all kinds of self-help “gurus”.

When I read the news about all those European politicians who “won’t be blackmailed by Putin” after trying to blackmail Putin with sanctions, Ukrainians who are “not afraid of Russians” and refuse to accept a simple statement that they will be neutral and not a part of a war pact against Russia, and all kinds of lies on social media that attempt to portray a reality opposite to the one on the ground, as if that matters for winning wars, I keep wondering what kind of books have those people been reading? It’s like those Instagram “models” who pretend to have a perfect life, whose homes are minimalistically beautiful, whose meals all look like art pieces, who are always happy and up-beat and all of that, while of course the reality is that they are all on anti-depressants and suicidal. It’s as if they all think the most important thing is to show you’re not afraid, you’re not hurt, the enemy is weak and ridiculous and can’t hurt you in any way, and you’re so confident you laugh at him until he goes home confused with his tail between his legs.

He didn’t succumb to fear

I’ve seen Putin displaying obvious, absolutely clear rattlesnake warnings – back off, you crossed my red line, I am going to attack if you don’t – and they kept laughing, psychoanalysing him to figure out all the weaknesses and insecurities behind the threat posture, and then they act with shocked surprise when he actually did attack, as if it were out of the blue with no warning. When he didn’t attack with enough force to wipe out his opponents, he’s mocked for being weak. Guess what this tells him? Yeah, it tells him that you are unable to understand subtle signs and he needs a bigger stick.

Those “New Age” authors are all charlatans who have been lying to you. A rattlesnake is not trying to make you afraid in order to “control you”, or in order to make you “forget your own greatness” or to “make you forget your dreams”. It’s trying to keep both of you alive. To conquer fear means to win a Darwin award.

If all that allegory went over your head, let me put it this way: Putin first tried to reason with you. Then he tried to warn you. Then he increased the loudness of the warning and simplified it, so that even a not-so-bright person can understand. Then he did a limited strike to clear the immediately hostile area, but without actually doing much harm, the way some snakes do a “dry bite” as a warning. He’s trying to keep everybody alive. But hey, you know better than to be controlled by fear. You’ll just laugh at him to show you can’t be manipulated and you’ll keep following your dreams of total, uncontested power, and like a deaf cow that got bitten by the rattlesnake, you’ll ask “how did that happen all of the sudden?”