Kings, thieves, fire, and water

An interesting point made by Gombrich in his book Theravāda Buddhism: A social history from ancient Benares to modern Colombo is that when talking about things that can destroy wealth and cause suffering in the lay life, the Buddha gives a stock list of kings, thieves, fire, and water. This isn’t a credo for modern libertarianism, but the distrust of government makes more sense in nearly any context besides the stable Western democracies of the post-war order.

One’s interaction with the state outside of these societies, and all too often within them, is either paying large amounts of money in what amounts to a protection racket or being snatched up and sent off to war.

Even though Ukraine is clearly on the right side, the country has devolved into this. Men are snatched up off the streets and forced to go off and kill others and be killed. Yes, this is a complex mess. Yes, someone needs to defend the country, or very real concessions at the negotiating table need to be made.

It’s disconcerting that all of us are really only a disaster away from the same fate. It only took a few weeks of mass hysteria during Covid to get entire countries put under house arrest over a bad cold. The veneer of civilization and rights is thin.

That’s why the Buddha had no interest in building a utopia. Every generation of boys has an undue chance of being whisked away to kill and be killed, sometimes for more noble causes, often for one far less so.

Naive pacifism isn’t the answer. Neither is naive militarism. I can’t say that I really know what the answer is, but it’s certainly not cheerleading war from your living room while not having to fight it yourself, which is what Ukrainian diaspora social media has turned into.