by Cauf Skiviers, Cultural Inappropriation, ©2024
(Mar. 3, 2024) —
“The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it’s just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture ‘This is a pipe’, I’d have been lying!”
René Magritte, The Treachery of Images
In the spring of 2010, I was hiking through Corsica’s rugged landscape. It was the usual hell on earth in paradise lost, between myself and my Russian friend and travel companion, let’s call her Dasha.
Then came the news: Moscow’s metro had been bombed. Forty lives were lost in the chaos of rush hour — another gift from the Islamist separatists to Mother Russia.
Facing Dasha, I struggled for words. A half-witted “Heard about Moscow. It’s terrible. I’m sorry,” was all I managed. Dasha just shrugged. “Nah, it wasn’t as bad as Beslan,” she said. In 2004, a school in Beslan had seen 186 children perish, as Russian security forces stormed the building after Chechnya separatists had taken 1,000 people hostage. I saw it coming, but her response left me puzzled.
And here we are now, an age where we can use AI to decipher two-thousand-year-old Roman scrolls burnt to a crisp, yet we still can’t crack the Russian code. This thought was nagging at me as Tucker Carlson introduced his interview with Putin, promising a genuine glimpse into what’s in that man’s head.
Back to Corsica, a few days later, Dasha and I decided to tackle Monte Cinto, the island’s tallest peak. More a hike than a climb, truth be told.
She thought I had it all figured out. Little did she know, I was as clueless as they come, betting everything on this Garmin GPS piece of junk. It was supposed to be the be-all and end-all of the modern outdoor man. So I heard.
It was a bust, as expected. The damn thing couldn’t get a signal to save its life, and I couldn’t read those cryptic maps if they slapped me in the face. My ineptitude left me exposed as a complete fraud, unable to fend for myself without my high-tech crutch.
Things took a nosedive from there. Stuck in the wild as night crept in, cold and unforgiving, Dasha stepped up. Using skills she later told me she had learnt in ‘geography school’ back in Russia, she guided us to safety at the refuge. Safe, but not without cost. The ordeal was not just a blow to my ego; it was truly emasculating.
It was then I began to realise the real schism between Russians and Westerners. Growing up, I swallowed whole the tale of a post-Cold War Russia, beaten down, clawing at the West’s door, a bunch of barbarians begging to be assimilated.
The reverse seemed true as well. Russia had faith in the West, believed we were all made of the same stern stuff that had defeated communism. Yet, there I stood, the prototype of Western unreliability.
And there stands Europe today, acting as if it was a third-world country, unable to defend itself in the absence of foreign aid. It’s madness. Europe, once the heart of civilization and the pulse of history, now mirrors weakness, epitomised by the recent failure of the UK Navy’s trident missile. The crown jewel of Europe’s security policy, now the ultimate symbol of our civilisational emasculation.
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