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And recent events have shown us stunning examples of the violation of justice. Some people say that there has been a decline in morality over the past half century. In fact, it was an era when people were especially attentive to moral issues, perhaps the most moral era in the history of the world, when many people were deeply concerned about specific events that indicated that the world needed to be corrected.

Powerful generals sent millions of soldiers to die in the trenches during World War I, while they themselves lived in luxury at a safe distance from the front lines. And when we read the poems of people involved in this situation, we see that behind their bitter reflections there is anger at the madness and, of course, the injustice of what is happening. Why did this happen? How can this be fixed?

An explosive mixture of different ideologies led to the fact that millions of people died in gas chambers. Elements of religious prejudice, bad philosophical systems, fear of "different" people, economic difficulties, and the need to find scapegoats – all this was mixed up by one brilliant demagogue, who told people such words that at least someone wanted to believe, and demanded that human sacrifices be made for the sake of this "progress". As soon as we mention Hitler or the Holocaust, we are faced with the same questions. How could this happen? Where is justice here? How should we treat this? How can the world be fixed?

In particular, what can we do to prevent such things from happening again?

But it seems that we are powerless here. No one prevented the Turks from killing millions of Armenians in 1915-1917 (and in fact, Hitler referred to this event when calling on his comrades to kill Jews). No one stood between Tutsis and Hutus when they killed each other in Rwanda in 1994. And although after the Holocaust and Nazism, many people said, "This must not happen again," everything was repeated, and we were horrified to see that there was nothing we could do to prevent it.

There was also apartheid: a great injustice affecting a huge mass of the population. And this state of affairs remained for quite a long time. Of course, similar things happened in other countries, but in these countries they knew how to crush the opposition with great skill. Think of the "reservations" for "American natives." Once, after watching an old movie "Cowboys and Indians", I experienced a shock: I realized that in my youth, I, like most of my peers, was completely convinced that cowboys were generally good and Indians were bad. The world has woken up to racial prejudice, but getting rid of it is like squeezing air out of a balloon: while you are working on one corner, the other is inflating. The whole world was unanimous about apartheid: "You can't do that," but part of this outrage was fueled by what psychologists call "projection," in which we easily condemn others for what we do. This is very convenient and brings a sense of deep moral satisfaction, although it is false. We blame someone in another country, not paying attention to the fact that the same thing is happening next to us.

And today we are confronted with new global forms of evil: ferocious and ruthless capitalist materialism on the one hand, and virulent and irrational religious fundamentalism on the other. As the author of one famous book puts it, "jihad against McWorld". (Whether there can be "compassionate" and caring capitalism or, say, rational fundamentalism is not a question we will consider here.) This brings us back to what we have been talking about recently. You don't have to be an expert in economics to understand a simple thing: if the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer by the minute, something is seriously disrupted in the world.

We all want to live happily at home and enjoy security. Dr. Johnson, a famous thinker of the 18th century, once said that the main purpose of all human actions is "to live happily at home." However, in the Western world (and not only in it), families too often break up and domestic life collapses. The noble art of love – the ability to be meek, kind, empathetic, thoughtful, generous, humble and forgiving – is out of fashion today. Ironically, everyone claims their "rights" with such persistence that they lose the main "right" of a person, if you can call it that, or his main aspiration and hope – to have a peaceful, stable, safe and kind home where you can live, be yourself, learn and grow.

And people are asking the same questions. Why does this happen? Is it inevitable? Is it possible to correct the state of affairs, and if so, how? Can the world be saved? Can we be saved?

And we are surprised: how strange it is that everything is so bad. Why do we always want to fix our lives, but we fail? And the strangest thing is: why do I, knowing what I should do, often do not do it at all?