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“There are, after all, two kinds of growth. One proceeds gradually, allowing adjustments to environments as environments adjust to whatever’s new. Skillful growers can shape this process.

The other kind of growth defies environments. It’s inner-directed, and hence outwardly oblivious. It resists cultivation, setting its own direction, pace, and purpose. Anticipating no obstacles, it makes no compromises. Like an unchecked predator, an ineradicable weed, or a metastasizing cancer, it fails to see where it’s going until it’s too late. It sequentially consumes its surroundings, and ultimately itself.”
...
That’s the difference, fundamental in strategy, between respecting constraints and denying their existence.

--- John Lewis Gaddis. “On Grand Strategy.”

It's more about the relationship between external vs internal detection and control capabilities, rather than fundamental kinds of growth. The cancer example is particularly telling because during the early stages it can be dealt with relatively easily, while in a metastasizing phase it's almost impossible to contain, at least for now. The same applies to a chain reaction.

Putin delenda est

1. Be not thou envious of evil men, neither desire to be with them.
2. For their heart studieth destruction, and their lips talk of mischief.

Proverbs 24, 1-2.


For me personally, explaining Russia's war on Ukraine to religious people is much easier than to secular folks. Within a religious context people know by heart what evil is. You don't have to go into historical or geopolitical explanations about Russian/Soviet colonialism and ethnic divides. You just show that Putin is evil and he bombs maternity wards, hospitals and city streets. End of story.