This is not a story about Switzerland. In fact, I know way too little about Switzerland to write anything of substance about it. But it was a little video essay about Switzerland I recently watched that motivated this post. It was about how it is increasingly difficult for Switzerland to keep up their legendary neutrality and whether they want to. And even though it was an abstract geopolitical topic, I found it weirdly relatable. Let me explain what I mean.
The Swiss unwillingness to pick a side in any conflict has made them the ideal location for any humanitarian organization that wants to be seen similarly neutral. They have very few enemies and need to spend very few resources on defence. Their reluctance to join international organizations has allowed them to negotiate deals that give them many of the same benefits without some of the responsibilities. And while this already hints at ways in which one might view this neutrality less favorable from the outside, it gets much worse. They were reluctant to allow European countries to forward weapons they had already purchased from Switzerland to Ukraine when the Russian invasion started. Russian Oligrachs keep a lot of assets locked in Swiss banks and, to this day, only a small portion of them were able to be frozen. It’s easy to see how this makes them look like war-profiteers to European countries.
But that’s not where the trouble ends, because at some point the US declared massive tariffs on Switzerland due to their big trade deficit. And, given in to European pressure, they have now allowed the weapon shipments to Ukraine, which is seen by Russia and allies as them loosing their neutrality. It really looks like their unique strategy which suited them for such a long time is starting to become more of a burden than a boon. And that is where I see a larger pattern, larger even than geopolitics.
Humanity is becoming increasingly intolerant of indifference. Where the middle ground was the most sensible place to be only a few decades ago, it is now under attack from both sides. If you try to remain neutral in a conflict between two parties, they will now both see you as colluding with the enemy through inaction, even if you are just trying to treat everyone the same. Most people will still agree, if asked directly, that all humans should be treated equally. But that quickly falls apart when you steer the conversation towards their enemies, whoever they may be. Everyone seems to have some these days.
And that’s what leads me to my attempt at explaining this phenomenon. It should be common knowledge at this point that the internet with its almighty algorithms rewards attention which is most effectively acquired through strong emotions. And hate is one of the strongest emotions humans can feel, so if you can convince a bunch of people of a common enemy, you have yourself a followership and by that a stable revenue stream. Getting people to like you is difficult, but getting people to hate a common enemy is much easier. And how do you grow your followership? By convincing the people who are already following you that your common enemy is actually so bad that everyone who doesn’t fight them is indirectly supporting them. Your followers will not only promote your ideology, they will actually pressure others into it.
Now contrast that with a strategy of neutrality. Trying to understand both sides of the conflict, avoiding any moral judgement. Who are you expecting to mobilize with it? What emotion are you aiming for? In the best case scenario, people will take some of the things you are saying out of context and either use it to argue their point or try to cancel you, but in the more likely scenario you’re just going to be ignored. You don’t build a passionate followership from neutrality. If you are doing it right and have high standards, you might build an elite followership of people who actually value neutrality, as I’m not claiming those don’t exist, they are just massively outnumbered. Because neutrality is not an emotion.
So here I am, arguing for neutrality while telling you how this is a terrible strategy to get attention, on a blog that nearly nobody knows about. There is an irony there, but at least it’s not inconsistent. Anyways, I hope at least you, the very few people who actually read this, understand how stupid the concept of an enemy is. A display of hatred is actually a display of ignorance. If there is someone who you might call an enemy, answer this question: how did they become your enemy? You’re not allowed to name anything that happened after you were already enemies, what happened at a time where you would not have considered them an enemy that upset you so much that they became one? Unless you’ve been involved in a childish conflict for so long that you forgot, you probably know this one. But what you almost certainly don’t know the answer to is this: why did they do it?
And I can already hear people screaming “No, I know that perfectly well, it’s because they are an asshole”. That’s not an explanation, that’s an insult. Nobody just “is an asshole”. What would that even mean? You might also say that they did it because they are “selfish”, “dumb” or “lazy”. I’ve got news for you: you are also selfish, dumb and lazy and so am I. Everyone is. That is not a good explanation either. I guarantee you, if you had enough information about what exactly happened, what they were thinking and especially how it made them feel, they wouldn’t be your enemy.
Unless, that is, the reason they are your enemy lies in the future. We must not forget that some people play human relationships like a game of chess. Obviously, you can also pick a fight with someone because you want something and fighting them might get you there. Punching someone to take their lunch money is the most primitive form of that, but there are more subtle forms that I’ll not go into right now. If that is the case for you, I have to tell you that I don’t approve of that and it’s certainly not what I would do, but as a nihilist I withhold moral judgement. There’s that annoying neutrality again.
You might think that there’s a third case here where your answer to the question from the first case is that your enemy is of the second kind. They started the fight. But being enemies does not have to be a symmetric relationship. It is absolutely possible to love your enemies and I stand by what I stated earlier, that if you fully understood what led them to pick a fight, they’d not be your enemy. The problem is that trying to understand this takes effort and you might be reluctant to invest effort into someone who is mean to you. But it’s actually the best way to make their strategy of picking a fight with you fail. If you refuse to fight them, they will not get whatever benefit they expected from fighting you. Instead they might learn something which is even more valuable.
Of course I make it sound easier than it is. Love is a difficult skill to master and learning to not hate is a significant part of that. But one quote that I don’t know the origin (not because I’m too lazy to Google but because it’s genuinely difficult to attribute) of perfectly explains the reason why you’d want to:
Holding a grudge is like drinking poison and hoping that the other one dies.
