When I first landed in Moscow I thought these infinite transformations the expression of a country liberated, pulling on different costumes in a frenzy of freedom, pushing the limits of personality as far as it could possibly go to what the President’s vizier would call “the heights of creation.” It was only years later that I came to see these endless mutations not as freedom but as forms of delirium, in which scare-puppets and nightmare mystics become convinced they’re almost real and march toward what the President’s vizier would go on to call the “the fifth world war, the first non-linear war of all against all.”
Peter Ponerantsev, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible
Forget about Russia for the moment. I’m not posting this because of Russia. I’m posting this because it shows where “pushing the limits of personality” and “infinite transformations” lead.
Short answer: nowhere pretty.
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