It’s truly fascinating how productive one can be just staring at the ceiling. At those high hours of the night when the shadows in the corners twist in bizarre angles and presences are felt under the bed. A beguiling time to reflect upon recent events, if you ask this author. 

One such event is the recent US election. If one is in the political studies world, it’s impossible to ignore this occasion. They are, so to speak, politically unavoidable. The  I.R. concept of balance of power explains this pretty well; “The posture and policy of a nation or group of nations protecting itself against another nation or group of nations by matching its power against the power of the other side”. No one likes when their neighbour can wipe them out of existence, and when a country has the destruction potential of the U.S. it’s only natural that the rest of the world is attentively evaluating whether the change in government poses a threat. Power must be balanced to prevent expansionist ambitions.

Civilizations have risen and fallen to keep that balance, and even if there weren’t other international superpowers to keep each other in check, nothing is eternal. History keeps moving. Good leaders die and bad leaders rise, just to die again and the world keeps turning with the only certainty that nothing is permanent. The world is scattered with the ruins of empires that dared to think they were eternal. So in this day and age, when we have witnessed the fall of the Roman Empire, the emancipation of colonies, rise and fall of the Soviet Union, Hitler, Mao… leaders should start asking themselves “And then what?”.

Hobbes argued that humans are selfish by nature. We will always want what others have, hence the invention of private property, to protect us from each other. By this logic, and speaking strictly on military terms, countries will always want to expand, take over more land, more resources, more knowledge. And then some more. Why? Well, to have a better defense. To have a better military. And then what? Take more land and more resources, so you can improve your military to take more land. All in a never ending cycle of loss, death, and destruction. 

So let’s say one ends up with all that land and has oneself an empire. A great empire, like the ancient times with many different people who speak different languages and come from different backgrounds. How long until they decide they can’t live in harmony and they seek independence? It took the Roman Empire two and a half centuries to collapse. It took the Spaniards 80 years to lose all their colonies. The Soviet Union dissolved in three years. Nothing lasts forever. Even the ship God wouldn’t be able to sink was gone in two hours and fourty minutes.

So emperors, kings, presidents, dictators… they all put nations of innocent people through a war that brings death and destruction to expand their empires, which aren’t even going to last forever… and for what? Why would one sign off an order of invasion? To get back the territory that belonged to one’s nation in the past? And then what? People resist, people die, one wins, and after one retires or dies they gain independence back? And. Then. What?

We are ashes and to ashes we shall return. We are but mere specks of dust in the never-still sands of time.  We are the dots on the “i”s of the never-ending book of life. A never-ending story that won’t remember who won and who died, because eventually, humans will go extinct. And eventually, the Sun will swallow the Earth. And in time, the Universe will collapse and cease to exist. We are nothing. We came from nothing. We will go back to nothing. Everything is aimless.

So once we have clarified the answer to the question “Why?”, we can proceed to the “And then what?”. Our existence has no meaning because there won’t be anyone left to remember us, so what do we do with it?

We get to the very much dreaded fork in the road, for now, we have two choices. Choice number one; Nothing that I do matters, so it doesn’t matter if those innocent people suffer for my Great Empire which will collapse after I die and I won’t see it so it will give my life meaning and purpose and make me very happy. Choice number two; Nothing that I do matters, my Great Empire will collapse two centuries from now so it’s not worth putting innocent people through suffering and untimely deaths just for everything to stay the same. 

The logic of choice number one could easily be twisted into an “ah well, if it makes you happy that’s what matters” narrative, sort of when you apply to a degree your parents are not really fond of. However, it is key to distinguish that by pursuing their imperial ambitions, narcissistic dictators put millions to their deaths, while I didn’t cause anyone’s death by studying PPE instead of law. 

The logic of the second choice, on the other hand, might lean into an undesired fatalism, because if nothing I do is going to matter in due time, then why bother doing anything at all? Why bother existing? French philosopher Albert Camus famously portrayed the banality of this existential dilemma in his quote “Should I kill myself or have a cup of coffee?”. Living constantly harassed by the “and then what?”s is not an easy feat. But the answer lies, once again and leaving the possibility of a higher being aside, in the suffering of people. When the universe collapses, no one will be able to tell the difference between a world where you exist and a world where you don’t, but the people you interact with will know. The difference will be in them. Because maybe if you don’t get out of your house, you might never be able to get your medical degree which will mean you will never develop a cure for cancer and give a mother and her daughter more years together than they expected, making their experiences on this plain of existence far better. 

So a conclusion, while we might be tiny snowflakes waltzing to our demise in the middle of a snowstorm and we will melt the moment the sun comes out, it is worth it to brighten up a kid’s day by allowing them to build a snowman in the short time we are here rather than serve as someone’s early tomb in what will later surely be described as a mountaineering accident.