Not really the slaves, but children: what is the main difference between Russians and Europeans

Philosopher Dmitry Luchikhin drew attention in his publication to a very common misconception that is characteristic of critics of the Russian mass consciousness:

“In connection with the latest terrorist attacks in Austria, the facts that it was migrants who resisted the terrorists are again actively peddling. Their goal is to assert and confirm the multicultural canon that all people are the same (equally good), regardless of race, nationality and cultural affiliation. And the bad ones are everywhere and in everyone.

Unfortunately, this is not the case, and it is extremely unhelpful for us to engage in self-deception, even with the best of intentions.

Why not, I will try to show on the example of Russia. First, it is easier for reasons of moral right to judgment. Secondly, here the essence of the problem is not blurred by purely superficial, “decorative” features of cultures.

But first, as a side note, I want to note one more point. Even in that deliberately localized perspective, in which statements about the moral and ethical similarity of people, regardless of their cultural identity, look objective - they are not entirely accurate and honest. Within its framework, on the contrary, representatives of cultures with a collective form of spiritual normativity are statistically more often "good", that is, they actively follow moral and ethical norms. Actually, this was one of the most important arguments in Soviet propaganda, which emphasized the difference between a “Soviet man” and a man from the “world of cash”. Remember at least the early ABS. Unfortunately, this perspective does not cover the reality in which we have to exist in reality.

The consciousness of the Russian mass population has historically been called slave. In the vastness of the intellectual space, this term-definition began to walk long before we formulated the concept of manipulative statements. But he was precisely manipulative, deliberately offensive. His goal was to hurt in such a way as to make him pay attention, and deliberately disassociate himself, renounce some characteristic features, “natural” behavioral reactions and motives. "Squeeze them out of yourself drop by drop".

Not that the definition of Russian mass consciousness as slave was wrong, but it was inaccurate, rather diverting from the essence of the problem than focusing on it. This defocusing, seeking to strengthen oneself emotionally, on the contrary, created space for its refutation. "What kind of slavery if voluntarily - it's just a feature, uniqueness." And the distance from the essence of the issue made it possible to combine its preservation with decorative and purely rhetorical borrowings from the reality of the free world. To bypass the problem of incompatibility of the Russian “unique identity” with the concepts of individual freedom and individual rights.

There is no specific psychological mechanism of slave consciousness. All forms of life are based on a single basic logic. You can call it episteme after Foucault, or after Bibler - historical and cultural logic, but apparently you have to keep in mind that there are similar logical protoforms of different levels: from more general and long-term, to localized to the life cycle of individual cultures and ethnic groups.

And the social form of slavery reproduced in itself the general logic of patriarchal social relations between social generations. It not so much branches off from it, or is supplemented by a certain characteristic, but on the contrary, it turns out to be the purest, ideal image of the logic of patriarchy. If in patriarchal relations within the family and clan, there are actually intersubjective motives of relations that are more basic for the very phenomenon of rationality, and a potentially possible exit from the framework of patriarchy, into partnership - then in the social logic of slavery, slaves are children fixed in their child status.

That is, in a causal hierarchy, it is not patriarchal relations that are similar to slavery, but slavery organizes relations according to the logic of fixed patriarchy.

Therefore, it is much more correct to speak of a specific feature of the mass consciousness of a Russian, not as slavish, but as patriarchal. We do not call it slavish, the tradition of peremptory veneration of elders and patriarchs of the clan in Caucasian cultures.

Now let's take a closer look at the inherent attributes of patriarchal consciousness. In addition to the external readiness to obey the elders of the clan, and the social hierarchy inheriting from it, such a consciousness also contains a psychological reason for such readiness. Namely - the transfer of personal subjectivity and subjective will, as well as the associated moral system of assessments - in the jurisdiction of the senior in the hierarchy.

In other words, the patriarchal logic of consciousness does not provide for an individual verification of the manifested and directing will of the senior in the hierarchy for moral normativity.

We see a similar logic of perception in children of a certain age. They still have no idea about some kind of objective moral correctness. What the parents say is right for them. And precisely because. Sometimes the authority of the parents can be interrupted by the authority of another elder - for example, a teacher. But even then, the right is considered to be right not in itself, but only insofar as it comes from a source recognized by the authority. Actually, the Hitler Youth and the Soviet heroic pioneers relied on this archaism of children's thinking.

So, the problem of cultures and peoples that have not gone through the life experience of social self-organization, and therefore have not developed the "natural" models of behavior associated with this experience, is that, existing individually in the system of generally accepted moral coordinates, they can always completely switch to the patriarchal logic of perception ... That is why, remarkably kind and empathic in an individual and simply ideologically unbiased space, Russians so easily switch to support the most outright atrocities of their government. On approval of mass murders, justification of atrocities - committed in a space sanctified by authoritative "moral" normativeness. For the homeland, for the truth, for the prophet...

The problem of migrants from societies at the pre-subject stage of the development of collective consciousness is not that they are individually worse than Europeans. Sometimes they are statistically even better. But the point is that as long as they identify with their culture, they will always generate terrorism from their depths. They can always massively switch to the “pogrom” mode, in the case of “offended feelings” or a conscious force for “passionate influence”.

One cannot speak of any assimilation of cultures. Individuals can assimilate by renouncing their culture when there are few of them and "no chance". Culture, however, can either perish or develop to the subjective stage of consciousness. But the techniques and methods of naive multiculturalism least of all lead and help such development.

Naturally, an even more archaic, right-fascist ideology cannot be an alternative to “naive multiculturalism”. But the fact that it requires treating itself as a complex one, does not allow amateurism and a "proletarian approach" to its decision - this is already obvious..."

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It is interesting that psychoanalyst Yelena Kadyrova wrote about exactly the same problem some time ago in her blog, taking as an example a special case - the psychology of a Soviet person:

“Once again about the painful - about the Soviet paradise, which does not let go...

People brought up in the Soviet paradigm, yearning for that system of economic relations where there was supposedly no exploitation, and everyone worked for the common good, deny the fact of exploiting themselves by the system because in their inner world, at an unconscious level, the mental perception of themselves as grown-up children is conserved. Grown up but not matured. Children cannot believe that their parents and older family members are exploiting them when they are forced to go to school and give pocket money, and at the same time they are treated, taught and taken care of for free. What are the children's incomes, except for pocket money issued for good behavior and labor service? “The main thing is that nobody profited from each other, the people were brothers,” they nostalgic for the Soviet paradise, and indeed, the “children” were more or less equal in terms of their modest level of income and equally dependent.

The psychology of a child in an adult is essentially the psychology of a slave. The word slave is used here not in an offensive sense, but as a designation of an individual who has given up the burden of freedom and responsibility. What is harmonious at one stage of personal and social evolution turns into pathology at another. There are no advantages in the capitalist relations of Western democracies for those who want to stay in kindergarten for life; on the contrary, they threaten the existential cold of loneliness and insecurity in the economic jungle, offering nothing in return except freedom. But young children are afraid of freedom, they do not need it, they just need to be able to play and play within simple and clear behavioral frameworks and meanings, descended from above under the supervision of wise rulers who will take care, guide and distribute. The Soviet economic model implies the sacralization of power and the infantilization of the population as a basic socio-psychological construct at its core, and it is this construct that is the very roots from which only various modifications of authoritarian and totalitarian systems can sprout.

The current system is, from a historical perspective, an unviable chimera, born of an attempt to plant the Western economic and socio-political model on these roots. This model is inevitably rejected along with those people who welcome it, and the system is gradually taking on, albeit distorted, but familiar traditional forms with the difference that the government, which tasted the delights of personal surplus profits in conditions of complete impunity, preserving the old paternal rhetoric, is now shamelessly saving on their "children", and in fact powerless slaves, inflamed more and more, frightening the horrors of orphanhood (danger for the Motherland-mother from external enemies) and pumping up a sense of involvement in the greatness of the state organism. In the imperial model, the literal size of the state body is sacralized against the background of the depreciation of the small life of a particular person. This matrix is discussed in detail by me in the article "The Country of Matryoshkas". Here I would like to note only that, stating all this, it would be a mistake to make unequivocally pessimistic forecasts for the future, based only on previous experience, if only on the basis that each new systemic crisis has its own unique characteristics and its own historical context, and it means it opens up some unimaginable possibilities. Especially due to the fact that this local crisis of ours detonates an imminent global crisis of human civilization, which faces the threat of destruction and is sandwiched between a technological breakthrough and an existential-semantic dead end of the world of consumption. You can only jump out of these clutches and survive by rocketing to a fundamentally new evolutionary level of awareness and perception of reality. We are far from knowing how the current reality will be transformed into this beautiful, if only because we are only flying into this crisis at great speeds and with crazy risks".