Philosopher: events in America are not the end of democracy, but its development to itself

Philosopher Dmitry Luchikhin made a very interesting analysis of the American events of recent days in his blog, noting “as you know, Biden declared his main task to unite the split American nation. This means that in the next four years we will be watching the most ambitious production of the famous fairy tale "The Fox and the Crane"...

Further, Luchikhin explains that there can be no talk of any decline of democracy either in America or in the world. On the contrary, the world is gradually, with retreats and mistakes, but still moving towards the triumph of democracy, to the moment when people finally understand that states are no longer needed, but only self-organization in communities that will control themselves from within is necessary. However, here is what he writes:

“The operation to remove Trump from the presidency is over. The "popular revolt" provoked by him put an end to even illusory chances of legal resistance. The intrigue, from the question of the possibility of retaining power, shifted to the question: will it be possible to sit out until the day of the official transfer of power?

The lesson of the Trumpaniad, which begins with the prologue of the first elections and ends with the epilogue of the latter, is in fact that the existing democratic mechanisms are no longer able to resolve social conflicts and confrontations.

The published materials show that analysts' attention is focused on specific manifestations of social conflict and conflicting positions, in which they are looking for its causes and opportunities to overcome.

But the real reason for everything that happens is the fact that a mass person, psychologically, is no longer ready to accept the need to submit to someone else's will and views alien to him, even if it is the will of the majority, even temporarily (for example, for four years).

The almost equilibrium distribution of supporters of conflicting positions does not create this problem, but only creates conditions for the utmost clarity of its manifestation.

The democratic background of the American tradition does not generate it, but only does not allow it to be veiled, disguised as the results of external influences.

This lesson is just one of many types of growing social tension, which is based on only one problem - the problem of man.

And until we begin to look for answers to it in its own contents, and not where it is more familiar and "lighter"; as long as we set ourselves the goal of finding a way to simply restore the usual social mechanisms destroyed by this or that social explosion; as long as we try to patch up our favorite and comfortable clothes, from which we simply grew up, the number of holes in our social “caftan” will grow exponentially.

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I don't think this is the end of democracy. Rather, it is her development to herself. As for the forms, the problem, in my opinion, is that when passing to a new way of social organization, a person does not immediately possess the necessary skills and abilities. Changing one thing, he relies on the constructions of the old. Having created stable forms of the new in one, it relies on them to replace the supports from the old.

In this case, humanity, which has passed from a situation of elite management to democratic self-government, has inherited a legacy in the form of rigid structures of state organization. Various cultural, social, and ethnic clusters of such structures have become hostages of their own rigidity.

For some time, the issue was resolved by pseudo-democratic mechanisms, where instead of self-government there was a situation of choosing the owner (the governing elite), and the opportunity to hope for his change.

Now, for various reasons, the willingness to accept defeat and submit to the winning choice has greatly decreased. Hence the strengthening of the tendencies of the most diverse separatism and the unwillingness to accept defeat when there is at least some chance of challenging it.

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I would agree that there will always be problems.

As for human nature, the roots of pessimism, in my opinion, lie in historical materialism. That is, on the assumption that it is the external conditions that shape a person. From here, by the way, and all the ideas that first presuppose the violent creation of conditions in order to get the corresponding individual at the exit.

In my opinion, this is not the case. And the era of slavery ended not because at first someone thought it was bad or not profitable, and then everyone got used to it and declared their habits a moral norm. It ended because, in the process of culture-creating activity, such structures were formed in the human consciousness, through identification with which the individual could no longer not notice the subjectivity of others and therefore, with a calm mind, use them just like animals or objects. And the marginal roadside was controlled by the law reflecting this psychological fact.

Therefore, efforts should be made not to forcibly create certain "correct forms of behavior", but to promote the development of the subjectivity of the individual, his personality. Natural development, under the influence of their own existential need. For example, those that legitimize actions under the influence of an existential need in society are taken out of marginality. They allow you to see and realize them as objective achievements and even advantages, etc.

And the consequences of such development, reflected in self-organization and self-being, do not even need to try to control, impose them, force them to..."