On Cancellation Culture and the Crisis of Humanism

Alina Vitukhnovskaya, writer

Russian society reflects more and more violently and sharply. One of the key themes of reflections is the fear of the abolition of Russian culture, behind which lies the fear of the abolition of statehood. Or maybe the main fear of a person is the fear of erasing one's own personality.

A post is actively circulating on the network that “there is no need to cancel Russian culture - we can handle it ourselves.” With a list of famous authors. That's it. Only "we" is "you", not "them". That is, not exclusively "tomato security apparatus".

It is you who have made the modern cultural field so unprepossessing, so dreary by promoting your own people. Everything bloomed here in the 1990s. But then, out of ten talented authors, ten were missed. And now - out of a hundred - one. And that one is untalented. There are exceptions, but they, as always, prove the rule. Neither belonging to the environment, nor the political position will not make you talented. Whatever you do, everything turns out to be a dull Oksimiron on repetitions, neuroses and pop injuries. Actually, you are not worried about Russian culture, but about your statuses and social preferences. And very noticeable and intrusive.

Many are now asking "Dostoevsky" questions, for example, "Is there a god"? If you think in terms of archaic ideas - in some way. If we consider the "god" of the evil demiurge, then everything converges. From the bowels of the inferno, the true underside of being crawled out, brushing off the pollen of culture and civilization, revealing itself in all its glory.

However, it is monstrously difficult and unnatural for me to express myself in the spirit of pronaphthalene, not close to me, modernist ideas. Therefore, I will say it easier. It is more correct to ask the question not “Is there a god?”, but “Do I exist?” This is where subjectivity begins. However, the true subject does not ask this question either. He knows what he is. And he does not need the metaphysical crutches of obsolete concepts.

One of my subscribers reflects on the attitude of Russians towards their cultural luminaries:

“When the great, by the way, no fools, Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz announced financial difficulties to help him, a lot of money was collected by the Poles in the shortest possible time, with which he was able to pay off his debts and buy himself an estate. Nothing is a pity for you, just keep writing, dear. Periodically, I recall this incident and compare it with Russia's attitude towards its writers and geniuses.

Tolstoy's anathema, Dostoevsky's death sentence, "mercifully" commuted to penal servitude, Pushkin's duel, Lermontov's exile to the Caucasus, Gogol, Turgenev and Herzen, who actually escaped, and then Kuprin, and Bunin and many others, Mayakovsky and Vysotsky, shot down by the system, Gumilyov, who was shot , the suspicious death of Gorky, Mandelstam tortured in the dungeons, Brodsky, Solzhenitsin squeezed out ... The list can be continued for a very long time.

The same British have killed one Wild over the past couple of centuries and this is still a reason for sadness, while Russia is a generous soul, it is not a pity for anything or anyone. Some nations are proud of their geniuses, others squeeze them out of the world, caressing and containing only nonentities who do not torment their sleeping consciousness with an unpleasant truth ... "

We observe and state absolute cynicism against the background of highly spiritual declarations. Therefore, I have no faith in the local moralists. I do not believe them even now, when they are proclaiming a new humanism with which they are going to exterminate the newly appeared evil. The sacralization of evil and belief in good intentions are equally dangerous. Both "fascism" and "humanism" are two elusive modernist chimeras, the struggle for (and between) which drags you into the abyss of historical non-existence.

I'm not worried about "cancellation of culture". For for me there is only one true identity - subjectness. Correspondence to my “Self" is my identity.

What I can’t stand in certain circles is the so-called “internal emigration”, the rejection of political discussion in principle (“I’m out of politics”), the rejection of social benefits-privileges, yes, yes, that’s exactly how positions are surrendered under the guise of highly spiritual detachment. This is how freedom was surrendered and the situation of political regression that we have was formed. That is, the current situation was created not only and not so much by "enemies" - as a rule, completely popular figures, but by such quiet people with their ostrich policy of non-intervention and non-resistance to evil by violence.

Deliberately declaring one’s “non-involvement” with a sort of easy challenge (“I continue to post cats” and “if you want, unsubscribe”) is nothing more than a mild form of deviant behavior. So common in our area that it has long been seen as the norm. Pseudo-intellectuality plus the Asian slyness of those who flaunt their "wisdom". Wisdom is here nothing more than a frozen mind, paralyzed by inertia, conformism and sticky animal fear.

Quite ineffective, even counterproductive, is the political language of the domestic intelligentsia. The language of the intelligentsia is not the language of intellectuals, something quite the opposite. Medusa, sluggish, spineless, flowing, illogical. From this point of view, Novikov's thrash trick is much more relevant, even if this is a kind of neo-Trumpism in Russian. In politics, as in literature, the most important thing is to feel the relevance, timeliness, modernity. I am skeptical about this style. But Novikov's appeal to Solovyov is wonderful. This is such political humor. Hard option. And the chanson itself is not so bad. Where really "Russian rock". But, of course, such a sloppy rollicking discourse. Whoever thinks clearly, he clearly states - this is just about chanson. About the conditional Circle or Novikov. Normally explained for Russia. Well, certainly better than Dugin.

The simplest explanation for evil is madness, mental failure. Society begins to doubt the fidelity of psychiatric science, because through its prism it could not determine the emerging social disease. But "social psychiatry" is not built incorrectly. The very humanistic conception of a person, through which you looked into that very abyss through rose-colored glasses, is built incorrectly. First of all, it is necessary to reconsider the very concept of a certain common person, which simply does not exist.

Ordinary crazy people can be identified by some unpleasant vibes emanating from them. Nothing comes from the current ones, the postmodern and the resource washed away all sorts of smells from them, removed all energy. Socialization is the greatest boon for the individual. But only in normal society. In the abnormal (socialist), where it was suggested that socialization is the only way to adequacy, the individual as a result was deformed beyond recognition. And he turned into a depersonalized psychotic, a neurotic, an object with an almost completely erased "Self".

As a result, we have a society of lunatics who managed to hide their madness only by playing social roles as part of their daily routine. When the routine disappeared, social masks began to move sideways. And we saw the man as he is. This is the terrible face of the mass unconscious. Only a complete rethinking of false concepts through the mechanism of subjective awareness can change it.