To make a pause. A new global alienation awaits us

Alina Vituhnovskaya, writer

I noticed a significant increase in Facebook posts that people began to part with their friends, acquaintances, partners, lovers, etc. You can say that this is happening all the time, but still not so suddenly and in such quantities. And most importantly, this phenomenon has no rational explanation. And although it is not possible to go into the details of each individual case, the trend is quite definite.

Journalist Anna Narinskaya is perplexed:

“Tell me, have you ever had cases when friends just cut you off without giving any reason? That was the closest relationship, and then the phone was silent, but on the other side they did not answer, or they answer but so dryly that it is clear that there is no need to call this number anymore. Moreover, we are talking about friendship - not about everyone's love, where this happens and everything is clear with it.

I have had two such cases - both with friends, both in the area of my thirty years.

One is my university friend. Nearest. To which she ran when she quarreled with her parents (she got married very early and had a separate apartment with the possibility of spending the night), to whom she told everything. And she told me everything, I think. I helped her get a job. She lent me money. Ten years of different close relationships. And now - not a bell for a week. I called - I'm sorry, I can't talk. Once again - again. And that's all. Never again. "

She is echoed by journalist and blogger Alina Farkash:

“Lately, I’ve been told more and more about breaks in relationships. It seems to me that when I was twenty, I had not heard of anything like it. And now - from every iron.

It seems terribly illogical to me: if there are problems in relations, then they are solved by negotiations and joint actions, and not partings? What new information can you get after parting?

However, all my observations were from friends who were paused. And not with those who did it. Therefore, I can only assume that pause is offered in two cases:

1. when they want to part without dramas, gradually, cut off the tail in parts, including trying to get away from the abuser without suffering,
2. when they meet someone else, they want to try with this person, but at the same time keep the old relationship - just in case.

Other reasons do not occur to me. But in general, this is, of course, an extremely strange practice. How can you pause a person? Fold in the closet: you lie here a little and wait for me, I will let you know when you are needed. In general, "in our time, this was not the case" and I'm interested in talking about it! "

Obviously, we are dealing with the phenomenon of a new global alienation. And it seems that the old world of traditional relations will never be restored.

First of all, I associate this with the political and cultural segregation that took place before our eyes, caused by the Crimean issue. The society was divided into cotton conformists, opposition and internal emigrants, close to the latter. The atmosphere created over 20 years of new Russian authoritarianism has completely changed not only the former format of relations, but also the very anthropology of the local person.

If earlier it was possible and necessary to have dialogues between political opponents, Westernizers and Slavophiles, democrats and national-patriots, now they are so resolutely delimited that they will never converge. Society consists of completely different strata, strata, and cultural communities. Even the time in which people live is different for everyone. For example, the intelligentsia seems to have plunged into the 70s forever. Some stayed in the 90s. And the 2000s, in their global modern understanding, did not even come here.

Apart from purely political reasons, there are deeply existential reasons. We have been taught for so long and so much to be correct and empathic. A post-Soviet man, like Pavlov's dog, pretended to have learned and portrayed it for so long and diligently that he no longer had the opportunity to experience. To communicate, we need to spend too much energy, and we no longer have enough for ourselves.

Russian egoism stems here not from satiety with consumption, but from poverty, which deprives not only physical strength, but also moral strength.

And just as political and existential, the economic factor is important. The 90s, with their abundance of opportunities, gave rise to creative and commercial projects, and business contacts, as you know, are much stronger than others. Now, when the middle class is de-energized, business has been destroyed, one more important “assemblage point” has disappeared from people and an even greater atomization of society has taken place.

Taking into account global reasons, the culmination of the apocalypse of relations was the Infernal Prince COVID, who appeared as if the character of an evil fairy tale, so that its heroes froze, like the frozen snow queen of alienation Kayam. He became not only a trigger for the end of all kinds of connections, he gave an explanation to everything, that “devilish”, but logical detail that the whole structure lacked so much. Now we can stop communicating just because it is first of all unsafe. Thus, humanity again played a humanistic party, as it was accepted for all 2 thousand years of Christianity.

Summing up. A fatal confluence of three powerful circumstances took place. The first is the crisis of anthropocentrism, which includes all types of social ties and relations, as well as the crisis of self-awareness within the framework of a person's traditionalist ideas about himself. The second most important circumstance lies in the exhaustion of the modernist-postmodern potential of world culture with a general unpreparedness of mankind for a new information reality and, accordingly, a subjective identity based on it. And the third, turning point, resulting factor was the aforementioned COVID as a reaction, on the one hand, of the natural environment to the total ignorance of humanity's most pressing and acute problems, and on the other hand, the careless and negligent flirting of people with weapons of mass destruction, against the background of complete connivance in the field of global health care.