What is the difference between real materialism and socialist

Alina Vitukhnovskaya, writer

He's writing:

“Strange things happen to some of my acquaintances, one has become a fanatical Darwinist, the other (whom I consider to be the most brilliant person) suddenly publishes the book“ Notes of a Materialist ”. Maybe people do not need metaphysics and space, they want to poke around in the material mud? "

To which his interlocutor, a famous poet, replies:

“These are all victims of monstrous misinformation, which in turn is the result of inertia and laziness of mind. That whole generations are crippled is, without a doubt, so. Previously, this was done to keep Marxism-Leninism intact".

From these remarks, we can say with confidence that they are talking two Soviet people who imagine materialism exclusively within the framework of the Marxist discourse presented to them by Soviet textbooks.

Socialist materialism is such a squalid and stripped-down version of the materialism of the present. Its main function was to exclude the resource (money) from reality.

The Soviet people still believe in the magic of the word, like the logocratic formalists, the bureaucrats of the lower class, the dusty literalists. And the materiality of thought for them is only a way to reflect on the impossibility of making their own decisions within the framework of the meager existential "powers" given to them.

The corridor of possibilities for the post-Soviet Russian resembles a long and narrow coffin. And social lifts look like gallows!

The materialism that I present is the complete opposite of the aforementioned socialist one. This is rationalism, progressivism, accompanied by the tearing off of a pseudo-sacred veil from being.

As for the hysteria of Mikhail Boyko himself, its psychological background is simple to the point of indecency. At one time, he swallowed book after book, trying to isolate from knowledge some semblance of a life basis for himself. Whereas he himself, as an individual, did not possess this basis. A mess of Nietzsche, Weininger and Abramovich formed in his head. Mikhail seriously assumed that after reading the "rules of life" of the oligarch, he himself would become an oligarch, and after reading "Zarathustra" - a superman. But he did not become either an oligarch or a superman. That is why he cares so hypocritically about someone else's spirituality! Indeed, for this type of person, distributed spirituality is a guarantee that others will not get anything either. As I wrote "Nobody will get anything" - this is the Soviet, socialist analogue of the National Socialist "To each his own." The only way for insignificance to “endure itself” is to see social losers around, blissfully dissolving against their background. Therefore, Boyko is deeply in love with the "Russian world", literally soldered into the current gray time.

When a person is deprived of his own language, imaginative talent, personal imagination, no matter how educated he is, everything turns out to be the most vulgar rhyming "love and blood", a set of other people's epithets and pathetic platitudes. Such people can be called compilation officials, metaphysical swindlers. Well, the fact that they are graphomaniacs is obvious.

Nobody surpasses in this genre the Russian traditionalists, who are essentially the postmodernism rejected by them in their very apotheosis, because we can say about postmodern writings (as a rule about the worst of them) - we all already know, have heard, read.

To report Nothing New every time with an anguish, worthy of a Nietzschean tightrope walker over an abyss (here I will fall into vulgarity, but I can) - their eternal pitiful lot.

And their talk about death, which has set the teeth on edge, its cheap sacralization, "Yes, death!" like a fish skeleton, soon satisfied with the lust of latent criminals and beggars, the greed of imaginary greatness, choked by a sugar-great-power candy cock.

It is good that such narrow interpretations of philosophical ideas like Boyko's are only an atavism of domestic pseudo-intellectuals. We can also see sober, adequate opinions about ideas. For example, writer and anthropologist from Austin (USA) Vasilina Orlova writes:

“Alina’s message to the world is not a bare“ slap in the face to public taste, ”but it has a depth that allows it to be placed in the global, universal context of universals. Alina is an adherent of reflective materialism. Now they would say - a new materialism, widely represented by thinkers in the West (Jane Bennett, Stacy Alaimo, Susan Heckman and others), not tortured and learned materialism and atheism by necessity, but freely chosen from many worldview alternatives. In the space of Russia it is also a protest movement (“The more I hear loyal cries about spirituality, the more materialist I become”).

The author protests against the widespread understanding of "postmodernism" as a convenient scapegoat in circumstances where no one wants to know what it is, but many want to use the term as a ready-made negative label that does not really explain anything, but allegedly calls the negative phenomenon of the fragmentation of the intellectual space. She dislikes the sacralization of suffering and its elevation to a sugary pseudo-absolute according to the profanely miserable principle “Jesus endured and told us to”.

The human essence, the human being, unexplained by anyone, is radically free and at the same time immersed in the depths of contexts, it is part of the mechanisms built into it like the Delesian "willing machines". The task is to free oneself from this context, to realize the degrees of one's own freedom and lack of freedom.

What language we use depends on what we can say. Alina despises modern Volapyuk: "By the way, creativity is the antonym of genius, a kind of publicly approved pseudo-intellectual neurosis." The author demands the true greatness of a being in a world where it seems impossible, since it is hammered by a positive existence, scheduled by the minute and equipped with trainings and a variety of coaches who tirelessly preach about how to do everything from tying shoelaces to building interpersonal relationships. As a philosophizing subject, Alina opposes herself to the world as an ontological given, as she realizes herself. The final and starting point of her philosophizing: “But, of course, I judge in many ways by myself,” which is both a liberating and, in some way, a closing gesture. Since we are not Alina, and none of us can become Alina, we can only watch the unfolding of her thoughts.

In her test of philosophy, Alina Vitukhnovskaya is as defined and precise as in educating human positionality in the modern world. The beauty of style and the achievement of hallucinatory insights are not for her. "I would like to see a philosophy that puts a full stop, not an ellipsis." In this sense, both Heidegger and Sartre leave her feeling dissatisfied. They lack the "ontological steadfastness" and self-loyalty that Alina expects to see in a philosopher. Psychoanalysis of Freud and Fromm also does not bring the desired satisfaction, psychoanalysis is "pseudoscientific pseudo-humanistic populism."

In a context where myriad impostor coaches teach us the simple tricks of a positive life, be it “Discover Your Femininity” or “How to Become Super-Effective in Just 10 Sessions,” on the one hand, preachers of perishable spiritual discovery and state-sponsored spirituality. on the other hand, and, on the third, the classics of philosophical thought, which appear before us as some unrequited masses, from Hegel to Derrida, which it is not clear from which side to stick to modern Russian contexts, and, most importantly, why make such an effort, Vitukhnovskaya's book is an absolute counterbalance to these alternatives, as a peremptory attempt at deep penetration into the essence of things. "