Modern savagery is not degradation, but a return to origins

Dmitry Luchikhin, philosopher

Recently, there have been many statements about the processes of degradation of culture and morality, education and intelligence.

I am far from considering these processes positive in themselves, from the idea of "throwing culture off the ship of modernity", but I would like to share a couple of thoughts on this matter.

What is happening to us, as to a civilization, deserves to be called not degradation, but rather coming out.

To cover the whole process, I will start a little from afar.

In a certain period of the existence of our civilization, there was a fixation of a separate and different way of life of the aristocratic elite and society.

The elite, freed from the pressure of vital necessity, and following the cultural vector set by the Christian worldview, initiated, supported and, in fact, created a complex of cultural and moral ideas. And taking advantage of her dominant position, she simply imposed it on society as a whole.

And even after the collapse of the estate-class principle of organizing society, this learned normativity for a long time retained its position in the consciousness of the entire society.

Then what happened (in fact, is happening before our eyes) what we observed in a more local format on the example of Soviet Russia. 70 years of an unprecedented experiment in accustoming the individual to high ideals and behavioral norms disappeared immediately after the removal of the compulsion to them.

And under the husk of Soviet idealism, the face of that very Russian-like infantile commoner, from whom it was planned to raise a "new man", appeared. Adjusted for a changed lifestyle.

Exactly the same, in general, is happening in the world. Getting used to freedom and democracy allows one to throw off the obligatory mask of cultural behavior imposed by the social group of its creators. And it becomes clear that not decades, but centuries, during which the individual was "brought up", but in fact learned to imitate certain patterns of behavior and thinking, were wasted for him.

No, this is certainly an exaggeration. Even in the forms of ready-made culture, created on a turnkey basis, there were gaps for the manifestation of original activity. And in these gaps, development took place. But everything brought up, learned as a habit and tradition, falls off the modern individual like autumn leaves from trees.

And the second point. Most of the so-called anti-cultural actions do not so much reflect the real level of consciousness of their actors, but rather a reaction to the maintenance and approval of the educational format of culture. This is not so much a protest against culture as against cultural education.

And it would be better for us to puzzle not over how to return the love of the common people to the normative models, but how to promote the true development of culture, which is always the culture of consciousness, and which develops only in the process of the free and self-living activity of the individual.

P. S.

It is not about imitating behavioral patterns, but about the original construction of patterns suitable for their social environment, but realizing the same cultural intentionality.

This happens wherever the elite is separated from the whole, but retains the connection of common cultural intentions. Where there is no cultural gap, gap, or it is purely external, conditioned by opportunities, but not by meaning.

When culture is brought in from the outside, has no natural ties with the culture of society, it can only be imitated as a monkey.

For the eastern countries, where they tried to introduce European culture, this is obvious. And in Russia, the idea of the existence of Russian culture, which just does not exist, is confusing. And to imitate the models borrowed by the elite or the European colony - society could only like a savage putting on a jacket. Even having learned to wear it gracefully, he did not become a European because of it.

Original is here.