They do not keep up with civilization: why most people oppose progress

Marina Shapovalova, writer

Everyone is so surprised and delighted by the photographs of Kabul, Tehran or Baghdad in the late 70s: look, here are the girls in short skirts!!!

Yes, girls in short skirts. In the capital.

Do you have any photographs of an Afghan or Iranian village from the same years?

Can you imagine what you would see in those photos? Or suggest?

Of course, do not even hesitate: there you would see the 16th century.

Those girls of the 77th year in short skirts knew very well how the province of their country lives. And the Moscow students of the 50s knew where they had escaped from, leaving their villages in the Tula or Kostroma regions. They have escaped from the past. Escaped from having to marry a guy the neighbors saw you with late at night. After all, otherwise - an indelible shame on the whole family. Not like in the 16th century, no, but no later than the 19th.

And in some 1910 year, a rural resident of central Russia, who accidentally ended up in St. Petersburg, looked at the inhabitants of the capital as if they were Martians.

Water in communicating vessels should be at the same level. You can create partitions between the vessels by raising one, thin, level to the "20" mark. But if in the rest there will be "16" - "14", how long will the bulkheads withstand? And if it’s even lower, and the mass of water in them is an order of magnitude greater?

Russia a hundred years ago collapsed into the 17th century. On the standard of living of the bulk of the people: 4/5 of the population lived in the village. The bulkheads burst, creating vortex disturbances, then the amplitude subsided, and the overall level settled at levels close to the minimum,

Kabul, almost European in appearance, fell much, much deeper. The law of communicating vessels.

Don't blame the laws of nature. They don't have anything personal to you. Just remember: if you have 65% of the population living in the 16th century, 25% - in the 21st, and the remaining 10 - somewhere in the Neolithic, then the lucky quarter will not prosper for long.

You really want to move forward, at the cost of great effort you accelerate your step. But the general speed of the column is determined by the rearguard. No intrigues, no conspiracy, it just cannot be otherwise.

The problem of humanity is that 5 out of ten will not understand what it is about, and four will ask what to do with it in order to prevent a tragedy.

Despite the fact that the lines above are not scarecrows and not even a question, but, in fact, a completely unambiguous answer.