Fear and illusion

Many of my acquaintances, mostly people of the same age, try not to watch TV, not talk about politics, and mind exclusively their own business. There are several reasons for such voluntary information isolationism, as they explain. Firstly, worries about what is happening greatly undermine mental health, since everything is meaningless, and it’s a pity to tear your soul apart in vain. Secondly, I don’t like the opposition because it is the same, for the most part, intolerant and sometimes vulgar. And why do you finally have to bang your head against the wall, fight at windmills in order to make those who don’t want it happy?

All this talk about the Russian people, who hate those who believe in them and worship those who despise them, has been going on for many years, and always leads to a logical dead end. It’s really impossible to understand this with your mind.

Probably, approximately the same shock gripped the naive populists of the 19th century when they went to educate the peasants, teach their children to read and write, working off the debt for their education, received as if at the people’s expense, and the peasants turned them over in batches to the police, as strange subjects, and therefore extremely suspicious.

“How can this be?” thought the populists, “We want you to live better, but you are sending us to hell.” It would seem like a paradox...

Today's young people who took to the streets “For fair elections” basically do not think about the people. They are simply disgusted and ashamed of the country in which they live and love. They suddenly became sick of listening to pompous nonsense, outright lies, watching outdated, boring and uninteresting people mistaking them for sheep and trying to manipulate them. They were fed up with the gopniks masquerading as “patriotic Russian youth”; it became unclear to them why they had to constantly scold the West, and generally quarrel with everyone. And when they simply spat in their faces, telling them a fairy tale about how four years ago two people agreed on the fate of the country for many years to come, they were rightfully indignant at such, even by their standards, prohibitive cynicism. This was clearly too much. And they suddenly became “angry” and “creative” overnight. And when they were publicly called “Banderlogs”, they began to defame them in every possible way and began to mock their symbols, they became even more angry. It is not so much that their indignant mind is now seething in them, but that their dignity and taste have been insulted.

But I’m not talking about this suddenly awakened youth, with whom I also recently had deep stylistic differences, and even now shares many things. But now I saw them in a completely different light. The part that left cafes and nightclubs to walk along the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg and cheerfully declare their different view of life in the country and the nature of things in general.

And I’m talking about that part of the youth, and the population of the country in general, of which, I’m afraid, there are many more: not so well-fed, not so educated, with their brains askew and aggression in their hearts. Out of habit, she considers only herself to be the people, opposed to the “idlers,” although she herself is often simply unemployed. Therefore, it is easy for her to offer to earn extra money from meanness.

This is the part of people for whom it is always more important to have their own tit in their calloused, worn-out hands than some ghostly crane. These are the majority of people in our country who have neither the need for initiative nor the ability to think independently. Only “class instinct”.

But instead of enlightening, it is they who are corrupted and this or that “people’s” elected official relies on them. The people want to be patronized - they will receive fatherly care, and when necessary, fatherly spanking. The people want to be told how strong, how warlike they are, how they will bend any enemy to the ram’s horn, and they are constantly reminded of valiant military victories, without worrying about their price - sacrifice is also included in the list of Russian virtues. The people do not like America, they envy it and are afraid of it - we will tell them about conspiracies, we will support their hatred, we will verbally threaten and defeat the overseas enemy. The people do not like the rich, we will join them in mocking and spreading rot on the “oligarchs,” blaming them and foreigners for all our troubles, inciting social and national discord, and all the time, promising to restore order.

In general, every time the people are in search of the next people's ruler, they are given some kind of simulacrum that imitates the people for clearly selfish purposes. This is such a vicious circle, and we have been living in it for many years, now rallying in war, now going into internal emigration, and now into binge drinking; we fight at weddings, brag that we can outdrink everyone, we don’t like the authorities, but we don’t stand in the way of them either. In general, we mostly survive, trying not to bother too much. We are not the first...

True, in this isolation, some kind of gap periodically appears - a strip of light is about to appear or dream at the end of the tunnel. And the illusion is born that in just a little bit the climate will change and the ecology will change. But the temporary anomaly is replaced by familiar weather conditions, and everything continues as before. The tunnel, with a ghostly light at the end, turns into the labyrinth of the Minotaur. Such melancholy takes over in these post-anomalous times, even a howl. And you renounce letting the illusion into your head, and hopelessness and fear are registered in your soul again.

How I would like to turn out to be just a skeptic who survived a previous life, a person whose brain turned out to be highly dependent on the lack of internal resource. And again believe in another fairy tale about the light at the end of the tunnel, which is still destined to pass. But many of us are infected with impatience; we want positive changes to occur during our lifetime, before our not-yet-blind eyes. We have waited and hoped too long. And tired of promises of a bright future. Yes, we are ready to rejoice for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. But for now, for every step forward there are two reflex steps (and now jumps) back, which, as is clear from arithmetic, do not provide forward movement.

Yes, I’m tired of my own whining and the constant premonition of, if not the apocalypse, then civil war. It is absolutely impossible to live in this state in Russia. Even more so for a long time. But a constant illusion is too painful.

This is how many people of my and other Soviet generations live - with fear and illusion. Now our illusion is hope for young people who are not constrained by the Soviet past. But our fears remain the same.

Here, in his speech at Luzhniki, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that the winner gene lives in our genetic code. Maybe. Maybe. Although there were different wars in Russian history, and they ended differently. (True, today no one seems to be attacking us, and it seems like a call for civil war). And yet, when there is no war, another tenacious gene of our people crawls into the world - the gene of fear. The same thing that forces some to sit at home, remain silent in front of their superiors, while others, on the contrary, are driven according to orders to rallies, forced to raise their hands at meetings, even to falsify election ballots.

It turns out that persistent fear, most often, remains with us when the next illusion quickly dissipates. And then everyone around us is frightening: some after March 4 are threatening with revolution and rebellion, others with repression. Stop scaring each other. Stop whipping up hysteria. Fear paralyzes the will and deadens the soul. And let everyone choose for themselves - to be afraid or to have an illusion. They still can't get along together. After participating in the “White Circle” flash mob on February 26, I again choose illusion