Taibai show: Confucius in the yard

The classic likened the life of the theater, and the actors people. Now the opposite is true: the theater has become a life, and the actors portray people. I want to share my impressions from two very different public shows in Taibe, the capital of Taiwan, not going to moralize about them. Let the reader himself judge the conflicts and strange clutches of modern life, revealing in them.

*

According to the old peasant custom, Taibay wakes up early. At dawn, the city is filled with chirping scooters, a rumble of Bazarov and the cries of merchants selling food for breakfast. But every year on September 28, on the Street of the Big Dragon in the old center of the Taiwanese capital, sounds unfamiliar to modern man are added to the usual city noise. They come from the confusion temple located here. Their exotic orchestra emits, which consists of a set of stone plates - lithophones, dozen bronze bells, gong and a large drum. The orchestra performs a ritual or, as it used to be called, "exquisite" music of antiquity. No soulful marches and exciting melodies are only a dry series of notes that indicate tone and rhythm, accustoming the listener to listen into a “pure sound” and so educating the sensitive peace of the spirit in it. A modern neurasthenic person, accustomed to a drunken-horsepower sensations, such musical asceticism will probably be burdened. But the moment obliges: metal and stone are singing on the occasion of the birthday of Confucius - the first sage and exemplary teacher of China. And dancers built in neat rows in silk robes, with axes and shields in their hands, perform the ritual dance of those ancient times. The dance is simple as ancient music: a step forward, backward and to the side, a restrained bow. After all, the point is not in entertainment, but in the correct performance, which, of course, requires the correct spiritual state. After the dance - sacrifices committed in the same solemnly -sustained manner.

Honoring Confucius begins very early - at the fifth hour of the morning. Also an ancient custom, in its own way practical and wise: who wants to be healthy and rich, should get up early. The audience with the emperor also began at dawn: power is people with the radiance of a daylight. And theatrical performances could go at night even in the absence of the public, because they were intended not to people, but to the gods. The thing is that in Old China the performance did not separate from the ritual, and the audience is not required for the ceremony. More precisely, the participants in the ceremony are its spectators, they act and observe their actions. After all, the solemnity of the ritual stems out of a sense of human connection with the eternal in himself and, therefore, his connection with the deceased ancestors and gods, with the eternal beginning in all people. This unity of people and gods, living and dead cannot be shown or prove, can only be testified. In essence, it is certified by the experience of the mysterious mirror of being, which is given to us before the consciousness of our own "I" appears in us. In this experience, no one conveys anything to the absolute meeting, but everything is transmitted. The ritual is a symbol of such an absent connection. In it and thanks to him, life is recognized as a decorum of inner truth. The festival of the memory of Confucius or the theater representation (which in China was thought not as a spectacle, but as a game, pure action) can go in the dark and without spectators because they certify the inseparability of the internal and external in the initial, inaccessible reflection of the glimpse of consciousness. No wonder the Confucian tradition demanded that their adherents eliminate bad thoughts before they appear in the mind. “Do not do anything bad even in the dark,” the ancient Confucian commandment says. (It seems that she reaches us in the form of pseudo -confusion sayings about the difficulty of searching for a "black cat in a dark room").

Modern researchers disassemble “Confucius Teaching” on the bones, but for me the key to understanding Confuciev’s heritage does not give the theory, but two simple facts. Firstly, Confucius did not write books, but only spoke out for various occasions: he clearly valued by direct communication more than abstract intelligence. Secondly, Confucius appreciated rituals and objects that related to them: robes, regalia, musical instruments, sacrificial vessels, crews, books. Moreover, in Confucius itself, his students and descendants attached a completely exceptional significance to his personal things and manners, in general, a way of life. The ancient historian of Sima Zyan, four centuries after the death of Confucius, wrote: “I visited the teacher’s homeland and saw his chambers, his chariot and clothes, his vessels for sacrifices and academic husbands who made solemn rites at the lesson hours. I was full of favor and could not force myself to leave this house. Among the lord of the world, there were many people whose glory died with them, and memory of them, and memory of them, and the memory of them, and the memory of them. About Confucius that he wore a dress from the canvas, for more than ten generations is lovingly for now. From the philosophers of European antiquity, only thoughts remained. Their dwellings, things and the graves themselves have long been forgotten. And in the homeland of Confucius in full safety, his house is full of old things (now it is not so important, genuine or not), in the cemetery of the genus Confucius, an honorary place is allocated to his grave, there is a complete genealogy of the descendants of the sage, who, by now, are spread out in the world of no less than three million people! By the way, a new edition of this genealogy is being prepared, where it is customary against the custom, but in the spirit of the present time all women of the famous kind will be included.

What does this love attention mean to personal things, character, and human behavior? We are talking about objects as unique and unique as life "cases" that encourage us to speak, and, moreover, say something new. In this enduring originality of things and an oral word, a unique person is captured. The truly human world is infinitely diverse. Therefore, a person cannot be invented. It can only be opened. In the person of Confucius, a man in China first discovered himself, met himself and ... remained forever. And this living person who discovered himself, a heart -to -hearted person cannot remain (C) without a culture that claims everything unique and peculiar. The literary form of the Confucian tradition, by the way, accurately reproduces the dilution of the secret and ornamental in ritual action. Its core is formed by laconic aphorisms, which, as it were, complement, ornamentate historical jokes. The former indicate the truth of internal experience, the latter - to the phenomena of life as a decorum of the secret truth of the spirit. One is implemented into another, and their continuity denotes the moral transformation of life.

Although the celebration of Confucius does not imply third -party spectators, but should be accomplished in the depths of the heart of everyone, it is not devoid of political connotation. Under Homintan, the anniversary of the birth of Confucius was an official holiday, and on this day all teachers were honored on the island. The new government who came six years ago canceled this holiday. Now accusations of incompetence, corruption and neglect of public morality are pouring on her. There is no criticism in this stream, no, and the name of the first teacher of China will pop up. On the eve of the holiday, Confucius called the newspaper close to the opposition circles one of the reasons for the growing fermentation in Taiwanese society by the disrespect of the current government to the memory of Confucius. But the Taibay administration, controlled by the opposition Homintan, conducted the current celebration with a special scope and supplemented it with an international conference, which fans of Confucius from almost all countries of the Confucian range with the exception of the PRC. The spectacle in its own way is curious, giving a rare opportunity to observe a special, supernational human type, packed with Confucianism. This is the type of scribes-erudite, pale and dried up from scientists, but the steppe and courteous to the impossibility: the step does not step without an apology and bow.

He united the conference participants and faith in the universal value of Confucius ideas. After all, Confucius taught the art of human communication, and communicativeness is the key to success in the modern world. And if the current capitalism is strong in that it knows how to exploit human desires, extracting the income literally from nothing - from the void, the absence of the subject of lust with which the desire feeds, then Confucianism with its finely designed articulation technique and moral asuza is quite suitable for the capitalist structure of the postmodern era. The same Confucianism in a certain way typizes the social environment, facilitating communication and exchange. And today it does it on a global scale. So the celebration of the birthday of Confucius in the globalized Taibea is not just a tribute to the past, but rather a sign of aspiration to the future. Exactly on the covenant of Confucius: Wise is the one who "cherishing the old one opens a new one."

*

Recently, another political show has unfolded in Taibe, which, if they knew about him in Russia, would probably attract the closest attention of the Russian political bomond. For we are talking about a series of actions that are very similar to the "color" revolutions in the CIS countries. The reason for them was corruption scandals in which the relatives of the president and his wife were involved. The head of state himself was accused of misunderstanding funds from the special presidential fund. Violations of the laws and the sums of money around which the cheese-brow flared up, by Russian standards, are completely insignificant. But in Taiwan they are already playing according to the rules of developed democracy, unscrupulousness in politics is punished strictly. To begin, the president and his entourage were prayed for a long time on television and in the newspapers, and from the beginning of September before the presidential palace, an unlimited sitting demonstration of protest began (it is also called in Taiwan as a sedentary meditation in Buddhism: “late sit”). Participants in the seats - and they regularly gather for several tens of thousands of people - protest against corruption and demand the resignation of the president.

So, in Taibea, and even became part of the everyday routine what the authorities are afraid of in Russia like fire: an open, organized, morally motivated expression of mass protest against the ruling team. Such an event would be perceived as a voluntary surrender of power and would simply blow up the existing order. As you know, "in Russia they rebel not because the power is bad, but because it is weak" (V. Shulgin). For the Russian authorities, such speeches are as real horror, which just has no place in reality: either the Protestants will disperse on the first, by the strength of the second day, or the government will collapse in the same days. In Taibe, a democratic show of “horror endless” is presented, and both sides carefully avoid violence. The manifestants are sitting, the police are monitoring order, the president rules. In reality, life flows according to the established order. And in the virtual world of television parallel to her, passions are boiling, causing a burning, just all-consuming interest to the public. To whom you are coming these days in Taibe, everyone is watching a direct report on the course of a sedentary demonstration. The new political performance at once overshadowed the familiar television chewing gum of soap operas, Hollywood militants, guesses, competitions of singing lovers, etc.

Thinking about the reasons for the unusual attractiveness of the new show, the first thing you notice it, as is customary to say in the West, is a limous, threshold character. Sensation (namely: acute excitement) is the bread of television, this, according to the field of the Virilio field, the "museum of incidents". And the crowd, rebelled in the name of legality, is its best object, because it appears in it at the same time scandal and positive publicity. Both converges in the festive "overlapping" of reality, the discrediting of power for the sake of its justification. The president in this carnival has been prepared for the role of redhead. Six years from television screens, a charming, impressive, judicial master of the country did not leave. And suddenly, literally in one night, the favorite of the public turns into a general laughinghouse - a dilapidated, babbling something about respect for the man’s power. Truly, Sic Transit ... and in the camp of the protesters the "Creativity of the masses" is seething. As expected in the mass action, the Protestants have their distinctive color - they wear something red - and a distinctive gesture: the thumb turned down, which means the resignation of the president. The camera snatches one or the other face, correspondents take an interview from participants in the seat - monotonous to a headache. The spectacle requires all eccentric, extravagant, "cool": ragged faces, exotic robes, at worst, naive kids or eccentric old people will come up. The audience needs to be tirelessly warmed up and teaching. Singers and dancers revolve on impromptu scenes. In an atmosphere of anxious expectation of Mordoboy, the protesters themselves slowly but surely raise a degree of tension. Throughout the island, marches against corruption began, in which it does not do without fights, although the score is still only bruised. Newspapers relish the skirmishes of manifestants with the police. And as a curious apotheosis of protest: in the photograph in the newspaper, students of the local faculty of the Russian language keep posters written in Russian demanding the resignation of the president, and the requirement is supported by an unprintable combination of three letters. Is the Taiwanese crowd really cannot without the Oedipus complex and in the overthrow of authorities, all with the same hopelessness is looking for a father?

In general, a new political era began in Taiwan, when the focus of politics does not become the struggle of parliamentary parties and not revolutionary violence, but a quasi, even more precisely, formatted media public and, moreover, constant pressure on power. To which the government meets with demonstrative compliance, while retaining real management functions. The new political configuration seems to be satisfied with everyone: the public sees its strength, democracy triumphs, power remains power. And behind the new consensus, the reality of the screen, which, as it should be the screen, at the same time hides and reveals. He hides or, more precisely, replaces reality. He reveals something deeper than images, feelings or ideas, namely: the pure factuality of the transformation preceding individual facts, a virtual measurement of experience in which consciousness opens up to the future. Information technologies, grinding matter into energy, present the viewer with the revelation of immanence : the phenomenon of the screen is actually mating not with the outside world, but with the inner depth of consciousness, just as spiritual wakefulness is refracted into the decorum of the Confucian ritual. There is something in common between the unpertubicly-indispensable appearance of the king-ceremony and the indifference of the "digitized" world to a separate subject. And the viewer himself in telecommunications is completely conditional, because the all -seeing of the electronic eye is as ugly as it is phantom. A modern person is doomed to see what is not. Instead of the disappeared truth, he remains to look for entertainment and live expectation. For him, the very opportunity to realize the desire is more important than its actual realization. As all ascetics know, the refusal of pleasure delivers the purest pleasure. Auscase involves forever lasting ecstasy. Similarly, a moment of horror stretches to infinity on the television screen and becomes an ideal show - a perfect embodiment of emptiness. In a funny riot against the authorities, the means coincide with the goal, and (not) satisfaction is guaranteed regardless of the real result. The same Aporia of the Askza-Exstasis determines the tendency of the narcissistic crowd to hysteria and obscenity (in the Taiwanese case, however, extremely weakened). We will not discount one more circumstance: the screen of virtual publicity is able to mask the real and more insoluble contradictions in society, presenting them with phantom, symbolic decisions. The very appliance of the authorities indicates that the sovereignty has moved to the space of the electronic "picture", which suggests the presence of some silent, not subject to discussion of the consensus.

What contradictions articulates, but also symbolically resolves the new consensus of festive linearity ? The answer must be sought in the nature of modern capitalism, which creates new, even more sophisticated forms of equilibrium between self -restraint (ascetic modus) and self -liberation (ecstatic modus). The triumph of the amusing, virtual opposition is a payment for the stability of the global capitalist system and, in essence, certifies power. The main and most complex question of our era is whether genuine sociality is capable of, in a festive threshold, tearing over the edge of being, to oppose itself to one or another totalizing unity? Is it possible to choose between the screen of reality and the reality of the screen?