Maria Kondratova. Reality as a Rorschach test, or Interpretations of one fire

Reality as a Rorschach test, or Interpretations of one fire
Based on one forum and two cups of tea

Maria Kondratova

Publication date: August 30, 2000

This story has at least two layers: “dense” and “thin,” to use the terminology of self-taught occultists. Two paradigms, two realities.

The first reality is practical: equipment burned out, the functions of a number of services were disrupted, people died. Inquiry, identification, search for the guilty and stoning of everyone else. Just like that, just in case. Facts and conjectures are analyzed, explanations and assumptions are put forward, but from under the strict clothes of a clear and completely Aristotelian logic, no, no, another, dreamlike, plane of existence will appear.

The Ostankino TV tower was a symbol. Not just a building that performs certain functions, but a sign, a myth of Moscow and Russia (like the USSR once), which has its own reality, like the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower. The Ostankino TV tower was a symbol. Her fire turned out to be a symbol in a square. And like any symbol, it gives rise to interpretations.

Once upon a time we had a single, common state system for everyone to interpret everything that was supposed to be interpreted. Now times are different, and everyone interprets Freud and Jung at his own peril and risk. As you know, the interpretation of a symbol says more about the interpreter than about the symbol, and psychologists actively use this when developing test systems: “Tell me what you think about when looking at this picture, and I will tell you who you are.” The country looked at the burning tower, and everyone had something to say. It is difficult to imagine a more successful group psychoanalysis session; the question is whether anyone can wisely use the information extracted from it.

In front of me is an open window with an online forum - not entirely representative, but still a sample. The discussion of the fire on this forum smoothly developed into clarifying the question “who is Orthodox here,” which confirms the idea that the “session” is coming to an end. However, at first there were very interesting statements:

Today something happened that was supposed to happen sooner or later. The TV tower is on fire. And it burns well. From Ochakov I see smoke rising, like from a volcano. In the darkness, at times there seemed to be a fire.
All these years, slop has been pouring out of the TV tower. And now it has happened - the crutch of liberalism is burning. This is the finger of God.
I wonder how Muscovites will live without TV drugs?
Can I repeat it? “We do not rejoice that disaster has befallen our enemies, but we rejoice that Thy justice has been accomplished.”

I've been around since August 1991 and didn't watch TV until March 1999. And then I started watching exclusively the news to find out the situation in the Balkans. I wanted to know about the dead Americans. But I only watch the news.
No one is forcing it - that's true, but everyone is watching. This is what surprises me.
Aren't they enemies? After all, the Union was disintegrating under their pig squeals. After all, they were the ones who called for reprisals in 1991 and 1993. They showed the shooting of the House of Soviets as an entertaining show. They encouraged people to vote with their hearts. It was they who charged society with anti-communism and liberal ideas. They instilled defeatism and pacifism.
So who are they if not enemies? The most natural.

This was written by a Jewish participant. His Orthodox colleagues echo him with amazing unanimity:

Let's pray for the salvation of people, if they are alive, and that no one else gets hurt.

And the fact that TV is closed is really due to business... it’s a pity only in Moscow...

And further:

The problem is that the tower offered drugs to weak people without any desire. Not everyone, like the Orthodox, decides to eliminate the TV box in their apartment.

The whole country was on the needle, and now the needle has broken!

And some people are worried about forebodings; for them, the fire is another sign of impending disasters:

A strange and troubled time - like before the beginning of time. A bomb exploded, the boat sank, the tower burned down... and silence.
Something must begin (soon is the beginning of the new Church year). But what? ...Like a faint pause before a storm hits.

Of course, these are, as they say, “extreme” statements, and although many remarks were made about the dead people and future costs, there were regrets about the destroyed building, but not a single voice was raised in defense of TV . They felt sorry for the TV workers who were left without work, they remembered the dead, but the only word “in defense” of the journalists was as follows:

Who puts on these shows? And who comes and says to the poor journalist: if you want another $5,000 in addition to your salary, then write this and so that later... And he sits and thinks... I just don’t have enough of this amount to move from the dorm to a more or less apartment, let him on the outskirts, but my own... and I’m already tired of this dorm... etc. So once, twice, then you want your own car, cell phone, etc. - and what in the end, what is the morality if such money pays? Just like that... And you...

I’m not kidding - this was said not as a denunciation, but in defense , and said by a person who does not belong to any confession.

Gentlemen, journalists and TV moguls, aren’t you scared? ...Are you still sure that you are sowing at least something reasonable and good, if the genre does not provide for the eternal?.. But the people into whose heads you are sowing this do not think so. And this is not about being accused by believers, whom you can turn into “religious fanatics” with one brave stroke of the pen and calm down at that. We have few believers, but non-believers, atheists, and doubters of all stripes cannot find words to justify you, except for a reminder of how bad it was under the communists (programmer from Australia) and references to “everything human”, which is not alien to you (see above). I have already written about how dangerous the absence of a positive image of power in society seems to me, but the negative image of television, and more broadly all media, is an equally alarming symptom.

The need for information is a fundamental human need. They will stop believing you, they will believe the Voice of America, and who knows who else. Both in the West and in the East, thanks to our immigration efforts, there are enough Russian-language media, and if there is demand, there will also be supply... After all, they also have ready interpretations of what is happening that are suitable for the mass consciousness. Here, the Guardian, they say, wrote: “The symbol of the Russian Empire burned down.” Some people are probably happy with this interpretation. Me - no.