In the shadow of the lampshades

The topic of lampshades has become very popular after Skybeda's recent opus.

However, I would like to talk not so much about it, but about why this kind of phenomenon, this level of polemic, discussion becomes possible at all.

I would like to talk about why these types of discussions are becoming more and more an integral part of our lives, why, in my opinion, they will expand and develop further.

To do this, you should pay attention to what actually affected this exchange of blows. But it was elementary ignorance, lack of education and etiquette, and all the shortcomings of our humanities education that affected us.

For several days now, the difference between Nazism and communism, the SS and SMERSH has been explained to Gozman and his supporters, and the rules of journalistic and human ethics have been explained to Skoybeda.

Thank God there is still someone to explain.

Soon, judging by what is happening with humanities education in our country, there will be no one to explain. There are no people capable of grasping the nuances of differences between ideologies, no real ethicists, not in the Harrisonian spirit.

Living evidence of the impending deficit, when there will be no one to correct or stop, is the story going on in the background throughout the week with the Faculty of Philosophy of the Russian State University for the Humanities, which was denied budget places for applicants (later it turned out that the same fate was in store for six more areas of training in this university), a story that can be seen as a symbol of the ongoing collapse of humanities education throughout the country.

But it was with a humanitarian turn that the spring of young Russian democracy began.

Do you remember how in the late 80s and early 90s they started talking about the catastrophic situation in the humanities, because then they started talking about Ivans who do not remember their kinship? Do you remember how the biting and ominous word “mankurt” came into circulation?

And then there was a revival, a magazine boom, an explosion of incredible interest in Russian history, in philosophy, religion, sociology, political science, and culture in general.

But two decades have passed and we have results that are even more disastrous than those with which we began our path to humanization and humanization.

Why?

Maybe because they started from the wrong place, maybe because they took the wrong path, maybe because, like Bouvard and Pécuchet, chasing an abundance of knowledge, they did not acquire the main thing - the idea that humanities is a system and the humanities not only overthrow dogmas and norms, but also establish new ones in the process of knowledge?

That's probably true.

But besides this internal reason, there was also an external one, which catches everyone’s eye. In these recent years, they have forgotten not only that the humanities are a science, but also that they exist at all. The sphere of the humanities has become an arena for the clash of ideologies and economic interests, indifferent to questions of truth, to the significance of the issues under consideration for the individual and society. But most importantly, the humanities have become poor Cinderella even in comparison with the not so rich natural disciplines.

The logic of the market, economic interest - all this has placed the humanitarian sphere in unequivocal ballast from the point of view of accounting efficiency, and we are seeing the results of this with our own eyes this week. The Gozman-Skoibeda controversy is a foreshadowing of future large-scale clashes and civilizational conflicts, generated by poor knowledge of history, culture, poor understanding of the essence of social consequences and ignorance of “how our word will respond.”

The state adopts numerous decrees and programs aimed at establishing peace and harmony in society, preventing interethnic conflicts and interethnic strife, and the Ministry of Education does its best to prevent this, taking a course towards the destruction of the humanities that contribute to the growth of this mutual understanding, destroying the sphere responsible for integrity society and the development of its culture.

Society is amazed at the level of Gozman-Skoibeda polemics, but I am not at all surprised by this, because judgments of this kind and such a volume of knowledge, such a level of culture of discussion are common for today's students, for whom the entire understanding of the richness and complexity of society and culture fits into pitiful scraps, which they were able to submit within the framework of the number of teaching hours shrinking like shagreen leather every year. I am not surprised either because I see well what the general level of mutual understanding and mutual communication is in a society that has lost all idea of ​​etiquette, morality, the commonality of norms, traditions, culture, and whatever, in general, that they exist.

We witnessed a verbal skirmish in which there was someone to pull back and someone to separate and explain. For the future generation, cut off from their own culture by the accounting efforts of the Ministry of Education, there will be no one to separate them, and the skirmish will be with sticks, not verbal. If the reduction of the humanitarian sphere continues, great upheavals will invariably await us, and not Great Russia.

Therefore, now we are faced with the question of how we should live further: in the shadow of lampshades or in the light of truth?