"Politicians prevent people from being people"

Anthropologist Konstantin Bannikov about the Archaic Syndrome and the Fascism virus

Anthropologist Konstantin Bannikov told The New Times about the “archaic syndrome” in politics, the fascism virus and the advantages of traditional cultures

Konstantin Bannikov (born in 1969) - anthropologist, doctor of historical sciences, author of works on cultural anthropology. Member of the European Society of Social Anthropologists, Head of the Center for Anthropological Research ARC (Helsinki), teacher of the Center for Social Anthropology of the Russian State University and the Department of Sociology of the Higher School of Economics. The author and co -author of scientific and popular books about peoples and cultures, including the monograph “Anthropology of Extreme Groups”, the encyclopedia “Peoples and Religions of the World”. About cultural anthropology, Russians, as a people who have experienced the experience of total control, regime restrictions and prohibitions, have such a syndrome-it seems to us that the most interesting is not here and now, but somewhere beyond the horizon, abroad, where there is something else, we are still unknown. Here, people stood for the belt of the Virgin for days, because it was imported - he came from transcendental reality, like jeans in Soviet times. And our “domestic” belt of the Virgin lies in the temple of the Prophet Elijah in Understande Lane - there is never anyone there. Cultural anthropology is a science just about this “something else” in the man himself, and there is no limit to this “something else” in us-neither towards greatness and reason, nor towards baseness and absurdity. About political culture and desocialization when the first image that comes to the mind of the president of the country at the mention of the opposition is a condom, then such a political culture is semiotically no different from the sign-physiological system of relations in the particularly. Only, unlike the baboons, is this a sign of not intellectual advancedness, but on the contrary, the manifestation of the “archaic syndrome”, which I consider to be a consequence of desocialization. In the process of socialization, a person learns the codes of cultural behavior, joins culture. And in the desocialization, which can be associated with stay in a closed society with a special regime (army, prison, etc.), this culture flies from it like pollen. People have to interact on a new basis, when not morality and ethics are relevant, but basic cognitive structures - what Jung called the archetype. There are no anthropologists among the presidential PR managers, so they come up with a PR program, looking at which an anthropological look, you understand that politics is built on archetypes. For example: Well, let's say, who is a shaman? This is Superman, competent in the world of living and dead, people and demons that connects three worlds - lower, upper and medium. The shamanistic costume carries the appropriate symbolism - to the lower world can send the tail of the snake, to the upper - a hat with feathers. Now let's remember how they spun the same Putin. So he flies in a pilot in a pilot’s helmet, then he is in a submarine, even later-in a dressing gown, zootechnics jamking some kind of silage. As a result, a composite image of a hero competent in various fields is created. If we put the pictures one on another - Putin in a dressing gown, in a pilot’s jacket, in a suit of the submariner - we will get the same shamanistic suit, carrying the symbols of the three worlds. "

People need sacred feeling, and Lenin is this or the Virgin - what's the difference

“Of course, this is an effective technique. The law on advertising, as you know, prohibits the impact on the subconscious, and political PR is often built entirely on this impact. How to mobilize the nation on any atrocities? Not only Stalin shot millions of people and wrote millions of denunciations. Culture is a rather fragile thing. Desciousization is subject to entire nations. Say, Russian people - Russian people - Russian people - Russian people - Russian people “The God-bearer”, but this God-bearer did not protest against the desecration of relics, the destruction of the temples. All the holy relics were replaced by myself in the mausoleum - my mother dragged me for six in the morning, and the line is now behind the Virgin Mary. On xenophobia, nationality is a “foe” marker, and it works in political technologies as an effective manipulation tool. All rhetoric, based on xenophobia, is a deeply unconscious thing, the so -called phylogenetic phobia. For a primitive person, this is a protective mechanism - you are the first to attack a stranger so that he does not attack you. Fundamental phobias are actively used in politics. But, as Thomas Jefferson rightly remarked (thanks to the scandalous Twitt Irina Rodnina, this is his statement now on hearing): “Intelligence is a disease generated by ignorance.” In addition, xenophobia is a mechanism of negative identity: to realize yourself, you need to surround yourself with antipodes. In regime communities - in the army, in prison - these are lowered, unaccounted caste. Here is the law on the promotion of homosexuality - the very factor of the enemy, mobilized for the formation of identity. The Kremlin is trying to find mobilization tools for the lack of real policy, ideology, legitimate power use phylogenetic fears. About the resources of humanism, every new round of humanization is preceded by a round of humanitarian disasters. Now about the rights of the child is screaming in those countries where gas chambers were working in full swing in the memory of the current generation, pogroms and murders were carried out. The modern humanistic state of society is a reaction to understanding the horrors to which humanity, as it turned out, can slide down even in the twentieth century. Humanity is painful, we have a virus of fascism that can develop into a disease. Even political correctness can be brought to the extremes of fascism - you slapped a child, you are put in prison, the child is sent to an orphanage. A great idea of ​​protecting children turns against children. "

A person is able to participate in the most terrible atrocities if his morality from one system was transcoded into another

”Fascism is a primacy of the system over life, when life with all its shortcomings is trying to drive into an ideal scheme when society becomes mechanistic, and the ideal screw for this system is a respectable burgher: he went to work before the war, and now he goes to work during the war, only now he works in a concentration camp. A person is able to participate in the most terrible atrocities, if his morality and virtue from one system have been transcable. In the other, there was, say, Christian ethics, became the “moral code of the builders of communism”. It was a time, and the anti -fascist movement consisted of those people who built their system of values. About the norm and deviations, I think that the desocialization is a universal problem, which, incidentally, is described in the book of Philip Zimbardo, Lucifer Effect. It tells about the “Prison Experiment”, which was carried out in Stanford in 1971. The most ordinary young people were invited to participate in a role -playing game - some played the role of prisoners, others - jailers. The experiment soon had to be stopped, since its participants entered the role too much. A person, unlike animals, can exist in any ecological niche. But a person without culture, without a virtual program, which is a culture, will not survive in nature - this is an animal that is forced to study in order to exist. Those who learn him will be - he will learn his wolves, like Mowgli, he will be a wolf, will master the system of life support in which he was brought up. Nature took our tail, deprived the claws, and we adapt to the globe and even to space thanks to culture and information. A man without culture is not even an animal, he is nobody. The ability to kill your own kind, and moreover, to give your own life for an idea is a consequence of our virtualization. A specifically human instinct of self -preservation should be called the instinct of harmony of meanings. "

The desire for an ideal person, which is described in utopias, attempts to embody them led to the fact that a monster woke up in a person

”All cultures exist in some kind of scale where there is a law or order, but there is a deviation and deviation from the norm. There are cultures that do not imply a deviation from the norm-such is a German culture. Now, say, it is supposed to repent for Nazi crimes-there are all cultures that suggest deviations-Dutch, Swedish. In some, the norm does not exist without deviation (French) or a deviation of The norms are accepted (Italian), there are crops based only on deviations (Russian). We are sure that you will not go anywhere. But, as we know, two such polar, seemingly people, like Germans and Russians, were able to carry out humanitarian disasters in the twentieth century. And in the confrontation of two terrible regimes, the more monstrous, which turned out to be capable of total mobilization, won - we were simply filled with corpses. About faith in humanity, one should not expect something supernatural from humanity-the desire for an ideal person, which is described in utopias, attempts to embody them led to the fact that a monster woke up in a person. When I see how the ordinary people of different countries and peoples are self -organized in the case of natural disasters, against the backdrop of the helplessness of state structures and the meanness of individual politicians, I understand that we have entered such a phase of history when politicians already interfere with people to be people. The most stable, most stable cultures are traditional. Reindeer herders on Yamal do not create conservatives, museums and libraries, but they do not create prisons, they do not produce homeless people. Any traditional culture produces ideal schemes for adaptation to the natural environment and to each other. This cannot be called morality - we are talking about the system of interpersonal interaction in order to continue human life. And civilization is an artificial thing, it creates an artificial environment, artificial laws, artificial problems, so it is unstable. Sowing with the Nenets in Yamal, I did not stop admiring them: they are completely organic. The inspector of juvenile justice would have committed suicide when he saw how children live there, but they are healthy and happy. This culture leaves no traces, but it does not leave garbage. Which lifestyle is more perfect? Our life in a metropolis is scattered into granules - the same person goes through different states during the day: he is a dog man, then a motorist, then a clerk, then an athlete, in the evening he is a loving husband and father - there is no whole person. And traditional culture is an absolutely harmonious sphere of people's existence - it is impossible to work as a reindeer herder, it can only be. Of course, life is changing in the tundra, and one cannot strive to preserve a living culture on the principle of Kunstkamers. If people want to spend the Internet to their yurt or plague, this should be maintained as much as possible. Support for the indigenous and small peoples of the world as self -developing and self -organizing systems should be considered as long -term investments, including because local cultures with their principles of ethical and environmental harmony, self -sufficiency, and life support can become rescue boats on the “Titanic” of our technogenic consumption civilization. Photo: Artem Sizov