Are we people?

Until relatively recently, liberal citizens, united in their attitude towards the Putin regime, seemed to be a fairly united group, which at the time of Bolotnaya could be packed into paddy wagons, tried and sentenced. But with the Ukrainian Maidan, and then with the appropriation of Crimea and with all the subsequent events that happened in Ukraine, its solidarity began to crack. Both shallow and deep. This can be seen on social networks. Users became friends in droves, good acquaintances declared each other not to shake hands, and some Ivan-Ivanychs and Ivan-Nikiforovichs continued their relationship through mutual insults. And not because someone called someone a “gander”. Calling people names has become more common and stronger. The most common label is “fascist.” Another one is a “Bandera member.” And both sides are asking questions: why such anger? And what happens to us, to people?

After Odessa: are we people?

I don’t know whether my answer will be satisfactory and convincing, but I will try to give it to the interested public.

Wars without a front line

I’ll start from afar - with the famous novel by a Czech writer.

War with the Newts by Karel Capek is one of those books whose depth and insight have not yet been fully appreciated. It was written based on the brown misfortune, which Chapek reliably depicted in an allegorical form.

The first time I remembered Chapek’s salamanders was at the height of the terrorist war with Al-Qaeda and wrote an essay on this subject, the motives of which I will allow myself to begin by reproducing.

Then the striking similarity between the dark fantasy of the fiction writer and the reality of what horrified everyone already in the 21st century immediately struck the eye: the collapse of the twin towers in the center of New York.

Then general confusion reigned in the face of a completely unusual war - a world war without a front line.

Such human nature, an ardent champion of humanism! Who would have believed it! And it’s him, he!

Capek, in a novel dated 1935, talks about the same thing: “It was a strange war, if you can call it a war at all; the fact is that there was no Newt state or recognized Newt government to which war could be officially declared.”

It follows that that war was with hordes of amphibians emerging from the depths of the sea, and that this war was with suicide terrorists who had crept into the human race. If it is not something identical, then something similar.

Reading the novel again, you pay less attention to the parallels with the realities of the Hitler regime. Well, yes, the Newts are non-Christians, idolaters, they pray to Moloch... Moreover, they are non-humans, free from all moral obligations, spitting on all humanistic values.

Well, okay; in general, the analogy of other categories of people with animals is old, banal, superficial and simply worn out from frequent use. But what seemed relevant to me in the book at the very beginning of the 21st century was the parallel of amphibians not with ideological Nazis who consciously sought world domination, but with unprincipled terrorists who rebelled against human civilization.

In charge of the salamanders that were tamed

So what's up with Capek?

Captain van Toch was quite friendly towards the lizards from Devil Bay. These salamanders are cute, nice little animals. The captain tamed them. And, feeling responsible for them, he taught them how to defend themselves from sharks. At the same time, he found a job for them - getting mother-of-pearl shells with pearl balls from the bottom of the sea. Thus, the mechanism of humanizing a rare animal population was launched.

The engine of the process is not the social revolution, not communist ideals, but His Majesty the Market. The captain supplies the salamanders with tools of defense and labor, and they supply him with pearls.

Gradually, the most capable are given an education. In special institutions they are taught to read, write, and count. They learn languages ​​and reach the level of the average European in development.

Salamandermania is spreading in culture, which does not prevent the manifestation of salamandrophobia in the lives of ordinary people. Attempts to baptize salamanders appear. A movement for the rights of salamanders arises. Humanists enthuse about the civilizing significance of progress rushing into the depths of the sea. But the newt civilization has its own fundamentalists who vehemently opposed the general trend of humanizing their fellow tribesmen and advocated loyalty to their animal nature. And when it seemed that the salamanders fit into the market structure of the world, the first terrorist attacks occurred. In the Cocos Islands, a case was recorded of a gunboat being blown up by a kamikaze salamander. People responded with retaliatory blows.

War became inevitable. As, indeed, is the defeat of the human population. Including moral ones.

There was no shortage of defeatist sentiments long before the denouement: people must give way to the newts, and only the newts will create a happy, integral and homogeneous world.

The slogan “After us, the salamanders!” is already in use! Or this slogan: “The future belongs to the salamanders!” People who are most devoted to the idea of ​​​​changing cultural and political elites see their task as clearing the way for a future world salamanderism, devoid of “idiotic ideals, withered traditions and all that dilapidated rubbish that was called poetry, music, architecture, philosophy or culture in general."

The most progressive representatives of the human race declared: “We are the salamanders of tomorrow!”

After the victory of the newt kingdom-state over the human race, according to Capek, a split will occur within the newt civilization and another world war will be unleashed, but between the amphibians of the West and the East. They will destroy each other. And the surviving people will begin to rebuild a new Civilization and along the way they will create a new myth about the Great Flood.

Already, not saliva flowed from the fangs, but blood. And from the horns too.

Alexander Dugin is composing it right now. Just in one of Vladimir Pozner’s latest programs, he announced that there is already a war going on between the civilization of Land and the civilization of the Sea. On the first side is the Russian Federation (people); on the second side is the USA (salamanders). The seizure of Crimea and the possible annexation of Ukraine is the first step. This, according to the philosopher Dugin, should be followed by the accession of Europe to the Russian Federation.

He promised guarantees to the Europeans: “Let’s tell them: under our protectorate we will provide you with protection. is sitting here Do you see how Pussy Riot ? We'll put yours in prison too. In your country “Femen” commits outrages in churches, in our country they are quickly hit with a baton and sent in a truck to the trash or to their historical homeland. We will take over Europe, and all the high technologies will be ours. This is development, this is modernization. If you wanted, here it is, the Europeanization of our society.”

As for national traitors, Dugin is merciful: “I’m not saying that we should physically subject them to repression. This is completely unnecessary. These people need to be isolated from the media, they need to be ostracized.”

“Why not sterilization?” - I wanted to ask.

Lord, you won’t even realize right away: is this still a person speaking or a salamander?..

Karel Capek was a great science fiction writer, but Alexander Dugin surpassed him.

The point is that humanizing lizards is not so bad. The other half of it is the danger of salamandering people...

“Consumptive humanity,” sensing the approach of its death hour, was ready to greet its gravediggers—the salamanders. And I began to find more and more merit in them.

Yes, they do not have the ability to reflect, nor do they need it. There is no everything that becomes its result: philosophy, religion, mythology, art. They do not know the pangs of creativity and the melancholy of loneliness. They are not preoccupied with the passion for competition in any area of ​​work. But they represent an exemplary example of homogeneity and the triumph of spontaneous standardization. And superficial solidarity. It is precisely such a population that would be able to fulfill the age-old dream of humanity - to build a monolithic society based on equal opportunities for conditional individuals. Capek called this the “comprehensive world of newts,” to which the human race must inevitably capitulate, but not necessarily after a direct armed conflict. It is also possible through internal transformation, as indicated in another prophetic work - in Eugene Ionesco’s play “Rhinoceros”.

Under the sign of the rhinoceros

At first it seemed that the rhinoceros rushing past the cafe with a wild stomp had either escaped from the zoo, or had come running from the jungle. Then another one; there were more and more of them. A theory has emerged that African animals are phantoms, a provocation, propaganda, or simply a consequence of mass psychosis. The illusions were dispelled when Madame Beuf recognized her husband in one of the rhinoceroses...

...Eugene Ionesco suggested that people are not born stupid, wild animals; they become them in the course of involution.

We are somehow inclined to think that the escalator of progress moves us exclusively upward. But he can lead us down with the same inexorability. The spiral of involution is superimposed on the spiral of evolution. Hence all the difficulties and contradictions in the development of human civilization .

The onus-bearing epidemic that decimated ordinary people was still able to be contained by the mind of a man named Beranger. But now she takes his best friend, Jean, from him.

Béranger. Jean was my best friend. And suddenly this transformation is before my eyes and such rage...

Dudar. I certainly understand. So to be deceived in a person! But you don't have to think about it anymore.

Béranger. How can I not think about this? Such human nature, an ardent champion of humanism! Who would have believed it! And it’s him, he! He and I have been friends... since time immemorial. I never thought that he... and suddenly such an unexpected evolution! I trusted him more than myself, I relied on him more than on myself... And do this to me!

I listened to singing outside the window. From there rushed some kind of stuck together mass of sounds: “Krymnashkrymnashkrymnash...” I wanted to pick it up... But I couldn’t.

Such painfully familiar motifs. Nowadays, such bickering takes place quite often on social networks and forums. Sometimes they take on a rather sharp form. As, say, in the text by Leonid Volkov: “Probably one of the most terrible discoveries of recent days (among other things) that many of “us” have experienced is that we have lost a significant number of “us”. Some completely normal people suddenly lost their tempers and salivated from their fangs: “For Crimea, we will forgive Putin everything, corruption and lies!”, “Let’s return Crimea to ourselves!”

Returned. And not saliva flowed from the fangs, but blood. And from the horns too.

Dugin responds to this with his favorite aphorism from Nietzsche: “Man is something that must be overcome.”

Actually, Nietzsche says something a little differently: “Man is something that must be surpassed.” He was referring to the idea of ​​the superman. Our contemporary misrepresented the great philosopher, as they say, according to Freud.

Dugin, judging by the way he worded it, means anti-human.

Rhinoceros?.. Salamander?.. Both?..

You can get used to rhinoceroses. And adapt to their ways. How it happened to my beloved Beranger. The girl is delighted with them:

“Well done! How funny they all are. They feel great in their own skin. And it doesn't look like they're crazy at all. They behave completely naturally. It turns out they were right to do this.”

And Daisy joins the herd and gets lost in it. Beranger remains the only person on the planet. However, he doesn’t feel completely right either.

He finds himself ugly. And they are beautiful. Gone are the days when he cautiously felt his forehead to see if there was a lump growing on it. Now he has to regret how ugly it is - a completely smooth forehead. And how the horn would suit him. And how he would like to become like everyone else. And how ashamed he is not to be with all those who represent 99.9 percent of the country’s population. A little more and he will feel like a national traitor.

At first, their roar irritated him. Then he heard the original musicality in it and found a peculiar charm. He tries to imitate, but the roar doesn’t work; a howl came out, uncertain, insincere...

I listened to singing outside the window. From there rushed some kind of stuck together mass of sounds: “Krymnashkrymnashkrymnash...” I wanted to pick it up... But I couldn’t.

I couldn’t overcome the human inside me.

***

Ionesco still hoped for something in the 60s of the last century. His Berenger, in the end, decided to remain a Man in the face of two warring civilizations - the salamander Sea and the onion-born Land.

Chapek foresaw this collision. “I don’t know,” he wrote, “what we should fear more: their human civilization or their insidious, cold, bestial cruelty. But when one is combined with the other, the result is an unimaginable nightmare, something almost diabolical.”

Alas, one thing merged with the other before our eyes.

Dugin is no exception in this regard. He is in the row: Kiselev, Prokhanov, Kurginyan, Migranyan, Mizulina, Yarovaya, Govorukhin, Bortko, etc., etc.