Become like children

It would be an exaggeration to believe that only schoolchildren and students took part in Sunday’s rally, but many commentators proceed from this. “Teenage rebellion,” some write, “lack of prospects and social elevators,” others echo. Still others—for example, Andrei Loshak—speak in the spirit that Navalny was able to reach young people by winning competition from television, learned to speak the same language with them, and thus brought them out onto the streets.

All these comments are offensive not only to the thousands of protesters, but also to common sense. Firstly, because when many people demonstrate with protest placards, we must at least as a starting hypothesis assume that the reasons for their indignation are clearly written on their placards. Secondly, people are autonomous rational creatures endowed with free will and share certain political ideals. Even if not all their actions are of a rational nature, one must proceed from this - for the sake of the slightest hope of the possibility of public discussion.

The battle for minds is a fiction

Most of the descriptions of Sunday protest were far from unequivocal. If the rally did not protest, but “children”, then they cannot fully be considered subjects of their own protest, someone led them. If what we saw two days ago can be called the “teenage riot” (this formulation was used by the editor of the “society” section of the COLTA.RU site Mikhail Ratgauz), which means that we observed not a political action, but a side effect of a changeable hormonal status, sublimation of the missing status Sexual life, flock of hierarchical game. Words have not only meaning, but also connotations. “Teenage riot” is not a descriptive statement, but an explanatory hypothesis from the same series as hints of physiological circumstances, say, a female interlocutor. It would be crazy to explain the words and actions of your colleague by saying that she is menstruating or has an insufficiently active sex life. So, in relation to any other person, this is the same wildness.

Perhaps the young participants in the rally mooed, sniffled and averted their eyes in response to the question of why they were here? No, they were witty, articulated and observant. They gave completely exhaustive answers to the questions of journalists. I spent many years studying first biology and then political journalism, and never before had I seen such subtly reflective testosterone. When someone tries to explain the politicization of youth by the fact that Navalny got through to them, this means, among other things, that young people are such strange creatures, speaking their own, not very Russian language and deprived of senses and access to reality. Navalny is winning the battle for minds, Loshak wrote. Seriously ?! There is no battle for minds. The minds are the minds that you cannot fight for them. The minds themselves choose the sources of information, comprehend them and make a decision whether to go to the rally.

I well remember the language that was used to describe the motives of the protesters in Bolotnaya Square in 2012. It wasn't like that at all. There was a revolution of dignity, there people themselves learned to look for information on the Internet, stopped watching TV and said: “Enough!” They themselves realized that it was enough to endure lies and theft. By yourself, by yourself, by yourself. The Gracchi and Cicero were there. And now, here is a complete mystery, a social explosion, so devoid of meaningful reflective subjects that can explain their motives, which only remains to be divorced.

It is strange to think that everyone who is younger than us makes important and potentially high -risk decisions under the influence of YouTube radiation, for the first time in life, meeting a politician who "speaks the same language with them." Do we know for sure that they have not read the speeches of Miliukov or the texts of Thomas Paine, have not heard a single presidential debate, which would have been able to understand that they themselves, finally, are not just such politicians, talking to each other in the same language? language? It’s not easy to imagine this, but it’s possible.

If the hypothesis about the youth nature of the current protest is correct, then it is schoolchildren who should teach their elders how to live. When, in a country in which the Prime Minister is building duck houses, there is a concerted rally, to which some people go and others do not, if the protesters know in advance about the possible consequences of their civic courage, but smile and wave, climb on poles and walk in paddy wagons, then it is they who should tell their lazy and cautious compatriots (including me) about civic values, mechanisms of political participation and the meaning of constitutional freedoms. Instead of practicing desubjectivizing communicative practices, trained by years of socially successful life in a not very tolerant country, and putting yourself in a puddle, you could try to learn at least some lesson from recent events.

I’m not very interested in why schoolchildren go out into the streets - they themselves answered this question many times and in every way, slowly so that it would reach anyone. I’m interested in something else: for what reason are they forced to engage in street politics? Why can't a 15-year-old Russian passport holder vote? In our country there are approximately four million people (15-18 years) who are smart, independent, well versed in the surrounding reality and are perfectly adapted to rapid technological progress; Which - we were convinced of this on Sunday - wish political participation. Why are they deprived of it?

The main achievement of human civilization is its inclusiveness. For two hundred years—the best two hundred years in human history by almost any standard—more and more groups gained political rights. In 2017, many are seriously discussing whether tomatoes have rights and whether robots can be given the right to vote. Maybe, before taking on robots, we should give the right to vote to our independent, smart and courageous compatriots, who now do not have the right to influence not only the fate of the country, but even their own career prospects, by regulating, say, the school schedule?

Plans for our children

The sticky Russian paternalism penetrated so deeply into our lives that no one even discusses this thought seriously. In a society in which no one can decide for themselves what to read or who to sleep with, a person under 18 automatically turns out to be a universally oppressed minority. Even if it is customary for adults who are turning gray to be treated like children, teenagers are even treated like babies. But any arguments against giving at least high school students full political rights sound so intellectually helpless that one doesn’t want to leave them unanswered.

Usually, when adults want to deprive teenagers of any rights, they lie that they can harm themselves. But in this case, this argument does not work at all: four million votes in the country are not enough to bring to power a politician who is not supported by the majority of the adult, full-fledged population.

Maybe teenagers are non -self -state? In a financial sense - of course, like the millions of pensioners to whom United Russia and Sergei Sobyanin personally send food packages before the elections. If we want financial circumstances to not affect the political decisions of young people, let's pay them basic income. In any case, they will always have a certain degree of independence, incomparably greater than that of the wards of the welfare state. (We will not even spend a separate paragraph to explain that the pensions are theoretically and in fact are not retribution for labor life, but only perform the function of social assistance, which people of all ages equally deserve.)

Maybe teenagers are dependent in their judgments? If we seriously applied such a high bar, giving people political rights, in any country would vote several percent of the population.

Maybe old people are wise and experienced? The last time I checked the discussions on this score, the most fashionable topic for discussion was that the old people take the future from the young, did not understand the new reality and vote for Brexit. Moreover, by the standards of human history, 15-year-old people have always been full members of society, and over the past hundred years they have become only more educated and smarter. It is striking, by the way, that the rights of 15-year-olds have been decreasing over the last hundred years, rather than increasing; In a sense, they are the only people who remained outside the political inclusion.

Maybe young people are now more childish than before? This consideration requires evidence, but even if it corresponded to reality (I do not believe in it), it would be a worthless argument. Anyone will become more infantile if they are prohibited from voting, working and sleeping with whomever they want. Once upon a time it was permissible to publicly say that slaves were not ready for freedom.

Perhaps modern life requires young people to undergo long and difficult specialization, which is incompatible with a full political life? If so, then the current system is simply criminal: they themselves bear all the risks associated with choosing a career path, and they will be forced to live and work longer than others in the political reality for which we vote. Why then are they the only ones deprived of the opportunity to influence the future?

The arguments above assume that voting at the polling station—and political participation in general—requires strong critical thinking, information skills, and thoughtful consideration. But this is not true at all. Voters are often irrational, irrational for completely rational reasons, and they vote as best they can. Democracy in populous polities can only exist because it does. But even if this were not so, are we sure that an 85-year-old person votes more consciously than a 17-year-old? Seriously?

The benefits of inclusion, meanwhile, are obvious. In addition to the fact that we will stop depriving four million of our compatriots of their political rights, we will also include them in the systemic political process, which will stop them from becoming radicalized . A real, sincere paternalist would dream of this. What could be better than serious young people who do not hang from lampposts and do not break shop windows, but read the Vedomosti newspaper and discuss the income tax scale? Isn’t that why we force innocent people to cram for the Unified State Exam (USE) in social studies and ethics of family life? Which, it should be noted, emancipated middle-aged people did not cram. This alone makes them the worst voters according to conventional hypocritical logic.

The strangest argument against the emancipation of at least older schoolchildren is the conventionality of the age limit. It seems like 15-year-old residents of the country I am ready to give the right to vote, and what to do with 9-year-olds? This argument is bad because the burden of proof lies not on me, but precisely on all those who want to put up with the deprivation of my fellow citizens of political rights. It is they who must prove to the 17-year-old girl that she does not deserve emancipation, because she will use her right to vote worse than a 30-year-old alcoholic from Golitsyn or even a 90-year-old teetotaler from Tver.

Almost all the arguments against expanding the franchise have not changed much over the past two hundred years. We have already heard a thousand times that non-free people are not ready for freedom, that someone is not given to make political decisions, that sharp changes in electoral legislation will break centuries-old traditions (it would be something to break), that people themselves do not want to take on a load of excess responsibility. But on Sunday, we saw people who directly and unequivocally stated that they want political participation and, therefore, are ready for this responsibility. It is necessary to give them what they demand.

Let's argue about what age people have the right to vote. But this conversation will be impossible while we consider our interlocutors by children.