Narcissus and virus

Chronicles of the sluggish end of the world

Fashionable revelations on the topic “World after Pandemia” are not enough differential diagnosis. Even the development of infection depends on the presence of concomitant diseases in the patient. Political organisms are now also proposed a whole range of complications with very different outcomes. Particularly painful breaking is ahead of the modes suffering from double dependence: a pathology of grandiose, combined with a severe coming from the "oil needle". An exacerbation of political narcissism in Russia at a price for a barrel below zero is an completely pure apocalypse.

The scale of the disaster

The predisposition of everyone is different. The Chinese do not like to live in an era of change, but it seems to Russians it seems to be more interesting to visit this world in its fatal minutes, and not in the province of the sea, but in hot spots. Perhaps that is why the “Russian world” is so characteristic of ascending and periodically collapsing, experiencing either a global triumph or another local apocalypse - the end of the world in one individual country. Hence our original historiosophy with a special experience of discontinuity. “The history of Russian culture,” writes Fr. George Florovsky, - all of it in interruptions, in attacks, in renunciations or hobbies, in disappointments, betrayals, gaps. ” Such self -abasement is the flip side of Russian ethno -narcissism, neurotic self -love of their own grandeur with mania to believe the fate of the world from his native ashes.

In the popular common sense analytics, everything is much more mild; She habitually closes with the scenarios of political economy and sociology, on control and communication techniques. Leaching of businesses, the loss of raw material markets, the extension of personalist power by the rejection of freedoms with the political self -isolation of the country and citizens - all this is an object level. For a Russian parody of ideocracy with a whole bouquet of mental disorders, it is much more important how this whole story will hit the subject - according to consciousness and psyche. This is a historical chance. Now you can either wake up or finally hang on artificial brain ventilation - with a well -known outcome for the regime and nation.

Worst of all, when and in the midst of trouble, people continue to abuse their, to put it mildly, immodesty. House of intensive therapy of rating with funny gases. The authorities are drawn up by another episode in the annals of glorious victories. "We can repeat!" According to the scheme "We will not stand at the price!" In the sterile image of "salvation under the command."

The interests of the highest PR are subordinate to the information policy and the redistribution of resources. News blocks are more and more like the chronicle of personal participation and manual control for everyone in a row. Solid day of the speaker, like "Tinsman's Day." It is generally necessary for our leaders to disappear somewhere in the early days of national disasters, but now the “Valdai pause” is more than compensated by the chronic presence on the air. The scenes of a continuous meeting of management with oneself are so rudely staged that it is impossible to reconstruct, for whom all this is designed?! Plus, ignorance of the norms of "saving pathos". The authorities cannot, like Alexey Merinov on Facebook, every other day, contact the nation in the format "Brothers and sisters!" This is devaluable.

Such vanity conceals the historical dimension of the event. The plague of the Era of Justinian, the “black death” of the Middle Ages, “in the shadow of which the human civilization grew, and sometimes only the human civilization grew” (Milan Daniel ( the famous Czech scientist-zoologist. - Ed. ))-the terrible morbality of barbarism and archaic, but also pushed to the exit from the Middle Ages in the civilization of the new time. Perhaps now all these torment is preparing an outcome from the suffering postmodern to an already naked “supernova time”. This is a completely different scale - the transformations of general cultural models and entire civilizational projects.

Plague for your whole house

The current pandemic is not called the "plague of the XXI century" except from superstition. In this regard, the plague actually stands somewhat apart among other so -called transmissive infections. If from natural smallpox, cholera, rash typhoid and Spaniard, up to a third of the sick died, then the plague mowed with the territories with a guarantee of death in literally 3-4 days, and therefore terrified more than all wars. Now this is not. But there is an immunity instilled in a culture of Alarmism from the Roman club to Greta Tunberg. It is difficult for us to believe that in nature there can be something so arbitrarily terrible, which sooner or later the latest sciences and technocracy would not have coped with. But there is already a suspicion that the Covid-19 is not a very ordinary virus, but something that can be unpredictably mutated on cultural environments. As a result, man and his science may encounter unprecedented destruction in the biology of the species and in biomedicine itself. To reassure yourself that it is only hypotheses is stupid. In the logic of bifurcations and risks with unacceptable damage, everything is much easier: "And if still yes?" Nobody believed in a one -time collapse of raw materials exports either.

While analysts are bending fingers in the calculation of “black swans” and “horsemen of the apocalypse”, Russian reality gradually surpasses even these ligaments of beautiful words.

Attacks of political narcissism are simultaneously derived from resource wealth, but also lead to the destruction of their own resource base. Here it is the narcissistic fixation that draws the border between political sanity or inadequacy. This is the first thing to start with. Otherwise, you will always speak into the void, not understanding why you are not heard or reacted with the opposite effect.

In our conditions, the transfer to images of imperial greatness is also a real screening that works on the displacement and compensation of household complexes. Before trying to inspire something reasonable to such a patient, you need to at least roughly understand how much he is not in himself and why he needs this escape so much. For more than a decade and a half, it is the epidemic of narcissism that is called the “plague of the 21st century” in the world. So the name is busy - and not only the name! As one professor said: “What is this your pandemic? An old woman with a key? A witch equally easily changing borders and a constitution? The plague is not in test tubes, but in the heads. "

Picnic on the sidelines

Against this background, much on the network now looks frivolous. Already when people died in the world, we all exchanged reports here that it was not for long, because "made in China." Now the same audience causes tears a video with the wires of doctors in Jun. One of my employees watched three times ... and cried three times. It resembles the closing of the 1980 Olympics, only "until new meetings."

But the flow of jokes, sharpness, jokes and caricatures of different quality does not think to curl up. There are finds (“and woke up a nation / in self -isolation”), although in general it is rather a weak initiative. But the spirit of the holiday is still built into the atmosphere of anger and horror in a paradoxical way. The networks seem to continue the mass exit to barbecue immediately after the announcement of the first non -working week.

Nervous fun often displaces fear. Carnavalization of death, according to tradition, helps to cope with infernal horror. Plus, the flight from excess control. “The Carnival is the second life of the people”, “A temporary exit beyond the usual system of life” (Mikhail Bakhtin). Therefore, even now all this sarcasm on the verge of scasteness is generated by the cynicism of not the public, but of the official, another reaction that does not deserve. Folk absurdism turns pale against the backdrop of the delirium of official explanations, statements, instructions and calls. Now this is also a ritual: on the Internet, people beautifully burn the “layout” of a hated policy, as they once burned a stuffed plague, with the same superstitious hope and with the same success.

Plus, anti -fundmentism and postmodern irony, which accustoms everything to the distance, without fanaticism. In particular, now not just statistics are pressed on the psyche, but it is her global assembly. If a medieval person, as now, every day received consolidated information about the victims of the plague around the world ...

Our time does not have the former addiction to optional, unexpected losses, but there is an intuition of a different price of human life. In the Middle Ages, the fear of death was ontological, now it is more personal. “Death, as far as it is, is always mine” (Martin Heidegger). Therefore, the carnival ends as soon as one of his or loved ones dies-or just acquaintances virtually, in one or two touch. Immediately, the political comedy is separated from the human tragedy, the caricature of power - from hellish realities of life and death. You begin to perceive the presence of the virus almost bodily, at your fingertips ... And then you yourself return to the soul -saving irony.

Lessons of void, or the beginning of political eschatology

In the era of “paper architecture” there was an international competition on a free topic: “Museum”. Our guys in Markhi designed “no” wooden stable, in the denniks of which there were horses of great horse monuments ... without horsemen. The idea is humane, but today in ordinary views from the window and shots like the extinct great cities of the old and the New World should have its own hidden symbolism. For some reason, all this was already in art: the utopia of the Hilertesimer, the architectural still lifes de Kiriko, the “strawberry meadow” of Bergman-an extinct street, a clock without arrows and a hen of a bunning, crashing into a lamppost. This is not Khatyn, Termnik or Dresden, but, if you like, the figurative equivalent of a neutron bomb.

Although this is not even a plague (people just hid), the views of such a general emptiness will not be remembered and the story itself.

In the Middle Ages there was no photoshop, but there was no such nature for shooting and a consolidated collage.

To suspect some existential meaning here, you do not need to literally believe in the highest strength and teleology. But for some reason, these paintings showed us, having already ruined more than two hundred thousand statists for the sake of the frame.

Probably, all these visions are not so that we all bring to digital non -Ototetilism and fiscal looting, state and “subsidiary”. The devastations look the same in the same way, but more importantly, how we will return differently. What will leave at the same time with self -isolation and social distance, and what will remain in the "Ark"?

It turns out that Facebook has always been a form of coexistence at a distance in everyday self -isolation of more or less close people. But the prospect of the absence of the very possibility of distorting makes you think differently about the forms and the very sense of direct communication, whether it is books, teachers or drinking companions.

The test of “all this tarantina” is an ideal occasion for reassessing their own suggestibility and sanity, selfishness and solidarity, responsibility and self -discipline. We are talking about readiness to quietly fall under any control or, conversely, to show normal, adult initiative and resistance. Of course, they will want to leave us at this distance from each other, depriving people of the street and physically not allowing us to collectively demonstrate anything. A great occasion to make a single picket the only form of public protest. Increased readiness is already a guarantee that people will not be able to go out at all. But this is a stick about the two -edges. What will you do with the case in army, police, guards, etc. barracks, including elite, like a cube? The authorities guess what she can now do with her opponents, but she does not even suspect, with what new enemies and risks she may encounter in the near future.

And, finally, what to do with production, long before the pandemic with a destroyed raw material curse, outgrown in the institution of the institutional? How to now be “oil producing civilization”, which, regardless of the epidemic, itself brought down oil prices by a purely narcissistic conflict with OPEC+?

It remains to recall that the very concept of the Apocalypse is dual. For us, the end of the world is the end of everything. But the Middle Ages prays for the apocalypse as delivering and atonement with a transmutation in a better world. In the first millennium, Europe is covered with "white lace churches." In Russia, in the appointed year, the peasants do not sow bread, and the priests do not count on Easter (but then they are forced to count on immediately 1000 years ahead).

People are engaged in self -immolation, are sealed with hunger or just fall in coffins - and all this is in a good mood.

Postmodern all the more notes the multiplicity of the apocalypsis: different evangelists, in history (in Rus' there were at least seven of them), in different cultures and scale, including real personal apocalypsis. It remains to understand the meaning of the appointed redemption.

Karl Schmitt created a “political theology”, arguing that the terms of modern political theory are nothing more than sacred theological concepts. Now this look would naturally develop in the concept of "political eschatology." Without understanding and experiencing the meaning of the Apocalypse, it is impossible to keep the necessary bar of seriousness in relation to what is happening. The usual positivism is clearly not enough here.

Forced psychotherapy, or daffodil opens his eyes

Pride is the first act of the devil and the “beginning of sin” (Initium omnis peccati Superbia). From the point of view of psychoidology, this is political narcissism, sometimes as if experiencing the patience of higher forces. People who consider themselves believers, as if they had not read the story of the fallen angel and all his smug, proud followers.

But we have additional problems with this. Narcissus from the ancient myth is really irresistible: young nymphs and quite sexual ancient Greek men ran after it with stacks. In our country, this texture itself is more likely repulsive, but translated into a flattering and tasteless image, extremely expensive and with a distinct smell of oil and gas. Therefore, the collapse of narcissistic constructions is not at all by chance now in resonance with the rapid compression of the sources of financing of all this decor. The attraction inherent in narcissism is not a fantasy of philosophers, but a completely tangible reality.

In addition, not only myths of grandeur and omnipotence feed on oil revenues, but also the minimum guarantees - the “zero cycle” of survival. When the reserve funds are depleted in the bins of citizens, it immediately turns out that our people during the development of consumerism quietly lost the ability to be proud of the power on an empty stomach.

Narcissus and Echo died of hunger, although they had no food problems. Our heroes, having not yet come off their own irresistible reflections, are already resting against the problems with the feeder. In our case, the narcissistic disorder in ideology and the Dutch disease in the economy are not accidentally fit into one epicrisis: they work in a closed circuit with a positive feedback. The destruction of the resource society and the raw material model can be irreversible, as if the pandemic was in full force played the role of uncontrolled “Dutch disease” (at first it is cheaper to buy someone else's, and then there is nothing to restore in its industries).

Oil gave rise to the latest Russian narcissism - it will kill it.

It all started earlier, even when the Locus of control began to change from the external to the inner and own life began to occupy people of the more exploits of the VKS and diplomats. Now all this is extremely aggravated spatially and functionally. Syria, Ukraine, even Crimea disappeared from the narcissistic agenda. The legends were subsided about how our hypersonic foreign policy puts America in indecent poses to choose from. Pictures of victories over the virus are convinced of the numbers and are not amenable to visualization. This emptiness is filled with polymrains, as if in the iconostasis framing the “first person” by the brands of the second level - the faces of ministers and governors.

Personal narcissism is considered almost incurable pathology. Oddly enough, collective political narcissism in critical situations can even be a self -medication of an unexpectedly transit mass. How deeply this will affect the old Russian ethnonarcissism - the issue of time and strength of the crisis. But it is already clear that the resonating crisis of the raw material model can work as a method of a special kind of physiotherapy - treatment of starvation under a cold shower. For the masses, these processes are already going on, but for the authorities the problem is that these daffodils will not die from hunger, but only if something cracked. Therefore, propaganda by inertia continues to work on the image of ideal patronage.

Someone from regional upstarts decided to curry up, calling the requirements of direct support for the population by looting. The main press service could be clarified by the “vertical” that the most disgusting form of looting is to pose against the backdrop of human tragedies.