A few days ago, the European Commission finally published clarifications on the application of the sanctions regime to individuals from our country who decided to visit the hospitable European Union.
Judging by the text of the document, nothing else can be imported: no cars with or without trailers, no suitcases, no bags, no rings, no perfume. The clarifications are advisory in nature, but there are already numerous cases of seizure of personal belongings and vehicles in Germany.
Mutual propaganda exercises, both on our and on the European side, no longer surprise anyone: we are going on an allegedly “irreconcilable” struggle against Satanism, Western hypocrisy, duplicity, they are fighting day and night against Russia’s supposedly special despotism, authoritarianism, communism, imperialism, and so on and so forth: all narratives have no number.
Both Russian and Western observers catch each other in duplicity. They are looking and always finding something to cling to, because in reality no one from the elite has followed or follows these ideologies. However, the gap is deepening and getting worse.
It seems that the same thunder in public discourse rushed from different sides during the Crimean War, the Balkan campaigns, not to mention the Soviet period stories. And the elites, it would seem, did not change, just as the human essence does not change. Nevertheless, there is a difference.
Even in those years, no one was looking for “bad” or “good” Russians. The noble Russian emigration, whether loyal to their Fatherland or not, existed in the West on quite adequate general conditions. Just like immigrants from the USSR. It is difficult to imagine a certain crowd of “Ukrainians” who would besiege the apartments of A. Herzen in London, or A. Solzhenitsyn or I. Brodsky in the USA.
Today, those same “Ukrainianists” are a kind of estate of medieval flagellants - mendicant supporters of physical self-flagellation and medieval assistants of the Inquisition who identified witches. But you shouldn’t focus on how bad it looks from the outside, although this is in fact the case.
After all, we are faced with a situation where a certain “collective West” (let’s call it that for now) has set itself the task of not only cutting itself off from us financially and, more broadly, economically, but also breaking off any cultural connection at all. This was not done even in the Middle Ages, with all the cultural and religious antagonism. There was antagonism, but there were no interrupted cultural and trade ties.
There is no doubt that the initially completely pro-Western Russian elite of modern times conducts its propaganda “second number”, in the “fool himself” style. Because it's a shame. And it’s even more offensive because Western policy looks outwardly and really stupid: from the ban on cheap gas to the locking up of Tchaikovsky.
But what is the reason for stupidity, and is it all about stupidity? It is easy to imagine the current political management in the West as a kind of herd of cretins, but the question arises: how did this herd manage to form and promote the concept of the “Third Pole”, about which the author often wrote, in the Middle East and India?
300 or 330 billion dollars of foreign exchange reserves are not stuck with us, but our reserves are stuck with them, these Western “inadequacies”. It is our additional 30, and maybe more, billions of dollars that will now work for investments in India, and in such a way that it will save money for the project of the same Third “Indo-Arabian” pole - a concept that also works against Chinese strategies.
Allegedly, we bought rupees, but now we can’t exchange them, we fought with the “Western Satan,” but they left him several hundred billion, and every year money flows in and out. There are restrictions, there are no restrictions - there are no obstacles to such a goal. Frankly speaking, you look at this, and you remember S. Marshak’s imperishable “Not So”:
The sun in the field catches a hat,
The shadow from the walls is erased with a rag,
He takes the door with him to the forest
So that the thief does not get into it...
This does not mean that Western policy is entirely successful, but one must apparently be more careful with epithets of mental inferiority. Not so as not to offend the “Western partners” (however, if we offend, we will pay, as usual, a fine with foreign currency earnings), but so as not to fall into, as they say in Orthodox literature, “into delusion.” Of course, you can eat oil, or rather drink it, but it is advisable to somehow limit the quantity.
People who maintain a high degree of sobriety have long understood that we are not dealing with “Western stupidity,” no matter how outwardly it may look, but with some kind of concept of a vision of the future, where “Ukrainian inquisitors-flagellants”, narrow-minded but executive political managers in Europe, etc. are tools, and the total break with Russia is due to some promising social model.
We also see that our elite is faced not just with rejection, albeit historically conditioned, like “the Englishwoman is shitting”, but with a certain methodology and worldview, which there are no ways to effectively counteract.
No matter how many conferences we hold on “mental wars”, there is no adequate response methodology, no matter how many strategies are developed - see the example of India.
This is not such a simple question, because without understanding the methods used to work against you, sooner or later the result will be the same - “catch the sun with a hat” and “wipe away the shadow from the wall with a rag.” And the author would invite the reader to re-read these lines most carefully.
If someone convinced you that a shadow can be wiped off with a rag, and you hold conferences to correctly identify shadows, select the best wall managers, pour money into it, etc., then should you be surprised at the final result?
The problem is that the next stage will be carrying water in a sieve, pounding the spilled water in a mortar, etc. And with each new stage, society will need even more oil until either the oil or public health runs out.
The question, therefore, is not who is stupid and who is not - the question is in methods and concepts that we do not see, but our steps “from the other side” are visible. We are being calculated, but we are not being read.
Look carefully at the elements of propaganda, listen carefully to these narratives, and you will hear there “waiting for Trump 2.0” - to stand for a year and hold out for a day. It’s even difficult to say how many calming potions with a “Trump” sticker were drunk in the past, but our elitists and intellectuals are persistent - they couldn’t wipe off the shadows with a rag, they will expose them to the rain with a sieve.
And again, it is important to emphasize that neither our elitists nor intellectuals are stupid, they are not some special ignoramuses, they generally have the ability to reflect, even greater than their counterparts in the West, but the cap and sieve continue to be used as the main tool. Why?
Exactly because there is no understanding of what exactly is being built under the banner of the new liberal Western project, and there is no understanding of the methodology by which it is being built. As a result, we get a natural result. And our most popular explanation for the current Western line of behavior is that they are fools.
And how can one not quote in full the words of the wanderer Feklusha from Ostrovsky’s play “The Thunderstorm”:
“They say that there are such countries, dear girl, where there are no Orthodox kings, and the Saltans rule the earth. In one land the Turkish saltan Makhnut sits on the throne, and in another - the Persian saltan Makhnut; and they carry out judgment, dear girl, on all people, and no matter what they judge, everything is wrong. And they, my dear, cannot judge a single case righteously, such is the limit set for them. Our law is righteous, but theirs, dear, is unrighteous; that according to our law it turns out this way, but according to theirs everything is the opposite. And all their judges, in their countries, are also all unrighteous; So, dear girl, they write in their requests: “Judge me, unjust judge!” And then there is also a land where all the people have dog heads.”
Tell me, are you satisfied with this explanation of reality? However, even in Western society, not many people put into their heads a different image than the one given above.
There are also enough of their own wanderers and wanderers, like B. Henri-Levi. Another thing is that they don’t catch luminaries with their headdress, preferring to give prizes in this sport to others.
Once again, I would like to emphasize that this situation does not mean that our intellectuals are weak - on the contrary, historically Russian society has been endowed with great abilities for reflection, that is, the ability to refer to the past, evaluate and re-evaluate events.
It’s not just that, abandoning the entire cultural layer of Russia, even ultra-liberals want to keep the works of F. M. Dostoevsky on their shelves. They need to fill this gap, and they fill it, but not out of any special love for this particular classic.
The author looks with interest at the exercises of our Russian leftist youth, who are actually trying to understand what is happening through reflection and based on sources.
But to understand means to foresee and predict, and this also fails, just like with our older comrades. Although the level of some left-wing resources and their speakers is very, very high. What kind of labyrinth is this in which our intelligentsia wanders, trying to understand the current Western model?
The fact that there is a model is evident from the results. Not by those that are shown to us in terms of the supposed degradation of Western society, which has been decomposing in unrighteous living since Antiquity and still will not decompose, but by the fact that in many countries management is actually built on the same principles and involvement in these processes is only increasing .
It would seem that there is an economic crisis, but involvement is growing. Absurd? No, it's not absurd. The point is not in reflection, not in the level of education or erudition, not in intellectual baggage, but in the direction of the search.
The Russian intellectual environment, apparently, has two birth traumas, and perhaps features.
The first is the feeling of the Russian, Russian space as a certain special sphere of “higher spirituality,” a space where the intangible periodically prevails over the mortal. By the way, this gives not only space for the flight of thought, but also the sincere conviction of the elites that the people will live in poverty, because spirituality is their historical strong point.
The second feature is the paradoxical opposite of the first - our entire scientific heritage and our entire scientific school is built on a purely materialistic basis.
A modern Russian Marxist simultaneously talks about the spiritual Russian path and immediately applies diamat methods in assessing economic processes. What if these processes in the West, for example, have not just an economic, but a religious-economic background? That's it, the methods won't work.
Who studies religion here, in addition to specialized theological disciplines? Philosophers and historians who do not know or understand economics. And economists, in principle, do not understand how religious concepts influence social production.
This is all the more interesting because, in the classical definition, economics is the science of social economy, and society is based not only on productive forces, but also on production relations, which are not always purely material.
The primacy of the postulate that a Westerner will gladly buy a rope with which to hang him for 300% of the profit is so strong that there is no way to even think about what if, for the sake of some religious (or quasi-religious) idea, the same Westerner not only does not buy a rope, but also will refuse cheap gas? And he will sell the rope to our “elites”, and with success, just like in India. We are laughing that the EU is discussing covering 45% of Ukraine’s budget deficit at its own expense until 2027, but maybe they are laughing in vain?
But the historical school prevails, because in principle there can be nothing immaterial outside the material “base”. This is where lies the very mistake that has cost us and will continue to cost us our next attempts to catch the stars with our hats.
After all, it is impossible to assume that there is some other model, where the “base” and “superstructure” are not located sequentially, but are equivalent, balanced and equally dependent.
In the debate about what comes first - the egg or the chicken, it suddenly turns out that there are adherents of the third idea, that both the chicken and the egg existed at the same time. Only our intellectual school cannot accept this as a basis - it is different.
And the point is not that now someone will say, “It doesn’t happen like that.” What difference does it make whether it happens or not, if modern Western ultra-liberalism has laid this ancient principle (and it is precisely ancient) as the basis for the new construction of the century.
Moreover, since this movement is based on the left-wing Western discourse, it becomes easier for many of its adherents to create a new reality “from scratch”. By reflecting, it is possible, unlike ours, to select only what is necessary, without spreading “to the smoke of the Fatherland” and the other smell of birches.
Turning to modern Western ideas, we often outline the time frame for their formation as the end of the XNUMXth – XNUMXth centuries. It seems that this is so, because modern ultra-liberalism, which by the way does not have an official self-name, is an antagonist of Christianity. Ultra-liberals even make fun of this, performing a kind of anti-Christian performance.
But the problem is that they not only stage productions like “The Great Gotthard,” but also have a mathematical model of economic development that does not fit well with political economic classics. Although it uses some of its principles and theses for the external social contour.
Why is this model not reflected by our intellectuals? And here again we need to look at our scientific basis, where, with all the wealth of our scientific apparatus, any economic model is built on an “either or” position, including in terms of geopolitics.
For example, “The United States is striving for world hegemony” is an axiomatic thesis that does not require proof. But what if there is a model where the US no longer plays its traditional zero-sum game? This is why our expert community does not feel the American idea of a “Third Pole,” because it cannot exist. But it exists and is already crowding out theses about a multipolar world. This will be felt more and more over time, although, alas, we will be the last to feel it.
Moreover, what is balance in the usual sense? Equality of the right and left sides in the result. But what if, in the same Antiquity, balance was not just a “right-left” game on paper, but had a completely material form of scales. Only there is a problem - the scales weigh something, not only the bowls, but there is weight in the support area - the scales do not hang in space. These are even different images, these are different perceptions of reality.
For our contemporaries, this is just hypothetical nonsense, but it was precisely such mathematical models in Antiquity that formed the basis of polis management, that is, the management of politics and the economy.
A modern philosopher reads some “Moderat of Gadira” and sees there a set of numbers, reflections on cosmogony and harmony, some relationships of prime numbers, although in front of him is an economic model, and a rather deep one.
The economist Moderat will not even open it, and even more so our elitist - he is already buying rupees, circumventing sanctions, while at the same time diverting part of the foreign exchange earnings to his own interests. “Everything is a number,” Moderat replies, and starts a discussion about how nice it is to trade in other currencies, without saying a word about the concept of “value.”
“This ancient philosopher was a stupid man, he was looking for some quality in numbers,” thinks the cunning elitist. “I agree,” replies Moderat, taking another 30 billion, or whatever it is, from the elitist for his project.
No matter how much modern Russian intellectuals, including savvy Marxists, declare that “the base determines the superstructure,” the new type of liberal model insists and will continue to repeat the opposite - the “subtle” is equal in weight to the “coarse”, one barrel of oil is equal to 10 thoughts about the barrel oil. For everything is material in this model: both material and immaterial. But our intellectual cannot even think of this while sitting at some strategy meeting. This cannot even be assumed; they will not understand.
Well, it can’t be like that, says the traditionalist, we must first create a barrel. And then he gets into trouble, because fundamentally from a philosophical point of view, the Western libertarian, the heir to the pagan philosophical school, is right, where everything is a number and everything is in everything. And it puts modern digital technologies into processing cognitive processes that it can quantitatively analyze.
At the same time, our spirituality is higher and immeasurable, and in the ancient model it is a part of the material world, calculable and having weight. This, by the way, proves that Christianity, from the point of view of the canon, is nominal in our brains, since even in Christianity the so-called. the spiritual world is material, just of a different quality. This is the paradox.
In our school, where there are concepts of positive and negative values, everything is measured in terms of good and evil, plus and minus. And in that ancient philosophy there was no minus - everything was modular there. Darkness is not minus light, but zero light. It would seem, what difference does it make? And the difference is colossal.
Our propaganda screams: “Russia does not want war.” And in the West, knowing the principle of the module, they say: “He wants war.” Our answer is that he doesn’t want to, but there, no, of course he does. Our people are convinced that if we say “no to war,” then we are postponing the war. And in the world of Moderat from Ghadira, everyone who uses the word “war” brings it closer, because the word does not have a negative meaning, because it is a number, because 10 words are equal to that very barrel of oil.
And by forcing his opponent, that is, us, to justify himself, the modern Western Moderat forces him to put another weight on the scales of that event, the occurrence of which the opponent (and that is us) so does not want.
Have you ever wondered why we always make excuses and debate with the West, apparently believing that we are doing something right? But Moderat is happy with this approach, because the “subtle” is equal to the “coarse”, and even modulo, especially since our discussions there are heard less and less - they need them to unfold here, and in the right way.
They threw a term with a certain weighty meaning into the discussion, and then they themselves will wind up the progression on the next talk show. However, they have not achieved complete secrecy of unnecessary information in their own country, but they are moving towards this with commendable zeal.
Why, one might ask, is it necessary to de-Russify Europe in such a model? Yes, precisely because any penetration of the “subtle” (narrative) creates the ground for the “rough” productive sector. You can throw anything at us, it’s okay. And it doesn’t matter that there are economic losses - when a religious fanatic was generally embarrassed by losses. But we say from every iron that “the West is greedy.”
He may be greedy, but he remembers the principle - give everything, gain the world. Only this principle is part of the same specific ancient mathematics. Well, for the lower classes of society there are Hindu practices and ideas of “freedom”, the fight for the environment, clean air, and points for social activity.
The author has already written more than once that the United States is moving away from a zero-sum game, which is a very important qualitative criterion. Perhaps the most important.
This is a different reading of the balance, which, if combined with specific ideological attitudes, allows us to conclude that modern ultra-liberalism is a vigorous mixture of late ancient philosophical and religious schools, modern Hindu practices and the heritage of the leftist movement. And it is possible to understand what they are doing to Europe and the Middle East only by considering the specifics of these methods.
It is difficult to say whether our managerial and intellectual elite is even capable of putting aside (at least temporarily) their attitudes and bringing together economists, mathematicians and philosophers in order to simply develop a scheme for interaction and counteraction to this quasi-religious ancient mathematics, implicated in libertarianism, a synthesis of Greek and Hindu cosmogony .
But sooner or later we will have to do this, otherwise we will spend years wiping the shadows off the walls with rags, while paying ourselves with material assets. However, as long as the modern meme is alive and working in practice: “As long as there is oil in Russia, there is me in Milan, if there is me in Milan, then there is oil in Russia,” hope for this remains illusory. Milan in this case is a collective image.
The author is not at all sure that in this text he was able to cover the topic in detail. And this is hardly possible in principle, given the questions raised. However, if this helps someone even a little to look at what is happening outside the usual framework, this will already be a result. Modulo.