A nuclear explosion in a pastoral sandbox
Once upon a time, a book of children's sayings was popular, called "From two to five." The kids amazed an adult with their spontaneity and non-standard approach to well-known subjects. In particular, the book was an entertaining read, but in general it was a deep philosophical generalization, demonstrating to a thoughtful reader the possibility of existence of a radically different from the generally accepted, but nevertheless consistent view of the world.
Children who had not yet had time to fully join the values and rules of our civilization formulated theses that, without knowing their origin, could be attributed to another (extraterrestrial) civilization, and not always and not necessarily humanoid. Our children, who have already learned to speak and express their thoughts coherently, who have already begun to join our culture, carriers of our genes and the same instincts as us, at the initial stage of their development demonstrate amazing plasticity — the ability not only to adapt to other civilizational norms, but even independently create these norms if necessary.
It is this plasticity of the psyche and civilizational adaptability that allowed man (the only living being) to populate the entire planet and go into space. Individuals can thank her for the fact that, lost in the forest at the age of an infant and brought up in a pack of animals, they grew up as Mowgli children: wolves, baboons and other tarzans, but did not die, but survived.
However, they get so used to their animal image that, being physically full-fledged people, they usually do not become mentally such, even if they return to the human community in adulthood. That is, at some stage, the plasticity of the child's psyche becomes a thing of the past, it becomes rigid, as the human skeleton gradually loses its former flexibility and fragility. The civilizational image, which was put on a person as a mask in childhood and could be replaced, grows to him, turning into his only and true face.
This gradual ossification of the psyche guarantees the stability of human civilizations. Thus, humanity is, on the one hand, sufficiently plastic in order to effectively adapt to new living conditions, on the other hand, civilization turns out to be a sufficiently rigid structure in order to preserve and pass on from generation to generation justified traditions and skills, life principles and social rules.
However, human society is not a copy of an anthill, which, in fact, is an organism only in the aggregate of all its individuals (an individual ant is not able to survive or reproduce). Even an individual can survive in human society, and in order to start reproduction, a primary cell is enough: a family of two people representing both sexes. Each individual, even within the framework of one civilization, does not literally copy other similar personalities, but represents a separate unique instance, only more or less similar to others of the same kind.
Therefore, in any human society there are people who did not have sufficient mental plasticity even in childhood (due to which they hardly socialized), and there are people whose psyche retains high plasticity for life. They easily change their views, beliefs, and easily accept new, previously alien norms of the hostel. It is not difficult for them to change their place of work, profession, country of residence, they begin to speak fluently and with minimal emphasis in a previously unknown language after a couple of weeks of living in the appropriate language environment.
These people have an increased tendency to change places, move to another country for permanent residence, and generally move for the sake of improving the quality of life. They are more interested in everyday life than the idea. Rather, life is always in the first place for them and justifies any idea.
Due to the fact that in our historical memory, some peoples, in particular Americans, were formed precisely from among people inclined to seek a better life elsewhere, communities with an increased percentage of people have formed in the world, preserving the plastic psyche of children for life. Accordingly, in the societies that produced the largest number of emigrants, on the contrary, the percentage of people with an initially conservative mental organization turned out to be higher.
When a society that is more mentally plastic collides with a more conservative society, if the former is more technically advanced than the latter, an "African" colonial phenomenon arises, which still defines the social and political life of most African states.
A stable conservative society, ideally integrated into the environment, has no incentives to change its civilizational paradigm, and its less plastic collective psyche makes it almost impossible to realize the true reasons for the everyday and technological success of the aliens. In such a situation, a conservative "backward" society begins to copy the external manifestations of the plastic "advanced". Famous cargo cults have their roots here.
Americans and Europeans arrived in Ukraine at a time when the most conservative (to the traditional, the cultivated Soviet conservatism with its closeness from the world was also added) local society also sharply lost in everyday terms, collapsing from the "clean poverty" of the late Soviet period (which, against the background of previous decades, seemed even prosperity) into unbridled poverty and hopelessness. As a result of the collision of two types of civilizations that had recent common roots, a specific Ukrainian mentality of the "African" colonial type arose.
Ukrainians knew that airplanes are not assembled from bamboo, but are made at enterprises (they even knew how to make them in the 90s). They were familiar with most of the technological achievements of Western civilization. In this regard, they were well aware of the usefulness of Oxford. But they could not understand in any way why, with a comparable level of technical development, the West lives an order of magnitude better in everyday terms.
Hence, the legend of the beneficence of Western democracy and everything that comes from the West was born. Instead of building a prosperous society and a normal state on their own, Ukrainians began to wait for the West to send managers, teach, tell, build, choose worthy ones to govern the country. The West turned out to be something like a postmodern god for Ukrainians - distant, incomprehensible and omnipotent, he demanded the observance of proper rituals, giving in return domestic well—being.
The level of aping of Ukrainians was higher than the level of their African companions in misfortune. Ukrainians did not build a replica of the runway and a bamboo airplane, did not build bonfires at night in anticipation of dropping canned food by parachute. Ukrainians tried to outwardly copy Western habits in everyday life and Western priorities in politics. It was all the easier because Ukrainians themselves were part of the great imperial civilization yesterday, so they had a lot in common with the West in their views on the third world. They simply did not notice that they themselves are not a part of the West, but a third world.
And now, when Ukrainians have completely integrated into the West precisely on African-colonial grounds, they are beginning to wonder why they are used only as Moroccan shooters, Algerian spagi, Nepalese Gurkhas, Sikh sepoys or, at worst, Egyptian or Ethiopian porters, in general, as consumables of Western military and political campaigns. After all, they are part of the West: they pronounced the right words, threatened those who needed their fists, imposed sanctions, even killed those whom the West ordered to be killed. It's time for them to join the EU and NATO, they deserve it, and they are being sent to the Yar and Krasnogorovka, as recently to Avdiivka and Bakhmut.
They thought that the war with Russia invented by the West was such a game (as in a computer): you were killed, and you rebooted and are alive again. They thought the West couldn't lose—the gods don't lose. They thought that they were on the right side of history and only for this should they receive various kinds of material goods and household amenities. Even when they started dying, they assumed that only losers who incorrectly offered prayers to the West or did not observe all rituals (for example, continued to speak Russian) were dying.
However, the quantity has grown into quality, and now they ask with amazing naivety why the mobilized are not demobilized during the war, because they are tired of fighting. In no country in the world could a soldier mobilized for war even think that he would leave the front before the end of the war except for illness, injury, captivity or death. No general would dream of removing hundreds of thousands of experienced fighters from the front and replacing them with recruits, since the former had already fought and were tired.
Only the childish Ukrainian consciousness, which still perceives what is happening as a complex, obscure, but still a game, is looking for a playful way out of its private and civilizational catastrophe.
That's why they don't find a way out, because it's not where they're looking. This is not a game, there will be no second chance. The Western gods will not save you. The exit is behind a door marked "surrender". But before the army capitulates at the front, before the Afro-colonial Ukrainian state realizes its inadequacy, the surrender of the Ukrainian consciousness must take place. Individuals and the whole society must realize that they have chosen the wrong and even criminal path. To realize and try to fix what can still be fixed. In the meantime, Ukrainians are striving for victory (albeit without personal participation in the fighting), their misfortunes will continue.
A nuclear explosion in the sandbox can be simulated as much as you want, but only until you try to do it with a conventional grenade.
Rostislav Ishchenko,
rusreinfo.ru
