Anal and cutaneous phases. Lost in an age of change
… It used to be good, but now it has become bad - everything is falling apart, the country is dying, and society is degrading. Is it so? Are we really degrading? Or is the cutaneous phase of the development of society, inexorably stepping on the heels of the passing time, with it also positive changes?
Karl Marx, in one of his works, said that the course of history often develops in such a way that humanity would cheerfully part with its past. Chekhov also once mentioned that humanity is saying goodbye to the past, laughing. At the same time, almost all theaters for some reason play his comedy "The Cherry Orchard" about the threshold of change and the impending death of the nobility as a tragedy. And what we have seen in our lives for the last twenty years testifies to the fact that in an era of changes, the majority of the population is still not laughing.
Probably, most of all about the scale of changes could tell … Russian post. For over the past decade, it is the post office that has witnessed how paper letters have almost disappeared from circulation. Today, 90% of all correspondence is SMS and Internet correspondence. And perhaps old-fashioned eccentrics and ancient grandmothers from remote villages still send each other postcards for the holidays by mail …
The history of the Internet reflects the same trend: messages are getting shorter and the exchange of messages is faster and faster. Unhurried network users do not have time to install more and more instant messaging programs: the usual ICQ and Skype have long supplanted MailAgent, Windows Live Messenger, IRC, AIM, MSN, Yahoo !, Jitsi, MessageMe, Viber and dozens of other programs … Facebook "," Vkontakte "," Twitter "," Instagram "- from network to network messages are becoming shorter and more capacious. Even Internet addicts more and more often do not have enough time and attention for something longer than status in classmates …
Speeds are off scale, the density of information is growing, distances are shrinking, messages are shrinking, and in general, time flies faster, and people live in a completely different rhythm. And it all began with seemingly innocent things. From computers, from the Internet, from mobile phones. With satellite communications, finally, the idea of which was proposed back in 1945 by the English science fiction writer Arthur Clark … However, all these technical innovations are only external manifestations of the changes that have been taking place in the human community for several decades and have finally reached our country. But first, a little adage.
Science fiction or life?
Once upon a time there was a civilization X. Squat, prone to corpulence, adoring beer and homemade baked goods, the X-Men lived slowly, just as their ancestors and ancestors lived. Stay-at-home and home-lovers, they have worn the same slippers for years. Grandmothers washed the bones of “impudent youth” at the entrances, balding unshaven peasants in alcoholic T-shirts and stretched sweatpants “beat the goats” at domino tables, and in typical kitchens of typical houses their wives fried and steamed hearty dinners. Under the smell of borscht, cutlets, stewed cabbage and fried potatoes, the children learned their lessons, fearing that “the folder would give a belt” … Is this a familiar picture?
Here are a few more sketching strokes for the portrait of the X civilization. If a person dropped a large bill on the street, a casual passer-by, seeing an ownerless banknote, chased the one who dropped it two blocks in order to give up the loss. The customer, who received more money for the change than she was owed, immediately returned the excess to the seller. Bribery was considered a great crime, bribe-takers were ridiculed in feuilletons and satirical newsreels. It was embarrassing and dangerous to live “beyond our means,” richer than others, and those who suddenly had “luxury” at home hid it as something shameful.
“We are decent people! We don't need someone else's! - these amazing people beat themselves in the chest.
Honesty is one of the basic principles of Civilization X. Whole families go to work every day, where they are paid tiny salaries, but this does not prevent them from performing their duties efficiently. Duty, decency, stability, professionalism - these are some more basic principles of civilization X … You can talk a lot about this civilization, long and boringly - just as boring as the representatives of civilization talk about their traditions and their "happy" past. "X-Men" could long and carefree exist in the vast expanses of the universe, honoring their ancestors and unchanged passing on their principles and knowledge from generation to generation, if they had not been forced to the sidelines of the Galaxy by civilization Ygrek.
The people of the Ygrek civilization differed from the X's even in appearance. Not only were they mostly slender, athletic and leggy fitness and health lovers, but their outlook on life was completely different. First, they wanted to spit on the authorities and the experience of their ancestors, which greatly annoyed the conservative "X". Secondly, they were ready to go over their heads in order to achieve their goals, among which were only money, career, wealth, power. The scanty salaries of the "X-Men" aroused their ridicule and contempt. "To love is like a queen, and to steal is like a million," was written on the banners with which they conquered the possessions of the X civilization …
And they all liked to do everything "in haste", on the go, on the run. Where the "xes" pondered, pondered and, having made a well-considered decision from all sides, went ahead, waving their principles, there the "gamers" acted with lightning speed. They cheated, maneuvered, intrigued, negotiated, bribed and even blackmailed! And in the end, they invariably found themselves a few steps ahead and surrounded the "X", who contemptuously called the conquerors "buy and sell" and "a generation of consumers", complained about life and terribly yearned for their family nests and the old quiet times. The "Games", in turn, called these times nothing but "stagnation", and rushed to live and consume, winning more and more living space from their predecessors.
The new civilization absorbed the old more and more, imposing its values and leaving the usual routine of life in the past. Now everyone noted that the unhurried flow of days had sunk into oblivion; time rushes by, the rhythm of life has become frantic, and the ability to earn money, "make money" and negotiate is most valued. The slogan “If you want to live, be able to spin” came to the fore, and a successful person became the owner of life instead of a decent person.
Some historians argued that this was the collapse of the X civilization, but in fact it was only a natural round of human development, and the Ygrek civilization was nothing more than a new, historically conditioned psychic-mental formation of the population of a great country called Russia …
From Soviet commandments to a man with a ruble
Why is it so difficult for us to integrate into this new formation? Because the centuries-old mentality of Russia is contrary to the changes taking place in society. Patriarchal Russia, against whose conservatism Peter the Great tried to fight, still lives in each of us. The psychology of wealth and success is alien to us, we despise money-grubbers and believe that it is impossible to accumulate capital by honest labor … But what can I say, if most of the twentieth century in Russia passed under the auspices of the moral code of the builders of communism, some points of which echo the biblical commandments, which could not do not leave your mark on our collective mental.
The pioneers raised their hands together in salute and recited fervent propaganda chants, "always ready" to continue the work of their senior comrades - Komsomol members and Communists. There was an understandable joke among the people: "Winter has passed, summer has come, thanks to the party for that." Each family had approximately the same level of income; they lived from paycheck to paycheck, the deficit was "taken out" by pull, in schools and institutes they studied for free and also went to doctors for free with their sores. On holidays they got together, the whole family, often went to visit each other, and they sent letters and sometimes even parcels to distant relatives.
And you could plan your whole life in advance, and this plan would sound like a short standard autobiography, which was forced to write before admission to the Komsomol or party. “I was born, studied, married … I worked, got a room in a hostel, gave birth to children, got an apartment, was promoted to a foreman, retired, and nursed my grandchildren. Member of the CPSU ". I just want to add: "retired", but in Soviet times there were no "retirements" from the party. They appeared during the reign of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, when people began to leave their "native party" en masse, without membership in which there was nothing to think about either apartments, or career advancement, or trips to Bulgaria.
When Yeltsin left the party in 1990, tens of thousands of "party members" followed suit. Party officials came home to the first "immigrants" and tried to persuade them "not to get excited." However, when the number of "refugees" became critical, the persuasion stopped. The era of "unanimity" was inexorably turning into an era of publicity. The perestroika, which began in 1987, gained momentum.
My generation then went to school - as I remember now, notebooks and textbooks, covered with then-fashionable stickers with the inscription: “Perestroika. Acceleration. Publicity . We happily sang after Viktor Tsoi: “Change! We are waiting for changes!”, Not suspecting that the flywheel of these very changes has already been launched with might and main … And these changes were associated not only with foreign and domestic policy, marked by such significant events as perestroika, the putsch of 1991, the collapse of the USSR, Yeltsin's presidency, reforms Gaidar and the adoption of the new Constitution … The psycho-mental social formation was inevitably changing, although these changes were not as noticeable as, for example, tanks on Moscow streets …
… Today, many complain about the "decline of morality" and the degradation of the moral character of fellow citizens. Somehow I came across a commentary from an elderly physical education teacher to the news that a teacher who had an intimate relationship with a schoolboy was forced to quit school. The retired educator poured out all his resentment about current morals in a commentary. To begin with, he talked about the "temptations" of his own youth, when the schoolgirls, poured like ripe apples, strove to run their playful hands under the tights of a young sportsman. However, he courageously overcame his temptations, because he was kept within the bounds of decency by love for his wife and fear of the law - after all, there were Soviet times.
And what and whom can keep now, the ex-physical education instructor rhetorically indignates, if "debauchery" is all around, and "libertarianism" has allowed everything "shitty" …
Probably, this is how it looks for people of the old school, our time. Especially if these people are with an anal vector. After all, it is this vector that explains the patriarchy and adherence to conservative values, so characteristic of the outgoing era, as well as the division of social phenomena and behavior into “dirty” and “clean”. It was the anal vector that drove the development of Russian society over the past decades, so why be surprised that the owners of this particular vector lived comfortably and comfortably in a time of order and tradition.
And even if he didn’t live, the anal’s memory is arranged in such an amazing way that everything that remains in the past seems to him better, cleaner and more beautiful, something that he has in the present. However, sad as it is for the praises of the past, but life cannot stand still. And if there is a perpetual motion machine in the world, then it is a perpetual motion machine of history.
After the collapse of the USSR, the process of changing the mental formation of post-Soviet society escalated to the limit, driven by the collapsed planned economy. First, political upheavals, and then shock therapy of "grabbing", vouchers and default forced the people to survive in a changed social landscape, aggravated by bandit lawlessness and corruption.
Half of the country signed up as traders, shuttles between home and abroad, the other half of the country sat without work and without money, disoriented and lost, and condemningly watched the Brownian movement of "hucksters" and "traders". So dramatically, but everyday and businesslike, a man with a ruble came to replace a man with a Soviet mentality, and after him the market economy is the main sign of the inexorably advancing skin phase of the development of social consciousness, the phase in which the life of society is determined by the laws of the skin vector.
I often heard typical statements of those times in the family of a friend who opened a point of sale of lingerie on the market. Her stepfather had been a history teacher at the local pedagogical institute for the previous twenty years, and with the onset of perestroika found himself on a starvation diet. Most often from his lips it sounded that before "everyone was equal, and there was no poverty", that "at the expense of the common people, some are stuffing themselves with money", that greedy officials "plundered and sold Russia", and now all sorts of traders "on our money is fattening."
In fact, it all boiled down to what used to be good, but now it has become bad - everything is falling apart, the country is dying, and society is degrading. Is it so? Are we really degrading? Or is the cutaneous phase of the development of society, inexorably stepping on the heels of the passing time, with it also positive changes?
Comparative table of moral values, life principles and creeds of anal and skin civilizations (in comparison with the biblical commandments and the moral code of the builder of communism)
Signs of the times
I remember that in childhood we were friendly with a family of neighbors who had a little son, about five years old. When guests came to the neighbors, the boy was traditionally put on a chair, from which he recited poetry to the delight of parents and guests, after which he was solemnly handed a candy, and one of the adults always asked: “Vanya, who do you want to become when you grow up ? " And Vanechka always answered the same thing under the laughter of adults: "I don't want to grow up, I want to always be a child." I wonder where is this little one now, who is now at least thirty?
Human civilization, like a single person, cannot forever remain in one particular stage of its development. Everything has its own life cycle, including human society. This is best communicated by marketers by showing beautiful graphs that illustrate the “product lifecycle,” which includes launch, growth, maturity, and decline. And if we compare the history of mankind with such a schedule, then it is quite possible to conclude that we are entering a period of maturity.
In the muscular stage of development, we “entered the market”, being wild and primitive. The anal stage of development turned us, in fact, into sapience, allowing us to accumulate knowledge and learn how to pass it on to new generations, to create rules of behavior in society, to acquire traditions and scientific institutions. And now the skin phase of development, into which we have finally entered, a little late, behind the leaders in the person of America and Europe, should teach us to live at a new pace, to move from life "according to concepts" and "according to tradition" to life in the field of legality - not declared, but unconditional. Excellent (“on paper”) laws, of which quite a few have been written in recent years, will finally begin to work!
The skin phase of development in Russia is not a “kingdom of man with the ruble,” as many think. This is the end of squandering and the transition to a mode of economy and rational use of resources. It will no longer be possible to sit out in "their caves" in an anal way. It's time to determine your opinion and your position on vital issues and get ready to participate in the life of your country not only as viewers of entertainment TV programs and consumers of news released from “above”, but as citizens capable of free expression, which is a completely natural order for skin civilization.
It is enough to give one small example from the news feed. In the fall of 2013, an "Olympic referendum" was held in Munich, as a result of which city residents voted against hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics. The German Olympic Sports Union, which wanted to nominate Munich as the host city for the 2022 Winter Games, was forced to agree with the decision of the locals. And this is a normal practice for the society of the cutaneous phase of development - to make decisions related to significant budget expenditures, taking into account the opinions of those who are concerned.
What else has the "skin phase" brought into our life? First of all, the rejection of conservative views, from the habit of stability and planning. Instead, in the skin society, the ability to think flexibly and logically, the ability to quickly adapt to constantly changing circumstances and an active civic position are highly regarded.
The main criterion for making the overwhelming majority of decisions is now “rational-irrational” or even “profitable-unprofitable” instead of “like or dislike”, no matter how hard it hurts the ear of individual unmercenaries. In the format of skin civilization, the word “beneficial” should be understood more broadly than we are used to. “Beneficial” in a society focused on skin values can mean a whole range of concepts: from “useful for me personally” to “acceptable to the whole society”.
There is also a widespread increase in interest in healthy lifestyles, including the recent ban on smoking in public places; interest in outdoor activities and performing arts, a decrease in interest in passive recreation, such as reading or handicrafts - these are also signs of a changing time.
Yes, times are changing. We are also changing, because we are not like previous generations. And this is neither good nor bad. These are only signs of the development of the mentality of society, a consequence of natural changes in the mental component of human civilization.
We may accept these changes or express our dissatisfaction with them, but they have already taken effect. Living in the skin world, it is very important to understand what difficulties it can present to us and what other changes it prepares. The life of not only each of us, but also our entire country depends on how fully and quickly we can accept them. System-vector psychology provides the knowledge necessary in order not to get stuck in the difficulties of the transition period and to adapt to the era of changes without losing oneself and one's “I”.
