Cultural development and degradation. Give specific historical examples of cultural degradation and backwardness. Cultural revolution or cultural degradation? Discussion of Alexey Davydov's report "The Crisis of Culture and the Cultural Revolution"

Yuri Loza, who ended his own musical career quite a long time ago and was content with the recording business and infrequent quiet tours, became a rare, but very resonant critic of social events. So the current New Year's programs have come under the devastating fire of his criticism, although the low quality of the New Year's shows has been causing public discontent for several years now.

The most unpleasant thing is that Loza's criticism is quite deep, objective and smacks of hopelessness. Domestic show business began to rot not yesterday, and we can only note the fact that its decomposition has reached a certain perfection.

In the domestic culture, a general decay has been manifesting for a long time. It triumphantly marches under the motto of the triumph of primitivism. Why create your own, if you can buy it at the world flea market? At the same time, the allocated is much easier and easier to "cut". Why eliminate problems if ministries or new control bodies can be organized under them. Why, in general, eradicate problems if they can be declared the intrigues of enemies?

When there is nothing to buy, then you have to exploit the ideas of 60 years ago.

The crisis has reached such magnitude that it suddenly became obvious to everyone to the point of nausea. Domestic talents are pushed aside by "cultural monopolists", who, apart from endless repetitions, have nothing. No authors, no ideas. There are no screenwriters, cameramen and lighting, no singers or just good voices. But in abundance there is a tired party of "Brezhnevs from culture". It would be funny if it weren't scary: music universities, competitions for young performers regularly churn out original disposable types, not talents at all. This is beneficial for everyone: mediocrity falling into the rays of glory, cultural "authorities" who have no one to replace. And even politicians, since it is beneficial for them that the people are dissatisfied not with their theft and mediocrity, but with the low quality of cultural content. The fact that this is not beneficial to society is of little concern to anyone.
The outlook is also negative. Instead of faith, people are given superstition and obscurantism. Instead of culture - cultural ersatz. Instead of music - rhythmic puke or puzzling "dyts-dyts", for a change. That serial killers and perverts of the original sourdough have become heroes of the present time is not worth mentioning. Then there will be surprised eyes at the next crisis, when everything collapses, suddenly and immediately. And looking for someone to blame. And recipes for unrealized salvation, one more primitive than the other.
Saving the world is possible, even if it's not worth it. Only, it takes work. Big and ungrateful. Is there anyone interested in it?

Personality and society.

Seminar 2

Society as a socio-cultural system. (question from the topic of Seminar1)

1 Social interaction: concept, typology of social interaction by spheres (economic, political, professional, etc.).

Theories of social interaction

Theory of social exchange (D.Homans)

Symbolic INTERACTIONISM(D. Mead, G. Bloomer)

Impression management (E. Hoffman)

Psychoanalysis (Z. Freud)

PERSONALITY AS A SYSTEM. THE PROCESS OF SOCIALIZATION OF THE PERSON.

Practical tasks:

How do the concepts of "personality", "individual", "man" correlate?

Define the term "personality".

What is the mechanism of the impact of society on the individual and the individual on society? Give a brief description of the views of M. Weber, E. Durkheim, K. Marx on this problem.

Outline the theory of personality formation by J. Mead.

Tell us about the theory of "mirror self" Ch. Cooley.

How did Z. Freud imagine the personality structure?

What types of personality will modern sociologists single out?

What is the "basic personality"? How does this concept differ from the concept of "basic personality"?

Describe the structure of personality as the interaction of the biophysiological "I" and the psychosocial "I".

What social mechanisms contribute to the formation of personality?

What is "social control"?

Define the term "social status".

What is a "social role"?

What types of social status do you know?

What is a "status set"?

What is a "role set"?

Do role expectations and role performance always coincide, in your opinion?

What factors predetermine the fulfillment by an individual of a social role?

When does role conflict occur? What is the way out of the conflict?

What is Personal Socialization? Describe this process.

What forms of socialization do you know?

What is resocialization?

Name the elements of socialization.

What factors of socialization can you name.

Tell us about agents of socialization

List and describe the periods and stages of socialization

Name the means of socialization.

Creative task:

1.

2. Prepare a roundtable discussion on the topic Take note of the fact that adult socialization often involves refining, revising, and even abandoning attitudes that have been formed in previous years. In this case, it is customary to speak of resocialization. Resocialization can cover entire sections of society.

Topics for messages and reports:

Sociocultural orientations of modern youth.

Sociological concepts of personality. Cooley, Erickson, Piaget. mid

The variety of social roles of the individual.

Inequality in society and socialization.

Socialization of the individual.

6. What is the essence of E. Durheim's theory of anomie?

Creative task:

1. Prepare and explain a logic diagram on the topic:

“Factors of youth socialization”.

2. Prepare a presentation on: "The rights and obligations of the individual as factors in the relationship between the individual and the social environment."

3. The socialization of adults often involves clarifying, revising, and even rejecting those attitudes that were formed in previous years. In this case, it is customary to speak of resocialization. Resocialization can cover entire strata of society.

Prepare a discussion on the topic "Resocialization of some social groups of modern Belarusian society".

Additional question for discussion (“brainstorming”):

Do all individuals have individuality or is it a characteristic of only talented people?

1. Beketov, N.V. Analysis of the processes of socialization of youth as a factor in the development of modern society / N.V. Beketov // Social problems of modern youth: collection of materials of the international scientific and practical conference (December 3-4, 2008) / Ed. F. Mustaeva. - Magnitogorsk: MaGU, 2008. - 476 p.

2. Anurin, V.F., Kravchenko, A.I. Sociology / V.F. Anurin, A.I. Kravchenko. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2004, p. 222-229.

SOCIAL CONTROL

Practical tasks:

Define the concept of "social control".

List the sanctions of social control

What forms of control does R. Park single out?

List the methods of social control identified by T. Parsons.

What is deviant behavior?

What are the causes of deviant and delinquent behavior among young people.

What is the difference between deviant and delinquent behavior?

How to distinguish delinquent behavior from criminal?

Is it possible to call the quirks of some brilliant people a deviation? Why?

Topics for messages and reports (optional):

1. Value as an element of the mechanism of social regulation.

2. Deviant behavior as a violation of social norms.

3. "Anomie" in society. (based on the work of R. Merton "Social structure and anomie").

Creative task:

1. Describe P. Berger's concept of social control.

2. Prepare a topic for discussion: "Mass Media as Instruments of Indirect Soft Control".

1. Tikhonova, E.N. Bureaucracy: part of society or its counterparty? / E.N. Tikhonova // Sociological research. - 2006. - No. 3. - P. 4 - 8.

2. Petukhova, V.V. Bureaucracy and power / V.V. Petukhova // Sociological research. - 2006. - No. 3. - P. 9 - 15.

3. Dobrenkov, V.I., Kravchenko, A.I. Sociology in 3 volumes. V.3. Social institutions and processes / V.I. Dobrenkov, A.I. Kravchenko - Moscow: INFRA-M, 2000. - 520 p. (P. Berger's concept of social control on pp. 186-192; deviant behavior on pp. 447-469).

4. Babosov, E.M. Sociology of personality, stratification and management / E.M. Babosov - Minsk: Bel. science, 2006. - 591 p.

5. Babosov, E.M. Sociology of management / E.M. Babosov. - Minsk: "TetraSystems", 2002. - 288 p.

CULTURE AS A SYSTEM OF VALUES AND NORMS.

Practical tasks:

Which sociologist studied culture?

Define the term "culture".

What are "cultural universals"? Which scientist developed this concept?

Name the reasons for the existence of cultural universals and the reasons for the differences between cultures.

Define the term "civilization". What interpretations of this concept are offered by various scientists.

List the functions of culture. Explain them.

What two opposite tendencies are noted by sociologists in the sociocultural process?

What is ethnocentrism and cultural relativism? Give historical examples of these phenomena.

Name the main structural elements of culture. Tell us about language as an element of culture.

What determines the specificity of individual cultures? What is mentality? What is a national character?

Define the terms "cultural progress" and "cultural regression".

What is "cultural evolution" and "cultural revolution"?

Give specific historical examples of cultural degradation and backwardness.

Creative tasks:

1. Prepare the answer to the following question in the form of a table.

Marina Davydova

MARINA DAVYDOVA is not afraid of Orthodox activists and the Cossacks who joined them. There are worse things. For example, running in place

Talk about the general decline - especially about the decline of education, culture and the entire humanitarian sphere - has now become such a commonplace that there is literally nowhere to set foot. Be sure to get into a common place. When I stumble upon yet another cry about this very decline, my imagination involuntarily begins to paint a terrible picture. Here was a closed (according to Karl Popper) Soviet society, an empire, so to speak, of evil, but in this empire people loved culture. At every corner they recited "Eugene Onegin" by heart, easily twisted quotes from Gogol and Griboyedov into the conversation, read Baudelaire and Flaubert, watched the ballet "Swan Lake". And now "Onegin" is not recited, quotes from Griboyedov are not screwed up, the existence of Flaubert is generally forgotten. Everyone listens to Stas Mikhailov and watches Dom-2.

However, memory enters into a fierce argument with imagination. I, too, found a "beautiful past." I remember literature lessons in a secondary school in Baku, in which our class had to make a comparative analysis of "War and Peace" and "Little Land" in an essay, and a parallel class (attention!) - compare the image of Kutuzov (from "War and Peace" ) with the image of Brezhnev (from Malaya Zemlya). I remember English lessons. I'm not even sure now that it was exactly English, and not some other. In any case, he definitely had nothing to do with the English that I later learned on my own. I remember how many hours at the institute it took me to study history, diamats and other scientific and educational programs, how many idiots with party cards gave us lectures on specialized disciplines, how much unthinkable rubbish I read in order to pass the exams for graduate school ...

People in the years of late stagnation read books, this is true (and what else could they do if the Internet had not yet been installed at home by that time). But the vast majority of them read the novels of Maurice Druon with ornate titles (“It’s not good to spin lilies”) and the epic of Anatoly Ivanov “The Eternal Call” (it was he, and not at all the novels of Yulian Semenov, as some believed for a long time, that was the main bestseller of the pre-perestroika years) . Modern Russian television is horror. But the television of my youth was horror-horror-horror. Even if we subtract from it the ideological “Village Hour” and “I Serve the Soviet Union”, in the bottom line we received concerts for the Day of the Police, “Blue Lights” with the jokes of the presenters, next to which any of the ProjectorParisHilton frontmen will seem like Oscar Wilde, and on Dessert "Kinopanorama"

In general, no matter how you look at it, there are absolutely no reasons to talk about the degradation of our culture (that is, about the progressive movement from better to worse). The youth spoke in foreign languages. NVP and istmat have sunk into oblivion. Festivals divorced apparently-invisibly. You can find film classics here and there if you wish, and even see them on a terrible TV. In it - what is already there - even art-house movies are sometimes shown. As for "Eugene Onegin", it can now be recited by heart by about the same handful of people as before. Little has changed here. But life has become better, more fun, more interesting. But the general feeling of degradation still remains. Where the hell does it come from?

In the most boring textbook on the political economy of socialism, which, as you know, was remarkable in that it was usually not possible to understand and coherently state what was written in it, I came across one most interesting paragraph before the next exam. It was called "The absolute and relative impoverishment of the working class." With absolute impoverishment, everything was simple. Well, here a worker received a salary of 100 conventional units, and began to receive 85 - he became impoverished. But the oppressed worker, according to the political economy of socialism, became impoverished even when his wages grew. And this paradox was explained as follows: the profit of the capitalist is growing much more rapidly than the salary of the proletarian. The gap between them is widening, which leads to an aggravation of the class struggle... and so on.

Now, in 2012, all this already seems like a monstrous pluperfect.

When I think about what my persistent feeling of today's degradation is connected with, this delightful example of sparkling Soviet demagoguery involuntarily comes to mind. There are many things in which we have not moved forward since my student days or even made some important steps forward, but the civilized world, in which not only science and technology, but also the value system itself, are changing at some fantastic speed , since then it has gone far, far away. And the gap between us is getting bigger and bigger - like between a person walking or even running after a train along the platform, and the train itself, rapidly drifting away.

This cultural gap (if we understand by culture a certain totality of our ideas about art and life in general) in the 70s and 80s, paradoxically, was not so huge. She certainly was, but she seemed surmountable. It was still possible to jump over it, having a good run up. The civilized West, after all, was also civilized, to put it mildly, not immediately. If we look not into the distant, but into the most recent past, we will remember that censorship restrictions in America, even in the 70s, not to mention the 50s and 60s, were still very strong. People in the Reagan administration called AIDS God's punishment, and it didn't seem unthinkable savagery. Homophobic statements in the 70s and 80s could still be heard from the lips of quite respectable Western politicians. Come on, homophobia… I was recently told that in West Germany in the 70s, a woman had to get written permission from her husband in order to get a job. Western society until relatively recently was much more repressive and conservative than it might seem. But now, in 2012, all this already seems like a monstrous pluperfect.

Literally before our very eyes, in countries that are commonly called civilized, the level of tolerance and the degree of self-reliance of the human person, on the one hand, have fantastically increased, and the very structure of humanitarian knowledge has become fantastically complicated, on the other. And just as the outlines of life changed there, the outlines of art also changed - it also increasingly became a zone of freedom and began to speak with the viewer in an increasingly complex language. In the field of theater, these processes (at least for me) are especially noticeable. The changes that the theatrical landscape has undergone over the past 20 years can truly be called tectonic. And if at the end of the 80s, when thanks to the Chekhov Festival, the first truly serious meeting of the Russian public with the masters of the European stage took place, the gap between us seemed insignificant, but now, paradoxically - despite the aforementioned abundance of festivals - it becomes insurmountable. Not because we are going backwards, but because we are simply not going anywhere.

Conversations on the evergreen topic “Is it possible to use profanity on the screen and on stage” some time ago was still amused and even seemed fruitful. But when at VGIK at a seminar on modern dramaturgy in 2012 you again hear these arguments from the lips of professors, this is already evidence of degradation. When not only online marginals, but in the works of venerable doctors of sciences, observers of quite progressive media and some public intellectuals you read the same monstrous rubbish that you read many years ago about actual artists and playwrights corrupting our morality and about “curators of actual feces” who bought everything around - this is degradation. When the artists of one metropolitan theater at the beginning of the 21st century are not embarrassed by their homophobia, and another declare that they have never read more nonsense than the texts of Alexander Vvedensky, this is degradation. Both in public life and in the realm of fine arts discourse, the brains of a large proportion of my fellow citizens more or less froze in the late 80s. Only in the late 80s did this state of the brain not yet seem like a catastrophe, but now it already does. Because then the vector of our movement was still not fully understood, but now it is clear that there is actually no movement.

To be honest, it’s not even the Cossacks and non-Orthodox activists that scare me, after all, there are not so many of them, and a healthy society can easily resist all these madmen. It frightens me that a huge part of the educated class in Russia has voluntarily doomed itself to provincialism. She revels in it, rushes with it like with a hand-written sack, calls it "love for classical art" and "fidelity to the traditions of Russian culture." Together with a huge part of the country, she recalls the recent past with nostalgia, nurtures national complexes, looks at the complex and changing modern world, like a loser on an integral equation, and, like the hero of The Tin Drum, resolutely does not want to grow up. But in order to hopelessly lag behind the civilized world, it is not at all necessary to go backwards, it is quite simple - as my homeland is doing now - to demonstrate to the entire planet a non-stop run in place.

The culture of a nation is such a delicate substance that from the huge amount of material on the Web, I chose this publication, which unobtrusively and convincingly proves the decline of education, enlightenment and progress in the "democratic" overseas paradise.

At the first screening of the famous film "Gone with the Wind" in 1939, there was a loud scandal: one of the heroes (Rhett Butler), angry with the heroine (Scarlett O'Hara), throws an unthinkable blasphemous phrase into her face at that time: “I don't give a damn” is a rare insolence challenge to the norms of public morality, equivalent to saying “Fuck you to hell!”. The indignation of society knew no bounds.

It was the first reconnaissance in force, designed to test how tenaciously society clings to its moral values. It turned out to be quite tenacious. Yes, even in the early 60s, any foul language, including blasphemy, was still absolutely unacceptable in public discourse, and among cultured people - in private conversations. The use of unprintable words and expressions was considered bad form, the height of vulgarity.

It's only been a few decades and everything has changed. One of the most striking phenomena of the last half century has been the moral, spiritual, and cultural impoverishment of American life. Now the denunciation of all previously unshakable norms of morality, public sex and thick obscenity constitute its usual background.

Popular movies consist of a continuous series of gory and pornographic episodes, somehow connected by incomprehensible dialogue and a wretched plot. Swearing richly fills the pages of popular books and magazines, pours in stormy streams from the screens of cinemas and televisions. The texts of popular songs and plays are saturated with swearing, glamorous celebrities of both sexes speak publicly, swearing increasingly slips into television news reports. And there is no need to talk about private communication. In order to be known as one's own in enlightened circles and to easily maintain secular conversation, now it is quite possible to get by with just two words: fuck and shit with their derivatives.

The famous debates between Lincoln and Douglas in 1858 attracted spectators from dozens of miles away. If, at the behest of a pike, the modern intelligentsia were transferred to that era, I am ready to guarantee that today's intellectuals - unlike the spectators of those years, the overwhelming majority of ordinary farmers - simply would not be able to follow these competitions in oratory, they would be so inaccessibly difficult for them the syntax and vocabulary of the then language.

The invasion of vulgarity of the lowest kind into the vocabulary of even cultural (or rather, educated) strata does not pass without leaving a trace. The language in which the intelligentsia communicates is noticeably poorer, the number of grammatical and phonetic errors is growing, speech is becoming more and more meager and inexpressive. It is understandable: why puff and strain, inventing elegant turns, when you can express all shades of emotions with one or two strong words. But, as George Orwell correctly noted, language is a mirror of the thinking apparatus; the more wretched and pale the speech, the more distinct is the impoverishment of thought.

To match the language and mass culture. In this area, there has historically been an invariable trend: culture was created at the top of society and trickled down drop by drop, being assimilated in a simplified form by the lower classes. This was how the cultural potential of society was maintained, this was how civilization was nourished.

The wealthy Flemish merchants adopted from the aristocracy the habit of decorating their homes with portraits of its inhabitants, still lifes and landscapes. Demand for painting, as usual, gave rise to supply. It is estimated that during the 17th century, Flemish artists created one and a half million works, and of the highest quality. The "bourgeois" - imagine! - turned out to be excellent taste, they did not accept hack work.

Bach, Telemann and other classics of the German baroque wrote their compositions to a large extent on the orders of the bourgeoisie, mainly of all kinds of guilds. Mozart composed operas in Italian for the court, and in German for the common people. The courtiers listened to Don Juan and The Marriage of Figaro, while the common people enjoyed The Abduction from the Seraglio and The Magic Flute. There is no need to talk about Italy at all - the gallery understood music no worse than the stalls and was no less exacting.

But now the vector of culture has changed 180 degrees. The pitiful remnants of classical culture have emasculated themselves, having fallen into suicidal outrageousness and arrogant self-isolation: the main thing is in no case to indulge the “low” tastes of the common people, not to stoop to their level. As a result, "high" culture has largely degenerated into a parody of itself. As for mass culture, it has simply turned into an echo of the ghetto culture, its nourishment comes from the bottom up, from the cloaca to the salons.

The intelligentsia and the nobility diligently imitate the cultural models created at the bottom of society. Young people from prosperous white families idolize “rap”, in rapture listening to fearful black thugs who, gesticulating menacingly and constantly grabbing their crotch (they say, male power is bursting, there is no urine!), wheeze about blood and violence, singing brutal sex, calling to beat with mortal combat the “sluts” who imagined themselves and “crush the cops”.

Fashion is now dictated by the underclass. Women dress according to the canons of the panel, competing in who will look even more extravagant, who will be naked even more provocatively. Tattoos and piercings have become the norm for both sexes. Whole jeans, not speckled with holes and cuts, are perceived as a manifestation of philistinism. The tastes of the ghetto, borrowed straight from prison life, decisively invade the realm of high fashion.

An equally striking change took place in morals. There was a time when society adhered to a certain strict code of conduct and an unshakable concept of honor. A true gentleman was distinguished by such qualities as courage, loyalty and honesty, a willingness to answer for his words and not deny his guilt. It was impossible to offend a woman, beat a lying person and publicly cry at fate. A gentleman's word was stronger than a written contract.

When the Titanic sank, the men gave up their seats in lifeboats to women and children, and, saying goodbye forever to their loved ones with a smile, calmly sat on the deck in anticipation of death. Self-esteem and unshakable concepts of honor overcame the fear of death.

Sitting on the neck of society was considered shameful. Even during the years of the Great Crisis of the 1930s, desperate people only accepted public alms with great shame and sought to get off benefits at the first opportunity. Extramarital motherhood was almost unknown, the single mother was an object of public contempt. By condemning individual dissolute women, society successfully defended its foundations.

But time passed, and the old code, which served as the main bond of morality, collapsed. The moral vacuum was filled with new rules, the society adopted the mores of the underclass: grab what you can; everything that lies badly is yours, everything that you can tear off lies badly; look for ways to wrest more benefits from the state; beat the recumbent, trample the weak, lie, deceive; winners are not judged... The mores of the social rank and file are now perceived by society as a set of role models.

All these are trivial, well-known facts. But how are they explained? Why did it happen? The answer was proposed many years ago by the famous English historian Arnold Toynbee. One of the chapters of his 12-volume opus magnum "Comprehension of History" is called "The Split in the Soul". This section on the crisis of civilizations describes what Toynbee called "the proletarianization of the dominant minority." This is the main symptom of the collapse of society, in which the "dominant minority", as Toynbee calls the elite of society, loses faith in its destiny and begins to imitate the declassed "bottom".

According to Toynbee, in the growth stage, civilization is led forward by a creative minority, self-confident, inspired by the consciousness of their virtue and the ideal of public service. The passive majority follows in the wake of the elite, mechanically and superficially imitating the patterns of behavior and tastes offered by the leaders. But when a civilization enters a phase of decay, the creative minority degenerates, falls into depression, loses self-confidence and ceases to position itself as a model for the masses. The elite is losing its former idealism, sinking into cynicism, ceasing to believe in its civilizing mission and relinquishing the burden of responsibility for the fate of society.

At the same time, it capitulates to the forces of lack of culture and the vulgarization of morals, art and language, imitating the lower classes of society that give rise to them - the "proletariat". Toynbee calls this process "proletarianization", although, in my opinion, it would be more accurate to call it "lumpenization".

Lumpens are admired, they are imitated, they dictate new values ​​to society, they feel that they are the masters of life. A holy place is never empty: the vacuum created by the destruction of the decrepit cultural code of the elite quickly filled the eternal code of lumpen culture. In any revolution, the initiative is always taken by a minority, usually an insignificant one, which imposes its goals on the inert mass and leads it along. So in the current degradation of Western culture, a tiny but active minority of the population, dynamic, self-confident and setting the tone in the absence of a rebuff, acts as a conductor. The avant-garde declared itself the hegemon, and society submitted to the new masters without resistance.

It was not for nothing that the British historian called the phenomenon he described “a split in the soul.” The degradation of society, the decay of civilization is by no means a monolithic process. Toynbee points out that a sure sign of a crumbling civilization is a split in culture. While the main part of the ruling class begins to adopt the lumpen culture, the few remnants of the elite, “fragments of the shattered” (in the words of Arkady Averchenko) rush about, feverishly trying to find solid ground under their feet. Some of them fall into utopianism, others into religious quests and asceticism (hence the craze for Buddhism and Krishnaism among the intelligentsia), others cling to the rudiments of the old culture, plugging their ears so as not to hear the bestial roar of the lumpen crowd.

But all in vain. The fiery words “Mene, mene, tekel, fares” inscribed on the wall inexorably portend an imminent end. Attempts, if not to beat back, then at least to contain the onslaught of the enemy, are only rearguard battles of a defeated and retreating army. They are unable to turn the tide of the war. The lumpen won a decisive victory and imposed their cultural code on society. In the face of reality, the former rulers of thoughts had no choice but to adapt to the new regime, which they themselves nurtured and nurtured. All that remains for them is to follow the wisdom of the weak: if you cannot win, join the winners.

Viktor Volsky's blog

The famous New York Opera House - New York City Opera - announced its closure and the beginning of bankruptcy proceedings. In recent years, the theater has experienced financial problems. In early September, his management announced a fundraising campaign. Until the end of September, for the further work of the theater, it was necessary to raise 7 million dollars, but only 2 million were collected. In this regard, the board and management of the theater decided to terminate its activities and start bankruptcy proceedings.

In the United States, funding for federal government agencies has ceased. For tourists, this has already resulted in the closure of many museums and parks. Many places popular with tourists are not available for visiting, including the Statue of Liberty, the Lincoln Memorial, Independence Hall, the Washington National Zoo, dozens of museums and galleries. Tourists will also not be able to visit the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Park and other parts of nature.

New York's most famous concert hall, Carnegie Hall, canceled a concert by American violinist Joshua Bell, which was supposed to open the season on Wednesday, due to a workers' strike.

Where is the crisis of culture leading? Experience of interdisciplinary dialogues Team of authors

Cultural revolution or cultural degradation? Discussion of Alexey Davydov's report "The Crisis of Culture and the Cultural Revolution"

Cultural revolution or cultural degradation?

Discussion of Alexey Davydov's report "The Crisis of Culture and the Cultural Revolution"

Igor Klyamkin:

Even before our today's meeting, I heard from some of you that Alexei Davydov's report "The Crisis of Culture and the Cultural Revolution" differs significantly from those that we discussed earlier. And indeed it is. Firstly, the report is mainly built on the material of literature, cinema, and television programs. Secondly, Aleksey Platonovich is trying to combine in his text the roles of a culturologist and a publicist. Thirdly, the author offers an unusual understanding of the crisis of Russian culture. As far as I understood, this, in his opinion, is not a crisis of decline and not a crisis of development, nor is it their mutual imposition, as in the case of Natalia Evgenievna Tikhonova. This is a crisis of decline and development in the same manifestations, since in the very decline, in the very decay of the old norms and values, the speaker sees the symptoms of renewal. Or, to use his words, sees the primary symptoms of the cultural revolution.

Aleksey Platonovich interprets the spontaneous protest activity of the mass man as an expression of the need for freedom. As a rejection by the awakening personality of the anti-personal traditional culture that blocks any reforms in Russia. The speaker is aware that in such a protest, which often takes on criminal forms, there is no cultural alternative to the “Russian system”. But this, in his opinion, is a manifestation of the demand for alternativeness - albeit painful, albeit ugly. The author considers the sexual revolution in Russia from the same point of view. Let's discuss how this interpretation is justified.

Another point that, in my opinion, deserves discussion concerns the protest of the Russian liberal intellectual. Aleksey Platonovich questions the cultural alternativeness of this protest. He believes that the very criticism of the Russian liberal intelligentsia in relation to the traditional Russian order should be the subject of criticism. Not because it is critical, but because it does not carry a real alternative to these orders. The cultural quality of the intellectual (and intellect) opposing the "Russian system" is a problem that has so far been out of our attention. Davydov puts it on the material of Tatyana Tolstaya's novel "Kys", offering his own cultural reading.

These are the themes that I highlight in this report. But it can also be said that these are different facets of the same theme of freedom and the nature of today's request for it in the mass and elite consciousness.

Alexey Davydov,

Leading Researcher, Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences

Crisis of culture and cultural revolution

Several previous reports presented and discussed at our seminar dealt with the phenomenon of the "Russian system" and the type of culture inherent in it. With all the differences in views and approaches that emerged during the discussions, almost all of us, as far as I understand, are inclined to the conclusion that this system has outlived its usefulness, that historically it is doomed to die. But what is coming and coming to replace it?

It doesn't happen in culture that something just dies. At the same time, its new quality is always born, which claims to replace the old quality. This counter process takes place in contemporary Russia as well. My report is devoted to the analysis of some of its manifestations.

Why talk about the crisis of culture and the cultural revolution?

Today we often hear that the modernization of Russia cannot be successful if there is no economic and political competition, free and fair elections, independent courts and the media. In other words, if there is no democratic-legal state. All this, of course, is true, it would be absurd to argue with this. But at the same time I ask myself: did not the movement in this direction begin in the 1990s? Why did the rollback happen? Is it only because our reformers did something wrong and wrong? Why, in this case, did the people not correct them, why did he allow a rollback?

Because and only because the minds of the majority of the Russian population are dominated by historically formed cultural stereotypes, which I have already spoken about in my previous speeches at the seminar. In order to avoid such kickbacks, a new level of need for freedom must be formed in society. In freedom as such. Freedom of the individual. There is no need for greater freedom among the masses, and there will be no deep and irreversible systemic reforms. And if we talk about the miscalculations of the Russian reformers, then this is, first of all, their underestimation of the need to develop in the mass consciousness the need for personal freedom. This is the stone on which our economic and other reforms stumbled.

And what do our liberal politicians and experts offer today? They again propose reforms, ignoring the culture. It won't work, gentlemen. Because you again do not take into account the mentality of the Russian people. A person who is ill with indifference to himself and fear as the basis of this indifference. And the root of fear / indifference is in the specifics of Russian culture. It is she who blocks the development of a Russian person's need for freedom. Due to its static nature, it is an opponent of both modernization and the individual as a subject of modernization. That is why I am sure that it is necessary to study the processes that destroy the statics of culture and contribute to the formation of a new, dynamic culture. That is why I want to speak not only about the crisis of culture, but also about cultural revolution in Russia.

The crisis, as the destruction of the old, conciliar-authoritarian culture, and the cultural revolution, as the creation of an alternative, personal culture - this simultaneous process has been going on in Russia for three hundred years. With communal-autocratic, Soviet and post-Soviet rollbacks, with countless victims. But this movement, this cultural revolution is inexorably developing. And the goal of such a revolution is to change the dominant cultural type in Russia, as Pitirim Sorokin spoke about.

After 1991, we found ourselves at a new stage in this process. The revolution in question is ideological by virtue of its ideological content. It is elitist, as it was born and is born every day in the elitist consciousness. And it is massive, as it covers ever wider sections of the population.

The essence of this revolution is in the liberalization of the value orientations of the Russian people, in the formation of a culture of personality as a new basis for the development of Russia. Yes, the formal changes in its political institutions and economic system after 1991 hardly affected the mentality of the people. Yes, basically Russian people are still traditionally looking for the “right” dictator, relying on the state in everything and disregarding their rights. Nevertheless shifts in mass consciousness go.

On what basis can these shifts be judged? Natalya Evgenievna Tikhonova fixes them on the basis of sociological survey data. I will try to do the same, relying on the analysis of the content of TV and radio programs, the blogosphere, newspapers, magazines, films, works of fiction.

What am I observing while reading, listening and watching all this? I am watching the unfolding of what Mao Tse Tung, during the Great Leap Forward years in China, designated with the slogan "Let a hundred flowers bloom." Perhaps, in our blogosphere, the second part of this statement, which appeared in China later, is already being implemented: “But not those flowers that smell bad.” May be. In the meantime, I welcome the very idea of ​​\u200b\u200bmulticolor - let all the flowers bloom freely and smell as they want.

What is freedom? It is the freedom of good and the freedom of evil. Simultaneously. And if we agree that development is always a transition to a new level of freedom, then we must agree that freedom at a new level is always a new interpretation of both good and evil. Which? We don't know yet. But in order to interpret a measure of good/evil that is acceptable to us in a new way, we need to have material to choose from. And the more the better. Because in "dregs" of good/evil, the main thing is not this or that interpretation of good and evil. The main thing is freedom of interpretation.

Let's dive into the current public reflection on good/evil and try to separate the smell of flowers from the stink of a cesspool. And let's do this on the example of phenomena that I conditionally called "a Russian person in an attempt to be a person", "sexual revolution in Russia", "scandal and cultural revolution in Russian literature". Together they make up a significant part of the "dregs" that is the subject of my report. It is in this “dregs”, which causes a whole range of strong feelings from bewilderment to indignation, that I am going to look for grains of a new culture.

Russian man in an attempt to be a person. Children's response to the moral impotence of their fathers

In July 2010, the premiere of the film "Oxygen" by the young Irkutsk director Ivan Vyrypaev took place, the main characters of which are a young bandit and a whore. On the night of January 13-14, 2011, in the program of Alexander Gordon, the film was shown on central television. How was he received?

Ivan Vyrypaev himself says that his film is "for those who want to think about the eternal." A journalist who was present at the screening said that the film "Oxygen" is freedom. Some Internet users saw it as a "manifesto of the youth of the 21st century", which rejects all stereotypes. Alexey Filimonov, who played the role of the protagonist, tried to explain in the name of what she was doing this after watching. In his opinion, "Oxygen" is a film about the mood of those young people who do not want to live according to the rules of conventional wisdom and protest against stuffiness in society in their own way: for example, they pick up a piece of rebar and break another person's legs just because it is Like.

It is clear that such characters do not cause sympathy. Therefore, the vast majority of Internet responses to the film are alarmingly squeamish. Netizens saw in him exalted boys in a turbulent period of adolescence, who are very fond of "listening to Radiohead and fiddling with their organ." They quote the hero: "...Smoke weed, eat apples, drink juice..."; “You drink and smoke, you drink too much and degrade, you live like a plant, and you like it…” Dialogues are quoted: “What are you doing?” - "Yes, I'm nothing!" - "What should we do now?" And they call it all narcotic nonsense. The characters are accused of "bad hearing". They do not hear officialdom, but they also reject the biblical commandments. A well-known TV presenter who attended the screening called the film blasphemy, which the vast majority of online reviewers also agreed with.

I understand these people. I just do not understand how they relate to the world that they reject and against which the characters of the film protest. And therefore I am more interested in those who saw in him something more than drug delirium. At the viewing, by the way, the general mood of the public towards this film-scandal was positive. The discussion was repeatedly interrupted by applause. Why are there people who like the movie? And why do the public like such, for example, cult films as "Brother", "Brother-2", "Brigade" and similar ones, whose heroes also reject morality and where people also kill and rob other people?

Therefore, I think that the viewer has a request for freedom, there is a need to feel like a person. But he does not know how to fulfill this request and this need. And in modern film heroes, he finds the same need, consonant with him, and the same ignorance.

In Alexei Balabanov's film "Brother", which was released in 1997 and collected many awards, the young protagonist Danila Bagrov, establishing justice, acts as a judge and an executioner. After killing many people, he flees from society somewhere closer to nature. What does not suit him? He is not satisfied with the social universal, which gives rise to injustice in human relations.

“Tell me, American, what is the strength? - asks Danila in "Brother-2". - Is it in the money? So my brother says that in money. You have a lot of money, and what? .. I think that the power is in the truth. Whoever has the truth is the stronger one. So you deceived someone, made money, and what, have you become stronger? No - did not! Because there is no truth behind you! And the one who deceived, behind him the truth. So he is stronger. Yes?!".

In the "Brigade" is exactly the same line. Four childhood friends, ordinary Moscow guys just want to live. But the world is bad, lies in evil, daily humiliates their dignity and, in order to protect themselves from it, they become bandits. Caucasians are automatically included in this predatory world. Hence the racist: “You are not my brother, black-assed nit” by Danila Bagrov. Hence the anti-Caucasian orientation of many current Russian films. Hence the racist slogan "Russia is for the Russians!" on Manezhnaya Square in Moscow on December 11, 2010 and in other cities of Russia. That day is just significant in that we saw “cinematic” characters on our streets.

Are these truth-seekers and nationalists sincere? I think yes. They are a symbol of those young people who were not satisfied with either the Soviet truth, or the Yeltsin-Gaidar one, or the Medvedev-Putin one. And the truth they have found, in following which they are trying to realize their nonconformist personal beginning, pushes them out of society.

What kind of phenomenon is this, when even good people in the struggle for the right to be a person become pogromists and murderers? I think that both "Brother", and "Brigade", and "Oxygen" are films about that cultural type of young people, thousands of whom came to Manezhnaya Square in December 2010, and tens of thousands of those who did not come out that day, but may come out next time. These are films about a new generation of Russian youth. Not all, but a significant part of it.

Internet reviewers cite President Dmitry Medvedev as saying that these people are hooligans and should be put in jail. There are also ideological assessments of this protest. Some see it as a manifestation of Russian national identity, others as a manifestation of fascism, and still others as a spontaneous formation of a popular political force. The poet Vsevolod Emelin, in his poem about the events at the Manezhka, emphasizes only the anti-Caucasian moment. I want to talk about something else.

Let's remember the facts. On December 6, a young man Yegor Sviridov was killed by Caucasians in a street fight. The police arrest the killers, but then let them go. Why? This question has been asked by Yegor's friends for several days to officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who arrested and released the criminals. But officials ignore them. No one thinks that the question is being asked by Russian citizens. Bossal rudeness, common for today's Russia, insulting the dignity of people. And after Yegor's friends report the state of affairs to the Internet community, it turns out that the dignity of many thousands of people is offended. Information about the rudeness of police officials is superimposed on the hatred of the population for bureaucratic rudeness as a general and chronic phenomenon of today's Russia. To this is added the offended national feeling. As a result, mass indignation grows out of a particular outrageous case as the indignation of citizens, not hooligans.

This is how events unfolded until December 11, when people took to the square. Who are these people? First of all, they are citizens again. Yes, their actions result in pogroms. But what brings these people to the square is not the desire to smash (it arises later, on the square, when the gathered have turned into a crowd), but their offended civic consciousness, protesting against humiliation. They are united by the desire to feel feedback from the same people who experience the same feeling of humiliation and the same desire to be a community capable of defending their trampled rights. They are united by the desire to be subjects of law.

That is why I do not agree with the assessment of these people only as hooligans and rioters. Yes, their outraged civic consciousness is politically and culturally immature. But it is. And it is important for me that they opposed the bureaucratic violation of their rights, that it was a protest against legal insecurity. And that's why for me the events at Manezhnaya are a manifestation of the cultural revolution unfolding in the minds of young people. One of the components of this revolution is the struggle of a person for the right to be an individual. And I welcome both the indignation of these people and their attempt to feel like individuals.

I remember one of the TV reports from Manezhnaya Square. In front of a television camera, a short, handsome high school student. Intelligent face. Accurate. Moden. A colorful scarf hugs your neck. He says he is protesting. Against what? He explains. There is no rational thought. There are words and interjections. Emotions and self-confidence dominate. But the pathos is completely understandable. The boy speaks on behalf of "we". Who are these "we"? Football fans? Pupils? Random acquaintances? Hard to understand. They are protesting against some kind of oppression, some kind of social universal, which presses and does not allow them to be realized as individuals. "It won't happen again!" he declares firmly.

You can, of course, following the Internet reviewers of Oxygen, say that this is a reflection of an exalted boy who is in a turbulent period of adolescence, who “lives like a plant” and speaks in turns “What are you?” - "Nothing". Can. In any case, I'm not going to argue with those who see in such a "reflection" the collapse of the intellectual world of the Russian youth, the crisis of culture and the decay of the foundations. But this is only one side of the matter. There is another. There is a fact of sincere protest. And searching for a new level of freedom. No matter how it is expressed. Let it be in a childish-primitive, emotional or even criminal form, let it be in the form of narcotic delirium. But he is. And this sincerity of our children in rejecting the established order of things must be spoken about, it must be discussed.

This is certainly not a new cultural type. Not at all. The type of person who wants to feel like a person, a citizen, a subject of law in total and self-sufficient denial, capable of developing into pogroms and murders, has not developed today. Unfortunately, Russian social scientists do not analyze the specifics of the traditional Russian cultural type stuck in its throwing. This is what writers have done and are doing. Therefore, we turn to the results of their analysis.

In the most generalized form, this is an offended person, whose dignity is humiliated by the dictates of the historically established culture and the political system based on this dictate. This is a “little man” who has come out of his family (often patriarchal) “mink”, trying to build a large society according to his own model, but does not know how to build. This character, stuck in its development, as I said at one of the previous seminars, received from the writers the name of a person "nothing else" (Gogol), "freak" (Goncharov), "unfinished man", "demon" (Dostoevsky) , "dislocated" (Turgenev). And let's not console ourselves with the fact that we are talking only about someone who lived before us, and today is outside of us.

This, gentlemen, is you and I - "squandered fathers" who deceived their sons with their culture. These are our portraits. And if we saw all these old-new types at Manezhnaya, then we will not rush to dissociate ourselves from them. Because we made them what they are. In your own image and likeness. The logic of their protest is paradoxical. They are fleeing from the untruth of that cultural universal that has oppressed and continues to oppress the Russian people for centuries and with which we, unlike them, prefer to reconcile. Their main alternative to the existing one is that they demand that their rights as individuals be respected by the state and society. But they don't know how to implement their demand. Therefore, their main condition lies precisely in the fact that they protest: both against the old that oppresses them, and against the new, which, as it seems to them, they also know. This is a humiliated and offended person, but stuck in his protest. And, I repeat, he was not born today.

A young educated man in Pushkin's "Prisoner of the Caucasus" and "Gypsies", humiliated by the city, runs into nature, into tribal relations. In communication with her, nature, he wants to protect his "I", he tries to learn from her, the wise one, a new truth. But he is also disappointed in her. Finding the inability to live in the conditions of nature and tribal relations, committing crimes, he runs back to the hated city. Denying everything and everything and getting stuck in throwing, he, in essence, denies life and faces a moral catastrophe.

In Boris Godunov, the Pretender, having successfully started the hunt for the throne for the sake of unlimited power (“the shadow of the Terrible adopted me”), is not able to remain the “shadow of the Terrible” when his heart demanded love. Continuing to fight for the throne, he no longer wants it. But her beloved dreams of becoming a Moscow queen. And he, a twenty-year-old youth, is forced to go to his love through stupidity - a bloody struggle for the throne, which destroys him. An attempt to be a person by killing people ends in disaster for the Pretender.

In Goncharov, a stuck person gets the name "freak". The young Mark Volokhov, a communist, one of the characters in the novel The Cliff, is not satisfied with the life he is doomed to under the conditions of tsarist Russia, and he fights against it for the sake of some “huge future”, “huge freedom”. What future and what freedom, he does not know.

Turgenev's "dislocated" honest young enthusiasts in the novels "Smoke" and "Nov", having read Western revolutionary literature, are preparing a revolution. By producing smoke, they perceive it as new. They don't know what the life they aspire to is. They say high-sounding words to each other, the meaning of which they do not understand.

In the novel Fathers and Sons, Bazarov is an example of striking civilizational immaturity. He contrasts the reality he rejects with the old myths: "Moral illnesses come ... from the ugly state of society ... Correct society, and there will be no diseases." And creates new myths. For example, he believes that with the help of cutting frogs, medical practice, social Darwinist theories, he can both explain the world and arrange a life worthy of a person. With youthful enthusiasm, he declares that Pushkin is "nonsense", and "Rafael is not worth a penny." He is also a protesting type, sincerely fighting against the dominance of historically established cultural stereotypes in society (“I don’t share anyone’s opinions, I have my own”; “As for time, why will I depend on it? Let it better depend on me”) . He is going to "break" life, although he does not know whom to break and why.

Danila Bagrov, the heroes of the "Brigade" and "Oxygen", football fans and the handsome boy from Manezhnaya carry many features of the heroes of literary classics. Yes, they, unlike their predecessors, are not carriers of noble or raznochinsk education. This is massive folk types, which allows us to talk about their novelty. But the nature of their protest is the same as that of the heroes of the classics. Their hurt dignity also speaks in them, they also try to be individuals, and also mostly unsuccessfully. They are all united by the existential rejection of the ancestral Russian culture and its dictates. And they are united by the inability to formulate a personal alternative to this dictate.

Danila, in search of some kind of people's Truth, runs from the city somewhere to the village. The heroes of the "Brigade" in the struggle against the world, which lies in evil, are surprisingly eschatological and, faithful to the Truth of the brotherhood, kill others and almost everyone perishes themselves. The characters of "Oxygen" want to be independent individuals, but in the struggle against the Old Testament morality they follow the laws of the taiga. They are modern incarnations of a man “neither this nor that”, “freaks”, young smokers, “dislocated”, “unfinished”, “demons” ... And yet I say to these boys and girls: “Hello, young, unfamiliar tribe! » Why?

I proceed from the fact that before our eyes there is a summing up of a certain period in the history of Russia, in the mass consciousness of which the historically established Russian culture dominated and still continues to dominate. This summing up is carried out from the standpoint of the value of the individual, which I understand as the ability to go beyond the framework of tradition and the search for an adequate measure of way out. There is a mass denial of the entire outgoing period, its ideologies and institutions, a personal alternative to them is being formed.

Yes, the alternative mass moral ideal is still bifurcated: it contains both the totemic tradition and elements of the ideal of personal freedom. But today there is a shift in emphasis. If the ideal of personal freedom was previously interpreted (by Russian liberals, Slavophiles, pre-Bolshevik raznochintsy, Bolsheviks) only as a means of liberation from the “wrong” bosses, now this ideal is interpreted as a value in itself, as a leading hypostasis. Russian specificity is still preserved: for example, liberal ideas are identified with veche, democracy with localism, freedom with will. But something happened that didn't exist before. The ability to criticize the Old Testament cultural foundations arose, and hence to self-criticism. I understand that such statements must be proved, and I intend to return to this issue below. I will try to substantiate my opinion by appealing to the tendencies that appear in contemporary Russian literature. Trends that are not visible in the literary classics.

And now, perhaps, the main thing related to the content of the film "Oxygen".

In the film, for the bandit hero, for whom the only value is sex, there is no morality. If it says "thou shalt not kill," he kills. If it says "do not commit adultery," he commits adultery. If it says "do not blaspheme," he blasphemes. And he does this "on the contrary" consciously. Why? Because he wants to. For him there is only justice based on natural law, which he understands as the right to be free from any right. But he does not live in the forest, but in a moral society. And he, "immoral", is in conflict with the "moral" society. Therefore, he has a “bad hearing” and therefore he is a bandit and a pogromist. And this is his natural right to act as he wants, for him there is oxygen.

What is the goal of youth who have rejected biblical restrictions but have not created new ones? She strives to be independent of everything. And strong. And have fun. Therefore, she does not need her imperial Russia. She wants to go to a new country, where there is freedom and pure entertainment. But... all the same, these people came to Manezhnaya Square as citizens. These people have “bad hearing”, but they “hear badly” only officialdom, which is based on the Old Testament-imperial morality, that is, on traditional culture. But they still heard the voice of the personality in themselves. And they are ready to hear everyone who is on the same moral wavelength with them.

What are we to say in this case to a young man who “does not hear” the Old Testament-imperial morality, but wants and can listen and hear? About what and on what basis to conduct a dialogue with him?

Alexander Akhiezer wrote that a Russian person must learn the main secret of Russian civilization - the secret of a divided society. A society in which the authoritarian-cathedral and personal principles are in irreconcilable conflict. But if so, on what cultural basis should dialogue be built in a divided society? You can build it on the basis of imperial morality, but then you need to forget about the ability of a person to shape himself as a person. You can - on the basis of the meaning of personality, but then you have to forget about the empire. It is possible, finally, on the basis of the meaning of the individual, as a new foundation for the empire: this is what President Medvedev wants, this is what many of our liberals want, and Alexander Akhiezer also wanted this. But this is just not possible. It is impossible to cross a hedgehog and snake. Therefore, you must choose. And this is what all the great Russian literature is about, which managed to expose the essence of the problem, but failed to solve it. About the same - and all, without exception, films about the protest of our youth, which is no longer "cinematic", but quite realistically presented to us at the Manege.

The conclusion is in my question: who reproduces the stuffiness in society, against which the Russian person rebels, trying to become a person? And it is in my answer: our culture, its way of being reproduced, called the “Russian system”. Her dictates, her historical stereotypes that still dominate our minds.

But non-inherited culture, no matter how meaningless it may be at the present stage, gives rise to a cultural revolution in the forms in which we observe it. It is produced by the unwillingness and inability of society, you and me, to overcome the cultural archaism in ourselves. Can we, protesting adult citizens, in the amount of several thousand people go to Manezhnaya Square? No. Can we, guided by civic feeling, be sure that, having come out into the square in such numbers, we will not behave like vandals? No.

And since fear, inactivity and reasoning have paralyzed adults, the youth, led by civic feeling and the desire to destroy, take the cause of the cultural revolution into their own hands. In my own way. Ugly. But it cannot produce another alternative yet. Such is the response of children to the moral impotence of their fathers.

Our sexual revolution

A sexual revolution is unfolding in Russia. It didn't start today. And not even after 1991. It developed for a long time in a sluggish dotted line. Its first manifestations can be seen in Pushkin's Gavriliad. Then there was the literature of the Silver Age with its symbolic nature of desire, the corporeality of the text, the thinking of temptation. But in the 21st century, the sluggish dotted line ended, and the sexual revolution went beyond the bounds of literature. It embraced the whole society. Its scale has a liberating social significance, because the main thing in it is not sex, but freedom.

In Russian society, there is a moral justification of a new concept for Russia - "free sex", independent of "love" and "marriage". The Soviet formula “ideologically sustained and morally stable”, which implied not only devotion to the ideals of the CPSU, but also fidelity to the principles of normativity in sexual relations, was almost expelled. Divorce is no longer considered a disgrace.

Today, the topic of sex and erotica permeates a huge part of the communication space in Russia. It sounds on TV, in glamor magazines, on the Internet, on the stage, in fiction, in the film industry. Sexual services are offered through the Internet and mass media, goods of the sex industry are advertised. They openly talk about sex, appeal to it, show it.

A few years ago, Elena Hanga's program "About This" was popular on TV. Then it was closed. But "it" made its way to the screens. A new program has been opened with Anfisa Chekhova on the same topic. The Full House humorous program fully exploits the freedom of sexual themes: according to the artists, what always causes approving laughter and applause from the public is below the belt. Recently, REN-TV has shown group, oral and anal sex (“gangbang”, “blowjob”, “nudity”). Young people are well aware of the schedule of these programs. These are the facts.

What is the moral decay of society? Cultural crisis? The death of Russia? An attempt by the authorities to divert the minds of young people from politics? Chernukha?

There is no single answer. There is no doubt that the theme of sex, independent of the meanings of love and marriage, has become one of the central ones in society and that this is a powerful ideological shift in the mass consciousness. And one more thing is indisputable: this shift, like a muddy spring stream during the melting of snow, carries everything - dirt, stones, and clean water. And no matter how we eschew this turbidity, we can't get away from it. Children resolutely welcome the removal of prohibitions on approaching the forbidden fruit. Fathers don't like it. For fathers, this is a crisis of the dying of Russian culture; for children, it is a way for it to survive in the new conditions. Let's calmly understand the new cultural phenomenon.

The naked body, hidden from the eyes of people for centuries, sex as a physiological act, the public offer of sexual services through a social network, newspapers and TV can be viewed in different ways. It is possible - as something immoral and depraved, as chernukha and a crime. And you can - as a moral, that is, as the provision of a service of the type that a person needs and who is glad that such a service has become available. It doesn't say anything bad about the person. It is known that one of the entertainments of Pushkin and his friends was visiting brothels. The young Gogol did not disdain this either. During the Soviet era, prostitution was banned in Russia. The development of social relations today along an "immoral" path will lead us to a type of culture in which prostitution is prohibited. Development along the "moral" path - to the type of culture in which prostitution is allowed or legally has a semi-legal character. Most countries of the world have taken the legal-semi-legal path.

So, in Russia, that conformist morality, which developed during the Soviet period, and which can be characterized by the words “no”, “what do you want?”, is undoubtedly perishing. and "I approve". And a new, freer one is born, which carries everything in itself: both the destruction of morals and the beginnings of a new culture. What is this new culture? Do not know yet. But one thing is clear: in the debate about "love" and "sex" there is a process of splitting the syncretism of the meaning of love.

The splitting of "love" occurs in two stages. At the first stage, “marriage” stands out from it, freeing intimate relationships from the dictates of marital relations. At the second stage, “sex” stands out from “love”, freeing intimacy from the sexual repressiveness of morality.

A few words about the first stage. In the ancient and middle ages, "love" was the means. Through "love" the race multiplied. "Love" was secretly independent. But officially, according to morality and laws, she is captivated by "marriage". "Marriage" strengthened the family, so it was he who was the measure of "love" (the principle of "endure - fall in love"). But gradually, over the centuries, through the tragedies of people, a great cultural revolution is taking place - love is freed from the captivity of marital relations. She becomes the measure of herself. Including in Russia.

Beginning with Pushkin and Lermontov, a public reflection arises in the country about the independence of the meaning of love from all social meanings. Love that has gone beyond morality becomes an easy prey of culture (L. Tolstoy, A. Ostrovsky, N. Leskov), but in the conditions of Russia, perhaps the only way for a person to feel like a person. In Turgenev's work, the idea arises that the leader in love relationships is a socially active woman, and a man, as a bearer of a masculine principle, has not yet developed in Russia either in public or in love relationships. In Chekhov's work, the ability to love becomes a way for a person to form a personality in himself, but Chekhov's love has always led to misfortune, hatred, tragedy and personal catastrophe. And in the work of Bulgakov, Pasternak and Sholokhov, the ability to love, free from morality, finally formed as a measure of the ability to be a person.

Thus, the writers' analysis of the meaning of love in its struggle for its independence has become a unique way of self-knowledge of a Russian person. Love in the great Russian literature, freed from the dictates of morality, has fulfilled its historical mission. She recorded one of the most important features of Russian culture - the failure of a Russian person's attempt to become a person or the inability of a person to live in Russia.

After 1991, a new stage of splitting the syncretism of "love" unfolds. From this sense, “sex” stands out and declares its “freedom”. Earlier "sex" was destination love. Autonomizing from it, “free sex” is becoming an independent sphere of human life today. Russian fiction of the 19th-20th centuries strongly condemned such relationships as lust, as likening a person to an animal. Let's remember Vera - the main character of Oblomov's novel "Cliff": "I'm not a she-wolf, but a woman!" Society today is moving in a different direction. It does not hesitate to demand open talk about "free sex", its open demonstration and propaganda, more and more openly implementing "free sex" in social relations.

What has changed in public reflection on sexual love?

In modern Russian romance novels, which are literally overflowing with store shelves, sexual love is by no means an uplifting force, as, for example, in the Song of Songs of the Bible, Dante, Petrarch. Not the path of ascent to the beautiful, as, for example, in Plato. Not an existential search for higher spirituality, as in Pushkin and Lermontov. The split in the understanding of the meanings of sex and love for the first time in Russian literature occurred between Alexei Vronsky and Anna Karenina. If Alexey dreamed of possessing Anna physically, then for Anna sex did not mean anything, she was worried about love only as a platonic essence. The sexual revolution all over the world and in Russia followed the path of Vronsky, emphasizing the physiological and social aspects of the human.

The physiological aspect of the sexual revolution is manifested in the emphasis on the freedom of sex - a short-term higher stage of pleasure, which, as a rule, appears in a person as the final stage of an ecstatic state. It is a liberation from a system of sexual repression that uses family, politics and culture to repress human sexuality and freedom. And thus forms a conservative type of people's character, focused on blind obedience and support for the dictatorship.

The ideology of the sexual revolution, presented, for example, by W. Reich in The Sexual Revolution and M. Foucault in The History of Sexuality, postulates that free sex is the most important potential reservoir of true human liberation and develops the idea of ​​freedom of sex as a desirable social phenomenon. Freedom of sex is one of the few freedoms that individuals, having experienced once, do not exchange for any "social benefits" that infringe on the freedom of personal behavioral choice in the interests of the state machine and leveling social control. According to W. Reich, the sexual revolution, liberating the physiological need of a person, is the prerequisite and basis of the "truly human revolution", since it liberates people from repressed sexuality, liberates them and thereby creates the conditions for a real social revolution.

The social aspect of the sexual revolution emphasizes something else - the measure of people's closeness. Today, sex is one way for a person to get close to the unique Other, but at the same time not to be enslaved by this uniqueness. This is a search for communication, but through such a rapprochement, which carries a pronounced measure of independence.

Finding the optimal measure of closeness / distance from each other, acquired through "free sex", in some cases can bring partners closer than through family "spirituality", develop into friendship, love. A type of sociality arises that comes, on the one hand, from the beauty of physical intimacy (the ideology of the Renaissance in Europe) and “pansexualism” in the human (Z. Freud), and on the other hand, from the conscious social unconnectedness of partners. The enjoyment of intimacy each time occurs as the joy of mastery, conquest, as a new and absolutely voluntary action. Through "free sex" a person each time experiences the process of "rebirth" (M. Mamardashvili) of love and the formation of himself as an independent person.

In classical Russian literature, this type of social relationship unfolds between the Master and Margarita in Bulgakov's novel of the same name, and between Grigory and Aksinya in Sholokhov's novel The Quiet Flows the Don. In both novels, the sexual revolution in Russia leads the characters to both existential and rational protest against the dictates of historical culture. And also to the conclusion that the subject of the sexual revolution cannot live in Russia.

The sexual revolution is a complex phenomenon. It can lead to the formation of civil relations if it develops on the basis of the recognition of the rights of the individual. People's protests for the legalization of abortion, divorce, repeated and civil marriages, for the development of the contraceptive industry, for the recognition of the rights of sexual minorities - all these are means of developing civil society, ways of forming a new unity through a new diversity. But in the conditions of modern Russia, when democracy in the country cannot get on its feet, sexual love hides in itself in order to avoid public condemnation. It becomes a new form of self-isolation of the subject who wants to protect his uniqueness from a unitary society that suppresses the uniqueness of the individual. An interest club, a civic organization, a non-traditional sexual group, closed in on itself, can form a “clique consciousness” and a “clique society”. A society that is divided into various sects, giving rise to a split into "us" and "them", mutual distrust and hatred.

"Free sex", if it is open, carries the beauty of communication. If it is secret, it is not free and has nothing to do with the sexual revolution.

I am far from thinking of justifying everything that is happening today on the theater stages, on TV screens and on the Internet in the field of interpretation of intimate relationships. There really is a mockery of the brightest that is in a person, and vulgarity, and ignorance, and pedophilia, and crimes. And all this must be uncompromisingly resisted and counteracted. But the main thing I want to say is something else.

I want to say that the thought of sex designers is free. And let her be free. Let it produce a new world. And let this world be "muddy" in places. And each of us will always be able to choose from this "dregs" what he needs to take on the boat, sailing into the future culture, and what he does not need.

I am sure we will decide on group sex. I think that this is a game of youth, excess, extreme. It won't stick. Although who knows? We survived the appearance in our life of a condom, and a mini-skirt, and a bikini, and a nudist beach, and a tie, and jazz, and a foxtrot, and a man's loose-fitting shirt. The opportunistic hype (“today he plays jazz, and tomorrow he will sell his homeland”) has gone, and all this has long become the norm. What about vulgarity? Vulgarity is immortal. But a person who forms himself as a personality and his era as an era of personality is able to put everything in its place.

Let's summarize.

What good is it that the shackles of excessive control over the sexual behavior of the population have collapsed, and "sex" has largely broken free? In the emergence of a new reflection that a person needs? Far from it. The main thing is that such a sphere of sociality was born, which declares itself as free. This is not an area of ​​freedom of paramount importance. Not a sphere in which a person demands free elections, independent courts and the fight against corruption. Nevertheless, this is the area in which a person feels personally free.

And this means that, having felt free in this area, he will want to feel free in other types of his activities. I think gay parades should be allowed. Not because they are “gay” and not because they are parades, but because through them the sphere of individual freedom in the mind of a Russian person will expand its boundaries even more.

I cannot but turn to those people who are in favor of reforms in Russia, but demand the introduction of censorship of the sexual topic in the blogosphere and the media.

It is pointless to introduce such censorship. Because it is impossible to stop the sexual revolution that has unfolded all over the world and has been somewhat delayed in Russia. Banned, she will go underground.

The state security is trying to ban the free work of bloggers, because it is dangerous for the regime. But nothing will come of this either. The authorities at one time forbade the publication of many outstanding poets and writers, starting with Fonvizin and Pushkin. So what? Did they manage to stop free thought?

Intimacy in the Dom-2 TV program, the Internet nudity of the ballerina Anastasia Volochkova and group sex on REN-TV seem to some people a loss of shame and conscience, moral decay and decay. And they can be understood. But let's try to look at the freedom of eroticism and "free sex" as an element of the cultural revolution, which, in its limited area of ​​morality, buries the conformist past and forms before our eyes a new human one, to which we and our children have yet to determine our attitude.

Scandal and cultural revolution in Russian literature

I read the works of contemporary Russian writers, whose texts are considered immoral, anti-patriotic, anti-human, anti-aesthetic by "subtle aesthetes", and I ask myself: why are these writers so popular? Why is the mass reader so attracted to perversions, swearing, alcoholism, violence, blood? Why does he not resent his mockery of recent shrines - God, the people, the homeland, the Russian people? Where does this savoring of situations come from when “the tower was blown off”, “the roof went off”? The “subtle aesthete”, brought up on Russian classics and Soviet patriotism, is indignant, demands that the Duma ban scandalous works. And the Duma forbids it, involuntarily increasing their circulation and provoking new scandals.

Reading scandalous literature, I ask myself: is it really not constructive? But this cannot be by definition. Because any criticism of values, especially if it is a deep criticism, is conducted from the standpoint of alternative values. But if so, then what are these alternative values ​​of scandalous literature? And are they able to fit into the processes of formation of a new cultural diversity in the world?

Why is a Russian person, brought up from school to “I remember a wonderful moment”, “I am the one who listened // You are in the midnight silence”, “The Dnieper is wonderful in calm weather”, “Beauty will save the world”, - why does he read with pleasure today about how, during a picnic with school graduates, the teacher went into the bushes, pooped, and the student, accidentally seeing this, picked up pieces of feces and carefully ate them? (V. Sorokin, "Sergey Andreevich").

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