Anticulture is a disease of civilization

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The danger of anti-culture is not only in a direct effect on the consciousness and behavior of people. It mimics, disguises itself as culture.

In the last 80-100 years, the anticulture has blossomed with a splendid bloom. At first, it struck the West, and after the well-known events of 1987-1991 (when ideological barriers fell and the Iron Curtain collapsed) it is actively being introduced into our Russian reality.

Anti-culture traits:

1) constant attention to the topic of death, necrophilia: endless novels and horror films, disasters, thrillers, action films, etc., informational necrophilia in the media. 2) preaching and propaganda of the abnormal in its various forms: theater of the absurd; philosophy of absurdism; psychedelic philosophy; drug anticulture; romanticizing the criminal (when anti-hero criminals are portrayed as heroes], excessive attention to deviations in sexual behavior [sadism, masochism, homosexuality); addiction to the depiction of psychopathology, painful manifestations of the human psyche, dostoyevshchina. 3) nihilism in relation to the old culture, a break with it or attempts to "modernize" it beyond recognition, in a word, a violation of the balance between traditions and innovation in favor of the latter; innovation for the sake of innovation, the competition to surprise, to amaze the imagination of the viewer, reader, listener with its "innovation". 4) militant irrationalism: from postmodern delights and dislocations to the praise of mysticism.

Unfortunately, many cultural figures are increasingly turning into werewolves - figures of anti-culture

Firstly, instead of "good feelings" "to awaken with a lyre" (A. S. Pushkin), "to sow reasonable, kind, eternal" (N. A. violence, murder, criminal behavior in general, rudeness, rudeness, cynicism, all sorts of antics, mockery, mockery.

Secondly, beauty, beautiful among today's cultural figures is not in vogue: the uglier and uglier portrayed, the better (examples: "Life with an idiot" by Viktor Erofeev, "Swan Lake" staged by Maurice Bejart, etc.).

Thirdly, the truth is discouraged. A typical example: in a television advertisement it was said: "Real facts are less interesting than fantasies and delusions." This advertisement has been broadcast on television many times. Just think about what is suggested to people: the world of illusions, the surreal world is more interesting than real life ?! Long live Manilovism, Munchausenism, Castanedovism, all kinds of intoxicants, spiritual and material! - This is almost a direct call for insanity, for withdrawal from real life up to drug delusion. In a word, good, beauty, truth - the fundamental human values on which life is based - are almost not interested in anti-culture figures, and if they are, then only in the wrapper-environment of the abnormal (deviating or pathological).

Anticulture is the overdevelopment of certain shadow sides of a culture, a cancerous tumor on its body. The danger of anti-culture is not only in a direct effect on the consciousness and behavior of people. It mimics, disguises itself as culture. People are often deceived, caught on the bait of anti-culture, mistaking it for culture, for the achievements of culture. Anticulture is a disease of modern society. It destroys culture, destroys what is human in man, man himself as such. It is more terrible than any atomic bomb, any Osama bin Laden, because it strikes a person from the inside, his spirit, mind, body.

The Russian philosopher V. S. Soloviev wrote: “What is culture, in fact? This is everything, absolutely everything, produced by humanity. Here is the peaceful Hague Conference, but here is the suffocating gases; here is the Red Cross, but then there is a shower of hot liquid on each other, here is the Symbol of Faith, but here is Haeckel with “World Mysteries”. " Unfortunately, this view of V. S. Soloviev on culture is shared by many, they understand it as something amorphous and boundless, and include in its composition things that are incompatible with normal humanity. I strongly disagree with this understanding of culture. The following statements of philosophers are closer to me: “Culture is a lump of accumulated values” (G. Fedotov); “Culture is an environment that grows and nourishes a person” (P. Florensky). Or such a statement by L. N. Tolstoy: “… we have the right to call science and art only such activity that will have this goal and will achieve it (the good of society and all mankind). And therefore, no matter how scientists who invent theories of criminal, state and international law, invent new guns and explosives, and artists who compose obscene operas and operettas or similarly obscene novels call themselves, we have no right to call all this activity a science and art, because this activity is not aimed at the good of society or humanity, but, on the contrary, is directed towards the harm of people."

Only that which serves the preservation, development and progress of life belongs to culture. More precisely, culture is a set of knowledge and skills aimed at self-preservation, reproduction, human improvement and embodied partly in the norms of life (customs, traditions, canons, standards of language, education, etc.), partly in the objects of material and spiritual culture. Everything that goes beyond the scope of this knowledge and skills, that destroys a person or hinders his improvement, has nothing to do with human culture and serves only one god: the god of anti-culture.

Propagation of the abnormal in modern society

Modern society and its atmosphere as a whole are infected with bacilli of an abnormal (immoral, criminal, sick consciousness). Cinema and television are filled with scenes of violence, murder, all sorts of horror films, monsters, shows of disasters, death of people. Criminals and murderers are often portrayed as heroes. Illustrative examples: the often shown on television domestic film "Genius", where the famous film actor Alexander Abdulov is in the lead role, or the TV series "Brigada".

Yevgeny Petrosyan sadly remarked in the TV show “Smekhopanorama” about the TV series “Brigade”: “Before the boy watched“Heavenly Slow Mover”and said - I want to be a pilot; now he is watching "The Brigade" and what is he saying? - I want to be a bandit. " The main role in the television series is played by the famous actor Sergei Bezrukov. In an interview, he justifies this television series, even declares those who do not understand the positive significance of the television series as fools. What is the plot of The Brigade? And he is such that the main character is a bandit who emerges victorious from all battles with his own kind and with the police. The series ends with the leader of the criminal group running for the State Duma of the Russian Federation and winning the elections.

The philosopher E. V. Zolotukhina-Abolina called this phenomenon of anticulture "the aestheticization of evil forces." She writes: “Endless bloody detectives, disaster films, horror series about maniacs and vampires have flooded our screens now. Cinematography is competing with life: well, who is more terrible, screen reality or real? Long-legged beauties strangle their unlucky friends with laces, and fabulous gnomes dexterously rip off the skin from the living - And we get used to it. We get used to the evil presented in a bright wrapper and against the backdrop of beautiful landscapes. Evil becomes domestic, like a Rottweiler dog, but this does not cease to be evil, and just like this dog, it can tear its owners to pieces at any moment. It is much easier for a young man who has seen a murder on the screen a thousand times (close-up, sadistically detailed) to pick up a machine gun and go to kill. His heart was covered with wool, went wild, and from this savagery he ceases to understand that a real person does not have five lives in reserve, like a character from an electronic game, and he cannot be treated like a target dancing on the screen. Aesthetization of evil is the scourge of our time."

I agree with everything in EV Zolotukhina-Abolina's assessments, except for one. She believes that "cinema is competing with life: well, who is more terrible, on-screen reality or real?" I am convinced that cinema in this case does not compete with life, but rather distorts it very strongly. It is necessary to distinguish between individual facts of life, which can really be terrible, and life in general, at the core. Life as a whole is beautiful and amazing at its core! If modern cinema really competed with life in all its diversity, it would pay very modest attention to the terrible.

It is a long-known truth: the younger generation is brought up for the most part by examples

If young people see bad examples, then they are involuntarily charged with the energy of these bad examples. And vice versa. Here is what Seneca wrote almost two thousand years ago: “If you want to free yourself from vices, stay away from vicious examples. A miser, a corrupter, cruel, insidious - everything that would harm you if they were close is in you. Go away from them to the best, live with Cato, with Lelius, with Tuberon, and if you like the Greeks, stay with Socrates, with Zeno. (…) Live with Chrysippus, with Posidonius. They will give you knowledge of the divine and human, they will command you to be active and not only speak eloquently, pouring words for the pleasure of the audience, but also temper your soul and be firm against threats. " (Seneca. Moral letters to Lucilia, 104, 21-22.) Seneca was supported by our illustrious commander A. V. Suvorov in very energetic words: “Take a hero as your model, observe him, follow him; catch up, overtake, glory to you!"

We see an endless savor of details - details of violence, crime, murder, rough / cruel treatment of people. The language and behavior of literary and film characters, as a rule, are devoid of normal humanity, delicacy, tact. Sheer rudeness, rude treatment, rough square language up to mat. Children, adolescents, young people see all this, absorb it like a sponge, get charged with this negative energy, and begin to imitate. They begin to think that everything in this society is possible, acceptable, acceptable. The negative energy of criminal consciousness, diffused in modern culture, in films, books, in the media, penetrates the fragile minds of young people.

One plot from Mikhail Romm's film "Ordinary Fascism" comes to my mind. Mussolini, the leader of the newly formed fascist party, was to attend a campaign rally in a small Italian town. He was little known to the inhabitants of the town. A few days before Mussolini's arrival, the main square of the town was plastered with posters with his image and a characteristic fascist greeting. When Mussolini appeared at the rally and raised his hand in a fascist greeting, all the residents of the town who had gathered at the rally raised their hand as one in the same characteristic greeting … This is the power of repeatedly demonstrating the same thing in print, in the cinema, in the media. Countless scenes showing criminal behavior only lead to an increase in crime, educate and breed more and more criminals. Cinematographers and writers sometimes justify their addiction to the detective genre by the fact that the crime plots of their films, TV shows, books reflect life, that life is supposedly such.

I declare with full responsibility: they slander life, people, Russia, humanity! The overwhelming majority of people live a normal life, give birth, bring up, teach children, build, heal, produce material and spiritual benefits. Crime and the fight against it are only an insignificant part of the life of people, Russia, and humanity.

Criminals, like disease-causing microbes, can only parasitize on the body of society. This is not what society lives on! The main life of people is either love, the birth and upbringing of children, the reproduction of a new life, or the production of material and spiritual wealth, life in culture, material and spiritual progress. Everything else is on the periphery of life. Crime is a peripheral, marginal life. Accordingly, it must be shown in this proportion. Not 50-70 percent of the screen time, but some 5-10 percent. Artists, writers, TV people should not follow the lead of the marginalized and those who are ready to watch the life of these marginalized.

Based on the book by L. E. Balashov. "The negative of life: anticulture and antiphilosophy"