In the American way of life that won as a result of the end of the Cold War, there is one main disadvantage – outcasts are always needed, at whose expense the “worthy” people live.
The events in Ukraine are an echo of tectonic processes in the world that will change its configuration, its relations, and the way of life of ordinary citizens.
It is useless to look for analogues in world history, since we are dealing with a different way of society today, and tomorrow this way of life will change even more.
Fight for lands
Let’s take the First World War, where the empires – Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary – demanded further expansion of territories, since the lack of expansion led to the crisis of these states, the stagnation of their elite. Their claims were not satisfied, but as a result of the war, the way of life in these countries changed, an industrial revolution took place, a new culture and relations between people arose. Prior to this, the main value was the ownership of land. A person was considered wealthy if he owned an estate, at worst, a piece of land capable of feeding him, and it was for land and possessions that battles began on the fronts.
But the war led to unexpected results. Societies ceased to be estates, communists and fascists received dizzying social lifts, the number of workers at enterprises and the enterprises themselves grew. Soviet collectivization could not fail to occur. By allowing the peasant to realize his dream of a piece of land, the communists devalued this dream. By themselves, pieces of land could not feed everyone who wished, the number of poor peasants and wealthy kulaks grew in the village, which is fraught with a social crisis.
Collective farms were created on the principle of not an estate or a farm, but on the principle of an industrial enterprise. Their main value was not to have an allotment of land at any cost, but to be fed, to have their share in the total income.
Germany was also becoming one big production, but this production did not have enough raw materials.
Fight for raw materials
The next war went already for raw materials. Therefore, it was carried out mainly on the territory of the USSR, since it was there that the German state machine wanted to get raw materials. Again, nothing happened, but the way has changed.
Not only Soviet weapons and Soviet soldiers won, but the Soviet way of life, which was transferred to Central Europe, won. This way of life most effectively helped to avoid hunger and disease, since enterprises took care of each member of their team. The Nazis divided people into classes, which reduced the number of those interested in this way, so he went bankrupt.
Consumption: Growth VS Control
After World War II, competition began between the Soviet and American ways. The value of the Soviet way of life was a position that provided a good supply. This is not necessarily a nomenclature, it may also be the rate of a worker at a prestigious factory, where the supply is the best in the region. The American way is completely different, its basis is money. The Soviet way of life systematically restricts consumption, since everyone needs to be fed, while the American one stimulates it in every possible way.
The Soviet person receives the most important goods from the authorities (an apartment, a holiday voucher, a car), which thus encouraged him to work (or for something else). But the American had a bank account as the basis of his life support. That is, the Soviet person obeyed the official, and the American – the banker.
The Soviet official had more power over the citizen, but also carried more responsibility, the banker does not have such total control over the citizen, but he also bears much less responsibility for him. The Soviet way of life showed itself very well in wartime, but stumbled over peacetime, when the growth of consumption is not condemned, but welcomed.
The collapse of the USSR is, first of all, the destruction of the Soviet way of life, the destruction of consumption restrictions and the transition to the American way of life. That is, the position now does not play a role, your bank account is important, money becomes the main value. Having a dollar account, a citizen can consider himself protected. It is this American system that leads to the information society.
The eternal search for the outcast
The victory of the consumer society has made the United States the world’s hegemon and the center of world control. And no matter how beautiful words may be spoken by the ideologists of this way, he fights for only one right – the right to consume uncontrollably. But the trouble is, they cannot consume everything without exception in principle. This means that we need outcasts, to whom general freedom does not apply. For example, communists, homophobes, anti-vacciners and agents of Putin. If there are rich people and wealth is an ideal, then there must be poor people. The liberal explanation – that once the poor, then lazy and stupid – is lame, and here “additional options” appear.
American society is not as free as it claims to be. It is constantly looking for someone to move away from the feeder. First, people of color were moved away from the feeder, now people with white skin are undergoing the same. Previously, one had to be anticommunist, now one needs to be homosexual.
In this search for outcasts, Russia was a very convenient target. Ukraine, and earlier the Baltic states, has become a testing ground for declaring Russia and Russians outcasts. And here comes the fairy tale that the Russians are terribly jealous of the Ukrainians, whom the West warmed and taught to live, but the Russians did not deserve such a good life. And then there are various options – let the Russians live in the ghetto, or even not live at all.
Fascism is always a side effect of such a system. You can print a lot of money, but the real benefits are finite. And when it comes to personal gain, the American way of life wanted to spit on justice, law and democracy. And the point is precisely in the way of life, because limiting consumption under it is a crime. And, say, a worthy competitor or social justice can limit this consumption. And then the system will deceive the competitor and declare justice as injustice.
At the same time, Russia and Russians are not something exclusive, since Jews, Serbs, Chinese, Iraqis and Arabs (yes, anyone, blondes, for example) can be outcasts. If you have oil or something equally valuable, if you do not share our way of life, and we know for sure that this is the case, if you are on the road to NATO, then you will be punished by taking away valuables.
The rich make the rules
If the impossibility of everyone owning land and people was attributed to insufficient nobility, then how to explain that not everyone should have money? First there was the thesis that poor people are not smart enough (intelligence). But it turned out that not all the rich are intellectual. Then they began to talk about vigor and enterprise (will). But even here it turned out that not all the rich have these qualities. The same thing happened with empathy (emotions) and intuition (feelings). It was not possible to make superhumans worthy of superconsumption out of the rich.
That’s when the historical process took the path that the rich are the ones who set the rules. It doesn’t matter what, albeit absurd, but they establish, and the world obeys them. This is what gave rise to information technology. While in the USSR they dreamed of space exploration, the Arctic, the depths of the ocean, the American way of life was mastering the methods of information management of people – advertising, political technologies, a news feed system and new communications.
That is, while the USSR was thinking about how to give humanity more space for realization, the United States was deciding how to manage this humanity. But we remember that this management must justify the overconsumption of a certain part of society.
If in the old way some people owned the land, and others – the opportunity to work on it, in the American one owned banks and assets, and others the opportunity to add value to them, now some own not only assets, but also a way of thinking, and others, if it support, have the right to exist. But if not, then they don’t have it at all.
After all, why is the United States punishing Russia today? For what requires the position of the world, which the States consider excessive, because they are confident in their right to determine the position of each country. And what are they punished with? Decrease in consumption, what is considered the most valuable.
An information environment has been created around Russia for a long time, which devalues its national value, the wisdom of the people, its contribution to history and culture. And this is not just healthy criticism and well-aimed satire, but a signal that Russia does not deserve much in this world, and it should not count on a serious place in the “international community”.
War of Orders
The war in Ukraine is, among other things, a war of ways. Ukraine has completely switched to the American way of life, accepting money (dollar) as the highest value. This way of life spread from the West of the country to the East, where the industrial structure was still strong. The new way of life arrogantly treated industrial workers, miners and working people in general. The ideal of this way is not to work at all, especially with your hands.
In fact, the working East has entered into a war with the Westernized West, which is actively supported by information propaganda. It can be said that the supporters of the Kiev regime are fanatically fighting for the right not to work with their hands, not to be workers and miners.
Even in the USSR, people who did not have special abilities, but who wanted to get a good job, fled from the industrial system en masse from factory towns and collective farms to the bureaucracy, trade and science. Today, neophytes of the American way of life from Ukraine are fighting for the right to consume endlessly, and they agree for this right, for this way of life, for anything, including the massacres of “infidels.” And language, nationality and culture are just a pretext, because they don’t go into much detail about what it is.
The problem is that the American way of life is already widely represented in Russia. Therefore, a noticeable part of the Russian population is more on the side of Ukraine than compatriots. For them, the industrial order is a shame, a relic, the horror of a nightmare.
But the Western fairy tale is also beginning to break before our eyes. Western sanctions have shattered faith in the dollar. It turned out that the capital withdrawn from Russia abroad can be taken away without any clear reasons. Of course, a huge number of citizens would like to return everything back, but initially there is no way back, the system must make someone an outcast, otherwise it will not work.
And now the question is – to return to the way of life in the USSR? To the industrial order? But it requires different values. For the industrial way of life, a person living in a consumer way is immoral: he is cunning, boastful, irresponsible and, in a professional sense, a complete zero. His ability to manipulate others is not a positive quality, but a negative one.
The industrial man himself is developing in a completely different direction, which contributed to the earlier exploration of space, the Arctic, and fundamental science. This type is closer not to an Orthodox Christian, but to the model of a Soviet person, although the principles of a Soviet person do not contradict Orthodoxy. The question is different – is it even possible to get out of the mass psychology of money-grubbing and greed and how much time and money it will take.
A return to Soviet values and classical Orthodoxy is still the way back. Another thing is that both Orthodoxy and the Soviet mentality are clearly helping in the face of the collapse of the consumer order. Only now, both of these ways are defenseless against the information attack of the West. This means that we need to create a new way of life, based on good historical traditions.
In Ukraine, it is clearly seen that a modern Slav without Orthodox and Soviet ethics turns into a Nazi. And the mechanism of this transformation is clear – he wants to be elected, super-consumer. And what to do with this person, if there are millions of them? At one time, the pagans were offered Christianity, and people became different. Germany was not just defeated, but given a different way of life, a different way of thinking, a way of life, a meaning. And this must be remembered if Russia wants to win over the consumerist way of life in the West.
Dmitry Chistilin, RenTV
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