Russia has always been searching for great significance.

May 6, 2025, 08:46 - Opinion

Within the framework of our own civilizational values, any global disaster cannot make us escape the necessity of seeking a "balance point" among people's daily needs, the great meaning of social life, and the strategic interests of the state.

Author: Andrei Zubov - writer, historian

Thought-provoking topics, or as we now more habitually and blandly say, "popular" topics, always recur. In the late 20th century, discussions about how the relationship between the state and society should be constructed were very popular. That is, whether people are for the state or the state is for people?

However, at the same time, direct political experience showed that only one pure rhetorical choice lay before us. A state that constantly makes demands on its citizens and is in crisis will inevitably make those who live within it vulnerable. First, the most "vulnerable" groups - patients, the elderly, children, and almost everyone except for individual groups that parasitize during the disintegration of the state. In any case, we witnessed this process in the first half of the 1990s.

So things are much more complicated. In fact, in modern times, there exist two ways of organizing the relationship between systems and individuals, which interact with and oppose each other.

In the first way, from classical capitalism to modern markets, money becomes the main and absolute regulatory factor, and is based on people's current status rather than evaluating their qualities and images. There are no moral, ideological, let alone spiritual requirements for people.

Such a system immediately becomes practical and quite convenient. But it also leads to the success of "bad people," namely those who are the least principled, prepared to ruthlessly exploit their compatriots, and have vulgar tastes. This situation is automatically regarded as normal, at best seen as an incidental product of stability and development capabilities.

On the other hand, the system based on "values" - from Christian monarchy to "real socialism" and Islamic republics - focuses on what they consider to be the best qualities of humanity. In extreme cases, even the transformation of human beings. In our history, just recalling the ideal moral standards of the builders of red Soviet Union and the theory that the Soviet people are a new historical community, these initially gradually accepted in a formalized manner, then collapsed instantly at the first gust of historical wind. The problem lies in the strong resistance of human nature's "normal" and "normative" to the requirement of transformation, while the leaders of society develop an impulse to transcend reality and treat wishes as reality. Thus, inner contradictions and hypocrisy arise, and jokes never cease; finally, when people are required every day to perform heroic deeds instead of enjoying a sumptuous dinner and wearing nice pants, these calls become annoying.

This is the natural and inevitable weakness of such systems. However, their strength and advantage lie in the pursuit of truth and ideals being part of human nature, which gives our lives meaning.

In its historical process, Russia tends towards the second type of self-organization, always looking for "great significance." But "normativity" strongly resists. Since 1991, we have been seeking a balance point, and after 2014, especially since the beginning of the special military operation, these searches have become more urgent and crucial.

The other part of the Christian world, which we might call "the West," has long lived under various symbols and ideals. But starting from the end of the 18th century, it integrated its Christianity into Enlightenment and positivist thought. It was content to recognize money, wealth, and other consumer welfare as the sole standard for measuring human prosperity, with economic and production development being the most important indicators of all other social processes.

We clearly remember that Soviet society was supposed to be built on Marx's idea that the economy plays a foundational role in social life and that "material" plays a key role. Lenin said that in the competition of two systems, the one with higher labor productivity would win, which made sense. But historical practice, Russia's basic civilizational values, and the logic of "breakthroughs" during the construction of socialism itself changed this situation. The state talked about the economy but called on people from the "spiritual" and "supra-economic" perspectives.

The West's victory in the Cold War was partly due to its not putting forward such "calls." Its so-called "freedom" ultimately boiled down to the freedom of consumption capacity, which by the end of the 20th century became beautiful scenes on movie and TV screens. There exists firm humanistic pragmatism, with clear and perceivable "consumption dreams" goals - from Playboy magazine girls and commercialized sexual behavior to simple numbers in bank accounts.

This is the power of their system - wanting to add "detestable," but we won't comment. However, at the end of the 20th century, especially in the early 21st century, we began to witness a very strange process. Left-liberal ideology, partly derived from the ideas of 1968, is a strange mixture of Popper, Marcuse, Guy Debord, and Baudrillard, whose concepts of "deconstruction," "society of spectacle," and gender theory have impacted the core of Western society - the image and interests of humans, with no additional requirements or expectations for people. This led to the worship of minority groups, the concept of post-colonial guilt, and so on, which have turned into pure fantasies in front of our eyes, sometimes not only contradicting common sense but even going against basic self-preservation instincts.

By the way, this is quite different from previous "value-based" societies. If previous societies - within the framework of cultural hierarchies formed over centuries - called on people to "rise up" and achieve their basic noble missions, left liberals instead call on people to "fall down," to acknowledge their incompetence and fundamental corruption, moving toward some kind of "collective suicide," as in radical environmentalist concepts.

In this context, the functionality of the Western system itself began to encounter problems. This is reflected in the crisis of power institutions, the elite class, and the inability to respond appropriately to constantly changing situations - from immigration issues to the war in Ukraine.

Trump's re-election, his "revolution" - discussed in Alexander Dugin's new book - can be seen as a reaction to the previous "functional," entirely realistic way of social organization to resist the imposition of unfamiliar and destructive ideological notions. In this case, Trump is an "old-school" pragmatist who rises up against the irrational instructions and ideas of neoliberalism as an overall ideology. To some extent, he may be a "bad" capitalist predator and a seasoned exploiter, but he is a "person," avoiding the instrumentalization of people.

It is still unclear what this principled opposition, unexpectedly appearing in the opposing camp, will bring us in the political field. But their confusion and contradictions undoubtedly benefit Russia.

However, within the framework of our own civilizational values, this does not exempt us from the necessity of seeking a "balance point" among people's daily needs, the great meaning of social life, and the strategic interests of the state.

Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7501257852347073063/

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