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Where is the drop of good?

Boris Gulko
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Опубликовано 2017-05-26 21:53

Where is the drop of good? Boris Gulko

The great mystery of history: where does it lead us? Towards the progress? Or to the opposite side?

We are witnessing an unprecedented explosion of technology. The world in this respect has changed in my time almost as much as from Adam to the times before I was born.  In the first grade I was taught to use abacus in math and write with a fountain pen, which left disgusting blots in my notebook. Horse pulling carts carried blocks of ice covered with sawdust through the streets of the working neighborhood in Moscow suburbs where we lived. The American Frederick Tudor discovered in the beginning of the 19th century that ice doesn’t melt under sawdust for some reason.  My mother washed our laundry on a washboard.

During my time we saw the appearance of electric refrigerators and washing machines. I witnessed the birth of a passenger air service and television. In the mid-50s, our neighbors bought the first Soviet KVN TV with a tiny screen, and all their friends and acquaintances assembled in their apartment, sitting on rows of chairs, watching the only TV program available through the magnifying lens filled with distilled water.

Gradually, the frequency of world changing technological innovations has become an avalanche. As soon as there were magic fax machines - you insert a sheet of paper into it, and immediately on the other side of the earth the same document appears from their fax machine -  the need for them has become obsolete. Their function is now performed by computers. Street telephones disappeared as well.  The basic institutions of social life keep disappearing. Every day the boxes of stuff my wife Anya buys on the Internet  keep appearing on the porch of our house. When drones will start to deliver goods, who are going to need shops? 

The same fate is happening to newspapers. I read the most interesting materials of tomorrow editions on the Internet the night before bedtime. Books become obsolete - one small electronic device stores an entire library, which will also become unnecessary.

During my childhood, the luxury car was a personal car. It is predicted that soon no one will need this burden. You’ll press a button on your pocket multipurpose computer, a self-operated car will arrive at your entrance, deliver you where you need to go and depart.

It’s predicted that by the middle of this century almost all parts of your body will become replaceable. Replacements will be grown out of your own parts. I imagine an awful picture of the future: powerful healthy bodies, white-toothed smiles on their faces and rotted, in an ever-growing part of the population, Alzheimer's diseased brains.

But at the same time with the progress of technology in today's world, corrosion of culture and its most vital part - morality - is all visible. Century ago, Oswald Spengler in the book "The Decline of Europe" predicted, based on the analysis of the history of eight world civilizations, the regularity of such a process. Nikolai Berdyaev[A1]  proposed a formulation for this phenomenon: "Every culture inevitably transforms into civilization. Civilization is fate, destiny of culture. Civilization ends with death, it is already the beginning of death, the depletion of the creative forces of culture ... Philosophy, art exist only in culture, in civilization they are impossible and not needed. "

Now, when we are inside this predicted process, it seems even darker. If the culture simply stopped producing new products, new ideas, it would be possible to survive using the old ones. Keep reading Homer, and if you want something modern - Dostoevsky. Listen to Bach and Beethoven. As Lenin said - "I know nothing better then Appassionata." However, he preferred Wagner, just like Hitler did.

But culture has not died. It deviated into a new form and now produces a toxic product that destroys the moral fabric of society. It appears, that technological progress and moral regress, as Berdyaev assumed, are internally connected.

The genius of Pushkin[A2]  gave birth to a prophetic line: "Where there is a drop of good, there is already enlightenment or a tyrant on guard." In today's America, "enlightenment" becomes a tyrant.

One of the most profound analysts of the processes taking place in the United States, the historian V.D. Hanson, in an article dated May 4, 2017 described the state of higher education in the country:

"In most universities, if an invited lecturer expresses scientific doubts about the seriousness of the global warming caused by human activity and the effectiveness of the government prescribed decision regarding this problem, or will doubt the strategy of the movement "Black lives matter", or suggest that the gender of a person is defined biologically, rather than socially, most likely his lecture will be canceled, or thwarted by the scandal. Campuses are now often mimic the political violence in the streets of the late Roman Republic. 

Radicals on campuses have achieved what military strategists call "nuclear deterrence" - teachers and students now know exactly what speeches will jeopardize their careers and which will earn them rewards.

The frightened lecturers introduce necessary corrections into their courses. As it was in the German universities of the 30s - the teachers are silent or express their opinions in politically correct lectures through euphemisms. Sycophants thrive, the dissenters are being prosecuted. "

Schools could lay the foundation of morality in children and prepare them to resist indoctrination by higher education. But there is no reason for such a hope either. Todd Stanns, writing on religious topics, reports how in the Canadian state of Ontario, a play about a boy who prefers maiden's clothes is being carried around schools and five-year-olds are already being taught the naturalness of homosexuality and sex change. When the Catholic schools canceled the show of an "enlightening" performance, the LGBT community protested. "I'm afraid that this cancellation is based on disinformation, which grew out of fear, intolerance, transgenderphobia, homophobia and misogyny" - listed the set of agitating stamps of "progressivists" the project manager of the show of this performance to the children of Jessica Carmichael.

Great American literature and cinema are already in the past. They were killed by political correctness, which replaced the traditional morality with immorality, and is vigilantly guarding this achievement. When I tried to watch modern American films on TV, for some reason love stories all came across about the same sex, and monologues, dialogues and discussions consisted, as a rule, from one word - "F words", as it is commonly called.

Indecency flows from life to the television screen, and back. In the fall of 1991 the US Senate dealt with Anita Hill's accusations of her former boss Clarence Thomas, who was allegedly a member of the US Supreme Court. The senators  spent days on live air, discussing obscenities, the pronunciation of which was attributed to Thomas. During those hearings I learned several new English words and expressions and recalled the picture I saw once in the "Crocodile" magazine[A3]  - a grandmother is holding a long list and examines her grandson: "Vovochka, repeat again: which words you should never say aloud?" It was unclear: what Thomas was accused of, if all these obscenities attributed to him senators can say on live TV to the whole world?  (I watched CNN hearings in Iceland.)

And in 1998 all of American radio and TV were living the details of Clinton's and Monica's sex scandal, talking about the president's cigar and stains on Monica's blue dress. Oral sex has become the major topic of discussion during lunch breaks in elementary schools.

Gradually, the scruples took on a prominent place in the television programs, especially among comedians. It's not easy to tell a good joke, but say something dirty - and everyone is laughing. Sometimes one word is enough.

Stephen Colbert leads a popular evening show on CBS. He, as the representative of the current cultural establishment, fiercely hates Trump. Here is his typical "joke": "Mr. Trump, I like your presidency. I call it "The Disgrace of the Nation." How is this funny?

But when Colbert said: ”The only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s c**k holster” -- a scandal broke out. But not because of what you’re thinking. The most protected part of the American society --  gays – was outraged. Something in this phrase seemed offensive to them.

But when Bill Maher on HBO portrayed Trump’s incest with his daughter Ivanka -- no particular protests followed.

There is an old notion that teachers and students bring light to the world. However, historian Paul Johnson in the book "Intellectuals" reported that the greatest support for Hitler on his way to power was provided not by shopkeepers and butchers, as written in Soviet history textbooks, but by teachers and students. I expect and hope that this summer will be the most fateful of the promised reforms by the Trump administration. The decentralization of school administration, the transfer of its authority to municipalities has already begun. The main element in the program appointed by Trump’s Minister of Education Betsy Devos is the vouchering of schools. If implemented, the monopoly of progressive education doctrines will be broken, and the parents of schoolchildren will have a choice: to leave the child in a state school in which he will be taught progressive immorality, or, having received back their money, which is deducted from citizens' taxes on education, pay for the child’s education in a private, charter or religious school.

Spengler, analyzing his “theory of 8 civilizations” and starting with the Egyptian and Babylonian, omitted the contemporary of those - the Jewish one. This one has not disappeared, and there are reasons for that.  They are in their books of the old times: they are taught in heder, yeshiva, by melameds.

American Jews have a choice: to send their children to the altar of progress, defining them in the system of public education, where they will be taught the equivalence of homosexuality to normality, questioning their gender, the sin of islamophobia, the inherent "sinfulness" of Israel's existence, "catastrophe of climate change”, the guilt of "the privileges of whites." At the University of Chicago, they already hung out the poster about "the privilege of the Jews." Any “progressive” idea for some reason always evolves towards anti-Semitism.

Another way is to enroll the child in a Jewish Orthodox school. There he will be taught the traditional moral values, those that allowed us to survive 8 civilizations in accordance with the Spengler theory.  The reform promised by Betsy Devos can neutralize one of the two problems associated with educating in such schools - its high cost.

For non-observant parents there will be another problem. If the children are brought up by the Jews, then the parents will have to become Jews themselves: observe kashrut and Shabbat. In America, the third of all products are produced with the sign of kashrut, although observant Jews are but a small percentage of the population. Americans suspect: if Jews eat something, it just might be a good thing! So the domestic difficulties of kashrut are not great. And to reserve one day in the week for introspection and rest is not a bad thing either.

According to statistics, more than 40% of children in America are born to unmarried women. Only 46% live in traditional families, and 34% live with unmarried parents. According to surveys, only 30% of millenials include successful marriage as one of their life priorities. It is evident that the traditional family is becoming obsolete in the modern secular society.

Therefore, deciding whether to give the child to a Jewish or a public school, we determine not only his fate, but also the fate of his grandchildren. It means we’ll have to choose whether the chain of “chosenness”, stretching over three and a half millennia from the treaty concluded by the forefather Abraham with the Almighty, will be interrupted. Indeed, there are practically no mixed marriages among orthodox youth. And among the unorthodox Jews there are 72%.

Placing a child in a public school, you are practically deprived of the chance to have Jewish grandchildren and getting ready in their descendants to share the fate of a dying civilization. Is this future worth eating a pork chop?

                                                          Translated by Alla Axelrod. 5/25/2017


 [A1] Nikolaj Berdyaev was a Christian existentialist philosopher, 1874 – 1948

 [A2]Considered to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. 1799-1837

 [A3]Russian satirical magazine 

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