Light and shadows of the Cultural - Civilizational Conflict

By Stanislav Ovcharenko

One of the goals of Stanislav Ovcharenko’s work is to show that a direct and rapid transition from the long existence of a totalitarian society to democracy is practically impossible, due to the damaged cultural code of a free individual in conditions of unfreedom. The main arena of confrontation now, not only in the post-communist world, but throughout the rest of the world, is the irreconcilable conflict between culture and barbarism, organic to an aggressively ignorant person.
Culture must learn to defend itself.
To do this, the author proposes to consider social processes as a type of natural development of both the society and the individual, and not as beautiful-hearted humanism, alien and incomprehensible to the bearers of non-Western culture and civilization. Moreover, similar events occur in similar circumstances, which allows us to make a correct prognosis.
The Russian “repentant intelligentsia” died after 1917, precisely because of groundless humanism. The author tried to comprehend and explain these turning-point events in the proposed book Light and Shadows of the Cultural-Civilization Conflict.

Stanislav Ovcharenko was born in 1950 in Zaporozhye, Ukraine. He graduated from Dnepropetrovsk University in 1977 with a degree in foreign languages, and from Kiev University in 1983 with a degree in philosophy. In recent years, he has been giving lectures on problems of world culture and ethnic psychology, focusing on intercultural dialogue. Since 2001, he has actively participated in the fight against the post-communist oligarchic regime, including involvement in the events on the Kiev Maidan, both as a journalist and as the head of the online publication “Light and Shadows”.
Living in post-Soviet Ukraine, he found himself in the status of an included internal observer; akin to the field conditions of an experimental volcanologist.
The experiment to exit the regime of a closed totalitarian society was carried out by life itself, and it was very convenient to observe inside. He lived in such a way as to understand and describe historical life at its turning point; this was facilitated by his personal disinterest in the ugly oligarchic forms of life, that emerged on the ruins of a closed social system. 
Stanislav is married and he has two sons and one granddaughter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Europa Edizioni
• Release date: Mar 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9791220150859

Book preview

Preface

In history, huge, epoch-making crises and catastrophes occur when artificial social projects reveal its viciousness and unviability - but at the same time, generations grow up who were brought up by these historically unviable social systems. The conflict between the viable human personality and the unviable social systems of the Lagging World constitutes the main civilizational conflict that is flaring up before our eyes.

A happy private life presupposes the application of one's energy to particular cases, temporarily, postponing those tasks that are now impossible to solve. Everything should be manageable. Even preferences and tastes must be controlled, and then we hold our life in our hands. We must control the conditions of our existence, structure of values, instill new psychological experience. To have a superstructure of self-consciousness over our own, as we please, developed consciousness, and then it can be root on the much higher level of our person culture.

The main thing for us is our own happy existence. If we are no longer there, the sense of our life disappears along with our body. But as long as we are alive, we have all the rights, all the limited opportunities to survive and not poison the lives of those around us and those close to us, whom we value - and without which we cannot live. We can calmly have a eudemonism of existence, which moderates both our life and those around us. And the grief that we were going to relive - it, gradually and consistently chewed off, is not so great. It can simply be bypassed, we can even deal with it completely.

A person who thought over himself has, as a rule, a very deep subconscious, intuitively prompting the right feelings and thoughts. A person who has not received the proper upbringing should not trust his feelings, because feelings are bursting out of the wrong individual psychological setting. But if we feel that we have correctly formulated our psychological attitudes, anybody feels that if our consciousness has mastered our own psychology, then we can rely on both our intuition and feelings; they will not let me down.

If a person all the time uses such already mature feelings, then they acquire the properties of diagnosis and prediction, because (s)he, the person, has worked a lot for them. They are like our reward, and we may sometimes not think about them, and they themselves to us suggest the right decisions.

The book is written in a simple and intelligible logical manner. Not only for the academic environment, but for thinking intellectuals who are leaders of public opinion, but are not at the same time an academic, official writers’ environment. This is a continuation of the Ayn Rand case in the new conditions, as people from the same environment and its readers, admirers. But she had it at the entrance, and we at the exit from the totalitarian closed system of society. During the existence of a closed society, deep, historically unexpected changes took place in the culture of the aggregated personality, to overcome which, however, a whole historical transition period is required.

Now we can see more of the dangers that arise from the technological revolution that Ayn Rand had not yet encountered. What is the main danger not only in the outside world, but also inside man, which people did not yet understand the consequences of earlier hidden tendencies.

The sharp transition of people from the lower, unsettled, and uneducated classes to the upper, more propertied classes leads to shocks, as it was the case in Russia, or in the other countries of the Lagging World, or even in the United States. Because temporarily wide masses of people in Postcommunist World feel weakness and powerlessness. But this is temporary. Until they get used to the new conditions. Because the development of a person’s consciousness is much slower than a change in situation. And they must be able to survive this time without plunging themselves into crisis and collapse, as it was in Russia and during the Renaissance; when one part of society pulled ahead, the other part fell behind. And the illusion of some kind of apocalypse is created, which actually is not there.

This book makes it clear that these things should be clearly distinguished. We must be careful in transferring our knowledge that was acquired during long historical time. No inevitable need to interact with China, Russia in technology transfer. Working in the Postcommunism countries, we see, as a consequence, how the sufficient active minority are washed out. On the one hand, the Postcommunist desert, and on the other hand, the emergence of the middle class. Hence, we are more aware of the Lagging World that is trying to poison both its society and the Western one, because this is a condition for maintaining the rule of the oligarchy in the Postcommunist space by means of rise of possible Oligarchy within the Western society.

The oligarchic structure of society, which arises on the basis of Postcommunist Soviet society, is insufficiently described and explained. How does this affect individual people? The book describes the socio-cultural consequences of this. A person may have a fear of something not to be afraid of. It feels clearly where this can or cannot be done in this historical moment.

The book discusses those situations from within that other authors do not consider in this way. There is a description from the outside and there is they see no danger in this degenerate aggressive process of archaic elites who are trying to recreate Archaic societies based on new technology, no matter how wild it sounds. They do not see the danger of undermining Western society itself on the basis of the achievements of the West itself. The Lagging World does just that: they absorb our knowledge, our technology and strengthen our regime in order to absorb us. Humiliate us. They attempt to immerse the West in the darkness of its archaic relations and seize dominance, penetrating into the institutions of the state power. A vivid example of this is how Christians destroyed the Roman Empire by plunging it into darkness for a long time.

After a thousand years, Christianity will play a positive role, and before, in the era of Antiquity, it was an immersion in the dark.

The main danger is not in terrorism, but in other alienated cultures from the closed social setting of foreigners. This is another social danger – the normal other cultural code is threatening, not terrorism. They can be positive citizens, but carry within themselves that cultural code to which, if given in, launches to erode the Western society. There is a return, as it were, to those historical stages that he has already passed and barely escaped. It’s like a monkey with a grenade in a city apartment.

From our field conditions, it is more visible that it is immediately impossible to immediately familiarize a person with Western culture simply by teaching some profession, intellectual knowledge. When we came out of Communism here, we thought that we would move on to democracy, the way of life of the West. But this is impossible, because the burden lies in the poisoned cultural subconscious. Which is rooted in the psychology of this unspeakability, which is transmitted, perhaps even genetically to a generation that creates around a special moral and cultural atmosphere of a civilizational enclave.

An important analysis of the moral and cultural atmosphere that surrounds a person in society is stronger than the knowledge that the West carries. Entering the West from the Lagging World, people create enclaves in order to create this cultural, psychological atmosphere that closes a person even in a developed territory. They create cultural cameras obscura, confined spaces.

Often in family conditions are created when people live as if according to some rules that are not perceived around.

It can be seen from this that one cannot be complacent, magnanimously manipulate ideas, because an incorrectly chosen worldview course is not just a game of thought, it is chosen at a subconscious level and is fraught with catastrophes in society. An improperly chosen scenario vector leads to a destructive process, because the point of reference is the thought, soul, worldview of a person. And from here practical actions follow.

If it seems that we can academically allow yourself to push, combine ideas, but if we come to practice - this can not be done. It should be dangerous. If someone decides to destroy half of humanity, relatively speaking, then he will attempt to do so. In Russia, in 19th century Belinsky said that half of the population must be destroyed so that the rest will live happily. The revolutionaries did not hide anything that they dreamed to do the terrible things. Everyone just waved it off, considering it all as fantasies. But sooner or later this fantasy will tend to come true.

So that artificial intelligence is not used as a weapon, it is necessary to discern the motivation and especially the countermotivation of people. Indeed, behind any positive invention is its negative use by people.

Therefore, it is very important to work with people’s motivations. It is obvious that societies of a competitive free economy with pluralism of opinions should understand that some kind of gateways are needed, channels warning that there is no going here, this cannot be done. As, for example, you can’t use drugs, so you can’t follow any ideas, it’s dangerous. It is necessary to rise above the purely commercial, mercantile interest. The West should realize itself as a whole, and not as separate countries. They are related to the Lagging World. We should not consider the contradictions between them as fundamental. When France, for example, produces Anti-Americanism, it undermines the unity of Western European society. As in 1964, when France under de Gaulle left the NATO military organization.

The Western world is too small, fragile, it recently, it seems powerful, but it has not yet developed in relation to the traditional enough to have unconditional superiority over the Lagging World.

In the conditions of the new (third or fourth) technological revolution, it is necessary that people should stop being simple, simplified in our understanding. They must have a higher education in order to ideally be conscious and helpful. Secondary education became compulsory in the 20th century, and nowadays, compulsory higher education is required. For a person to reach the level of critical reflection, philosophical attitude to the world, and not just professionally acquired skills.

In this regard, we can recall the experience of philosophical education, developed by Matthew Lipman, with a small content of groups of 5-7 people. This will require a lot of people; it needs to become a mass factor - but without reducing the level and quality of such education and upbringing.

Introduction

In the Lagging, especially in the Postcommunist World the Oligarchic system must be destroyed, because if it has already arisen, then it will strive to self-reproduce itself and will certainly do this by force. The West should not help the Lagging Countries in such a way as not to prolong the dominance of the Oligarchy in the Lagging countries. But often Western statesmen and politicians do not see oligarchs in these rulers, since they themselves are not oligarchs. It turns out that on the basis of Western aid, malignant local parasitic elites swell. They cannot be fed, but vice versa should be deprived of food. It is necessary to resist the offer to maintain normal commercial relations with forced labor economies. It is necessary to interact directly with the population of these countries through external management.

Why somebody in Ukraine screams against external governance? Because the Oligarchy feels that it is necessarily losing control of its own population. They are afraid that they will become unnecessary for people who are no longer dependent on them due to globalization processes. In fact, globalization is for the benefit of the population, people. But they still do not understand that it is beneficial to be in the open world. To the end, globalization for Oligarchy is not profitable. After the borders were opened after quarantine, masses of people fled to Europe to work, so as not to remain in a country with Oligarchic government. To do this, they will massively learn foreign languages and by all means receive higher professional education, that leading them to the external free world.

In Western society, leftist moods are now strong, fear of the future in conditions of temporary loss of work. Society is being rebuilt to a new level, and the masses are not yet ready for a new stage in Postindustrial civilization. They scared for two, five, even ten years... Although they have a more harmonious structure of needs and foresight than in Postcommunist and Muslim countries.

The book is intended for thinking intellectuals, which there are a lot of in the West. 

Each generation of Western civilization should reexamine how much the degree of freedom, the degree of accessibility of vital values, and the ability to act freely are limited or expanded. Each generation cannot rely on the experience of past generations that had the so negative prolonged experience. They reached us, delivered a cluster of complex implications, and we, in turn, must support the positive achievements and pass on to the next generations. But each stage of progressive development had to be conquered step by step.

A perfect system should be so complex that its function is as simple as possible.

In connection with the prospect of continuous automation, the ability to work with information, as before with material resources, is growing. It is necessary to pick up information even from misinformation, i.e. true information should be selected from the one that carries false content. It is necessary to take into account those informants who take us seriously and to weed out someone who takes us frivolously, disrespectfully, deliberately falsify. They should be felt immediately and immediately cut off. Competent - incompetent. It is necessary to find not only information, but also define the settings. It is necessary to track false or true, sincere accents on certain parts of the information stream.

It might be those who are interested to distort information in this or that case. If, earlier it was possible to isolate us by simple suppression of information.