Ekaterina Shulman latest interviews. New intellectual correctness

M.Naki – 21 hours and 4 minutes, and at the traditional time, the Status program comes out. Here, in the studio - Ekaterina Shulman. Good evening!

E. Shulman – Hello!

M. Nucky – And I’m broadcasting, Michael Nucky. Not only the traditional time, but also the traditional composition.

E. Shulman – If time can change, then the composition, we hope, will always remain traditional.

M. Naki – I hope so. Let's remind our listeners that there is a broadcast on the Ekho Moskvy channel, where our listeners will be able to watch our wonderful board, on which today there is a very intriguing drawing.

E. Shulman – Not only intriguing, but even artistically executed.

M. Naki – You can also see us, Ekaterina Shulman and Michael Naki. And we're moving on to our first topic

M.Naki – There was such a wave of informational occasions this week that I’m even interested in what Ekaterina considered worthy of attention.

E. Shulman – From news to events, about events to processes. The processes, as we remember, are sometimes manifested in the form of news occasions, sometimes not, but we still try to follow the underground flow of these rivers, which sometimes burst to the surface. How many things that I would like to say about what was remarkable in the past week.

We are expected on March 1, sort of like the announcement of the President's Address to the Federal Assembly. On the one hand, such information was published in a number of media, on the other hand, the press secretary said that "when there is a date, we will notify you about it."

M.Naki – Message to the Schrödinger Collection for now.

E. Shulman – Either it exists or it doesn’t, absolutely right. If anyone does not remember, in 2017 the message was not read out at all. Making sinister...

Usually, traditionally, we have it every year in December. In the 17th year it was not. We assume that it will probably happen before the elections, this is an important state event, but we do not know for sure.

In addition, for the first time in post-Soviet history ... not in the entire post-Soviet history, because this happened to President Yeltsin, but not once to President Putin - his illness was officially announced. There were explanations after the fact before that, that is, he was absent for some time, after that they said that he hurt his back in training. Now, in real time, as we assume, it was announced that he had caught a cold, after which he, as they say, disappeared from the radar. Well, not quite from the radar - we see some information reports about his meetings, but, nevertheless, he does not take an active part in the election campaign.

M. Naki – And when he spoke, he spoke through his nose - I noted - he had a speech after an illness. And I, in my opinion, heard this for the first time in my life, although my life was not very long, for Vladimir Vladimirovich to speak through his nose.

E. Shulman – The cold does not spare anyone. In itself, this is not exactly an event, although, as I have already noted, it is news. Let's continue the chain of these amazing events. The fact that our main candidate does not take part in debates is already used to. In general, he never accepted. The incumbent president does not participate in our debates - we all seem to consider this to be the norm, although speaking between us, there is nothing normal in this.

In this election cycle, the main candidate is not filmed in any commercials. And those campaign videos that are distributed by his headquarters, they are cut from some existing materials of the former, also to some extent "canned".

Another somewhat new phenomenon in this election campaign - now the well-known, now famous film by Oliver Stone called "Putin", dedicated to the main candidate, began to be shown. And the Yabloko party filed a complaint with the Central Election Commission, saying that this was election campaigning, which, for some reason, was suddenly broadcast at prime time on Channel One at an unpaid time.

The CEC wrote a letter to Channel One saying that this, of course, was not a violation, because it contained no campaigning, no calls to vote for a candidate, no list of the consequences of his election - well, indeed. - "But in general, we would ask you if you would refrain from showing this film before the election, how good it would be." And Channel One says: “Of course, we cannot return what we showed to the Far East ... put the pasta in a tube, but we will not show the last episode, we will postpone it until the post-election period.” The film was also filmed.

Here I almost stuck to this ominous or expressive (as you wish) chain of events and the event that the favorite host of the main candidate was removed from the air - Ekaterina Andreeva ... But Channel One nevertheless refutes at least this heartbreaking news, because that would be quite sad. What is it: if you catch a cold, then you won’t have a film or the host of the Vremya program. It seems that after a while she will conduct this same program. But in general, what is called interesting.

E. Shulman: Comrades, we have no secret puppeteers. Don't believe it

M.Naki – So what are you leading to? That there is no one Putin ...

E. Shulman – No. I'm not leaning towards this at all, but I'm leaning towards something. See how cheerfully, briskly and effectively the election campaign is going on, in general, without any personal participation of the one who, in theory, should become its main beneficiary. When it all started, if you remember, I said that the main slogan of the campaign would be: “Don’t wake up dashing while it’s quiet,” and voters will try not to be especially reminded that we have some kind of election campaign going on here.

We can see some agitation-bid. And we talked about this a week ago - about what simple, but very effective administrative methods the state machine is fighting for this turnout. Not for any turnout, not just to catch up with a lot of people. Because, for example, by means of all sorts of referendums that disturb the population, it was decided not to raise this turnout, because it is still unknown who will get excited and come. But the correct, reliable and good electorate, it must come and, in fact, they are called to come. That is, come, come, but how to vote, you yourself know what to explain to you, tea is not the first time, not small ones. But some such, in fact, an agitation campaign or something else, it’s better not to wake someone up.

So, when we said this even before the start of the election campaign, perhaps we did not expect to what extent our forecasts would come true.

Another, at least potentially important, imperceptible such incident is the claims made by the presidential administration to the government about the speed and quality of its legislative activity.

What form did it take? It happened in the form of a letter from the President's Council for the Codification and Improvement of Civil Legislation to the Ministry of Economic Development. What is the Presidential Council for the Codification and Improvement of Civil Legislation? This is a modest-sounding organ under the President, one of the rather numerous councils under the President, the most famous of them is the media - the Human Rights Council, but in general, there are quite a few of them. This Council for Codification, it is important because it is a public person, a kind of smart office of the main State Legal Department of the presidential administration and its head Larisa Igorevna Brycheva.

Again, I hope that no new film will be made about anyone, because in this way those people who, in fact, occupy very significant places in the state machine, fall into the eyes of the public, because the public likes to grab hold of those who often flashes in front of the cameras. And those who actually manage a lot of interesting things there, they usually don’t know. So, in no case do we wish Larisa Igorevna the glory of Sergei Prikhodko, who himself accidentally got into the lens and now everyone suddenly became interested and asked a lot: “Who is this such and such? It's probably a secret puppeteer."

No, comrades, we have no secret puppeteers. Don't believe it. See government phone directories and websites. Thank God, we are in an era of great transparency: whoever holds a position is an important person with us. If his last name is unfamiliar to you, then this speaks of you, and not of him.

So the Main Legal Department is a key element of our entire legislative mechanism. Much of what is adopted in the form of laws is written there. Their opinion on any bill is decisive in its fate. This legal administration stopped, for example, a rather radical reform of the criminal law, conceived by Alexander Ivanovich Bastrykin. Experts know: the so-called draft law on objective truth. An ominous pause...

When you heard about the topic of the issue, you immediately mentioned the sexual revolution…

The late 1950s and early 1960s were an incredible time, not fully understood. Especially in Russia. For us, this time was covered with a coffin lid in the seventies and merged into a uniform Soviet regime, but in fact it was, apparently, a completely separate period, little like what happened before and what came after. Artistic and documentary evidence of that time gives the impression of a completely different society and a completely different scenario in which this society could develop if it were not for the discovery of oil fields in Eastern Siberia (as economists say), if it were not for the composition of the apparatus coalition that overthrew Khrushchev (as they say Kremlinologists), if not for the Prague Spring and the Soviet reaction to it (as fans of the “great chessboard” believe). But whatever reason you choose, it's still amazing to read, for example, Chukovsky's book "High Art", where he talks about the accuracy of the translation of "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" into English or analyzes quite benevolently - not just mentions! Nabokov's adaptation of Eugene Onegin. This is 1966, some completely different Soviet power.

In the great revolution of 1968, it is precisely the transformation of the social norm that occupies me. From the point of view of Europe and the United States, 1968 formed the ruling class of the Western world in the second half of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st. People whose youth fell on the protests of 1968 became party leaders, prime ministers, presidents. This system of values ​​- generally left, human rights, liberal - became the official religion of the Western world, and it was focused on freedoms and human rights. Among the new values ​​approved as socially approved, mainstream and (later) virtually uncontested was the value of sexual freedom.

A new stage in the emancipation of women was launched, the outlook on the sexual sphere as a whole changed. It used to be a realm of duty, limitation, and danger. After 1968 - pleasure and self-expression.

"New York", from the series Women are Beautiful. Harry Winogrand. 1968

Before the invention of antibiotics and contraception, sex was a zone of physical risk (illness, death during childbirth or abortion) and social risk (loss of status, reputation, property). The gloomy atmosphere that traditional and previously industrial society created around sexuality is understandable. Sex was tied to reproduction, reproduction - to the institution of inheritance, so society was so fixed on female fidelity, and not on male. As Balzac explained with his usual unpleasant frankness, "the betrayal of a husband does not bring illegitimate children into the family." Female sexual transgressions were severely punished. These are obvious things...

While we are on the outskirts of the topic, let's stipulate that the old morality did not radically change in 1968. Rather, the changes of previous decades have finally taken shape in these new social norms.

Right. We tend to perceive history as a progressive movement. Step follows step. Even in the context of the narrow topic of our conversation. It seems that changes that have happened once can no longer be rolled back. Unless militant Islamists take over Europe. Or something along the lines of The Handmaid's Tale won't happen. But let's look at the ethical transformation that took shape in 1968. In Northern and Western Europe and in North America, a second demographic transition has taken place—or rather, it has finally come. In a film magazine, this probably needs to be clarified: the second demographic transition is a decrease in the number of children per woman, an increase in the age of marriage and first birth as life expectancy increases and maternal, child and infant mortality decreases. This is an iron law. Regardless of religion, mentality, nationality. For example, in the UK it took ninety-five years to reduce the average number of children per woman from six to three, in Iran it took ten, and in China it took eleven. It doesn't matter whether we are Muslims or Christians, and what kind of bonds we have in what places. You will give birth less and later and live longer as soon as you start to feed, wash and treat a little better.

I am not a sociologist, not a scientist, but here are my empirical considerations: compared to the life that I still remember well or know from the stories of my parents' generation, the place of sex in a person's life has shrunk to a minimum. This, of course, is the point of view of an observer, not a participant, and in this sense it is comically vulnerable. But, speaking not only about the surrounding everyday life, but also about today's art, I would allow myself the term "asexuality". Well, it's true. The great content of the life of the previous generation, especially in the artistic environment that I understood, was novels. A separate topic is how the repressive society and the senselessness of any social activity in the 1970s and 1980s influenced this. But it's not only that. And the fact that today the zone of sexual life has again become a zone of risk.

Your empirical evidence is supported by science. When the era of political correctness began, someone laughed at her, someone welcomed her. But gradually it became a universally obligatory line of behavior, deviating from which is already socially unacceptable. You have to constantly think about how not to offend anyone's feelings, especially minorities ...

... and the minorities collectively turned out to be the majority ...

…that is one of the reasons why the new code of conduct severely restricted freedom of speech and expression. Political correctness has changed both the public space and the arts.

An untitled image from the Women are Beautiful series. Harry Winogrand. 1968

Recently, I thought that if Nabokov wrote Lolita now, then no publisher, even from the suspicious Olympia, would come to him. And the police would come. Not as a pornographer, but as a pedophile. Because our happy timeceased to distinguish between word and deed. We are already imprisoned for reposting. In other places, thank God, not yet, but the statement is criminalized everywhere. And the storage of pictures is equated with violence. It is easy to imagine that viewing of pornography will be criminalized, although I hope that we will not live to see it.

And yes, sex has become dangerous again. Not because of contagious diseases, not because the husband will kill the shafts for looking at a neighbor through the fence, but because sex with an unfamiliar or unfamiliar partner threatens to be accused of violence, harassment, a public scandal, and the death of reputation. This risk, of course, is not yet about us, not about our country, but total transparency is coming for everyone, it’s just that not everyone has yet understood how to relate to this and how to behave in these changed circumstances. There is another deterrent: people have become more sensitive and demanding in relationships. They are vulnerable and may view close contact as something that can…

… break your boundaries… This is my favorite.

That's it: break the boundaries. And still hurt.

This is my second favorite. But, if I remember everything correctly, the essence of this very “sex” and the accompanying human relations is precisely in “violation of boundaries”, otherwise why is it needed at all ... And violation of boundaries is always a trauma.

This is one of my saddest thoughts about the current moment: the cult of spiritual comfort and well-being emasculates art and human relationships. Because everything present inevitably hurts one way or another. Both in art and in relationships, the main character becomes a narcissist, preoccupied with himself, his beloved, his boundaries.

To understand how and why this happens, let's look at what research tells us about the values ​​of the new generation. A small disclaimer is needed here: in popular culture and in the popular press, all generational differences are greatly exaggerated. Ascribing the same values ​​to people based on the fact that they were born in the same year is little smarter than believing in horoscopes. But values ​​in society do change and change for everyone. And this is most clearly and manifestly expressed in those who are younger, although the changes concern not only them, but also the elders.

So, all the practices of growing up have been pushed back in time. Young people later start having sex, smoking and drinking alcohol. All this has ceased to be a ritual of initiation, initiation into adults. This happens in all societies, even in one as relatively repressive and tolerant of violence as ours. Minister Skvortsova here told us recently that the age of childhood will be extended to thirty years. And she's right, it will. Because if it doesn’t happen that he stabbed his finger - fell ill and died, gave birth - fell ill and died, went out for a walk - fought with a neighbor and died, however, the neighbor also died - if this does not happen, then, naturally, you will have significant increase in life expectancy. This means that the age of childhood, education and generally understood youth is increasing. We already have everyone up to twenty years old - babies and children, up to thirty - teenagers, up to forty - young people, only after forty they gradually enter the mind (who are lucky).

Returning to our topic: for the younger generation, sex is becoming less sacred, its value is declining, it is often seen as too troublesome and risky, where there is a lot of turmoil and pleasure is not guaranteed. Actually, sexual release is not put on a pedestal: pornography and a wide range of devices are publicly available, and using a whole living person to achieve situational pleasure is a bit costly.

It should be noted that this is not the first time that the generation of children is much more chaste than the generation of fathers. This was already the case at the dawn of the era we call the Victorian. Parents from the eighteenth century: atheism, enlightenment, libertinage, the fight against prejudice ... "But this important fun is worthy of the old monkeys of the vaunted grandfather's times: glory dilapidated lovlas": their children, romantic, religious, monarchist-minded, in white collars and black dresses, look at their drunken and depraved parents with horror and disgust.

What is the main difference between the "68 generation" and their current peers? I think it's in the value system. Then the basis was freedom, today - stability and well-being. Moreover, well-being is more psychological than material.

"Generation 68" is the generation of baby boomers born after the war. They came to a world full of hope, inspired by the ideas of progress, believing in the forward movement of mankind for the better. Values ​​do not belong to the generation, values ​​belong to society.

What do we know about the values ​​of today's young generation? It can be called conservative, progressive thinking is unusual for the youngest, they are rather afraid of changes. In prosperous countries, this is more pronounced than in disadvantaged ones, so we have, for example, more progressive youth. However, according to both Russian and American sociological data, young people are quite conformist. The conflict of generations is not expressed. It used to be that the basic practice of growing up was disagreeing with an elder. Until you rebel against your father, you will not grow up. It is clear that later you will return, you will become a parent yourself, and everything will be repeated all over again, but this gap must happen. And in the generations after the birth of 1995, the conflict is not fixed - apparently, they do not want a break. Perhaps a breakup, a rebellion, is also too troublesome.

The same studies tell us that the new generation is more interested in food than sex. The cult of food brings them its own dangers in the form of overweight and type 2 diabetes, but nevertheless, food seems to be much more attractive and erotic than sex. Another disclaimer, because people often take everything literally. You talk about a decrease in sexual activity, but they hear: "Young people will stop having sex - we will all die." No one will stop having sex, we are not talking about doing anything at all. We are talking about values ​​and social norms. Desexualization is becoming the new social norm.

Can we observe any specific manifestations, in addition to our empirical sensations and statistics?

Yes, please: feminist discourse is against the objectification of women, that is, against the use of the female body or its image as an object of admiration or other use, separated from the woman's personality. In this vein, there is a condemnation of explicit images. Recently there was a scandal, I read in The Guardian: V Manchester Art Gallery a young female curator removed Waterhouse's Hylas and the Nymphs, which depicts a water lily-covered swamp where girls of varying degrees of nudity are luring an innocent citizen. A discussion was initiated: let's think about what we are looking at, how women are depicted here, is it good? Of course, it immediately becomes a shame for the poor Pre-Raphaelites - they were persecuted for this temnik both when they painted it, and now. Then they were scolded for the fact that they paint indecently, excite passions: it is harmful for girls. Now they are objectifying women, indulging the culture of violence: it is harmful for girls and for boys. Just one on one.

Hylas and the Nymphs. John William Waterhouse. 1896

So-called revealing clothing is also condemned. I saw a big campaign to condemn a video in which they advertise either high heels or some tight pants: a girl walks through the city, and passers-by express their admiration for her. “What are you happy about,” critics say, “they whistle after her there, and you encourage it? Do you suggest that all women wear pants like that to be looked at like that? Where does this lead us, comrades? And this leads us, comrades, to the fact that images of naked men and women, as well as clothes that leave some parts of the body open, may in fact be banned in the foreseeable future. That is, it will not be prohibited by law, but will be squeezed out of the public space - the norm will change.

There is another important aspect here. Consumer capitalism now needs to embrace a huge Muslim audience. Feminists and fundamentalists are moving in the same direction. What is objectification? This is exactly the same reason why images of people and animals are forbidden in Islam. "Don't create images for yourself and don't stare at them."

I think the second world, predominantly Islamic, will be implanted in the first. It does not follow from this that Islamists will conquer us all. No, they will be absorbed by the same consumer capitalism, and in order for them to be comfortable and comfortable there, many of our norms and customs will be adjusted to them, especially since this also corresponds to feminist discourse too. It just seems that more distant systems of values ​​cannot be found. You just need to choose the right angle, and everything will work out fine.

What do we read in the latest fashion trends reviews? modest clothes, modest fashion, a closed body, and so that there was something else on the head. How is it described? Like a fashion that empower women makes women stronger and liberates them.

Free from what? From the former freedom. From the missing bras and short skirts of the 1968 name. Feminist discourse now tells us that the gains of 1968 were not freedom, they were deceit. They deceived women, instilling in them the idea of ​​having sex and not getting anything for it: the good old patriarchal culture just came from the rear. Therefore, let's not do all this, let's not dress in open clothes for a selfish male look, let's not allow ourselves to be objectified. Approximately such logic.

If the ruling class was recruited from the people of 1968 for so long, then it turns out that it was they who ensured this “turn around” from 1968, they were the drivers. How did it happen?

The year 1968 is the time when the religion of human rights and freedoms becomes dominant. But it was she who gave rise to political correctness. And political correctness, in turn, gave rise to a new censorship (let's call a spade a spade). I think that we already have some kind of new Victorianism, we are already seeing it in reality. I won't say whether it's good or bad, because grades are none of my business. It is definitely good that the level of violence is decreasing and will continue to decrease.

What is definitely bad?

The West has had almost half a century of creative freedom in the sense in which it was understood in the 20th century. And these half a century is coming to an end.

Ekaterina Shulman

Political scientist, associate professor at RANEPA, columnist. Lawmaking specialist, nominee for the Politprosvet award for publications in Vedomosti and on Colta.ru

- It is generally accepted that politics is thoroughly saturated with deceit. How is the relationship between a politician and his listener generally built?

- I would like to object somewhat against the thesis that politics is somehow more saturated with lies than other spheres of human activity. There is no more lies in politics, but publicity. Politicians are considered more lying than, for example, used car dealers or realtors because their lies are constantly recorded and addressed to an extremely large audience. And this audience is more inclined to share their impressions than the people who were sold the car, saying that it had almost no mileage and it was not broken at all, and then it turned out that it was even very broken.

Accordingly, the curse of politics is not so much lies as such, but the openness of this lie. As far as I understand, representatives of various social sciences spoke within the framework of this. I look at it from a political science point of view, and political science can be characterized as history in real time, in the present continuous mode. Therefore, my interest is to see how the very concept of truth and untruth is transformed in a political context and how it will look in the near future.

We, dear comrade listeners, live in the information age. You often hear this term, but you may not fully understand what is meant by it. With the transition from the era, which is usually called industrial, to the post-industrial - or information - era, several monopolies in the socio-political and, accordingly, in the information sphere collapsed at once. The monopoly on public speech, the monopoly on content creation, was broken. If we turn to the 20th century, we will see that both in democratic and totalitarian regimes there was a complete or partial monopoly on speech. In a totalitarian state, everything is clear: there is a single megaphone, it is in the hands of the state, the state imposes its absolute truth, those who do not agree are buried somewhere on the sidelines. This is how the relationship between truth and untruth is arranged.

In a democratic state, the situation will be milder, but nevertheless, there will still be a certain corporation of content holders, masters of discourse. This is a conditional academia: educated people, scientists who know the truth and tell it to you. Another group of monopolists are the owners of the mass media. Not even owners, capitalists and moneybags, but actually speakers who speak on behalf of TV channels, newspapers, radio stations. They are also masters of the discourse. Everyone else is an audience, their right to speak is limited.

What happened with the advent of the information age? A single megaphone that was in the hands of the state, or many large megaphones in the hands of corporations, multiplied exponentially. Social media gives each of us the opportunity to express ourselves. The number of sources of information has increased in an incredible way. I repeat once again: this is a very serious historical change, the meaning and greatness of which we are not fully aware of. Its closest historical parallel is the invention of printing.

I remember it like yesterday. When Gutenberg invented the printing press and it began to gradually spread throughout Europe, there was a lot of shouting that it was the end of the world. And I must say that not without reason. The first printed matter, which began to be produced en masse, was not even sacred books (although this is an important point), but sheet music (music) and pornography (erotic picture books). And it broke the church's monopoly on the printed word. If earlier manuscripts were written by specially trained people in monasteries - there were few books, they were expensive, monasteries were centers of education - now suddenly every owner of the press could print his own fascinating book.

At first there was a lot of indignation about the fact that this spreads immorality, eroticizes our youth. After that, more serious consequences came - namely, translations of the Bible into national languages ​​appeared. This spurred on the process of reformation, which in turn led to the destruction of the one "baptized world", Christendom, and led eventually to the formation of nation-states. Thus, indeed, the Gutenberg press destroyed the old world.

Approximately the same thing happens with us. A huge, incalculable number of sources leads to an incalculable number of facts and to the democratization of this discourse. Everyone can say whatever comes into his head, everyone can find listeners. And the listener is no longer just a listener, he is also a commentator, he is also a distributor (and the competent authority also comes to him for this and says - why did you share a bad post). Accordingly, he participates in all this discourse.

The consequence is the destruction of the monopoly on truth and further erosion of the very concept of truth. Therefore, when we say: “Everyone is lying,” it does not even mean that there is a truthful self, but you are telling a lie. It means that the number of facts is so great, and there are even more interpretations, from these myriad facts you can build any concept. Accordingly, it becomes not only impossible to establish the truth, but it is already incomprehensible why.

The paradox here is that, on the one hand, information technology has ushered in an era of universal transparency. It would seem that fact-checking has never been so easy and enjoyable. It seems to be easy to find out how everything really was - but it turns out that this is not really necessary. People are not looking for the truth of a fact, but the truth of emotions, people will unite not according to the principle “together we know how it really is”, but according to the principle “we feel the same”. This desire for emotional connection leads people to populist politicians or populist parties, radical parties, which are based on such diverse political phenomena as the far right in Europe and the banned Islamic State in Russia. Accordingly, such associations are practically invulnerable to accusations that they told a lie.

Fact-checking shows: dear comrade Trump, you all lied in your speech. It doesn't matter. His audience, just like the audience of other populist politicians, does not expect exact facts from him, they expect him to express the same emotion that she herself feels. This combination of transparency and elusiveness of truth is one of the most mysterious and peculiar features of the current historical moment. I would also quote the late Boris Abramovich Berezovsky, who in one of his last interviews said that a new era is coming, we will no longer feel comfortable in it, but our children will. Descendants will say about our time that it was an era of continuous lies, but the next era will be so transparent that constant lies will no longer be possible.

This statement is interesting in that he, in general, knew what he was talking about, this is a person about whom even in the decision of the High Court of London it is said that for him the truth is a relative concept. He belonged to an era that made it easy to say anything because no one would know anything about you. It seemed to him that the time was coming for a universal life in glass houses or in crystal palaces. We ourselves mark where we are, write about ourselves, what we do and with whom we dine, and take pictures of our plate ourselves. No special services are needed to collect information about us. This is true. But at the same time there is a devaluation of the fact, and the dissolution of the very concept of truth.

- That is, in the speeches of politicians, it is not the truth in the literal sense that is important, but what stands behind it - some kind of big idea?

- We, as well as all over the world, have politicians who tell a lie - and somehow they are forgiven for this. But there is one point to keep in mind. This celebration of disobedience, this democratization of discourse that I am trying to describe is a kind of superstructure, or growth, or mold, if you like, on the basis of sustainable social relations and sufficient economic well-being.

If you have a low level of trust, every action costs you more. You maintain an army of security guards, law enforcement officers, accountants, lawyers, bandits

There are societies with a low level of trust and with a high level of trust. This is a sociologically measurable thing. To what extent citizens trust each other and to what extent they, supermarkets - anyone. There is a direct correlation between the level of trust and the level of economic well-being. Roughly speaking, societies with a high level of trust are progressive, developing and quite rich societies. These are societies in which a certain level of basic security has been achieved, relying on which citizens can carry out all these transactions. Societies with a low level of basic security, have a low level of trust, are prone to economic stagnation, they are also poor countries. Why?

A low level of trust is not just an unpleasant feeling that everyone around you is a bastard - deceived. This is a permanent tax on any of these - I will repeat this obsessive word - transactions. If you have a low level of trust, then every action costs you more. You contain an army of security guards, law enforcement officers, accountants, lawyers, bandits. Exaggerated bureaucracy, overregulation, a huge amount of paperwork that you have to fill out, hand over and receive - these are all derivatives of a low level of trust. These are derivatives of the presumption of guilt: it is understood that everyone is a swindler and a deceiver. Therefore, in order to buy an apartment, you need a stack of papers, and even this does not guarantee you that a person will come tomorrow and say: I am registered in this apartment, I was in prison, give it back. You are forced to sue, and the court will also be unfair. In order to compensate for the bad faith of the court, you hire security. You are totally obsessed with security. Everything that you have, you invest not in development, not in progress, but in savings and protection. The main thing that you have in the country is security, that's what you're doing. And your president is the same, and your entire political regime is the same.

Paradoxically, poor countries with a low level of trust should be more truthful than rich ones, because they cannot afford this public lie, because they have very little trust that this populism eats away. In reality, unfortunately, everything is the other way around, according to the cruel principle “those who have it will increase, and what they have will be taken away from the have-not”.

Rich countries can afford populists. They, these populist politicians and populist parties, even if they win the elections, fall into the system of checks and balances that is a working democracy. Accordingly, they won’t do big things there. Now we are witnessing this situation with the famous Brexit, the referendum on the UK leaving the EU. Voted, got an unexpected result. Everyone is grieving, the pound is getting cheaper. After some time, it turns out that the exit is planned not now, but sometime in the distant future, and what it will be is not very clear. The pound is growing a little, the end of the world has not happened again. Why? Because there is a mature, developed party system, because there is another newspaper for one newspaper, there is no monopoly on, again, a propaganda mouthpiece. Because there is public opinion, because everyone has the right to speak. Here are the people who want to turn back the clock and leave the EU, and other people also have the right to speak on the same topic in the opposite way. And in general, these issues are decided by a referendum, and not by a mass scuffle. Accordingly, no catastrophe occurs.

In poor countries with underdeveloped, decorative, imitative political institutions, this kind of thing is much more expensive. A decision made by a narrow group without expert opinion, without any consultation whatsoever, begins to be immediately put into practice, there is no one to object to - accordingly, the consequences immediately come to everyone's head. And they are much more tangible and much more serious than any pranks that the citizens and politicians of the first world can afford.

- But how is it that in countries with a low level of trust, populists not only exist, but are also successful?

All over the world, the audience and the public politician exist in a specific relationship with each other. People do not go for the truth, like to a religious teacher (and thank God), they come to the show, the price of which they, in general, are more or less aware of. Therefore, this trust, which seems so absolute, actually has very serious limitations. This is true for all countries in the world. I'll try to tell you how it looks in our case.

When you look at the results of opinion polls, it seems that the power of propaganda knows no barriers, that public opinion is absolutely manipulated. Today, respondents call America the main enemy of Russia, tomorrow - Ukraine, the day after tomorrow - Turkey, then Turkey is again the best friend, and the enemy, probably Syria, and then they forgot about them. It seems that the picture of public opinion is a mirror in front of the TV.

But let's look, for example, at the consumer behavior of people. We will see that as soon as the infinitely trusting audience feels that the ruble is falling, it rushes to the shops and starts buying household appliances and other goods. This is exactly what happened in 2014. From the point of view of the big economy, this consumer panic is quite harmful: it burned out consumer demand for the next few months, spurring further commodity inflation. Now imagine if there is such a person in the Russian Federation - the president, patriarch, Grigory Leps - who can come out and say: citizens, do not exchange rubles for dollars, trust your own ruble, do not buy two coffee grinders, better get all the rubles out of under the pillows and take them to the banks, support our banking system. There is no such person. When it comes to your pocket, people get smarter sharply.

People easily change their minds on issues that do not concern them. As soon as the hostility with Turkey was somewhat canceled, people immediately ran to buy vouchers. Some part of the public was indignant: they shot down our pilot. But most do not care about this at all, they just want to relax inexpensively.

There is such an international sociological study "Eurobarometer", which has been carried out in Europe since the early 70s, and in Russia since 2012 by the sociological center of the Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. It studies strong and weak social ties. Strong social ties are, roughly speaking, close relationships, relationships of people who can borrow from each other, for example. Weak social ties are more distant acquaintances, that is, for example, such relationships in which you can advise a good place where to relax, or which school to send the child to. That's what it is. People are asked questions like “How fast do you think you can find a job if you get fired?”. How quickly can you raise such and such an amount if you need it?

Since 2012, we have seen a literal explosion in both strong and weak ties. People feel more and more connected to each other, and this increases their own optimism to such an extent that it is even negatively correlated with their economic situation. People's incomes are falling, while their sense of well-being is growing. This has its own dark side: people, being in euphoria from this feeling, begin, for example, to take loans easier. But social optimism is growing. People feel more independent from the state, they feel more secure - they will be helped, if anything.

It is believed that the main task of the first year of a child's life is to instill in him this very sense of basic security. It assumes that in principle everything will be fine, and if it is bad, then they will help you. If a child has such a feeling, then he begins to develop further: he eats cat food, sticks his finger into the socket - in general, he progresses, as he should. If he does not have this, his development will be delayed. All of our humanistic parenting practices - to pick up, not to leave alone at night - are aimed exactly at this, so that the child feels that if something happens, he will be supported here.

There are societies that, following the results of the 20th century, have not developed any sense of basic security, and they do not develop, they sit in the corner and cherish their security, their precious resource. Paradoxically, they also become easy victims of the populists. This is the picture of global injustice that I have to paint for you.

We are being sold some mixture of the Romanovs, Stalin and the atomic bomb, Soviet power and the Russian Empire

What do populists rely on in such cases?

- One of the most effective traps can be called counterclockwise rebellion, the desire to return to the past. The present and future seem unreliable, incomprehensible, chaotic, and the past seems stable, solid and black and white. This is a kind of mythologized picture of the past historical greatness, each country has its own. We are being sold some mixture of the Romanovs, Stalin and the atomic bomb, Soviet power and the Russian Empire. America is being sold in America, which needs to be made great again, great again. In Britain, they are selling an island that can exist on its own, as it allegedly used to be, although this has never happened. Ever since the Danes sailed there, it has been a world center of trade routes, which has grown rich and developed precisely due to its openness. Yet they, too, are being sold this idyllic picture of little rural England. France, as far as I understand, is being sold mono-ethnic Gaul, inhabited, apparently, exclusively by Asterix and Obelix, without alien national admixtures.

All this, of course, is a monstrous lie. Nevertheless, people buy it because the past seems comfortable: they are actually selling the concept of security to everyone. I want to hide my head and say: mind me, I'm in the house, let all your progress go through the forest. The bad news is that for countries that aren't progressing very much, this game of nostalgia, this reenactment mania, costs more than others.

It is clear that big countries will not leave the world stage: they are the world stage. It is clear that this isolationism will remain at the level of talk and no one will build a wall. Moreover, between us, no one will leave the European Union, no one will evict all Mexicans from America or all Muslims from France. All this is chatter. Listeners understand that this is chatter, but they enjoy listening to it.

In the case of countries that, let's not point fingers, make up 2% of global GDP, such dreams can be much more dangerous. Because if, I repeat once again, there is nowhere for big countries to go, then countries that are insignificant in terms of economic turnover may find themselves in a dusty corner of history. The Great Silk Road passes by them, or, if you like, a large pipeline, but it does not flow to them. While the fat one dries, the thin one dies. That's why poor countries should be more honest than others, because they can afford less this luxury of public lies.

One more phenomenon needs to be mentioned. This is the so-called information bubble. The main media for most people, now the absolute majority in America (and soon it will be the same with us), are social networks. Our feed on Facebook, VKontakte, Telegram is formed based on our behavior on the network. We are shown what we want to see. We are drawn this information bubble, painted inside with beautiful flowers, like in Andersen's fairy tale "The Snow Queen": the house of a woman who knew how to conjure, remember? It was always summer in the garden of the sorceress, but outside, autumn had long since come. We are shown those who agree with us, we are shown things similar to those that we were looking for before. Thus, we constantly receive confirmation of our prejudices, speaking in Pushkin's language. Those who disagree with our point of view are some separate atomized idiots whom our friends link to and say: look what he writes again, moron.

Knock knock, winter is coming, your flowers are all wilted, your medals are all fake

Then we again find ourselves in this warm milky river, our social network feed, where everyone roughly agrees with us, everyone praises us, likes our pies, our children, our flowers. This is very conducive to encapsulation, locking us in the house of a woman who knows how to conjure (and this woman's name is Mark Zuckerberg).

What is true for the individual citizen is also true for the so-called decision-makers. They also have their own Facebook feed, only printouts from it are brought to them in special red folders. They, too, are surrounded by people who agree with them, and they, too, constantly receive confirmation of their wisdom. It's great, right?

It is rather difficult for objective reality to break through these painted windows and say: knock-knock, winter is already close there, your flowers are all wilted, your medals are all fake. When this happens, it is so uncomfortable and unexpected that I want to say: this is all a hoax.

How to pop this bubble? How to get into objective reality? Politicians have a simple way: it seems to them that if they compare two denunciations from two opposite sides, then combining it will give them objective truth. Unfortunately, this doesn't work.

- How can ordinary people get out of this trouble?

- You can adopt the methods of Alcoholics Anonymous: 12 Steps to Liberation from Alcoholism. First, recognize the problem and call it by its name. You must understand that the information wealth you use is actually limited and tailored to your preferences. Just be aware that maybe things aren't quite right.

It's good to get out of your comfort zone. At least outside of your feed. Not in order to find out the truth that is being hidden from you, but in order to find out some other segment of the discourse.

What do I do, for example. It is useful to go and get acquainted with any alternative discourse, even radical ones: nationalist, feminist, isolationist. You will read a lot of nonsense, something will offend you, something will seem absolutely terrible to you. But you will have a violent expansion of the brain. You will see that there are people who are sitting in the next bubble, and they also have their own complete picture of the world. The flip side: unfortunately, this kind of exercise also contributes to the blurring of the concept of objective truth.

Second: try to work out for yourself, find for yourself some line of experts that you trust. How to find them? There are some formal signs. In general, it’s not bad if a person has an education. Higher, for example, professional. It helps. Look at how much a person, when he speaks, refers to some kind of research, objective data, whether he cites some figures at least sometimes. Flip through what he wrote a year ago, look at what he predicted. A very confident statement that in a year the regime will fall, or the dollar will collapse, or the third world war will break out, or, conversely, Russia will rule the whole world, any extreme certainty should alert you.

An honest person often uses expressions like "if I'm not mistaken", "so as not to lie" or "if my memory serves me", for example. Specialists often do not speak very confidently and often say: on the one hand, it is so, on the other hand, it is so. Because we, people of social sciences, are dealing with complex phenomena, moreover, extended in time. We rarely have something that started yesterday and ends tomorrow. If you hear a person, talking about socio-political processes, say: in fact, these are all bastards, they should all be shot, and these fellows, they should, I don’t know what, be fed ice cream, then he’s probably not very good specialist.

Photo from the personal archive of Ekaterina Shulman

This is the radio station "Moscow speaking". My name is Yuri Budkin. Our guest is Ekaterina Shulman, political scientist and associate professor at the RANEPA Institute of Social Sciences. Ekaterina Mikhailovna, good afternoon.

E.SHULMAN: Hello.

YURY BUDKIN: At the beginning of this hour, we talked about the idea of ​​United Russia, that workers would control the salaries of top managers in state corporations. There is already a bill, it has already been submitted to the State Duma. And Andrey Isaev, the first deputy head of the United Russia faction, said that in this way the issue would be brought under the control of the workers. Some doubt. And you?

E.SHULMAN: I think that the salaries of top managers are the last thing that should really be of interest to employees of both state corporations and employees in general. Such measures are intended, as I understand it, to disguise the absence of working trade unions and, accordingly, a working system for protecting the rights of workers. Workers' rights are violated not by the fact that the top manager gets a lot, although this can be annoying. These rights are violated by illegal dismissals, fines in the workplace, which are very common in our country - despite the fact that they are expressly prohibited by the Labor Code. But many employees do not know that you cannot fine anyone for being late or for some other things, there is no such form of penalty. The rights of workers are violated by all kinds of games with the basic salary and bonuses, which may or may not be. Thus, a person is placed in dependence on the will of the authorities. Discrimination of the rights of women, for example, those who go on maternity leave, that is, non-observance of those rights that are guaranteed to them by labor legislation.

All this should be the subject of the attention and concern of the trade unions, which in general, if we had a politically free system, would be one of the main political forces in our country. Because if in your country the vast majority of people are employees, and at the same time quite low-paid employees, then if you ask, as they say, with your eyes closed: “Guess which political force should be the most influential in such a country?” - the first - it will be a left movement of socialist orientation, and the second - it will be a trade union. We have neither one nor the other.

At the same time, the number of labor indignations, let’s say, speeches about the violation of labor rights, is growing, it has grown very much in 2016, and this is known, among other things, to the United Russia party. This data exists. They are generally quite open. And sociologists also know this and share this valuable information. Therefore, I think that there is an idea to slip something like this on citizens under the guise of a struggle for equality and labor rights, while in fact it is not a struggle for equality and labor rights, but it satisfies a certain latent sense of justice: “Look - the authorities are fattening, and you will have the opportunity to somehow control it.

Y.BUDKIN: Wait, you are talking about a latent feeling. No, they openly say: "Unreasonably high income differentiation between the top management of enterprises and organizations and the bulk of workers." This is an open question. And they say: "Here we want to solve it."

E.SHULMAN: How can the workers here change the situation? Will they vote to decide what salary the director should have?

Y.BUDKIN: “We proceed from the fact that the composition of collegiate bodies will include representatives of employees,” says Isaev.

E. SHULMAN: This is the name of the “tripartite commission”: employers, workers and, accordingly, representatives of trade unions. Once again I repeat my simple thought: the director's salary does not violate the rights of employees. Although it is clear that inequality irritates people. And this is also understandable, and in general even understandable. But by itself, this measure will not improve the situation of the employee. If your director receives less, it does not follow at all that you will receive more or that you will not be fired unreasonably.

YU.BUDKIN: Why don't trade unions work here?

E.SHULMAN: I'm afraid that they don't work for us, so to speak, by means of a deliberate state policy, because there can be no other explanation. The Federation of Independent Trade Unions, which is the heiress of the Soviet trade unions, including the heiress of their rather extensive real estate, sanatoriums and all other property, as they say, keeps this “clearing”, not allowing any other movement to grow there, which, I repeat once again, if it grows , will be extremely influential.

The story with the “left flank” of our political spectrum is organized according to the same scheme. There is the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which is headed by the same person, more or less the same people have been in leadership there for the last 25 years. Its task is to keep its share of the electorate, not to let it particularly shrink, but also not to let it grow especially, and most importantly, not to let some other, so to speak, self-generated left movement, left party, grow in this place.

Y.BUDKIN: But speaking of trade unions, you said that in 2016, despite the existence of the trade unions that we have, the number of protests for their rights - for the rights of workers - increased.

E.SHULMAN: Yes, they mostly take place outside some kind of trade union structure, which is really bad. Because what are unions good for? They institutionalize (in a scientific term) this very protest activity - accordingly, make it legal and, so to speak, well, roughly speaking, safer. Because if the citizens themselves gather there in the checkpoint and want to beat the boss in the face, then this is not very cool. And if the negotiations take place through trade unions... The trade union is a moderator, you understand, an intermediary between the employee and the employer, this is its role.

The trade union movement has a dramatic history, many people fought against it. There are also a lot of people who watched films about the mafia, about America in the 20s and 30s. There was a fierce struggle between mafia structures and trade union structures. Sometimes, on the contrary, they merged with each other. All sorts of interesting twists and turns along the way, but nevertheless, everyone more or less understands that these types of structures for protecting the rights of workers are necessary, because they actually stabilize the situation in conditions of inequality, really ...

Y.BUDKIN: Well, if these do not work well enough, then it would seem that it would be good if something else appears nearby. You say: "No, it's bad."

E.SHULMAN: It would be nice if a real trade union structure appeared. But if she appears, she will be extremely influential. This is scary from the point of view of the existing political mechanism. It's scary to get some new players on your head. It is much better to deal with the FNPR of a good old friend, whose main function is to distribute vouchers and organize May Day demonstrations. Accordingly, the price for this is inevitably, for economic reasons, an increasing number of unorganized, well, spontaneous riots, if you like, these same labor protests.

Y.BUDKIN: And there will be more of them?

E.SHULMAN: Well, look, we don't have mass unemployment. Here, too, there is some agreement between economic entities and the state, according to which mass layoffs are not allowed.

Y.BUDKIN: Wait. Are there separate economic entities and a separate state? It is customary to say that the only economic entity in our country is the state.

E.SHULMAN: It is not the only one, it is the most powerful one. And he dominates the economic system as well as the political one, that's true. But nevertheless, some division, well, well, between state corporations, state banks and state enterprises - not even state enterprises, but, accordingly, the so-called oligarchs (remember the word of the previous era) are also included in this agreement - and political leadership. There is mutual understanding between them - not to allow mass layoffs, not to allow mass throwing people out into the street; it is better to go for a reduced work week, part-time work, unpaid vacations, but not to fire people en masse.

Sometimes this agreement is violated, especially in the case of the so-called single-industry towns - respectively, with cities concentrated around one enterprise. There may be… Well, following the example of Pikalevo. Maybe you remember the case with Pikalevo? These are such hot spots where this kind of thing can occur. But in principle, maintaining some artificial employment is what our state machine is very much concerned about. She does it in different ways. Therefore, as is generally rightly expected, it reduces some social tension. Because real, big performances are when many people are on the street at once.

But nevertheless, even apart from layoffs, people have something to protest against: against wage cuts, against the actual layoffs, that is, unpaid vacations. A lot of things people are against. And I repeat once again: well, yes, according to objective data... Including there are centers in my native Academy of National Economy and Public Administration that are engaged in monitoring. Yes, a lot of people do it. It's all fixed in general. The growth of such a number of performances, yes, there is.

YU.BUDKIN: About the role of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia and what happened to the Soviet trade unions, here is the 510th writes: “You dislike the Soviet Union - firstly. And secondly…"

E.SHULMAN: There could not be effective trade unions in the Soviet Union, because there was only one employer - the state. And the trade unions were also state-owned. Again. The trade union is an intermediary, a mediator. He acts, stands between the worker and the employer. If you have a single employer, and he organizes a union for you, then the union ...

Y.BUDKIN: At that time the director was the employer, and the trade union…

E.SHULMAN: The state was the employer. There was only one employer. You could no longer work for anyone but the state. All enterprises, organizations, any structures were state-owned. Accordingly, how can you defend your rights against this single employer? What is your alternative? You have no alternative. Therefore, from there we inherited ...

YURY BUDKIN: The Communist Party is an alternative.

E.SHULMAN: An alternative to what?

Y.BUDKIN: Well, if the trade union cannot find the truth from the director of the plant, he can apply to the city committee of the party.

E.SHULMAN: You can come, yes, and you can complain about the party meeting.

YU.BUDKIN: Also.

E.SHULMAN: It was also a wonderful set of tools. Again. In another economic situation, when the state is still not the only employer in our country (although the public sector is too large in our country, but nevertheless it does not cover 100% yet), we inherited this Soviet system, in which the trade union - this, once again, is the organizer of holidays, Christmas trees and May Day festivities. We don't really understand what a trade union really is.

Well, having said that, I will say the following. At the same time, independent trade unions exist, real independent trade unions. Branch trade unions function. As is known to those who are interested, for example, oddly enough, in the system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs there are as many as two trade unions that compete with each other (and not without success), defend the rights of their workers. And employees in law enforcement agencies are very disenfranchised. It is they who have a mass of rights regarding the taxable population ...

Y.BUDKIN: That is, if there was a desire, there would be more such trade unions? So, it turns out - there is no desire.

E.SHULMAN: Hello! What does "no desire" mean? Desire to eat. All people have a desire to have their rights protected. I just suspect that police officers, firstly, are more familiar with the law - out of necessity. And secondly, maybe this is a narrower corporation, which is easier to self-organize within itself. Well, it's just that I know they have such a thing. And for some reason, other workers do not have such things. Every unfortunate office plankton is very strongly oppressed and offended, I repeat once again, with illegal fines, and dismissals, and all sorts of idiotic demands. I'm not talking about the fact that in our latitudes it is not customary to resent some absolutely illegal dress code, which is also terrorized mainly by women, employees.

Y.BUDKIN: Mikhail immediately writes to you: “How else can you discipline and motivate employees if you say that they cannot be fined even for being late?”

E.SHULMAN: Oh, really! And also, you know, corporal punishment is forbidden. What a trouble! How about with employees? Difficult, you know, difficult, not easy! Just a kind word... and a gun, nothing else.

YURY BUDKIN: Then again, look at the public mood. You have already said that there are many states in the economic market. Well, or almost everything, or a lot of the state as a player in the economic market.

E.SHULMAN: A lot. And it has become much more over the past 10-15 years.

YU.BUDKIN: But this seems to be not enough for the citizens of the Russian Federation. I look at the results of the VTsIOM poll - and it says: "Russians have a negative attitude towards the oligarchs and believe that their property should be nationalized." Read - for the state to be even larger, citizens want.

E.SHULMAN: There are two terms in this question, both of which are evaluative. The term "oligarch", which means "a bad person who stole a lot of money." This term has no other meaning in common usage.

YURY BUDKIN: This is an "owner other than the state." This is also the meaning of the word.

E.SHULMAN: And the second term - "nationalization" - is not understood by people as "statization". Nationalization implies, again in the minds of citizens, the return to the people of what was torn away from the people. If you ask people: "Do you think that there should be more state property than private property?" I assure you the results will be different. Even in this excellent VTsIOM survey, if you look at it carefully, you will also see that it has been improving over the years and that the positive attitude of citizens towards entrepreneurs has already reached a fairly high proportion. That is, if we say "entrepreneur", then people say "good." And you say "oligarch" ...

YURY BUDKIN: No, even 27% say they want to become entrepreneurs.

E.SHULMAN: Here, 27%. It is in our conditions that people want to open their own business. In general, this is a completely fantastic figure, which speaks of courage and the spirit of entrepreneurship, which is absolutely not killed. VTsIOM in general... Well, our survey industry is a separate issue. But VTsIOM regularly asks respondents the same question: “Girl, do you want to go to the country or have your head torn off?” Here is their favorite wording. And with undiminished pleasure they report to us about the results. Approximately 86% prefer to go to their country house…

Y.BUDKIN: Wait, after all, even if… You say that the question is not formulated very correctly or people are wrong…

E.SHULMAN: The question uses evaluative terms. This is generally a rather monstrous blunder from the point of view of sociology as a science.

YU.BUDKIN: Good. But how can the same people vote for state property (read, even people's property), and the same citizens say they don't like what state corporations or their leaders are doing?

E.SHULMAN: Well, they can. Again. Nationalization is the return to the people of what was stolen from the people. And state corporations...

Y.BUDKIN: And then there will be state corporations...

E.SHULMAN: And state corporations are “fat cats”.

Y.BUDKIN: They don't understand this?

E.SHULMAN: No, they don't. And you really don't have to understand. Therefore, the great art of these very people who conduct surveys is to use a whole series of questions ... to try to get into the head of the respondent in this way in order to at least extract from there what he really thinks. Because if you ask questions directly, again: “Are you for everything good or for everything bad?” - then you will have people for everything good at once: for nationalization, and for private property, and for entrepreneurship, and for the president, and for friendship with everyone ...

YURY BUDKIN: Political scientist Yekaterina Shulman. This is the jacket program. Right now the news, then some commercials, and we'll continue.

YU.BUDKIN: We continue. This is the radio station "Moscow speaking". Today is March 3rd. My name is Yuri Budkin. Our guest is Ekaterina Shulman, she is a political scientist and associate professor at the Institute of Social Sciences of the RANEPA. Live broadcast means you can join by phone: 73-73-948 (city code - 495). SMS portal works: +7 925 88-88-948. You can write to the user govoritmskbot via Telegram.

I also wanted to ask you about this story with five-story buildings. Today, Galina Khovanskaya (she met with Mayor Sobyanin) told the news that the Moscow authorities want to provide citizens who are resettled from five-story buildings with more spacious apartments - if not for a residential area, even for a total area, but at least a little more. What is this story? Why did she make so much noise?

E.SHULMAN: This is an extremely large-scale story. This noise is just beginning. I think that this will be one of the main topics (for Moscow, certainly the main topic) of the 2018 mayoral elections. As we remember, not only the president is elected here in 2018, but also the mayor of Moscow. This is a rather significant topic for the whole of Russia, but for Moscow it is just a topic of topics. What is conceived is amazing in scale. Now I will not terrorize anyone with numbers, but, as far as I understand, about 10% of the total housing stock in the city of Moscow ...

YURY BUDKIN: And 10% of the population, yes.

E.SHULMAN: ...these are the same five-story buildings that are supposed to be demolished. As always, at the beginning of a great design, there are extremely many ambiguities. What kind of houses will fall? In what order, in what order? Will they first demolish and then give new housing? Or will they somehow build it first, and then move it there? This, you understand, is a bit like in the old riddle about a goat, cabbage and a wolf, which must be transported on a boat. First, after all, people need to be resettled somewhere, and then demolished. And in order to resettle people, there must be some places that are formed when the old housing is demolished. That is, there are difficulties.

YURY BUDKIN: They are already saying that there will be some sort of flexible fund.

E.SHULMAN: Yes.

YU.BUDKIN: They are already saying that work is underway. Here Khovanskaya says today that bills on this matter will appear very soon.

E. SHULMAN: There will be changes in the legislation that should serve this previous ... upcoming mega-pogrom in Moscow. I don't like it right away as a person involved in the legislative process. I really dislike the speedy adoption of changes for the specific needs of someone. If you are not able to do what you want to do within the framework of the current legislation, then you should not do it. Just because you can pass almost any amendment to the law, it doesn't follow that you should. Therefore, what you have in mind is, generally speaking, illegal. The current legislation does not provide for this, it is impossible. They say: "Now we will quickly fix it." The Duma says: “Yes, let’s do it, great, it will be adopted by autumn,” that is, during this spring session, which began in January. I don't like this very much.

High-speed lawmaking is generally our misfortune, an ulcer and a disgrace. In the course of this acceptance, "faster-faster" is simply accepted what the hell. Then they begin to correct it immediately, immediately after the adoption. Sometimes it turns out too late what they took in a hurry there. There are many examples of this. There are examples of what was quickly accepted, and then had to be quickly canceled. Well, for example, the well-known package of amendments to the law "On Advertising", which, incidentally, banned advertising on cable channels. Adopted in the summer of 2014, and already in January 2015 was canceled. “Yarovaya package” – they took it, a lot of things in this package were dumped, a team of any hodgepodge. Then I quickly had to edit and postpone, postpone everything, postpone and postpone the entry into action. And now it is not clear when it will enter. The demolition of stalls, which we remember, shocked Moscow a few months ago - it became possible thanks to an amendment to Article 222 of the Civil Code, which was also quickly and in fact quite secretly carried out as part of the adoption of a completely different bill, thrust in the second reading, as they like to do in the Duma when they want to hide something bad. Now we are talking about something much larger than any stalls.

YU.BUDKIN: But so far these are some assumptions based on previous experience.

E.SHULMAN: And what are the assumptions? If we have leadership, the Duma says: “We will adopt amendments to the law,” these are no longer assumptions. As far as I understand…

Y.BUDKIN: Are any changes to the law that are introduced quite quickly according to this principle, is that bad?

E.SHULMAN: Any changes to the law that are adopted quickly, faster than stipulated by the regulations, is bad. Large-scale changes to the law for a specific need are bad. The law is not a quick response tool. The law is not a tool to meet the needs of a particular mayor. Law for everyone. Again. If, within the framework of the law that we have in force in the Russian Federation, you cannot fulfill some of your very valuable fantasy, then you need to correct your valuable fantasy, and not change the law.

Y.BUDKIN: Vitaly writes: “But what's wrong with the demolition of five-story buildings? These barracks should have been demolished a long time ago. Service life - 30 years. In fact, some 55. And you say that it turns out badly.

E.SHULMAN: So, one more time. I'm not talking about five-story buildings as such, I'm talking about the principle.

Y.BUDKIN: But in order to demolish them...

E.SHULMAN: And why, all of a sudden, in order to demolish emergency or dilapidated, or housing that does not meet the parameters, it is necessary to change the law so radically? The law should not be changed for this. The law needs to be changed in order to change the rules for providing you with new housing in exchange for your demolished one.

So, let's not forget... We are talking about some five-story buildings, as if this is some kind of, I don't know, state program - Khrushchev built it, and Sobyanin demolishes it. Actually, it's your property. And the property is not only for housing ... that is, not only for your square meters, but also for the land under this house, if you have it registered. It is very few people, unfortunately, framed. Now knowledgeable municipal deputies are advising to urgently run and register the land under the house. But I'm afraid they won't let you. It was difficult even in "peaceful" times, but now it will be especially difficult.

Full version:

– Now calls are being made from everywhere to work with the youth. How to work– no one knows, no one really understands who they are and what to do with them. How do you see today's youth?

– The idea that young people are some kind of guides to the future, this is our tomorrow, so whoever agrees with them will be its beneficiary and owner, seems to be based on some unchanging course of things. “I’m caressing a sweet baby, I’m already thinking: forgive me! I give way to you: it’s time for me to smolder, for you to bloom. But at the current historical stage, these seemingly inescapable truths are subject to some correction.

First, our with you the youth stratum is small: these are the fruits of the demographic pit of the 90s, which, in turn, became the heiress of the previous demographic failure of the Second World War. If you look at our demographic pyramid with you, you can see these repeated dents - the unborn children of the dead. This hole is slightly smoothed over the years and will be smoothed out further if our further historical development proceeds without catastrophes, but it exists.

Secondly, the concept of generational change is becoming obsolete. There is a story by Kipling - "Little Tod's Correction", from a collection of his stories about British India. It tells how a little boy wandered into a meeting of the legislative council, where British administrators were sitting, and there he recounted the objections of his Indian servants to a proposed law that would have to renegotiate a land lease every five years, instead of fifteen, as before. . They boiled down to the fact that in fifteen years a person grows up and becomes a man, his son is born, in another fifteen this son is already a man, and the father has already died, the land passes to the next worker. If you renew these contracts every five years, this is extra expenses, turmoil and money for all sorts of duties and stamps.

In a traditional society with a low life expectancy, generational change occurs very quickly - just in fifteen years. We now focus on twenty-five years, but the situation is changing: life expectancy is increasing. Accordingly, the period of active life increases, and the period of childhood lengthens. I do not expect that in twenty-five years I will have reached the “age of survival”, as our Pension Fund delicately calls it, and my children will be fathers and mothers of families and heads of households. Most likely, I will still work, and my children, perhaps, will still study, look for themselves, they will not have their own families and children, they will still be young people.

Generational change has slowed down a lot, so from a purely applied point of view, if you want political power and influence, then work with those who are forty. There are many of them - this is a large generation, the children of the "Soviet baby boomers", they have been on the social stage for a long time and will show themselves socially, economically and politically for another thirty years. From this point of view, young people can be left a little alone.

Nevertheless, while we have not yet achieved biological immortality, which Aleksei Kudrin recently promised us in a 10-12-year perspective (though not in Russia), generations are still changing. In this regard, it seems to me important to study generational values, family relations, parenting styles, the gender contract and its changes.

When you say “youth”, “children and parents”, everyone means something different. It must be remembered that the millennial generation is the generation of people who have reached the age of early social maturity by the turn of the millennium. That is, they were born in the late 70s - early 80s. The current twenty-year-olds are the so-called centennials, generation Z. These two generations differ from each other. It is useful to remember that a person of 45 years old may well have a child of 20 years old - this is a social norm. Therefore, when we say "parents", we should not imagine some gray-bearded old men, we should imagine young people in the range from 40 to 55.

We now have three demographic strata active on the social scene. People 60+, born in the 50s, occupy the upper floors of the management pyramid. There is a generation of 40+, their children were born in the 70s. And there is a new generation, which is the youth, born in the 90s and later.

From the point of view of demographic statistics, our demographic failure ends in the middle of the 2000s. From 2004 to 2014, a high birth rate was recorded. These are the two bricks at the base of our demographic pyramid: those who are now 0 to 5, and those who are 5 to 10. When they enter the age of social activity, an interesting moment will come. If you want to prepare for the political future, now work with forty-year-olds, and in ten years, wait for new twenty-year-olds, there will be many of them.

If you want power, have an organization

Since I am a political scientist, any demography and generational values ​​excite me exactly as much as they are reflected in political processes and political behavior. When we talk about political processes, the mere number of participants means little. It is important because they are voters, but from the point of view of influencing political processes, it is not the number of heads that matters, but the organization of the structure. This is a general law, it knows no exceptions.

The unorganized in the political space has no subjectivity, the organized has. Power always belongs to an organized minority, but instead of being sad about this iron oligarchy law (as it is scientifically called), organize and you too will have power. Power is not a needle in an egg, it can be found in all social relationships: in the family, in economic exchange, in production, in creativity. If you want power, have an organization.

There are few young people now, but given that our civilization as a whole values ​​youth and considers the future and the new as positive markers, the participation of young people in any process increases its price. If you have only pensioners, it is considered that you are people of yesterday.

In fact, if you can attract the voices and energy of retirees, they will serve you for a long time as political fuel for your needs and goals. With youth, as in the game "Scrabble": if you managed to put your letter on this cell, then the price of your move immediately multiplies tenfold.

Where is the generation gap?

- On television, with some panic, they understand that they have lost their youth audience, they have gone to uncontrolled social networks. At the same time, quite a lot of young people generally refuse social networks and an active presence on the Internet. Where are they, what are they?

You are very right about panic. It embraces the administrative machine, perhaps with insufficient force as yet. When they, or on their behalf, say that “we have lost the youth”, that the youth does not watch TV, or does not respect the authorities, or does not go to elections, or does not want to do something else, then the youth here is just a pseudonym tomorrow. In fact, those at the top have problems not with the youth, but with the next generation, with their own children. They habitually call them youth, and this is no longer youth. These are people in the prime of social maturity, and they are deprived of access to decision-making and political representation.

Now all the research on intergenerational and family relationships shows us an interesting thing. We are accustomed to believe that the conflict of generations is a thing laid down by nature: children always rebel against their fathers, that's how life works. We do not realize to what extent specific socio-historical conditions are capable of smoothing out or exacerbating this conflict.

We are now going to talk about very large communities, within which there will be many exceptions, so do not try to project these observations onto your families. In its most general form, we have the following picture: people born in the 1950s performed their marital and parental functions in a very peculiar way. This generation has its own special characteristics: the highest level of divorces and abortions, the mode of these divorces and the model of subsequent relations between parents and children, the specific sexual behavior of the 70s and 80s. We will not now go into the reasons, we will not blame or justify anyone, we will simply record this sociological fact.

This generation was forty years old before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Part perceived this event as the greatest political catastrophe, part - as a great window of opportunity opened, it is not important now.

It is important that the ethics and aesthetics, politics and economics of the 1990s largely reflected the ideas about life of this particular generation. When they say that we built capitalism on the basis of the book "Dunno on the Moon" and on the cartoons in "Crocodile" depicting capitalist society, and the relations of Church and state - on the basis of atheistic pamphlets turned upside down and Yemelyan Yaroslavsky, we must bear in mind that those who built all this, were brought up in the Soviet way.

The generation born in the 1950s is the pinnacle of Soviet upbringing, they went through a full course of ideological indoctrination: from kindergarten to higher education. The war cut off forever the memory of the former Russia, simply physically killing everyone who could remember something, and the post-war generation became a product of Soviet power.

Their relationship with their own children, to put it mildly, tends to be complicated. It is in their case that the conflict of generations manifests itself most acutely. Women and, to a lesser extent, men 40+ are the main clientele of psychologists and psychotherapists, and their request is to correct childhood traumas. In the generation born in the 50s, the conflict of generations manifests itself most acutely.

It is usually believed that 40- and 50-year-olds are offended by the lack of a social and career lift: the children of generals have grown to become generals, but there is no rotation. But it's not only that. Very often, the conflict is due to the fact that the children of this generation grew up in broken families with very specific relationships between father and mother. These are the children of Soviet women with their special understanding of their role, their duties, their rights in relation to children and in relation to current and former husbands.

Children of the generation of the 50s already have their own children. And between "children" and "grandchildren" there is no conflict of generations, and this trend is recorded not only in our country. The smoothing of the conflict of generations between centennials and their parents is noted everywhere. This is a rather unique situation from an anthropological point of view.

Most of all, the attention of researchers is attracted by the fact that children and parents talk about each other with tenderness and respect. It seems to be the most natural thing in the world - who does not love their children, and it is customary to love parents too. But in the middle of the 2000s, the picture was the opposite.

I remember reading closed women's communities in LiveJournal, and I had an eerie feeling that I was among my peers, and at that time I was thirty, in general, I was talking to my parents alone. People were in a terrible conflict with their parents: they either did not communicate at all, or hated each other, even telephone conversations ended in tantrums, tears and hanging up. It was wild for me personally.

– Typical story.

– But at the next demographic step, this is no longer a typical story. Most generational research is marketing in nature: it is understandable that companies want to know how to sell products and services to whom. Nevertheless, we, political scientists, can learn a lot of interesting things from them. In a study that was recently conducted for Sberbank, there is such an interesting point: one of the few complaints that children make against their parents is that they do not tell how to live, they do not give instructions.

– Did they have too many installations themselves?

“Maybe they had a lot of attitudes themselves, maybe they feel that time is changing too fast. Parents, in turn, say: “I don’t know how to do it, maybe they know better than me.” Usually, for the first time in the history of mankind, the next generation knows more than the previous one is written in studies related to digital literacy and networked existence. Learning is backwards, and it's a brain explosion to say the least, because our entire culture is built on the fact that the previous generation passes on its experience to the next.

Such a transfer of experience is typical primarily for an agrarian society, where there are practically no innovations, and experience is more important than creativity. After the successive waves of industrial revolutions began, and the great geographical discoveries expanded the horizons of mankind, a situation already arose when the next generation was better oriented in the changed conditions than the previous one.

But usually during the time when living conditions changed, these new generations themselves managed to become adults and parents. This is the first time this phenomenon has been observed in such a short period of time. This is a very interesting, new and little like phenomenon.

The neurotic desire to quickly cram skills and abilities into a child so that he is prepared for life has been replaced by a feeling that nothing can be installed into him, because we do not know how the world will change tomorrow.

The idea that until the age of 21 you learn everything you need to know, and then just work on this fuel, already looks utopian.

On the one hand, time runs fast, but on the other hand, there is nowhere to rush: everyone understands that you will study endlessly, improving your skills or getting a new specialty. From this understanding, a desire arises not to spend years of life together with the child forcibly pushing valuable knowledge into him, like a goose for foie gras, and spoiling relationships in the process, but rather to give him a supply of love, a sense of self-worth and acceptance, who will stay with him.

I am not now saying that this is a rational or winning strategy: those who received the best education at a young age still have an advantage - not because they learned about the periodic table, but because they have more neural connections in their heads formed in the process. recognition of the periodic table, so their brain is better adapted to further learning.

Now I’m only talking about the fact that people have a certain feeling that the main thing is still relationships, love. So I give my child confidence, acceptance - and behind this is the feeling that the training that the parents of the previous generation gave does not look so valuable anymore.

When those in power talk about the youth they have missed, they are not talking about the youth. They missed their children. This formulation is true for a significant number of people of this age, but thank God, not for everyone - human nature takes its toll.

– Missed children - who are they?

- These are those who were born by people of the generation of the 50s.

If we are talking about youth protests, then these are not protests of twenty-year-olds against their parents. Generations of twenty-year-old children and their parents are united by common values, the main of which is justice. Their protest manifests itself in different ways, depending on age.

Forties and older tend to protest legally, and that's good and effective. These people sign up as observers, apply to the courts, write complaints, skillfully pit one department against another in order to get what they want, organize structures that protect the rights of prisoners, women, children, the sick, anyone. They are successful in this activity. The protest of the “grandchildren”, due to their age, is more chaotic.

Contrary to what they like to say about the Russian people, we have a low level of tolerance for violence, including state violence. We may like to talk about Stalin, who is not on you, but as soon as real manifestations of state violence begin, few people like it. More precisely, those who do not like it are much more organized and articulate than those who are normal.

Asexuality is new and violence is on the decline

- You started talking about the morality and values ​​of young people. A contradictory picture is emerging: on the one hand, young people film all kinds of cruelty on video and post it on YouTube, on the other hand, there is a lot of news where some high school student saved someone.

– They often quote an inscription inside one of the Egyptian pyramids that today's youth does not want to work, does not honor gods, elders, they only want to have fun, and so on. Feeling about the low moral character of young people and, in general, about more debauchery compared to yesterday is also one of the traditional social mechanisms for transferring experience. It is interesting that at the current historical moment this statement is the furthest from the truth.

All the data that we have, both American and Russian, indicate that the involvement of young people in those practices that were previously considered markers of growing up is moving further and further.

People try alcohol later, they start smoking later or don't start at all, they start having sex later. Generation Z is generally much less interested in sexual topics than any previous one. Asexuality is a new trend, and it will only grow.

All studies show that today's youth is the most correct of all generations imaginable.

All studies show that today's youth is the most correct of all generations imaginable.

Growing up, people forgot about it, the concept of violence was blurred, tolerance for violence was much higher. It was believed that all boys fight, this is normal and right. Does anyone think so now? - No. Does it follow that the boys never fight again? No, it shouldn't, but attitudes have changed and that affects behavior.

We are witnessing a very slow death of initiatory practices that assumed that at the age of puberty the entire pool of youth is exposed to something that not everyone experiences. Someone has been weeded out, and the one who survived, already with battle scars, is part of the tribe and is considered a full-fledged hunter, earner, has the right to sex, property and autonomy. These practices are very deeply rooted in our minds, and are the subject of a significant number of fairy tales and most fiction about growing up.

Now, in order to become a man, you no longer have to kill your own kind. Gradually, situations are also disappearing when you have to be beaten, and you have to survive it, or you have to beat someone and, accordingly, survive it. We are not going to say now what the consequences will be and how these practices will be replaced, we are simply fixing this fact.

Our tolerance for violence is lower and lower, so facts that no one paid attention to before become the subject of discussion and indignation - besides, thanks to technical means, everything is captured and published.

There is an impression that there is monstrous cruelty in the world - the girls beat another girl and posted the shooting on the Internet. Yes, name me a class in which girls or boys did not hit another girl or boy! Nobody had a phone with a camera before.

We don't yet realize the scale of the decline in violence, we're just seeing it. In general, the global decrease in crime, the great crime drop, is one of the mysteries over which representatives of all social sciences are struggling at once.

Why do people stop committing crimes? Among the attempts to explain this phenomenon, there are quite exotic ones, such as improving the quality of gasoline and reducing the amount of lead in exhaust gases. Lead is known to increase aggression.

The American version: the generation of criminals was simply not born, because thirty years ago, contraception became available to the disadvantaged.

The statistics on only two types of crimes have not improved: these are cybercrimes and, for some reason, theft of mobile phones. The number of cases of street hooliganism has decreased very much, and one of the reasons that are mentioned is computer games.

Computer games in general will save us all: these are new jobs and war simulacra for young people. How can society do without war, when for all previous generations of mankind it was the main occupation of the elite, a way to resolve political conflicts, a way of economic advancement? What to do with the political elite, if the war was canceled?

Research shows that young people are becoming more and more interested in food. Have you noticed how many boys and girls are learning how to cook?

– If earlier “you will go to a culinary college” was a terrible curse, now it’s the other way around.

– This is a wonderful, creative and very popular profession, where we will not be replaced by robots for some time yet. Now, when choosing a profession, you need to ask yourself the question: can a robot do this? If you can, don't do it.

– Chef is one of the highest paid professions!

- These are new stars. No one wants to see rock musicians using drugs anymore. Everyone wants to see Jamie Oliver cooking something in the company of his five children.

Lack of motivation will be a social advantage

– At the same time, it is often said that today's youth have a rather low level of motivation. I myself feel that I cannot tell my children: "Study well - everything will be fine with you, otherwise you will go to the janitors." I understand that today people who have not even completed tenth grade are perfectly arranged and everything is fine with them.

“Lack of motivation can be a wonderful and very relevant trait for a generation that is going to live in a post-scarcity and possibly post-labor economy.

Imagine that the automation of production has given us an extraordinary reduction in the cost of everything for which people of previous generations were killed: furniture, household appliances, cars, clothes, and other material items. That, indeed, after the economy of ownership comes the economy of use. That our descendants will look upon us with tender pity for the fact that we sought to acquire pieces of property and dragged them along with us.

Maybe in the morning, pre-ordered drones will deliver capsules with clothes to their door, and pick them up in the evening. They will not own property, housing will be rented. Objectively, they will be poorer than us, but their standard of living will be higher.

This seems like a paradox until we try to look back at some previous historical period and take, for ease of comparison, the level of consumption and standard of living of the then elite.

The aristocracy had diamond tiaras and palaces that we do not have, but at the same time they did not have the opportunity to treat their teeth, they died early and a terrible death, their children died like flies, they physically suffered insanely, lived in discomfort, in cold rooms with drafts, they had no sewerage and running water, it was difficult for them to wash themselves - in general, no matter how outstanding a king, count or duke you were, from our point of view your standard of living and comfort was monstrously low.

If this process continues, if it gives the results that economic futurists are now describing to us, then the lack of motivation to run after the escaping dollar or the fleeing ruble in order to catch it and secure a life for oneself will be very good.

The absence of such motivation will be a social advantage, because a person will need a different type of motivation: motivation for self-realization, for the manifestation of one's uniqueness, that in oneself that a robot cannot replace.

No one will need labor in our current understanding, because your work will only worsen the ecological situation, but your creativity will bring surplus value and further progress of mankind.

In less lofty terms, lack of motivation is an extremely valuable quality for people who will have to live in a society where their work is not needed. In order for them not to feel thrown out of society and useless, they must have a different psychology, a different head arrangement. They should not consider getting chips as the goal of their efforts. They should be calm about tangible achievements, positions, awards, money - in fact, to external signs of status.

We see how humanity is slowly moving towards this. You should always look at the First World and its forward detachments, because they set the norms that will later be universal. There we see the fifty gray Zuckerberg sweatshirts, the Scandinavian behavior of the elites, the ostentatious modesty and the death of the conspicuous consumption that the bourgeoisie once brought with it when it became the ruling class.

A good person is a profession

The problem of the new century arises: how and what to do with people whose work is not needed. It seems that a life with a guaranteed civilian income, when you do not have to work, will be a wonderful dream, but in fact a person gets sick and dies from this. Studies show that for people who have lost their jobs, the process of self-destruction begins much earlier than material need sets in.

A person must be included in society, he needs recognition, he needs to feel important and useful, doing something valuable, he needs meanings. If you give him money and say: “Now go and do nothing,” he will start to get sick, wither and destroy himself.

The famous economist Robert Skidelsky, a former member of the British Parliament, said the following: one of the tasks of the new era is to teach everyone to live as only the aristocracy used to live, and at the same time not go crazy. It doesn't seem like a problem at all, but it's actually a very big problem.

It will be decided by the generation that, thank God, is indifferent to tsatsks and show-offs, which will finally throw off this yoke from its soul, which now already says that the main value is the family, that creating a family is a greater achievement than career success, what matters most is a relationship that values ​​communication skills.

This is very correct, because a robot has the notorious efficiency, a person needs it less and less. Remember, there was such a Soviet expression: “a good person is not a profession”?

Now we are coming to a society in which there is no other profession: there is only the profession of a good person, and all the rest can be automated.

Now we are coming to a society in which there is no other profession: there is only the profession of a good person, and all the rest can be automated.

A person is required to communicate with other people, create and maintain relationships, organize people. Managerial qualities come to the fore, but not in the sense of squeezing the maximum out of the employee, but in the sense of supporting joint work, making it joyful and satisfying for those involved in it.

This becomes extremely valuable, and in this sense, the new generation looks very promising. In general, those who communicate with twenty-year-olds are very enthusiastic about them, as a teacher I can confirm this.

The value of the family will only grow

There is a blurring of the boundaries of the "male" work space and the "female" home space. The increase in the value of the family and family relations led to the fact that women did not want to leave their children, but they did not want to give up work either. The great "family or work" dilemma remained in the 20th century: this is a problem for the industrial economy, when your job is either sitting in an office or standing in a factory. More and more people are working from home and going out to meetings, just to somehow walk their heels.

The value of the family will only increase as more and more people live at home. Remote work and the development of delivery brings us back home. In the twentieth century, a person has never been at home: he went to the factory in the morning, came back from the factory in the evening, went on vacation to a sanatorium, sent his children to a pioneer camp for three months, and to see who lives in his apartment, there wasn't much of an opportunity. This, on the one hand, strengthened family relations, on the other hand, it destroyed them, as lucky as anyone.

Now people live at home and put their relationship with the family in the foreground. This is somewhat reminiscent of a traditional society: a hut and a spinning wheel, only instead of a spinning wheel we have a computer. And as vertical farms pop up and feed our cities, settlements will become more and more autonomous.

We will still see some villages of Old Believers or a village of artists who do not need anything at all: they have a solar battery on the roof, from which they receive electricity, they have drilled a well for themselves, they get water from there.

They have vertical farms where they grow their own food, a drone flies to them and brings everything they need, not to mention the fact that they can print it on a 3D printer that is right there. Life in cities will change dramatically.

Line up for oxytocin

– At the same time, is there any feeling that the queues for iPhones and some special sneakers are evidence of an increased need for markers of one's social status?

It's a quest, it's an adventure. Previously, a person tried to avoid physical labor, because it was a curse and the lot of inferiors. The higher you climbed the social ladder, the less you worked physically and the more fatty foods you ate. The rich differed from the poor in a very simple way: the rich had long nails, white hands and special clothes that showed that he did not work, and even in very traditional Oriental-type societies he still had a big belly (he could afford to eat a lot of fatty meat! ).

Now everything has turned upside down: the poor are fat, the rich are thin. We specifically run and jump, do physical labor and lift weights in order to be healthy. In the same way, standing in line, which was a curse on the Soviet man, sucked his blood, made him aggressive and generally destroyed his life, is now becoming a wonderful hobby. Look, we are all standing together, we have an adventure, people buy special tickets to arrange a quest for them.

- I heard several times from people who organize quests that young people have some kind of drug addiction from them.

– Despite the online, despite the computer games that I have glorified, human nature has not changed: a person is a social animal, he needs to interact with his own kind. This online interaction is no worse than offline, but a person wants to interact in the real world. Quests give not so much adrenaline as teamwork.

By the way, this is exactly why people go to charity, non-profit organizations, political activism. Many people think that people go there to sacrifice themselves - this is a very dangerous delusion. Bad things will happen to those who come with such ideas to charity.

You need to understand that people come there for oxytocin - the hormone of happiness, which is produced during successful joint activities. Those who have tasted the sweet taste of success in interaction with others will come back for it again and again.

In fact, this experience should be given to a person by a school. "I didn't know, I found out, and now I've got it." If anyone had enough pedagogical talent to replicate this experience for students, the kids would love the school. Doing what works is a great pleasure.

Forced publicity - a new instrument of pressure

“We have an absolutely perfect picture of today's youth. What problems do they have, dark sides?

– People who look at the ongoing socio-cultural processes with malevolent eyes call the emerging culture a culture of weakness – as opposed to the culture of strength that existed before.

What's wrong with this culture of weakness? It fetishizes the victim and thereby encourages people to declare themselves victims in order to gain privileges. By reducing the overall level of violence, especially physical, it develops new forms of violence, the first of which I would call forced publicity.

There is a term "outing" in the relevant community. There is a coming-out, when you talk about yourself, and there is an outing, when I tell you that you are such and such. This is the pressure tool of the new era. Paradoxically, as in the traditional society, in the new society everything is tied to reputation. Everyone lives in plain sight, everything is open, recorded and can be published, data is available not only to states and corporations, but also to citizens.

- Everything is known about you, starting from the moment when your mother came to the maternal community and said: “Something we have a problem with diapers today.”

- Yes, that's right, and your photo with and without a diaper from the global network will never disappear and will haunt you throughout your life. Accordingly, reputation is everything, and the collapse of reputation closes a person all his social and professional prospects. He cannot say: “Yes, suppose I am a bastard and did bad things, but I am a professional.”

Nobody needs your professionalism. You sell a certain product, the central element of which is your personality. If your personality causes disgust and rejection, then you can’t say: “Yes, I kicked a woman in the ass, but I’m a good actor.” No matter what kind of actor you are, people come to see you in a film and they should treat you well. If they don't treat you well, they won't go to the film with you, there are many other films with good people.

– Victorian attitude.

- We have already mentioned the specific attitude towards the sphere of sexuality among the younger generation. We must admit that we are driving at full speed into a culture that is related to sexuality, if not negatively, then suspiciously.

It would be better for all of us if good old depraved Europe set the norms, but in the modern world they are set by America, and America is a puritanical country. They literally lived for several decades, since the late 60s, in a situation where sex was considered something more good than bad, and apparently they did not like it.

We are now seeing American society return with great pleasure to a paradigm in which sex is bad. When they were Puritans they said it was sinful, now they say it's dangerous. Sexual communication becomes dangerous from different sides: firstly, you can never be sure that your behavior will not be recognized as violence, and secondly, you open up to another person and do not know how he will behave. This has always been the case, but now the risks outweigh the benefits.

With the availability of technological tools to solve this problem, the idea that in order to get an orgasm, you need to connect with a whole other person will seem wild to the next generations. They will value relationships, of course, but they will value sex less. So chastity and temperance seem to be everything for us.

Defend the rights will be less aggressive, but more persistent

The new generation will probably be more cowardly according to our concepts. Going against society will become more and more difficult with each successive generation. People have a need to sacrifice themselves, but when there is so much involved in your social relationships and your comfort level is so high, that need is less likely to be fulfilled.

From a political point of view, the lack of a pronounced motivation to win and achieve and social conformity can make them more passive citizens. But, on the other hand, the idea of ​​the maximum value of self-expression and self-realization, and not the accumulation of material things, will work against the trend that I described: a person who is completely tied to a material incentive is even easier to make a conformist. A person who understands that he will not be socially successful if he does not develop his personality, and who values ​​\u200b\u200bhis personality above all else, will be less aggressive, but will guard his boundaries more carefully and assert his rights with more perseverance.

Now a text is circulating on the net about a young girl who was taken to the hospital with a child, and she staged a fight for her rights there, because she did not like the way she was treated.

Children born in the 90s became parents, and they do not consider humiliating and aggressive treatment normal. The most important thing is that the norm is changing.

Anything can be the norm: first-born sacrifice, ritual murder, temple prostitution, genocide. Man is such a plastic creature that, depending on the conditions and social attitudes, he can behave like an angel, or maybe like the last bastard (and the same person). In psychological experiments like the Stanford one, when people dress up as prisoners and guards, they start doing crazy things. When you need to shock someone you don’t see for an incorrect answer, people reach what they consider to be deadly tension.

Usually these results are interpreted in the spirit that every person is a bloodthirsty animal at heart. Nothing like this. In fact, these experiments show that a person is infinitely adaptive, he follows the rules. This is our mental norm: what rules are we, so changing the rules, changing the concepts of what is acceptable is extremely important. If we see a decrease in tolerance for violence in all its forms, the general trend cannot but rejoice.

– Now there is a great hunger for militaristic values.

- I'm sorry that I jump to conclusions right away, but as we see from the research data, this seems to be the last tour of the 60+ generation.

The main principle of parenthood, as in medicine - do no harm

– My children are 9 years old, 5 and a half and 2 years and 3 months old. I'm still at that idyllic stage when I don't need much parenting exploits to build relationships. In this sense, it is good to have many children, because, according to the beautiful formula that belongs to my husband, all happy families are like a farm or a small nursery.

When there are more than two children, this is no longer quite a private life, it is such an enterprise. The production element simplifies life in many ways, relationships are built around this production need in a rather healthy way: there are many of you, I am alone, there are some things that need to be done, everyone understands this and is built into it.

While this complicates life logistically, it simplifies it morally. I think that people who are locked up alone with their only child, who think about how to develop him, how to communicate with him, how not to suppress his personality, maybe, in some way, lead a more complex and nervous life.

– What are the main skills and competencies you would like to instill in children? Alexander Arkhangelsky, is the ability to act in a new way and look for a way out in new situations. We can not give the full amount of knowledge, because they will become different, but you can teach to adapt to change.

- As a person who grew up in a family of teachers, I can say the following thing: teachers themselves do not really believe in education and believe very much in heredity. Parenting is great, but the child grows up like his parents. We just all live together and, since these are my children from my husband, I don’t think that they are somehow fundamentally stupider than me. They will pump their own skills.

I absolutely do not believe in the idea of ​​competition between people: people are different and want different things, so if they compete for one object, most likely one of them does not need this object, he just has not guessed about it yet. Hoffmann has such a short story called "The Choice of the Bride." The bride had three suitors, they all wanted to marry her. Then a fairy came and invited everyone to fulfill his wish.

The reader has a question: how is it that they all want this bride?! As a result, one of them gets a bride, the second one gets a purse that never runs out of money, and the third one gets a book that turns into any books at will (Kindle!). One of them loved the girl, another needed money, and the third wanted an endless library, while they all competed for this same bride. I think this false bride is the driver of the false idea of ​​competition.

I do not believe that children can be trained in such a way that they are competitive. As practice shows, the main obstacles to life success and happiness are not the lack of skills and knowledge - they are acquired, but their own psychological deprivations. We are hindered by anxiety, fears, obsessive-compulsive disorder, a tendency to anorexia and so on. If all this does not happen, if a person is psychologically healthy and prosperous enough, then he will achieve everything he wants.

It seems to me that I have already done everything basic for the children: I myself gave birth to them from the best possible father, I raise them in a prosperous family, where no one offends them, and if someone tries to offend them from the outside, then I do not encourage such behavior. That, in fact, is all. The principle of “do no harm” is basic in both medicine and parenting.

It is easy to do harm - mankind has accumulated a lot of experience in this matter, but it is difficult to let a child grow up whole, without sticking a finger in sensitive places along the way. I'd rather take care of myself in this regard. As they say now, no matter how you behave, your children will find something to complain about to their therapist. I accept this fact - let them complain to the therapist. Those who had their mother at home will complain that their mother was present all the time and hanging over. Whom mother worked for - that she was not there and was not enough ...

– Sometimes you are afraid that you will yell at children, and from this they will begin their trip to a psychotherapist in 15 years.

- As Aristotle said, take care of the tears of your children so that they can shed them on your grave. Don't make them cry while you're alive, let them cry when you're dead.