Not everyone can agree, but the article is quite useful and, on the whole, correct.
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I was invited to a conference at the Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University, as part of the Lomonosov celebrations. The conversation will be about intelligence - intellectual economy, intelligence as a factor of development, knowledge economy, etc. This topic is very close to me. This is what I'm going to talk about in this extremely intelligent meeting.
Ignorance and obscurantism - a motor of modern development
Professor Katasonov told in LG. He likes to ask students this question: "What is the main resource of the modern economy?" The answers are different: oil, money, knowledge. And all by. “The main resource of the modern economy,” the professor solemnly proclaims, “is a fool. You can sell everything to him. " Laughter in the audience.
Funny, isn't it? But in fact, this is not a joke, but, as Ostap Bender used to say, "a medical fact." The engine of modern development is ignorance and obscurantism.
Promotional video:
"LET'S STOP HER AND ASK:" HOW DID YOU GET TO LIFE THIS?"
Humanity reached the maximum of its scientific and technical power in the 60s of the twentieth century. After that, nothing radical in science and technology happened. The driving force behind this development was the nuclear missile race. (From RP: More than a dubious statement. Well, what kind of rocket race was there in the time of Jules Verne, when the scientific and technological revolution began?) The symbol and apotheosis of scientific and technical power was man's exit into Space.
At this time, the scientific profession was the most fashionable and prestigious, bearded physicists were the heroes of books and films, they were loved by girls, they were imitated by "young men thinking about life." I remember how fashionable the Cosmos was in my childhood - in the 60s. We knew all the cosmonauts by heart, I remember, I published a wall newspaper with a headline that I was very proud of: "A new milestone in the space era - a radiogram from distant Venus."
There was a huge demand for engineers, physicists, mathematicians. It was the physicist who was in those days the modern version of "good fellow". Each epoch gives rise to its own version of the hero of our time - and then it was a scientist-physicist. The best, the smartest went to mother schools, and then to some MEPhI or MIPT. Obviously, for one to become a world champion, thousands must start playing football in the yard team. In exactly the same way, and in order for one to make a world discovery, myriads must go to the start: decently teach physics and mathematics, wrinkle their foreheads over the problem from the Kvant magazine, strive for victory in the regional Olympiad. And all these activities should be fashionable, respected, prestigious. So it was then. It was considered fashionable to be smart. In my childhood there was an almanac "I want to know everything!" - they wrote mostly about science and technology. And the kids really wanted to know that.
Already in the 70s, the rocket seemed to run out of fuel and it entered ballistic orbit. Everything seemed to go on as before, but it went by inertia, the soul of the world left this sphere of life. The tension of the nuclear missile race began to subside. Gradually, the nuclear superpowers ceased to be truly afraid of each other and to expect a nuclear strike from each other. Fear became more of a ritual: the Soviet threat was used to frighten voters and congressmen in America, and the USSR was frightened by the "intrigues of imperialism". That is, the arms race continued: a big business generally has colossal inertia, you just can't stop it: over there, Soviet life has not yet completely collapsed. (I mean both the technical infrastructure and Braudel's “structures of everyday life”).
The arms race continued, but such that the US Secretary of Defense threw himself out of the window shouting: "The Russians are coming!" - this could no longer be. Over time, the arms race has lost its passion, has become not a militant affair, but more and more bureaucratic.
The scientific and technical demands of governments on their scientific communities have been declining. The political leadership no longer spoke to scientists like Comrade. Beria to comrade Korolyov, sitting in a shelter at the nuclear test site: "If this thing does not explode, I will tear your head off!" (From RP: Here the author seems to be confusing something, at least the Queen with Kurchatov.)
Accordingly, the scientific profession, while remaining prestigious, more and more became just one of the professions, nothing more.
From the annals of our family history. At the turn of the 1950s, my husband's father and uncle entered institutes: my father-in-law went to Baumansky, and his brother went to MGIMO. So the one who entered Baumansky was considered more successful in his environment and. so to speak, cooler than the one who entered MGIMO. Already in my time, in the 70s, the scale of prestige was reversed.
The manifestation of this new spirit was the famous Detente of Tension, under whose sign the 70s passed. Nobody seriously believed in the military threat, did not build bunkers in the garden, did not stock up on gas masks. Then the enthusiastic singers of Detente said that this is the true end of World War II, a true transition to peace. Quite possibly, in a spiritual, psychological sense, this was exactly the case.
Accordingly, the fashion for science, for natural-technical knowledge, for a scientific way of thinking - gradually came to naught. Science is not capable of developing on its own basis, from itself. Tasks are always set to her from the outside. In the overwhelming majority of cases, these are tasks of improving military equipment. From itself the scientific community is able to generate only what is called "satisfaction of its own curiosity at public expense."
In the 60s and 70s, the scientific way of thinking (i.e., belief in the knowability of the world, in experiment and its logical interpretation) was increasingly giving way to various kinds of esoteric knowledge, mysticism, and Eastern teachings. Rationalism and positivism inherent in science began to be actively shaken. In the Soviet Union, this was not officially allowed, which only fueled interest. Yuri Trifonov, a great painter of everyday life in Soviet society, captured this transition in his "city" stories. Engineers, scientists - the heroes of his stories - suddenly fall into mysticism, esotericism, organize seances. In the West at the same time, the fashion for Buddhism, yoga, etc. spread. teachings that are far from rationalism and a scientific approach to reality.
This was one of the prerequisites for what happened next. There were other powerful prerequisites as well.
LIFE IS BETTER, LIFE IS MORE FUN
Around the 60s, progressive mankind was overtaken by a kind of attack.
Approximately in the 60s and 70s, something happened in the leading capitalist countries that it didn’t know, humanity, from the moment of expulsion from paradise. The fact that no one trumpeted or trumpeted about this once again confirms the indisputable: both in their small life and in the common life of mankind, people strain out trifles, but they do not even notice the big and important thing. So what happened?
A terrible thing happened.
The basic household needs of the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants were satisfied.
What does it mean: basic? This means: natural and intelligent. The need for sufficient and healthy food, for normal and not even lacking a certain beauty clothing for the season, for a fairly spacious and hygienic housing. The family started up cars and household appliances.
Back in the 50s and 60s, it was an American dream - a dream that is not accessible to everyone. In England in the 50s, such a word was even born subtopia - glued together from two words "suburb" (suburb) and "utopia": a dream of your own house in the suburbs, equipped with all modern conveniences.
A couple of years ago, the blogger Divov posted interesting material on this topic in his magazine. This is a translation of a fragment of memories of life in England, in a provincial mining town at the turn of the 50s and 60s. So there was one (!!!) bathroom for the whole town, all residents had "amenities" in the yard, the contents of the chamber pots were covered with ice by morning, my mother washed in a trough, fruits were bought only when someone got sick, and flowers - when he was dying.
So sufficient everyday comfort and security became available to about two-thirds of the population in the late 60s - early 70s. With tension, with quirks, but - accessible. We are, of course, talking about the “golden billion”.
This has never happened before in history and nowhere in the world! Prior to that, poverty was the norm of common people. And the daily tense struggle for a piece of bread. So it was in everyone - I emphasize: everyone! - countries of the world. Reread from this point of view realistic literature from Hugo and Dickens to Remarque and Dreiser, read the "Roman Tales" of the 50s by the Italian writer Alberto Moravia - and everything will become clear to you.
And now everything has changed marvelously. A normal, average working man in the street got decent housing equipped with modern amenities and household appliances, he began to eat decently, and began to buy new clothes.
I have had occasion to talk with elderly Europeans who remember this tectonic shift, this epoch-making transition, this… I don’t even know what to call it, it’s so epochal. I remember one Italian telling how after the war he had a dream: to eat a large plate of pasta generously flavored with butter. And at the end of the 60s, he suddenly discovered that "non mi manca niente" - literally "I have nothing missing." And this is awful! So what happens? The man pushes the plate away and says, "Thank you, I'm full?" What's next?
In other words, the development model based on satisfying normal needs for money earned by people has exhausted itself. People did not have and did not foresee any growth in cash or growth in needs. Business could only grow with the growth of the population, which, as luck would have it, stopped growing in developed countries.
Dostoevsky prophesied in The Teenager. The person will eat up and ask: what next? Give him the meaning of life. Or what other goals.
But in reality it was not a man who asked. He was outstripped. Outstripped global business. He was the first to ask "What's next?" and the first one found the answer.
Capitalism cannot exist without expansion. Global business needs new and new sales markets. And these markets have been found. They were found not overseas (there was already nothing to fish there by that time), but IN THE SOULS OF PEOPLE.
Capitalism no longer began to satisfy, but to create more and more new needs. And to satisfy them triumphantly. So, mobile operators created the need to constantly chat on the phone, pharmaceutical corporations - the need to constantly swallow pills, clothing manufacturers - to change it almost every day, and in any case - every season.
You can also create new hazards - and protect against them with the right products. Protect against everything: from dandruff, from germs in the toilet, from cell phone radiation. As a marketer, I can say that the “escape from danger” model is the best on the Russian market.
Marketing came to the fore. What is Marketing? In essence, this is a teaching on how to make the unnecessary. That is, how to make the unnecessary seem necessary and buy it. Why was there no marketing before, in the nineteenth century? Yes, because there was no need for it. Then the necessary goods were produced and real needs were satisfied. And when it was necessary to invent false needs, then marketing was needed. The same is the role of total advertising.
Marketers are professionally proud: we do not satisfy needs - we create them. This is indeed the case.
In order for people to buy anything, reasonable arguments were canceled. Since we are talking about imposed and false needs, it is dangerous to discuss them rationally. It can very easily turn out that they are false, and what they say does not exist in nature and cannot exist at all due to the laws of nature. The imposition of needs occurs strictly on the emotional level. Advertising appeals to emotions - this is a lower layer of the psyche than the mind. Below emotions are only instincts. Today, advertising is increasingly appealing directly to them.
In order for the process to go more vigorously, it is necessary to remove the obstacle in the form of rational consciousness, critical thinking habits and scientific knowledge prevalent among the masses. It is very good that these habits and knowledge began to loosen at the previous stage. All this hinders the global expansion of capitalism! This makes it difficult to sell mountains of unnecessary and empty things.
In general, it is not required to include critical and rational thinking today. It is not fashionable, not modern, not trendy. S. G. Kara-Murza constantly talks about the manipulation of consciousness (in fact, the book of the same name brought him fame). This is not entirely true. Global capitalism is aiming at a task more ambitious than the manipulation of consciousness. Manipulation of consciousness is still a targeted scam, a one-time manipulation. And now we are talking about the global formation of the ideal consumer, completely devoid of rational consciousness and scientific knowledge about the world. The well-known philosopher Alexander Zinoviev rightly said that the ideal consumer is something like a pipe into which goods are pumped from one end, and from the other they whistle into the landfill.
What is the ideal consumer? This is an absolutely ignorant, cheerful moron who lives with elementary emotions and a thirst for novelty. You can say not a jerk, but more delicately - a six-year-old child. But if at thirty you have the psyche of a six-year-old - you're still an early moron, no matter how delicate you are. He has a smooth physiognomy, not disfigured by unnecessary thoughts, a "waistcoat" shaved with a razor, a white-toothed smile treated with the appropriate toothpaste. He is cheerful, positive, dynamic and always ready. Consume. What exactly? What they say will happen. That's why he is an ideal consumer. He will not whine: “Why don't I have a new iPhone when I haven't mastered the old one? And in general I don't need it. " He should need - everything. Having grabbed a new toy, he must immediately throw the old one.
He must constantly snack, experiencing "heavenly pleasure" and at the same time heroically fight overweight. And at the same time not to notice the idiocy of their behavior. He must constantly chat on the phone, and at the same time frantically save on cellular services. He must (this is more likely - she) continuously protect his loved ones from microbes, which is actually completely unnecessary and even harmful. And most importantly, he must believe - believe everything that is told to him, without requiring proof.
In general, the very phenomenon of rational proof, which was once a great achievement of ancient civilization and has since then been inseparable from thinking humanity, is dying out before our eyes and threatens to disappear. People no longer feel the need for it.
MEDIA - VIRTUAL "ISLAND OF FOOLS"
To educate a positive hedonist - an ideal consumer who continuously pleases himself with purchases, overeats and at the same time actively loses weight, not noticing the absurdity of his behavior, daily purposeful work is necessary to fool the masses.
The main role in this matter is played by television as the most consumed mass media, but this is not the end of it.
Consumption is not to say “spiritual”, but let's say: “virtual” product should also constantly please or, in any case, not upset with difficulty, incomprehensibility, complexity. Everything should be joyful and positive. Any information about anything should reduce everything to the level of elementary chewing gum. For example, any great people should be presented as an object of kitchen gossip, as simple and stupid as the audience themselves, and not even the audience themselves, but as those ideal consumers who are planned to be raised from viewers.
The consumer should not say about anything: “I don’t understand this” or “I don’t understand this”. It would be disappointing and not positive.
Once M. Gorky wrote that there are two types of approaches to the creation of literature and the press for the people. The bourgeois approach is to try to lower the texts to the level of the reader, while the second approach, the Soviet one, is to raise the reader to the level of literature. Soviet writers and journalists, Gorky believed, should raise the reader to the level of understanding real literature and, in general, serious texts. Modern media does not stoop to the present level of the reader - it actively pulls that reader down.
Picture books are spreading more and more, but not for three-year-olds, as it has always been, but for adults. For example, a successful publication of this type is the last period of the modern history of the USSR and Russia in pictures from the TV presenter Parfenov.
In essence, modern media is a virtual Island of Fools, brilliantly described by N. Nosov in Dunno on the Moon. It seems to me that in this satire the author rises to Swift's heights. The speech in this wonderful text says, who forgot, that's what. Homeless vagrants are taken to a certain island. There they are continuously entertained, shown by detective stories and cartoons, ride on carousels and other attractions. After being there for a while, breathing in the poisoned air of this island, normal little ones turn into rams, which are sheared, receiving income from the sale of wool.
Our media regularly supply customers with sheep for shearing.
Customers in the narrow sense are advertisers, and customers in the broadest sense are a global business that requires a sufficient contingent of consumers. Just as the Soviet press aimed to educate workers in communism, so today's media aims to educate ideal consumers. Only completely duped citizens are able to consider the purpose of life to be the continuous change of phones or the continuous waste of money on eye-pleasing trifles. And since this is so, citizens need to be brought into proper form, i.e. to fool.
Cheating starts in school, with children's comic magazines that are available everywhere, while the smarter magazines are subscription-only and not advertised anywhere. I myself was surprised to learn that newspapers and magazines of our childhood “Pionerskaya Pravda” and “Pioneer” are being published. But they do not show themselves anywhere, schoolchildren do not know about them, this is something like the underground newspaper Iskra. These publications (the quality of which is also not ideal, but quite tolerable) are not in school libraries or in kiosks, they are not in common use at all. As a result, most children read only fantasy, which prepares them for the perception of glamorous press, ladies' and detective novels, etc.
The result of such a purposeful policy is the impossibility and inconceivability of any serious discussion in the media, in general, no serious discussion of anything. Even if someone started such a discussion, it would simply not be understood and supported by anyone. American experts have established that a normal adult American television viewer is not able to perceive and track the sequential development of any topic for more than three minutes; then he loses the thread of the conversation and gets distracted. There is no data on our audience. Let us make an assumption, flattering for our patriotic feelings, that ours are twice as smart. Then they can listen not for three minutes, but, for example, six. So what? What kind of serious discussion can we talk about at all?
It is characteristic that even people with a formally high level of education (that is, having diplomas) do not feel the need for rational proof of any statement. They do not need either facts or logic, enough shamanic shouts, like the universal method of argumentation that has recently gained wide circulation: "This is so!"
In my classes with direct sales sellers (almost everyone with higher education received back in Soviet times - teachers, engineers, economists, doctors), I was repeatedly convinced: people do not need argumentation. It only takes time and unnecessarily makes the performance heavier. A well-reasoned speech is perceived as boring. "You tell me how it is, and that's the end of it." Much better than any argument is perceived what Rousseau called "emotional cries" and attributed to prehistoric savages.
The habit of contemplating your favorite TV presenters forms an idea (perhaps unconsciously): the main thing is not what is being said, but the main thing is who is speaking. If a person is respected, beloved, sympathetic, speaks, everything is taken for the truth, "people grab it." People feel the need to see a "talking head" on a TV screen, it is very difficult to perceive even a simple text in print. It is not for nothing that many of my listeners willingly purchase video recordings of my performances, although it is much easier (from a traditional point of view) to read them.
WHAT IS TEACHED AT SCHOOL?
In his simplicity, Minister Fursenko blurted out: the purpose of education is to educate a cultural consumer. And the modern school - secondary and higher - is gradually catching up to this task. Not immediately, but pulling up.
What is being taught now? How to behave in society, how to fit into a team, how to make a video presentation or write a CV. And physics with chemistry is a nudge, a scoop, the last century.
Not so long ago, on the Enthusiasts highway, there was a billboard depicting a pretty "silver molecule" contained, I don't remember, in what - I think - in an antiperspirant deodorant. The idiocy of this advertisement among the workers of my company was noticed only by one elderly woman - a chemical engineer by a pre-revolutionary profession. Then the billboard was removed.
To know, in the sense of keeping in mind - they teach us - nothing is needed. Everything can be viewed in Yandex. This is a very productive point of view. If a person does not know anything, then you can sell everything to him. And an empty head is very good for pumping details of tariff plans or properties of different types of toilet paper into it.
Enormous successes have been achieved in this matter. I sometimes have to talk with young people who come to work for us. They hold up decently, look neat, have some self-promotion skills, and at the same time are perfect savages: they have no idea about history, or geography, or the basic laws of nature. So, we had a history teacher by education who did not know who the Bolsheviks were.
Why bother with something? You need to know something completely different. Once I passed a test on the Internet for my knowledge of various fashionable things, which, according to the organizers, are characteristic of the lifestyle of the middle class. I shamefully failed the test, the answer came like this: it’s even strange that you have a computer and the Internet to pass this test.
It is precisely for the formation of such experts that modern educational institutions and modern educational technologies are designed.
Obscurantism and ignorance are the last refuge of modern capitalism. This is not just a certain defect of modern society - it is its most important component. Without this, the modern market cannot exist.
A logical question: who, in this case, will create new products for “vparki” ideal consumers? And who will lead the human flock, who will be the shepherds? Obviously, ideal consumers are not suitable for this purpose. In the modern United States today, this role is played by immigrants from third world countries, from the former USSR. It's hard to say what will happen next. Modern capitalism, in general, modern Western civilization does not look ahead, its main thing is today's expansion. And it is achieved through the total moronization of the population. Because it is the main resource today.
