“I warned the ministers: 'If you continue this policy, you will get a country of fools. Such a country is easier to govern, but it has no future."
The words from the title were said by Sergey Petrovich back in 2009, in an interview with the AMF newspaper. The topic of spiritual, cultural and moral degradation of generations in Russia was especially close to him. The son of the Nobel Prize laureate Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, Soviet and Russian physicist, educator Sergei Petrovich Kapitsa, for most of us, needs no introduction.
But let's return to the words of Sergei Petrovich, because they turned out to be prophetic. It's 2017, and the generation of modern youth is still reading Russian classics less and less. Ink, pens, books have been replaced by electronic toys, gadgets and mobile apps. A generation of mobile and self-confident, informed and pseudo-progressive people who have gone headlong into the digital world, easily replacing the real one, where there is no place for feelings and emotions.
Sergei Petrovich has repeatedly shared his thoughts about the modern generation, and also often explained the difference between generations.
We have collected the most important, in our opinion, excerpts from an interview with the great thinker Sergei Petrovich Kapitsa, and we will try to figure it out, understand what has changed from 2009 to 2016, is there a reason to fan panic snot and is everything so bad in modern Russia?
BACKGROUND
In 2009, the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) conducted research that the authorities somehow did not notice. And in vain. Their results are such that at least two ministries - culture and education - need to press all the "panic buttons" and call emergency meetings of the cabinet of ministers. Because, according to polls by VTsIOM, 35% of Russians DO NOT
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READ BOOKS IN GENERAL
But Russia, if you believe the speeches of the President and Prime Minister, has taken the path of innovative development. But what kind of innovations, scientific breakthroughs, the development of nanotechnology, etc., can we talk about if more than a third of the country's population has never picked up a book in a year? On this occasion, in 2009, the AMF newspaper took a short but detailed interview with Professor S. P. Kapitsa. Here are excerpts from this interview:
RUSSIA IS TURNED INTO A LAND OF FOOLS
“The VTsIOM data indicate that we have finally come to what we have been striving for all these 15 years, - we have brought up the country of idiots. If Russia continues to follow the same course, then in another ten years there will be no more of those who today at least occasionally pick up a book. And we will get a country that will be easier to rule, from which it will be easier to suck natural resources. But this country has no future! These were the words I uttered five years ago at a government meeting. Time passes, and no one even tries to understand and suspend the processes that lead to the degradation of the nation.
We have a complete rupture of words and deeds. Everyone talks about innovation, but nothing is done to make those slogans come true. And the explanation “I work so hard. When will I also read? cannot serve as an excuse. Believe me, our generation worked no less, but there was always time for reading. And labor productivity in society several decades ago was higher than it is now.
WHY DO A MAN READ?
“You ask why a person should read at all. Again, I will give an example: human and monkey organisms are very similar in all their characteristics. But monkeys don't read, but man reads books. Culture and intelligence are the main differences between humans and monkeys. And the mind is based on the exchange of information and language. And the greatest tool for sharing information is the book.
Earlier, starting from the time of Homer, there was an oral tradition: people sat and listened to the elders who, in an artistic form, through the tales and legends of past eras, passed on the experience and knowledge accumulated by a generation. Then there was a letter and with it - reading. The tradition of oral narration has died out, and now the tradition of reading is also fading away. Take it somehow and, at least for the sake of curiosity, leaf through the correspondence of the greats.
THE ROLE OF THE USE IN EDUCATION
“I have long proposed to change the criteria for admission to higher educational institutions. No exams are required - let the applicant write a five-page essay in which he explains why he wants to enter a particular faculty. The ability to correctly express one's thoughts, the essence of the problem demonstrates the intellectual baggage of a person, the level of his culture, the degree of development of consciousness.
And the USE, which is used today, cannot give an objective picture of a student's knowledge. It is built only on knowledge or ignorance of facts. But the facts are far from everything! Does the Volga flow into the Caspian Sea? The answer to this question deserves not a tick in the corresponding box, but a separate serious conversation. Because millions of years ago the Volga did not flow into the Caspian, but into the Azov Sea, the geography of the Earth was different. And the question from a textbook turns into an interesting problem. To solve it, it is precisely that understanding is required, which cannot be achieved without reading and education."
FEELINGS INSTEAD OF MINDS
“… The question of losing interest in reading is the question of what is happening to people now. We ran into a very difficult moment in the development of mankind as a whole. Technological development rates are very high today. And our ability to comprehend all this and reasonably in this technical and informational environment lags behind these rates.
The world is now going through a very deep crisis in the field of culture. So the situation in our country is quite typical for the rest of the world - in America and in England they also read little. And such a large literature that existed in the world 30-40 years ago is no longer there. Nowadays it is very difficult to find the masters of minds. Perhaps because no one needs minds - they need sensations.
Today we do not need to change our attitude to reading, but to radically change our attitude to culture as a whole. The Ministry of Culture should become the most important of all ministries. And the first priority is to stop subjugating the culture of commerce.
You can have an army whose soldiers will fight valiantly without demanding reward, because they believe in the ideals of the state. And you can have mercenaries in the service who will kill both their own and others for the same money with equal pleasure. But these will be different armies!
And in science breakthroughs are made not for money, but for interest. Such is the cat's interest! And it's the same with major art. Masterpieces are not born for money. If everything is subordinated to money, then everything will remain with money, it will not turn into either a masterpiece or a discovery.
For children to start reading again, an appropriate cultural environment must develop in the country. What defines culture now? The Church once set the tone. On weekends, people went to church and instead of TV looked at frescoes, icons, stained-glass windows - at the illustration of life in images. Great masters worked by order of the Church, a great tradition illuminated all this.
The development of culture is a question of the future of the country. The state cannot exist if it does not rely on culture. And it will not be able to strengthen its position in the world only with money or military force. How can we attract our former republics today? Only culture! In the era of the USSR, they existed perfectly within the framework of our culture.
Compare the level of development of Afghanistan and the Central Asian republics - the difference is huge! And now all these countries have dropped out of our cultural space. And, in my opinion, the most important task now is to return them to this space again.
When the British Empire collapsed, culture and education became the most important tools for rebuilding the integrity of the English-speaking world. The British opened the doors of their higher educational institutions to immigrants from the colonies. First of all, for those who in the future could become a manager of these new countries.
I recently spoke with Estonians - they are ready to study medicine in Russia. But we charge them a lot of money for their studies. Despite the fact that they get the opportunity to study in America or England for free. And after that, how can we attract the same Estonians, so that interaction with us becomes more important for them than interaction with the West?
In France there is a ministry of Francophonie, which promotes the cultural policy of France in the world. In England, the British Council is considered a non-governmental organization, but in fact it has a clear policy to spread English culture, and through it, global English influence in the world. So the issues of culture today are intertwined with issues of politics and national security of the country. This essential element of influence cannot be neglected.
WE DESTROYED OURSELVES
Excerpt from 2008 interview.
How many years will it take for Russian science to regain its lost ground again?
- Stalin left my father in the Soviet Union in 1935, having built an institute for him in two years. Over the past 15 years, not a single scientific institute has been built in our country, but almost everything that has been destroyed has been destroyed.
A stable stereotype has developed in the mass consciousness: the collapse of the country is a sabotage of the West. And what do you think was the reason for this: our carelessness, stupidity, or the struggle for the redivision of the world in order to lower a strong and powerful country to a certain limit and then milk it: oil - gas, oil - gas?
- There were such attempts, but they failed. We have destroyed ourselves.
At a council of ministers a few years ago, it was decided to allocate 12 million rubles for apartments for young scientists. And at this time a scandal erupted with the prosecutor, who renovated his apartment for 20 million. I was hooked on this and said that if you allocated 12 billion for apartments for young scientists, you could improve matters. And all half measures are meaningless. And he ended with the words:
How did you manage to keep such energy, sharpness of mind amid these stresses, struggles, resentments?
- You need to be able to find things to do. When I was kicked out of television, I took up demographic science. When I could not deal with the accelerator, I found myself another occupation. And this has happened several times in my life.
And then, I have my father's example. After all, his father, after Beria removed him from the leadership of the Institute of Physical Problems and the Oxygen Industry, lived for 8 years even inside the country, but, in fact, in exile - in the country. Then I was also fired from TsAGI, my career in aviation did not take place. I began to help my father, and together we began to engage in experimental work on the study of the flow of thin films of liquid.
How did it end? Last year I was inducted into the Council of the Global Energy Prize. And one of its laureates - an Englishman - received it just for studying the very tapes that my father was engaged in, and touchingly announced this when receiving the award!
It turns out that the most important secret of longevity is passion for your work?
- Sure! And then everything will be all right.
IT'S TIME TO IMPLEMENT GOOD
Sergey Petrovich, please explain this discrepancy. Today, the Internet has linked the world into a single network, nano-technologies are developing, an active study of stem cells, cloning is underway … It would seem that scientists are doing everything to make human life easy and comfortable. But in reality, people still get sick a lot, live a little and hard
- I think the point is that society cannot properly dispose of its knowledge.
How can you blame society? They say, for example, that people themselves are to blame for drinking too much, because they use vodka incorrectly - Mendeleev discovered it for scientific purposes. Well, how else to use it? Just for lotions? Or take the creation of nuclear weapons …
- Nuclear weapons are the worst example. The dream of the biggest bomb has led humanity to a dead end. It is great happiness that during all these coups that swept the world, there was no nuclear catastrophe.
Nuclear arsenals are now shrinking, but slowly. And humanity must learn to live with this evil. But the problem of nuclear weapons is not only technical. It is also a problem of human consciousness and education.
Therefore, you cannot think of anything better than proper education! This requires a lot of work, which no one is eager to do so far. But if we do not think about this problem seriously, humanity will come to collapse, the first symptoms of which are already being observed in the public consciousness. Believing that society can drift anywhere is a recipe for suicide. After all, a person differs from an animal only in the presence of culture. Although animals are not so primitive, they also have prohibitions.
ON THE NEEDLE OF ANOTHER TECHNOLOGIES
And why has humanity turned out to be a weak link in progress? Computers have become super-perfect, and we are the same as a million years ago
- Look at the same computers. They have, roughly speaking, hardware and software. Software costs 10-20 times more expensive than hardware, because the product of intellectual work is much harder to create. So it is with humanity. "Iron" - energy, weapons - we have as much as necessary. And software - call it cultural potential - lags behind.
“Computers have at least solved the hardware problem, but medical science still cannot solve the problems of the human body
- A lot already depends on you: do you spend on drink your life, overload with stress. And the brain, unfortunately, wears out much faster than the body. There are old women in America who are almost 100 years old, they live out their days alone, in hotels, suffering from Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. Sorry sight! It turns out that the soul dies before the body. And this is wrong: you need to die together! (Laughs.)
But all the same, we cannot even defeat the flu and the runny nose! I'm not talking about cancer
- In this case, first of all, early diagnosis is needed. If the illness is noticed in time, the chances of healing increase many times over. But such procedures also require a lot of money, and qualified doctors and technology. If devices for early diagnosis were available not only to the wealthy, then cancer deaths would decrease.
At one time - “in that life,” as I say, I was involved in the development of accelerators. They have two uses. The first is the safety of nuclear reactor vessels. But with their help it was possible to cure people of cancer. The device affected the affected organ without touching anything around. Before everything collapsed in the country, we had 6 cars made: one is still working at the Herzen Institute, 20 thousand people have passed through it.
To provide the entire USSR, 1000 machines were needed, and we were ready to produce them. But then, in an era of monstrous chaos, the Germans came to Russian officials and said:
From the Editor: Sergei Petrovich Kapitsa was an outstanding personality. He belonged to the category of people who are changing this world for the better. Wise, brilliant people want to listen to day and night, to listen to their life experience, judgments, thoughts; inspired by ideas to introduce the best into your life. Such people will not advise bad, they will not teach bad.
Sergei Petrovich lived a long, eventful life, died in Moscow on August 14, 2012, at the age of 84.
What has changed from 2009 to 2017?
It is very difficult to assess what is happening. First, the ill-fated experiment on children of the USE is still alive, and it seems that it is useless to fight this phenomenon. Secondly, the Cabinet of Ministers of Culture and Education has not changed significantly, or rather, the quality of work does not differ much from 2009. Faces changed, old ones left - new ones came, but problems remained. It cannot be argued that nothing is being decided, but significant results and achievements are still not traced. Oh yes - the year before last was the year of literature, 2016 is the year of cinema, this is the year of ecology. We move forward with mosquito steps. Really, forward to what?
As for the problems in education, teachers' salaries in the country are still calculated as average. In a country with 11 time zones, it is somehow wrong to calculate the "average salary in the country." It is necessary to publish the real figures, compare with the data in the regions. For example, a recent publication in a Novosibirsk newspaper with a screaming headline: "The minimum wage for teachers and doctors is frozen at 9030 rubles," says the opposite, that all the data are too high and exaggerated, and teachers' unions have long ceased to work …
And there are many such questions. Of course, you can talk for a long time about the inappropriate occupation of the post of one or another minister, seek his dismissal, or generally mistrust the entire cabinet of ministers, the government, but then what? Other people will come - systemic, and they will differ from the previous ones only by surnames and hair color … But problems will remain. And I want the attitude to the problem, to the system as a whole to change. Not the attitude of the people, but of those people who are introducing this system into our lives.
At one of his last meetings with the audience, Sergei Petrovich admitted:
- About 20 years ago it seemed to me that the main problem on our planet is the problem of peace, because we were armed to the teeth, and it is not known where this military force could lead us. Now, it seems to me, we need to turn to the very essence of our being - to the growth of population, to the growth of culture, to the goals of our life. The world, and not only our country, is going through a deep turning point in its development, this is something that neither politicians nor most people understand. Why does this change occur, what is it connected with, how to influence it, how to react? Now people need to understand this, because before they act, they need to understand. When I understand, I will definitely tell you.
Now, will we understand ourselves, without him?
The article used materials: AIF newspaper
Author: Andrey R.