“But how can you believe in the evil eye,” I said to my interlocutor, a great connoisseur of the bureaucratic world, “when the officials, your heroes, are just proof that there is no everyday evil eye? They conspicuously consume in a poor country and do not fear any massive evil eye. Don't they envy them? Or here are city officials - they are often scolded with pleasure, but this god does not produce any vibrations. Do you believe that a neighbor can envy his neighbor and inadvertently jinx him. And here the populace hangs."
“Yes, in general, they are afraid,” my interlocutor answered me. “They knit red threads, big people have energy bodyguards.”
"Is that right?" I cried.
“They say,” my newsmaker answered, “sometimes you can see some puny little man among the guards from the side, behind his left shoulder - so it’s like him. But you understand, the evil eye is such a thing … Here only an equal will kill. Envy is a special emotion, you really envy only an equal who has a little more than you. And who is incommensurably more - different feelings. And the evil eye and damage only work on envy, this power is needed there. It only works on its own. So the officials are afraid of each other, but not the people. But we are afraid."
We are really afraid of each other. Z8% of Russians believe in the evil eye and damage, and I will tell you how it works.
In 2009, in the aftermath of the crisis, in the small town of Krasnorechensk, a mother and daughter opened a pillow cleaner. Company for drying, cleaning and re-stuffing feather pillows and feather beds. The room was chosen to be light, the walls were painted orange. A little even a hipster dry cleaner turned out, and with a good imported filling - the most powerful dryers were bought. It was then fashionable to write about self-rescue, small business, and startups. Moscow flourished sluggishly, and it was pleasant to think that energetic small enterprises were emerging in the provinces.
Work has begun. And in each, perhaps, the fifth feather bed or pillow, our heroines began to find strange objects - some kind of needles, rags. Hair.
One rag doll was wrapped in a 32nd newspaper. At first, the hostesses of the dry cleaners laughed and even said that they would arrange a museum of urban damage, and you, Moscow ones, come to take pictures.
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The city, meanwhile, fell silent. At first, the turnover at the dry-cleaner's rapidly increased, and the featherbeds were taken to them on trunks, on bicycles, on sledges and in garden cars, then, on the contrary, a rollback happened, and for almost six months the cars were almost idle. And then my mother fell ill. And the daughter closed the enterprise, demolished the sign with a hammer, sold the washers and dryers - she was looking for a buyer for a long time, gave it to the Finns for a cheap price. And she never said a single word to anyone about needles and dolls. And she told the greedy to funny everyday life writers to convey that there is a concept "What if!" And she doesn’t know, what if, as the city female Areopagus told them, she really got sick from taking out the charmed objects with “unprotected” hands, that is, “taking damage on herself”.
The daughter, until recently, a cheerful, light girl, drove me away from the gate, crossing herself and spitting. Looked into the abyss that breathes illogical.
Then I learned that in every town there are ghost hunters - such women who are "protected", seasoned local residents, and they go from door to door looking for these rags and needles throughout the apartment - in bed, under the threshold and even in red corner behind the icons. And if you put a black penny in a box with family gold, then money from the family will start flowing away.
Oh, what a domestic blockbuster could have been removed from the life of a team to combat corruption and the evil eye!
And especially a lot of work for such women in the cities, which is closer to the south.
We do not even dance from the stove (the stove is what remains and sticks its finger into the sky when the house disappears, collapses, burns down; the stove is a pillar of culture), we dance from the fire, from the very beginning, when it is dark and scary around and when not even "an eye for an eye". And there is, as the poet and columnist Vodennikov would say, "an eye for being so well-groomed."
The gods are jealous and envious, they envy people who are gifted more than they should. Neighbors are our gods now. They define our life. They are the ones who finally prove to us that there is no equality. There is no equality in love or friendship, and even among those who live in the same panel house.
And nothing can be done, because envy is underestimation, pain and melodrama. The basis of everyday life.
And this phenomenon is of an unwritten scale, because people lack melodrama in their lives. This is especially true for small towns.
Look: Moscow is a nest of vice. And there is a small town - the cradle of virtue. Where do spouses often cheat on each other? In a small town. Because there is nothing else to live with. There is a family, love currents, human relations - a big city sublimates all these passions into work and mortgages, and a small city exploits the “human” to the last.
The life of the settlement is built on human relations and is regulated not by money, but by the endless movement of reputational capital.
In this sense, damage and evil eye (one differs from the other in that it is possible to jinx it by accident, but to damage it only purposefully) is a kind of fine and bankruptcy of a moneyless world.
Can envy be useful? Yes, of course, at the beginning of her life, until it darkens, ticklish and sparkling, and gives birth to competition. I saw an envy map once. In one village, the TOS (Territorial Community Council) received a grant, and enthusiasts beat off siding and beautifully painted the frames of two veteran houses. And then a village coach (there is this type of business coach - rare and valuable) showed me a map of the village, all scribbled in oblique lines. Jumping like a mad hare.
This was the card of envy: first, the owners of those houses, from the windows of which the veteran beauty was visible, also ransacked their houses and painted the frames. Then those whose windows overlooked those houses that were renewed under the influence of someone else's charm, also covered their houses with siding. Then those who could see from their windows those who saw from their windows - well, in general, you get the idea. The whole village has taken on a fresh look.
Are we only so beautifully envious? Not at all. We can compare our observations. By the end of the twentieth century, the Happiness Movement was extremely widespread in America - scientists were looking for what else was missing for happiness, then it seemed that the consumer society had taken root forever. Happiness academies were established and happiness conferences were held, where a variety of polls and calculations were presented.
The employee felt happy not when the salary was raised for everyone, but when it turned out that he was the only one who was raised and his salary became higher than that of his immediate circle.
Residents of the suburbs felt happy if all the houses in the settlement were about the same value, and unhappy if a more expensive house was being built nearby.
Undervaluation and pain.
Envy is the only emotion that is in the same brain region as physical pain.
A team from the Japan National Institute of Radiology found that at the moment of a fit of envy, the “anterior cingulate gyrus,” the center responsible for treating pain, lights up with a semaphore red; and thus pain and envy are "physiological twins." People are afraid of pain, so envy is merciful to the last - it gives us the opportunity to get away from pain. We do not envy the people of the opposite sex, we very jealously calculate the age of the opponent - we rarely envy the older ones either; and envy is relevant only within one social group. As an object of envy, you do not exist outside the group. And you don't exist at all.
So let's calm down. There are 4 million “evil eye and spoilage” requests in Yandex. But at the same time direct - "how to put the spoilage" - 5400 calls, and how to remove - 150,000; that is, we shoot for the most part non-existent, as in swoon sketches in a theater studio.
And how we shoot! The ritual for removing damage is always an imitation of an almost church ritual - always a prayer and a candle. In Russia the religion is not of faith, but of hope. Hope. Extra-logical abyss. Suddenly carry over? God forbid, everything will work out. This is how thought is constructed from the lowest, to the general, supranational.
Evgeniya Pishchikova