Comment by Evgeniy Dainov:
The other day I spoke to a young Russian man aged 23-24, who has been living in Sofia for five years. He spent the summer in Moscow and it was “the happiest period in my life”. He was going to return to Moscow to do his master's degree.
- Aren't you - I ask - afraid that they will take you into the army and send you to the front to die?
- Well, he says, if that happens, that would be the greatest thing!
- What? - I ask again - To die in some muddy field?
- Recently - he replies - I understood the following: the meaning of life is to die for the Motherland.
- Okay - I provoke - then why don't you immediately volunteer to die?
- Oh, that's not my decision. That's my country's decision. It knows best. When it decides - then...
When the purpose of life is ... death
The entire philosophy and psychology of modern Russians is buried in this conversation. The philosophy is that of the self-taught (and under-taught) guru Alexander Dugin. Until recently, I didn't understand how real people could follow it, but in the above conversation I understood. Dugin's thesis, after decades of evasion, is as follows: Russians will conquer the world because, unlike all other peoples, for them the purpose of life is death; nothing else matters.
I imagined - and in Russia you can see - the real consequences of such an attitude towards life. If the only meaning is to die, then there is no point in doing the following things: giving birth and raising children; building a strong house for the generations after you; making efforts to improve the lives of the people around you and your country; sweating to learn in order to defeat diseases and cope with the elements; doing good so that you leave behind at least a slightly more humane environment than you found; being careful about what you leave for future generations.
A revelation about today's Russian psychology
None of this matters if the meaning of your life is to die. That's why modern Russians don't do the above things. The majority live in rotten huts in a sea of mud, until finally their Patriarch tells them: "You'll die of drinking anyway, it's better to die at the front, at least there was some sense in you..."
I imagined that. But how it is experienced by the individual Russian - I didn't imagine that until the conversation with the young Russian that day.
In terms of today's Russian psychology, this conversation is also a revelation. The meaning of living is to die; but when, where and how, this is not your personal decision for your personal life. The state decides that for you. Your life is its own. You don't make decisions, you do whatever you are told. The state knows, and you - no.
The concern is not exaggerated.
This is the situation after more than a century of massacres, famine, misery and negative selection. Individuals clearly do not exist - there is only a mass that does whatever it is told. The meaning of life for this mass is to die when it is told, and not to achieve anything for anyone while it is alive.
There is no hope for such a people. Even if a miracle happens and the Americans come and do what they did with Germany and Japan to turn them into civilized countries - this will not work in today's Russia. And now Donald Trump is bent on introducing exactly these people, in exactly this state, onto the great world stage.
The times were worrying. They are very worrying at the moment. Let's hope they don't become scary.