We always thought that time on our side, the sun sets, it says a privileged position, as if identity is defined by landscape. Today we consider it to be a metaphor, thrilling with prophetic power. Obviously, history still remains the same, much has improved in geographical terms, but nothing has changed in the political religion that puts its Western God to the center of the universe. Of course, we are not talking about the God who created the world, and the Keeper of its units of action, his system of calculus, ordinances, proportions and secret rules.
With the fall of the Berlin wall, when together with the USSR gone and the specter of an “enemy inherited”, as if the world was flat, the arrogance of the victors in the conflict of the XX century made us think that our values do border on omnipotence, capable of overcoming any resistance and become universal: even “democrature”, ambiguous geopolitical hybrid at the turn of the century, was to take, at least, the external form of our political and institutional arrangements, therefore, the infection process was launched, although the result remained essentially as dangerous imperfect, that seemed to be imposed from the outside. But the West won. This terrible force capable of here to create two totalitarian ideologies that gave birth to concepts and forms of democratic mechanism that could finally deal with these demons and block their way from the underworld to the world, closing the circle of the XX century.
On the other hand, was born here Agora versus space horizontally arranged public discourse to the castle, with its drawbridges and tower, from which resounded the “vertical” decree of the monarch; the right for the first time recorded a provision about freedom, in conjunction with other rights creates a system of relations between the government and its obligations, from which it is formed and the network of social relations.
For this was the existence of institutions that are able to transform this system of values, taking into account the materiality the concomitant of life in the belief that the laws are in the hands of the people, and not gods, and written, therefore, not on the tablets, and in Parliament, where in case of conflict, the law of creatures prevails over the law of the Creator, because he cares about (all of) the rights and the rights of everyone: both those who believe and those who do not believe. In these parliaments, no one really is not written with a capital letter, and all truth is equal, or at least relative and mapped on a community level — it’s called “politics”; and wins banal and neutral numerical advantage, at least as long as it is established that the head must be considered, and not cut off. Then, naturally, the gods often continue to exist in the individual consciousness and define it, even in public behavior. Similarly, history and Christian values are included in the genetic code that part of the world, which we call the West.
It is the relationship between consciousness and the laws, applying them to the lives of others, the definition of rights, the emphasis on the public sphere has made us responsible, and responsibility is another category of the West, entailing the obligation of reporting. It involves taking responsibility for the overall picture, a broader vision, for a common goal (the so-called public good) that obliges us to understand the obligations that go beyond our individual world, considering their mutual obligations, to assess the system of correlation of our actions with the actions of others. At the same time, there is awareness of the need to answer for themselves, the rejection of the most dangerous temptations of excess, which leads to the fact that no legitimate authority ceases to be satisfied-won sovereignty, seeks to also illegitimate part of it just because it’s available. Understanding of measures and reporting define a sense of boundary, which is a self-regulating mechanism for each, and protection of the system as a whole.
We came out of the war that broke out in our civilization, and gave birth to the nightmare of the Holocaust: why it was necessary to take measures against such a sharp turn that proved that only one of the cultural, artistic and spiritual framework of Europe is not able to save us because Evil is generated by a not irrational beginning, and in the development of modern rationality. After that “fiasco of culture” (in the words of Adorno) after the colonial period the core of the new constitutions became the democratic principle, which is simultaneously an obligation and a form of protection program. We have area of the rule of democracy, institutional democracy, but later turned out to be treacherous witnesses of these grounds, remaining in any case a point of reference and shape our cultural, political and moral identity.
The military Alliance facing another totalitarianism of the twentieth century, still active and armed — Soviet communism — was material and substantial part of the West, and for long periods there was a risk that, dominating over him, he will absorb its basis. Outside NATO, however, there was a social or civilizational task: to unite the democratic form of politics with a state of law, individual law, with international law as a way of resolving conflicts, respecting freedom of thought and expression, to political and economic freedom. The task of preserving European configuration of a pluralist democracy also values and ideal points of reference, combining it with the American public the right to happiness. A common point of reference was supposed to be a constant competitiveness of power achieved through the formation of cultures and opportunities that are mapped at the state level with a free choice of citizens.
Today it risks losing its meaning, Western civilization is now reduced to a mere geographical name, in addition, lost his East. Putin, of course, embodies the beginning of a new Imperial, but the ideological contradiction takes place not with Moscow, because the new East is China. At the same time, LIH (declared a terrorist organization and banned in Russia — approx. ed.) deprives his mortal enemy, his Western identity, destroying the symbols of our modern life. When the ritual murders take place in Newspapers, in dance halls, in cafes, in shopping malls, stadiums, in Jewish schools, in the Church, jihadist Islamism, in fact, attacks on normal routine life of our democracy, the incredibly inflating its everyday sense, because Western democracy in its practical use is just that: a permanent system of mutual guarantees, which we freely exchange, without even noticing it.
And it’s not even the biggest danger of the concept of the Western world. It is rather the crisis of the postmodern, that is, in the transition from an industrial society based on territorial and national levels to a spatial-temporal break of modernity, which is changing the concept of work, dematerialized management, hiding power, interdependence disappears, dissolves barriers, disrupted the system of representation, expands the space of the conflict, becomes impossible, or useless. In this latest hole in space and time, the market was wider sovereignty, the fear became stronger than the government, uncertainty prevails over freedom.
In domestic politics, the search of impossible answers to global problems. Supranational institutions have developed to the extent that meets the point which we are living, but they lack soul, and hence of legitimacy, and, maybe, and tools. The person would feel disappointed, abandoned, betrayed. Antipolitical acts as a mirror and as an amplifier of his problems, she leads him astray, that all the difficulties have a common root, while, in fact, at the heart of populism, attracting one by one people are taken out of society and feeling the helplessness of isolation is solitude. It always maintains a state of mind, clean of the rebellious instinct, the simple sense of antagonism, not forming a class of spirit, without creating a political project, a culture of change.
The crisis has made the rest of the case. On the one hand, if you ignore the channels connecting private loneliness and social sphere, and the rebellion is doomed to marginality. On the other hand, to date, the crisis miraculously established a cultural hegemony of “necessity”, bordering on superstition, using the language of financial indicators imposed by governments from above and acquires a symbolic value, and independently transforming politics, without people, without accountability, without contending with competing and alternative thought (which does not exist), without the Supreme task of achieving consensus and monitoring. In this process, public opinion has identified the crisis of codes with a new Decalogue, with new sins of the modern virtues, forming collective fear and guilt on the part of the weakest and least Autonomous. With politics, which, consequently, led to uniformity of thought, obanliku her, creating a kind of “vague democratic”, which evaporate differences, traditions, alternatives, insignia.
And finally, an alternative to the dominant thoughts, but it appears on the right. Along with trump, Le Pen, with their rank and file Italian imitators, talking about race, skin color, nationality, which is the essence of radical right-wing in their natural state, primitive, primordial, beyond the limits of the ten-year development of the American Republican party, outside of European conservatism, the Reagan paternalism ideologies of bushizmy. Trump destroys the right culture and extends it beyond its tradition, transforming it into pure practice, here and now, in interpretation the popular unrest, the embodiment of nedoumenii, view basic needs without conceptual development: it could be said without a policy, because in the perturbation everything becomes politics, but in a new form, with a new language, and even with the new relations between truth and propaganda.
All this is possible, because the Western Canon ceases to function. Partly due to the sense of uncontrollability of the crisis, the troubles of the world, lost its control and acting as a disincentive for a citizen without citizenship, so he settled himself, sought a way out of their personal or sentimental problems in the emotional sphere of anger and frustration, because politics and the state does not guarantee him any protection. This happens due to the supranational dimension of an emergency — terrorism, migration waves, prioritizatio life, which seem irrefutable and define the growing sense of insecurity, and the legitimate authorities have nothing to oppose him. Finally, due to the reduction of jobs, which affects not only the profit and the future of families, but also the very materiality of our democracy, which put labour as a voluntary commitment in the centre of the Western Alliance between capitalism, social welfare and political representation.
Here begins the zone of action of populism. The cultivation of the instincts, the decision to raise them in the hierarchy, turning them into policy, requires accountability, measures, debt, sense of boundaries, mapping of cultures. On the contrary, populism sees this as an unnecessary restriction. When there is regression to the categories of blood, race, skin color, the idea of “the other” disappears and occurs again as a menacing phantasm, because we’re drifting into the abyss of the primitive understanding of the white man, a local resident by birth. Of course, we are both, but never was content, realizing the unilateral nature of this basic notion in complex historical process, cultural Parallels, connections, knowledge and experience that enable us to grow within this complex system of differences, embodying the West. That’s why today, the Western space is compressed by suppressing the concepts and practices that freely existed inside him, and even acted as a key element of the overall democratic identity, including notions of left and right, philosophy of politics, a tacit acceptance of both sides of a discrepancy/conflict, language and arising from his position, that is, Western policy and its principles.
It is no coincidence that under threat, along with Western space is liberal democratic thought that has created the political and institutional conditions to right and left were formed over time as the government of culture, responsible for the Western “the house” where they coexist, recognition of each other’s roles and understand their responsibilities. Today, liberal thought is there are probably in the minority in this world, which we continue to call Western, while it is reduced only to a geographical name without cultural or political perspective, served as the hallmark in all its varieties. At stake was a civilization that is something more than the party in power. That’s what we are, or at least, what we want to be.
