Mirrored morality. How Russia is building a new ethic

Not had time to subside debate about whether to engage the man with no legs in one contest with a healthy, as a state join the discussion and sends the singer in a wheelchair for a European competition in Kiev. That is, trying to talk to Europe on her tongue, at the same time convincing themselves and others that it’s our language.

If it is prohibited, for speech in Ukraine is better not to think. Disability in the hierarchy of modern Europe is above nationality. Any Russian artist in Kiev — woman, child, old man, any orientation — will be met indignant roar from the stands. But the fight with the disabled in Europe is possible, the indignant roar of the address of the disabled in the European dictionary of emotions for a long time marked as “obsolete.”. So either it is not (which is unlikely, the Ukrainian audience is already right configured), or the Europeans, he heard the roar, will have to make sure that going to Europe Ukraine to a lesser extent fluent European language than is declared an enemy of Russia. Not to let the country — slightly better, still will be an occasion to rhetorically ask, who here mixes culture and politics, work and leisure, tar and honey.

Skill to effectively present their own adherence to Western values is firmly embedded in the set of techniques of Russian public diplomacy. The Duo Tatu, despite subsequent redemptive marriage will forever remain in the history of music of the LGBT team, opened the Olympics in 2014, after a law was passed banning gay propaganda. From the same series about the appointment of Maria Zakharova, the speaker of the Ministry of foreign Affairs (no worse than Saki Nuland) and her informal style, “Buranovskie grandmother”, a concert in Palmira (classical music in the ancient theatre — stored and saving the heritage of the West best of the West) and much more.

A demonstrative gesture does not necessarily mean that he is false to the ground. Attempt to speak loudly with the West in the language of its own humanitarian achievements, some of which in Russia is considered humanitarian excesses, can look like a trick and like a anguish, and as one act play, artificially drawn for propaganda purposes by orders from above. Trump insulted the journalist of the disabled, which had to stand up all by Hollywood, and Putin sends a singer with a disability to represent Russia. Which side of the Atlantic, the question is, on what side of the Oder-Neisse line now the moral height?

The choice of a singer with disabilities — an attempt not just to talk with the West in the language of his trouble, but to speak this language loudly, radical, shouting more quiet and consistent statements. Eurovision is known as one of the favorite cultural events of the European LGBT community, and there have exhibited representatives of non-titular races, atrosanguinea was up on stage as people, age, gender and characteristics of development different from the glossy pop ideal.

Once Eurovision is a festival of tolerance, you can go this way Europeans and imaginary, from the point of view of Russia, the disadvantaged to oppose the true. A woman in a wheelchair that’s going to compete for the contest with the healthy heterosexual and homosexual singers of any color, is the juxtaposition of our present human feat of their attempt to transform sexual orientation or migrant origin in pride, sympathy and support. Found to be proud of and to whom to sympathize with: that’s who need.

Tolerance as a gift

Russian man is really do not understand why sympathize with moved to Europe for healthy Arab, he recently could have been the same move, but little sympathy’t remember. He doesn’t understand why you cannot look at gay men with a puzzled disgust, if it so happens, and look (as well as for many Eastern Europeans), although all with him. And what is it with this Tramp wall with Mexico, if he lives and she’s like no one causes a disturbance.

We can say that the show disabled from the Russian side — is not the spirit and the letter, not the force of mercy, and simulation for tactical purposes. Times of humanity in Russian life is less than the TV, there is nothing to portray. On the other hand, need to start somewhere, and invented to demonstrate the act can take root and sprout.

The election of a singer in a wheelchair representative of the nation preceded, regardless of the intentions of the initiators is quite sincere discussion on the subject, whether person, who due to the visible physical disabilities is the subject of sympathy, to participate in the competition, where the winner not provide instruments and living people. This conversation was not only completely sincere, but thematically and stylistically coincide with the European conversations on the same topic and came to similar conclusions, despite the claims of insurmountable value differences. Yes, this can be an advantage in the competition, but try with this advantage to live. Positive discrimination and the discrimination that aligns at the expense of equality.

Then only the question of when to stop to after his achievements before the unequal group turned in the team pursuit. Not even they themselves, and those who are driving on their behalf: Hollywood actors denouncing trump for inappropriate communication with the disabled person, healthier and younger than both of them.

Here is a really fine line. Mercy, compassion, ethics generally refer to the things that philosophers in the twentieth century is associated with the demand and stress (“Morality, ethics, philosophy, culture, physics, muscles, ability,” — said the students Mamardashvili). Is not that enough to comprehend a clear mind and read the detailed instructions. An ethical act is meaningless if there is no personal need of the incumbent, his personal efforts. Most want recognition of their minority rights still remained valuable, personal act, an act of generosity.

One of the reasons anti-liberal revenge in the moral sphere is that of the act of recognition of equal rights to minorities disappeared required to conduct air pick, the inner force to guarantee completely replaced external. But one thing with infringement of rights to fight for their equality, the other every minute tremble, as if of eumenidi not incriminate you in a criminal “ISM”.

To ethics remain ethics, it needs to be not only the result of constraints from the outside, but self-restraint from within. Leniency, mercy, and positive vygorazhivaniya — things that are not possible without some code (that everybody knew), but differ from the rights that retain a generous personal gift. But it is impossible that he turned to the master’s grace.

We ourselves are not local

With public morality are about the same, with the Russian cities and the habits of their inhabitants. Talk about what the Western way of life completely alien to the Russian people, Russian cities are becoming more European than ever after the revolution of 1917. Europeans and Americans, as a counterpoint nathusii to Russia and skeptical to the say this with some amazement. Now they were expecting it the least.

Out of fashion countless sushi “Florence” and “the Manhattans”, replace them with “Voronezh” or “Krasnodar”, but inside they are much more recognizable global environment, the European attitude to food, the idea of a local product: not only in humans, but the meatballs should be small homeland. The expulsion of cars from sidewalks and clean station toilet make the country more European, than a thousand declarations of intent (of course, else this will not replace). Under the talk of a new cold war is a real invasion of the West to Russia. That are trying to do with Russia’s streets, signs, trains, Parking lots, airports and banks, there is nothing that would not be a transfer of Western everyday life on Russian soil. And transfer was adopted.

The singer in a wheelchair at the competition is absolutely in the same series. As the reproduction, advanced queries and went beyond the daily needs of the layman, it seems overkill. It seemed unnecessary bike paths, car-sharing, Aeroexpress first year went empty, experienced drivers despised navigators, not everyone else pumped a transport card in the phone and for some reason, reaches for her purse. The question of the minority always seems somewhat artificial and premature (there is so much we have a healthy poor) and society for her immature. But artificially raised the question is a natural response. The question may seem far-fetched, but the answer is always somehow present.

When a country joins the EU, the EU opens chapters in negotiations. These are different issues — legal, political, economic, which in Europe is resolved, and in the candidate country or otherwise in any way. Russia in recent years — even the years of anti-Western mobilization (and the last six months and even anti-Russian mobilization in the West) has opened a lot of folders with European moral content and somewhere came to similar conclusions Europe, but somewhere closer to him by the very fact of their discovery.

Breaking down taboos

Opposition politicians complain that our people are a little worried about the material life of the authorities. There’s a simple explanation. The current generation of Russian people remember, fought here with the privileges of the party nomenklatura: they have cottages, spetsmagazinah, boys majors on the black “Volga” go to MGIMO. However, successfully depriving boys “Volga”, a simultaneously deprived himself of deposits, pensions, scholarships and jobs. And since the phrase “something to lose” is much more in line with the position of the modern citizen, than the citizen of the late USSR, these and not hope to climb up and stole himself in disgust due to the relaxed attitude to governing estates.

But a growing wide range of hearty whims, which before then did not know. The waiters refused to serve a girl with autism: will scare away customers. The owner of the establishment receives a well-deserved public verdict: don’t you dare to deny people with special needs, and few people now at risk. The proximity of the teacher and student can now only be intellectual, even in the most elitist, not worse than the Plato Academy schools, but more recently, it was almost openly brag.

The search for the missing, help the hospices, volunteering in orphanages, protecting buildings and trees the form of prestigious leisure. Clothe the naked, comfort the sick and visit the prisoner — the fashionable classes. Not only former city councillor of the old authorities now safely do not drive the car on the pedestrian Arbat street, but the honored worker of culture is not to ride on the sidewalk with the people’s artist in the passenger seat. In the world CCТV network cameras continuous monitoring increases the sensitivity. On issues that were personal drama, or a shameful secret, now there is public opinion.

Even where public opinion turns its archaic side, the discussion often works on undermining the archaic. The traditional world is based on the many taboos: there are things about which do not speak — they are too clear and too shameful. The members of the primitive community who believe that everyone thinks as they do, because otherwise unthinkable, find out the shocking truth: next to them are people who think otherwise and did not hesitate. Not some renegades, but right the same, and that more and better settled.

It is clear also that, if exciting got dressed and went to drink with the boys, so she is guilty and, as it turns out, is unclear. Were confident that with her sex — shame worse than ever and everyone thinks so, as it turns out, not all. HIV-positive, it turns out, too, not only themselves to blame, not all of them gay men and drug addicts. The Parliament allowed to regularly beat children for educational purposes, but as soon as the businessman in a jeep trying to educate on the street, personally the head of the UK Bastrykin required to bring the case to criminal punishment.

The opening of the envelope with the ethical issue even to get a negative response in a situation is rational, economical in the means of tyranny automatically becomes the start of negotiations before the closed-ended question. Limitation of rights in archaic society sometimes turns into another limitation of lawlessness. We thought that these can kill, if bad hid, and it turns out that they just can’t agitate the minors.

Because of this, it turns out that, despite some of the wild excesses, the conversation is conducted in more correct language than in the free time of perestroika or in the nineties. And the extremes more often than waiting dezavuiruya or punished, how recently the attempts of the deputies of Tolstoy and a Source to search for to blame. The film “Brother-2” now would not get funding (it is a pity, because it’s more real movie than “Viking”), but the Ministry of culture, which likes talking about the Crimea and patriotism, and even individuals simply would not give money to all these “chocks” and “Ukrainians”. As the modern West, even hostility began to ebb in the calibrated, cautious wording, observes some linguistic taboo.

The ethical void left after the collapse of the Soviet system of views, is now filled more than in the cynical nineties, and not only by the denial of others, of liberal values, as rightly noted in the past year, Andrey Arkhangelsky, but their up — in what appears just loyalty to Russian traditions from the time of Viking, Vladimir and the Byzantine Empire. This happens even where the opening of discussions on a particular issue means a victory over alien answer.

In outrageous gestures to opponents who thought we were weak, in an attempt to catch the European conversation to get your sovereign response, a new Russian positive ethics, based not only on denial but on copying, imitation and controversy. The moral version of the Italian strike: you tell us about tolerance, and we will tell you about it with a slide. Sending disabled on the competition, Russia is behaving exactly the same as the creators of the calendar “Pirelli”, which in recent years replaced by seductive beauties Mature women, pregnant. The era of greater freedom, when good practice was to require an unlimited market of youth and style, was in this respect much less compassionate.

The government restricted opportunities

Trying to outshout the Europeans in their language by sending to them the singer in a wheelchair, not necessarily good. No consideration of positive discrimination did not prevent not to let the Russian Paralympic team in Rio as a whole, including those sports where doping gives victory. Besides Russia, especially in recent months, is secured to the legitimate area of xenophobia, and the disabled patriot to the outside observer, the second outweighs the first.

Discussion about the disabled person in the contest useful, among other things, and in order to understand the state of health of modern Russia in the world. She’s about as doing that on a fake leg, a birch cane. Loss of limbs, which continue to hurt, combined with a desire to act as if the amputation and pain did not exist. Let no one delivers the mind that noticed our physical flaws, and says nothing aloud, but about them, remember when going to judge, consider.

On the one hand, we want positive discrimination, on the other — to no mercy, look from top to bottom, any conversation about the country with disabilities. To win to give as maimed, but this one didn’t. So any attempt to talk about Russia for a discount on age and the disease suppressed, but the disability was taken into account. But, as in the case of Eurovision, membership outweighs the traces of suffering, and the stroller rolls out under the indignant howl from the stands.

Meanwhile, the country’s minorities struggling for equality, a convenient excuse to overturn the situation in itself, and without external guidance to build equality in a positive ethics, based on the voluntary generosity of the majority towards minorities, which would be the most effective argument in the fight for equality outside.

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