Thoughts during the Plague (A.Dugin)

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1. THE POST PLAGUE WORLD ORDER |ALEXANDER DUGIN|

   

   THE POST PLAGUE WORLD ORDER |ALEXANDER DUGIN|

2. Thoughts during the Plague № 1. Black vengence of light god.

   

   Thoughts during the Plague № 1. Black vengence of light god. Apollo. Return to the Self. To know Self on the edge of Death. Hello, I decided to share with you my thoughts on the pandemic which is actually spreading. Naturally, I have a lot of thoughts, like everybody, on the topic of what is happening to us, and it may make sense to record a series of conversations, a series of lectures on coronavirus, this modern plague, on associations that come to mind of a philosopher and about the predictions that political scientists and experts in political philosophy and geopolitics can make regarding the future, when it all will be ended. I suggest that we discuss it, so write to my social networks, I will answer your questions and discuss interesting thoughts that you will express. But let's start today with a relatively fundamental thing. If we recall the beginning of the Iliad, then we will encounter a situation that is surprisingly reminiscent of what is happening to us. There is Apollo, Apollo is very dark, darker than storm-clouds, that means that the god of light, the god of lightness, the god of clarity, the god of constancy is upset. Interestingly, he is saddened by a disrespectful attitude towards his priest, Apollo’s priest, but the result of his irritation for the Achaeans is the plague. So the god of light, the god of muses, the god of harmony, the god of exalted beauty is the source of the plague, the source of the pandemic in the Achaean army. Another very important point is that when Apollo comes to the feast of the gods in the same part of Homer, then all the gods jump up from their seats, because his coming to the feast does not bode well for anyone. This ominous aspect of the god of light, the god of justice, the god of true judgment in the Greek tradition is very revealing. He carries the plague, he carries the virus, he carries death and extermination. Why does he do that? And here it is very important: because his priest was disrespectfully treated. If we break away from the specific history of Homer, we can formulate this philosophical myth as follows: the god of light, the god of the vertical, the god of heaven, the god of Hyperborea punishes humanity, which is distracted by some completely inappropriate thing, insulting the solar axis in each of us. And then the story with the coronavirus, with the pandemic, with the plague, that decimates humanity, becomes understandable. Apollo is a metaphysical symbol of our appeal to ourselves, to our inner dimension, to our self, to our immortal soul, and when people sin against this immortal soul, when they are completely absorbed in the elements of entertainment, the outside world, bodily fun and constant swarming around the material goods that they either acquire, or receive insufficiently, or want more, or want to spend these goods faster or use them somehow. As soon as people begin to swarm around non-Apollonian values, when this swarm reaches a certain critical point, Apollo sends a plague to humanity, and this is absolutely true, and this is logical, and this plague makes people return to themselves again. This was mentioned by Albert Camus in his novel "Plague". He said that the plague is a way to think, it is an invitation for us to think about the most important and fundamental things. It is not only about quarantine, it is primarily a collision with death, because when we live in a normal state, we don’t remember our limb, we forget about death, it is somewhere outside our attention, our existential zone. And here comes the pandemic, then the coronavirus comes, here comes the plague – and death comes back to us, and we come back to it. Thus, we return to the essence of humanity, because it is no coincidence that the Greeks called people mortal, βροτοί. Mortality of a human is its special figure, this is its border, this is its formula, its limits – death – and it is in the face of death that our life expands. Life only makes sense when it is related to death. Heidegger already at the end of his philosophical process, in the twentieth century defined Dasein as "being to death." Our presence in the world, our presence here, our thinking stay in the place where we are, acquires meaning, significance and weight only when we visualize death. Plague or coronavirus moves us to this, it brings us back to our Dasein, in fact, this is a kind of philosophical lesson. And Apollo is the god of philosophy, the god of thought, the god of light, and it is this light of human limb that is ignited in us at the moment when we encounter our borders. It is very interesting – limb –, peros in Greek is the border, the limit. It seems to us (this is a separate question why) that everything is infinite: the Universe is infinite, the matter is infinite, and in the absorption of material infinity, the infinite fragmentation of matter, this infinity, we become slaves to infinity, and in this infinity we just fall into the situation of entropy, entertainment, scattering, forgetting about ourselves. And we want to live forever, and therefore we are talking about physical immortality, therefore we are talking about the transfer of consciousness to cloud servers, and our logical thought is tending to merge with this infinity. But the Greeks said that the essence of man and the essence of spirit, the essence of God is the limit, peros, not apeiron, not infinity, but namely finiteness, boundedness, and this boundedness, this proportion of life and death, the presence and absence establishing a boundary constitutes the essence of the prominent unity. Our finiteness, our limitation by death, just constitutes our essence, our light essence. And when we strive to get away from this boundedness, when we try to merge with infinity, we lose ourselves. Now this is happening, and Apollo is sending the plague to make us recall that we are mortal and finite creatures. And if we purely technically fight the coronavirus, trying to recover, save our relatives, sit in quarantine (all this must be done for sure), but we will miss the main lesson of Apollo, we will miss the main philosophical message of coronavirus: that we are finite, we are mortal, and this mortality is our essence. In the face of death, we live, and whenever we truly live, we live only in the face of death. As soon as death disappears beyond the horizon, life loses its astringency, its presence, it spreads, it falls into the pseudo-infinity of entertainment, domestic worries, constant dispersion of an infinite number of small objects, actions, steps or gestures that attract us. In fact, only in the face of death our presence, our being in the world is assembled, and only in this state, and only in this position, in the face of our own border, we are able to be ourselves, we are able to exist as people, we are able to collect our thoughts. Therefore, it’s not about living or dying, it’s about the fact that a person lives only on the border with death, and when it leaves, forgets about this border, stops living, spreads, it commits a crime against itself, and an epidemic is a call to us, maybe the last call to return to our own dignity. This is the philosophical meaning of the plague. It is amazing that at the Moscow Art Theater we opened the exhibition “Apollo. Manifestation” of the remarkable artist Alexei Belyaev-Gintovt just at the moment when the epidemic began. We did not think about it, we have been preparing the exhibition earlier, at the end of 2019, but it coincided and happened so that this exhibition “Apollo. Manifestation" was underway at the Moscow Art Theater just in that moment. Obviously, we did not cause this coronavirus pandemic, but it is obvious that this pandemic in the metaphysical sense, philosophical sense, is connected with the Apollo gestalt. I think that this is perhaps the most important: we must think not just how to save ourselves from the coronavirus, but why and most importantly for what it came to us, whoever stood behind its appearance and whatever the nature of this pandemic - man-made / not man-made, natural or artificial is, it’s not important, it is the sense of it that really matters. And here when it comes to telos, the purpose of something, the meaning of something, then we must turn to the figure of Apollo, who is the interpreter and the true originator, that is, the metaphysical source of the pandemic that happens to people, and it is a healing, albeit rigid, shaping, it is a hand outstretched to us and aid from light metaphysics so that we return to ourselves, that we close our borders, that we close our homes, that we close our eyes and draw them inside ourselves . So that we finally stay with ourselves, with our immortal soul, which we are about to lose in the postmodern culture and in inseparable from it, constant, penetrating more and more deeply into our culture transgression. The plague is a call to take a step back, turn into ourselves, shut ourselves off from endless entropy and clearly, piercingly, tragically and at the same time with a new inner hope to realize our finiteness. Only in the face of death can a person exist authentically, and for this it must look into its eyes. All the best, you have been watching a new format of appeal to the audience, and with this program, with this short speech, we begin a series of conversations in the era of the pandemic, lectures in the era of the plague.

3. Thoughts during the Plague № 2. End of globalization

   

   The end of globalization, open society and liberalism. New world map. Multipolarity and new structures of sovereign power.

    

   Hello, we continue our conversations in the era of pandemics, and today I would like to talk about those indisputable consequences of coronavirus spread in the world, which, it seems to me, have already become apparent. 

   I am deeply convinced, and this is confirmed by most sane experts both in our country and on a global scale, that this coronavirus epidemic actually represents the end of globalization. All institutions, all mechanisms that should both have prevented the spread of the pandemic, and become immediate reaction in order to somehow localize or neutralize, or cure; all these institutions on which humanity could count and rely by default in conditions of global united world with open borders, with the ideology of human rights and with a common vision of full transparency of all societies; all this failed in a completely shamefull way. Globalization could do nothing against coronavirus. In the beginning, the attempt to leave everything as is, not to change anything and not to respond to the virus, gave catastrophic results, and all societies, including the most open ones, the most liberal, most globalist: European and American - were eventually forced to just close their borders, implement government control, the state of emergency and actually to rush far, far away from these global institutions that have demonstrated their complete ineffectiveness, inability to respond to any problems and to delegate authority to nation states. Actually what happened in France with Macron, in the United States with Trump, in Germany with Merkel, and even with Boris Johnson in the UK is a return to nation states, imposition of the state of emergency and, as Karl Schmitt said, the state of emergency is necessarily followed by establishing dictatorship. A sovereign is the one, for Karl Schmitt, who makes decisions in emergency circumstances - Ernstfall. Coronavirus brought us the need for Ernstfall, i.e. emergency circumstances and in these emergency circumstances, the ultimate authority which make decisions, the sovereign instance are nation states and their leaders. Here we are! 

   In other words, as soon as globalization collided with something that represents a real threat for human lives, all spells about open borders, about technocracy, about Ilon Mask, flights to Mars, driverless Tesla cars, Greta Tunberg, all globalist projects and spells disappeared in one moment. In fact, we see how, by contrast, China is effectively acting. Why is China, which was the first victim of the pandemic spread, although, perhaps, the pandemic in other countries: USA, Europe and Italy existed before, just it wasn't detected. China turned out to be the first country where it was identified as an epidemic of coronavirus, this pandemic. And then other countries have discovered coronavirus but it’s quite obvious that the scale and the scope that the spread of coronavirus has acquired in Europe or USA means that this virus existed there for a long time, he just was not diagnosed as such. So, China, which collided to the full extent, first, in a pretty terrifying scale, with this epidemic, China coped with it only thanks to its closedness. Due to the fact that China maintained a political structure governed by the Communist Party, because it was and remains a disciplined, disciplinatory society that was instantly closed, instantly implemented isolation mode, closed Wuhan, closed other provinces, blocked people, forbade movement, imposed a state of emergency on a part of its territories, and in such a way localized the virus and suppressed it. This strict coordinated action of the Chinese model gave an example of how to work with coronavirus. And in the beginning England, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, America said: well, just not the Chinese variant, tried to ironize over the Chinese, but as soon as trouble reached Europe, then it turned out that the measures applied by the Chinese are the only effective way to fight coronavirus. 

   Some figures being very convinced fanatics and globalists like Giorgio Agamben or Bill Gates still try to convince us that the best way to fight coronavirus is to quickly get infected for everybody, leaving open borders, keeping completely all the system of globalism, well, in some sense it follows from this just quickly to die. Boris Johnson tried during the virus spread week in the UK also to move in this liberal-globalist direction but in that circumstances of the terrifying scale of the tragedy, very quickly rejected this, and was compelled to implement the same national isolation regime, closure of borders, isolation of people, quarantining, sa faced as well extraordinary circumstances. And now today's world is for those who wanted to close their societies, their borders and their people, wanted to impose a state of emergency and to transfer the authority to national state as the highest instance of sovereignty or didn’t want it, but still ended up in a situation of need in the face of the pandemic, since everyone around acted the same way: closed borders closed people and transferred the power from supranational authorities to national. What do we have as a result? We mean that when the epidemic started, before the spread of coronavirus, we dealt with open society, and even if this society was not completely open on worldwide scale, all elites, all leadership of all countries: Russia, and China, even Iran, to a large extent, aside from Western countries, recognized by default that we live in open society that open society is if not something accomplished, as in Europe or America, then an aim to strain after, as for other territories, and therefore in reality nobody called into question basically that anyway liberal democracy and open society is the goal to which all of humanity is moving. No one questioned this. And then the coronavirus came, and it turned out that this goal, this orientation is completely a failed one. This is a chimera that cannot respond effectively to none of the challenges with which it collided. And after that we see the total collapse of open society, because coronavirus is incompatible with open society, as far as we must choose between either coronavirus or open society. And in the beginning those who still tried to say: "Better open society and death", have lost all support because everything, absolutely everything, and even western liberal societies in which this openness has already penetrated in the depth of their unconscious and even them had to instantly break up with it, shouting: "No, if closedness is the choice of life, then we choose closed society. 
   Here's what happened: we see the closing of open societies and moving from transnational authorities and approaches to economic, social and political processes to national standards. In fact, welcome to the multipolar world! Coronavirus closed open society, completely eliminated the process of globalization, undermined (well, we are separately talk about it) globalist economy, and returned the peoples to national borders. And many will tell me: "Well, these are temporary measures, now everyone will cope with it, invent a vaccine, recover" ... This is a mistake. First, the epidemic will last quite a while. Even the most optimistic forecasts announce a term of six months or even of a year. Many say that it will contaminate all humanity, and there are relapses of this disease. Someone says that synchronously to this virus (firstly, we do not finally know about its consequences, how serious and terrible it can be), there may be relapses, there may be different strains, but in principle, such a precedent already gives evidence to the complete failure of the globalist project. 

   If a serious problem can be effectively operated by humanity solely in the context of closedness, in the context of national borders, it means that globalization has come to an end and that we enter the post-global world. Accordingly, from the ideological point of view, it is nowadays that we are experiencing a transition from an open society to a closed one, and the longer this fight will last in conditions of a closed society, and only in such conditions it can be conducted, the deeper the institutions of this post-global order will take root. We entered into the coronavirus epidemic as open society, as global world and we will come out of it as multipolar world with nation states as higher authorities of sovereignty. That's what has already done this pandemic. And day after day the irreversibility of this process will become more and more apparent. Those who believe that everything will come back, are deeply mistaken: there is no way back, totally new horizons are ahead, the new world order which is different from the previous one is ahead, naturally different from the bipolar one which collapsed in the 90s of the last century, and from the unipolar one. This multi-polar world, in which China, Russia, strong closed states - even the United States of America - can survive with state of emergency, with Trump, with the imposition of curfew time with patrols troops in American cities with closing, and actually suspension ("suspended democracy"), of democracy and temporary abrogation of civil rights and freedoms or, at least, restrictions - this regime is henceforth dominant of that world order which will take shape faster and faster day after day. So, during coronavirus we are changing one world order: open society, global system for another: for a closed society, a multipolar world with completely different priorities, other value systems and other structures of political governance. 

   The state of emergency, Ernstfall, it is very very serious and one who is in power in such a situation, is not likely to give it up voluntarily to anyone. This is, let's say, the positive side of the epidemic in which we now live. Of course, it’s important to deal with it, it’s important to survive, but you can’t reduce everything to solution of purely technical issues, it is essential to think about the future. And at the exit from this pandemic we will come across a completely new post-global reality.

4. Thoughts during the plague № 3. Closed national economy and its priorities

   

   Hello, you are watching the new series of the program "Thoughts during the plague." Today I wanted to talk about those changes that have already begun from the first coronavirus pandemic spread stages, about what is actually happenning to global economy. In fact, those processes which already take place, not only those trends that are outlined in the near future and the middle future - all are so fundamental that in comparison with the previous era, which also had its crises: dot-com bubble, real estate crisis and the housing bubble in 2008, which seriously affected the global economy: all this, compared with what is happening today are just kid stuff, because today the overall world's economic model is already collapsed. And of course, it’s very difficult to adjust one's consciousness, to this wave. Everyone thinks when correction of markets will begin, when will oil price reach some acceptable for all levels and when the global economy will recover. Now it’s clear that countries are only closing, and the movement goes fundamentally down, but there is a hope that says, "Well, some day this should end, and gradually, albeit with huge losses, but the world economy will return approximately to that status quo, whence it collapsed.

   This is more than doubtful, and in order to understand, in what world are we already in, I suggest that we perform the following experiment: let's imagine that in the state of emergency in which the economies of all countries of the world are today: Russia, China, Europe, USA, BRICS countries, third world countries - in general, all the economies. Let’s imagine that they will be in this mode for an indefinitely long period. Well, for experiment, let's say that they will always be in it. Now let's imagine. You will say, "No, no, no, no, never, in no case, no, this is absurd, stop saying it, shut up immediately, switch the channel, we wanna listen to anything but we have to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and by this light everybody means one thing: a return to pre-crisis state. Let this return be long, but give us this precrisis conditions at least as a dream. I suggest (no one, of course, knows how everything will be developing), but I suggest that we conduct a mental experiment. Let's not give this light at the end of the tunnel, and let's get used to looking at those things that surround us, without this so called "light" in order to finally turn off in this economic maze round the corner, and there is no light neither in the beginning nor at the end. What do we have? Today we have closed economies that represent a kind of islands formerly associated in a single archipelago with bridges, transitions, tunnels, but today these bridges are destroyed and we are dealing with an island group, that is, just every economy of each country represents a certain independent, self-sufficient phenomenon. This is already hard to comprehend. Even the Iranians, for example, who damn the West so much, and for whom the West is "the great shaitan", and America must collapse, and this Dajjal kingdom - and still when the situation with closed borders reached Iran, and the Iranians themselves closed their borders, and the West closed its borders, and the US closed the borders - all of a sudden the Iranians: these proud, independent, religious believers that the great Satan is in the West, suddenly implored, saying, “Remove sanctions from us.” And Russia, too, behaves the same way: saying that sanctions don't befit during coronavirus. Fit very well!

   Neither of the epidemics in history mitigated hostilities, neither in the XXth century, when the Spanish flu took the world by storm during World War I, nor in the Thirty Years War epochs, nor during Medieval wars. And the epidemic was just a kind of attendant circumstances of military operations. As the history proves, no one makes a discount in none of political systems because of an epidemic, and everyone continues amidst open or closed society to move towards their own goals. Now we we live in a closed society, we are forced into this order, and my suggestion is to consider this not as a temporary state, but as a new world landscape. It is a mental experiment, I recall once more. So, in this case, if we recognize it, if we agree with it, even as a hypothesis, I emphasize - a mental hypothesis, then the first thing to do is: "All the hope abandon, ye who enter here." Give up hope for lifting sanctions, give up hope to go along with Chinese BRI, for continuation of Chinese globalization, American globalization, European globalization. Give up hope for the WTO give up hope of lifting or the imposition of new sanctions, abandon hope for international global economy. For the fact that Wallerstein called "world system". This world just don't exist any more. Give up hope on this, and let's try to see how they will be acting the countries from the economic point of view in these conditions. If you get rid of this hope, because when people enter the hell, of course they don’t want to, they want to say that it's random, but at some point some kind of figure appears that says, "No, when you read here the phrase "abandon every hope, all you who enter", (it was written above Dante’s hell), that's exactly what was meant." That is: leave it, one can't go out of here. And if we accept it, then the first thing we will forget about and refuse is to ask for mercy, to hope that everything will be restored, to grab resources for a limited quantity in these force majeure circumstances in order to return again to the situation which we moved beyond. So, not to wait out.

   If we give up hope and we believe that the economic model which has formed now will last indefinitely long (well, conditionally forever in terms of human cycles, not in terms of real history). Well, for ever. Just as the Soviet Union existed for evermore - like liberalism existed for aye, like Modernity existed endlessly. In other words, it’s always very relative to human history. So, imagine that this situation will always be. So, we find ourselves in the situation of closed commercial states, that’s not Popper, not an "open society", not globalization, not liberalism in international relations, not Adam Smith, but a Fichte's closed commercial state. Now we live in conditions of closed commercial state. What are closed commercial state priorities? Primarily - providing food autarky. This is the first. Why? Because if people in closed commercial states will not have a sufficient amount of food they will just rise to rebellion, riots will begin, and they depose that government, which rules over them - and that’s all. If this power will not provide them a living wage to keep body and soul together. But this living wage suggests a very important thing: all products should be produced (namely critically important ones for this living wage) on the territory of this state. This applies to Russia, this applies to the United States, this applies to any country - big or small.

   It means that abandoned in the era globalization primary agricultural sector must be of strategic priority for the state. In closed commercial state agriculture must be developed exactly to the extent which is necessary to ensure satisfaction of primary food demand of the population and not depend on external supplies. Something right opposite to globalization with priority to cutting costs and optimizing the economic model and, accordingly, food products were produced not where it was needed, but where they were cheaper because they could always be delivered. But this open global supply chain collapsed and, consequently, the products must be national. Import substitution in the food sector must be absolute. We can buy and consume only your own products, which we cultivate ourselves, and consume ourselves. Besides, a state in conditions of closedness cannot allow this area to develop everyhow. Because if the agricultural sector becomes completely hostage to market prices then accordingly following from orientation to profit maximization and appearance of speculators, purely market approach will lead to a possible lack of food products, and accordingly to riots and uprisings. Respectively, it is required first before (this is the most most important, sine qua non of closed commercial state) to establish control over agriculture, and, of course, experience shows that here there must be some freedom of production because coercive collective farms and full planning in this sphere does not give positive results, but the converse is also not true: leaving this area to unfettered market forces can also lead to negative consequences.

   Accordingly, the state must maximize freedom of agriculture, but at the same time to prevent the appearance of speculators in this area that would create unreasonably high prices for agricultural products. Here is the first task of any closed commercial state. And instantly a feature comes up: first, this do not require at all neither contacts with foreign countries, nor friendship or enmity with anyone - it is just up to us and must be essential, first and foremost aspect. Of course, if we establish economic cooperation with some other countries, we can buy or sell, and distribute on our territory foreign products but, strictly to the extent that keeps us independent. Because today it can be a friend, tomorrow it will be an enemy, so we cannot depend on any supplies of grocery products. This is sine qua non. The next aspect is the question of industry. If we talk about the need to provide in the primary sector complete food independence, autarchy, the same is to be done in the field of industry. And here again we face exactly the same issues as in agriculture, those trends that in the era of globalism led to delocalization of industry. It concerned not only Russia, which in the 90s and the 00s lost ninety percent of its industrial potential, or even about 99%, but this applies to both Europe and the USA, which moved their production to Asia and to the Far East since it was more efficient, cheaper, and thus in the situation of forced closedness, they lost the most part of their industry because this industry doesn't exist any more. By the way, Trump came to power precisely under the slogan of that he would reform this situation, and his opposition to globalization even theoretically was based exactly on that.

   So, delocalization leads to deindustrialization of states, it is beneficial from today's point of view and justified by the logic of global open society, but it's completely incomparable, incompatible with the reality of closed commercial states. The second feature is development of national industry. In our country there were talks abour it, but since everything was easy to buy, Russia was integrating into the global economy, in a clumsy and bad way in the 90s, and a little more rational under Putin. But actually there was the main task to integrate into these processes and take advantage of the conditions that globalization created. That was an absolutely, fundamentally different policy.

   And after all Putin’s talks about the need for national production, all the officials nodded, but since there wasn’t urgent need, everybody simply gave up on it, and finally, after listening did nothing. The only area which Putin controlled by direct micromanagement, the defense industry, was developing, but again we we don’t know how exactly it was, because it is evident that there is no industry in Russia, It was destroyed in the 90s, sold and not restored in the 00s But since we believe our president that we have better weapons, it means that in defense industry, something was developing independently. Naturally, in this area there is no place for open society. We believe in it, it’s ours almost religious patriotic mentality. How it is in reality - we don’t really know, but the point that we have no industry, and that we need it is the second imperative of the current epidemic.

   And the third feature: maybe you would like me to have started with it - it is sovereign independent financial politics because in the modern and postmodern world, and especially in current global system everything is totally connected with financial institutions and financial mechanisms, and agriculture and industry are considered as optional things because the one who owns money, can afford to buy both industrial and agricultural goods in sufficient quantity providing it for population and national needs, but as soon as we find ourselves in a closed commercial state, the whole hierarchy is changing. In the first place is food safety and the need for autarky, in the second - independent industry and in the third, only in the third - the creation of a sovereign national financial system. Here I would draw attention to the great american poet Ezra Pound, who dedicated his magnificent work "Cantos" - the book of life - mostly not only to the description of beauty, but also to the description of the ugliness of finances, ugliness of banks, satanic nature of capital as such.

   And this is very important, because Pound in his "Cantos" describes the whole debates between economists: Silvio Gesel, Keynes, liberals just as a huge field of aesthetic struggle in economics, because from Pound's point of view, the system based on loan capital, it's a certain satanic element destroying human personality, human beauty truth, goodness, justice and the human as such. In other words, either banks, interest, loan capital or a human - Ezra Pound says; and when he extends this ethical, metaphysical problem, this religious hatred to capitalism, loan capital, banks and financial system that destroy like usury, penetrating into the art works, into the matter, into people's lives, transforming everything into commodity, alienating one from another, any person, destroying societies, destroying families, destroying nations, subjugating them to the dark power of the estranged, demonic, satanic beginning, when he applies it to a positive scenario. Here Pound gives surprisingly excellent recommendations. First: the state can issue as much money as it wants, and it cannot be poor, the state cannot be bankrupt, the state cannot default.

   Why? Only in case it is truly sovereign and if this national currency is backed by sufficient quantity of agricultural and industrial products within the state. Then the national currency issue leads neither to inflation nor to defaulted state simply because this national currency is sovereign, it is not tied to any other currency, it does not depend on any international fluctuations simply because the state has everything inside itself essential for the support of all types of activities. And then the issue of national currency is completely independent from any kind of currency board, from any external factor, then the state becomes truly rich and with the help of financial policy keeps the economic growth at the level it needs. This is the third element: independent sovereign financial system. This is salvation for any country in Fichte's closed commercial state situation. It's clear for Russia, but also for any other country - now I speak in general. Another crucial element is the complete state foreign trade monopoly. It's a certain antithesis of liberalism in international relations and if the state is the only monopolist in foreign trade activity, then it monitors that the penetration of import goods from abroad do not weaken national autarky neither in the field of food products nor in industry, financial system, and at the same time control that the export of goods, services, technologies and materials do not strengthen competitors in the international field. This is a direct anti-liberal approach, which is defended, by the way by many economists who are against Adam Smith, this is not unusual it's just mercantilism in international relations proposing state foreign trade monopoly.

   This state can have internal market relations in combination with special management, for example, where there is the need to regulate some processes in the national interest or, for example, reduce the opportunity of profits to speculators, especially in sensitive areas, but at the same time for everything concerning foreign trade it is necessary to impose a tariff policy, policy of special wages and national interests. That is what we are coming to. These are the principles of a closed commercial state that go into effect today. Just recently, Russia completely closed its borders, we were not the initiators, we were one of the last to do this, it doesn’t even matter how we found ourselves in this situation, but today we are already living in a closed commercial state. And here only one question arises. By the way, the same can be said about Italy, which, having found itself as a closed commercial state and at the same time completely dependent on the European Union, simply defaulted in the first few days, and was actually bought up at the exchange. The same can be said about France, which introduced a state of emergency, and about the United States. That is, all countries today are closed commercial states. Not Russia began to close its borders, we were one of the last to close, but we are already there. And now we are faced with a choice: whether to accept this as a long-term project and build a closed commercial state. It will not necessarily be a dictatorship, but it will also not be a democracy at all, it may be with greater and lesser conservation of market relations in certain areas.

   The state should certainly strengthen its position, but what kind of strengthening of these positions will be, to what extent and in what form it will take place - every nation and each closed state will decide itself, based on its own considerations. There are simply no dogmas here, but those principles that I have outlined are dogmas in the situation in which we are. And completing this, I can say that we must decide if we accept it as a long-term project, well then goodbye globalization. We live in a post-global world, we are building a post-global economy, and a completely different subject – the sovereign economy – dominates in this global economic system. This main subject is the national closed commercial state - this is the main player on the world stage. Here, sovereignty or realism becomes absolute. And, accordingly, either we believe that this is a temporary measure and, as it were, make a stand and bet that everything will return to the era of globalization. Now our governments will answer this question.

   And here there is a risk: our government has become accustomed, frankly, in these recent times, not to be responsible for anything. That is, no matter what is happening, it tries to say that it's an advantage, everything is as planned, it was a tricky plan. In fact, here - stop.

    

   Now it is necessary to give an answer, both direct and unequivocal: either a closed commercial state, because it is movement along one path, or it is an expectation of a return to the restoration of the global economy. This movement is in a completely different way. These two strategies are incompatible, you cannot make both of them at the same time, you cannot prepare for one and the other at the same time: a choice is made here, and depending on what the history will show next, how it will develop, it will be clear whether this decision was right or wrong. For one or another, the state, the government and the current political regime will have to pay. Will it make one choice or another. This is the risk of power. Why do people endure power and allow to be maltreated by it for centuries? Only for one reason: when such a critical moment of choice comes, the people can calmly observe how the authorities solve this complex problem. And here the power begins to take risks, because if it makes the wrong choice, it will simply fall, it will pay for it. And the people will just choose the next power, another. This is where is the risk. Therefore, accordingly, from my point of view, the government should determine which way it will go when entering a pandemic situation, and how it perceives this forced closure. Does it perceive it as a model of the future economic world order and prepare for it for a long time and seriously, or expects when everything will return back, and then, according to the result of this choice, it will be responsible for this choice. So, the situation is extremely serious. What I say, in general, thinking more about Russia, is absolutely applicable to Italy, France, England and the USA, Mexico, Iran, China, Turkey and so on.

   We ended the era of peremptory existence in an open global world, we were forced to find ourselves in a closed commercial state, and I propose to seriously think over this perspective. We can return, I do not exclude this possibility that we can return to globalization, it will be, however, a different globalization, we will not return there soon, but there are very great reasons that we will never return to this globalization, and will exist for a very long time in a closed commercial state. In order to prepare for this second scenario, which we are already doomed to, and we don’t know how much time it will last: the coming months, maybe years, maybe even longer. That is why I propose to make this mental experiment and, in fact, to make a choice. Without this choice, we cannot move on. The situation is very serious, and Russia will have to make this choice, but all other countries will also have to make this choice. So, either we temporarily take a step back from globalization, to which we will return after the end of the coronavirus, as Bill Gates, Gordon Brown (speaking about world government) and George Soros say (in fact, he keep silence now, because now to advocate for globalism is like to make a coming-out, that is, if you say “I'm a liberal,” you can be hospitalized for this, so only people with a bunker or some kind of reliable shelter such as Bill Gates or Gordon Brown can afford it. In principle, today, of course, everyone understands that only closeness is saving, but nonetheless, voices even from these dungeons, from secret shelters are heard that propose however to make a world government. But, of course, today no one is listening.

   But gradually their voice may sound louder and louder. So, some people are squeaking from the dungeons that let's still have a world government, let's go back to the global project, but realists or practitioners begin to close their borders and are preparing for a complex, difficult existence, an unexpected, abrupt existence within a closed commercial state. As for me, I like the project of a closed commercial state from the philosophical point of view, and from the metaphysical and poetic point of view, just like Ezra Pound, and I prefer this, but it is my personal opinion. Let's digress from our sympathies and face up the reality. This choice must be made now, and everyone must make this choice. Every responsible politician, every responsible economist, every responsible citizen in whatever country it is. All the best, we will return to the “Thoughts during the plague” soon.

5. Thoughts during the plague № 4. Plague and Dasein

   

   Hello, you are watching the series “Thoughts during the Plague.” Today I would like to talk about philosophical issues related to the coronavirus epidemic.

   We have already said that from Heidegger's point of view, Dasein is determined by the attitude towards death. In the era of a pandemic, an epidemic, death that comes to us and turns out to be in close proximity with us, enters our attention zone and becomes an active factor of our presence. From the point of view of existential philosophy, this increases the acuteness of our presence in the world. Our Dasein in this situation awakens to itself, coming to fixation.

   Usually, when death is out of the question, Dasein spreads, scatters, disperses, forgets about its finiteness and, thus, about itself. Instead, the alienated Das Man mode is activated when Man denkt, Man trinkt. When instead of saying “I think,” “I drink,” they say - “drinking,” “thinking,” “eating,” “sleeping.”

   In fact, Das Man is the one who does all this: eats, sleeps, thinks, is present, moves, walks, enjoys or is sad when we are absent. We think that this is us, but in fact this Das Man is someone, something that does not coincide with anything particular. It thinks, it sleeps, it eats, it falls... But it exists through us. This is when there is no death.

   And when death becomes close to us, we are shaken from it, we do not agree - Man denkt, Man trinkt. We need it to be ourselves - because death is near, it is standing outside the door or is already climbing through the window. In this situation, we are no longer satisfied that Das Man is doing this instead of us - we are starting to do it ourselves. Maybe this is the last time we think, drink, eat, watch, walk, move, talk, breathe, etc.

   Accordingly, from the point of view of existential philosophy from the point of view of Heidegger, such an existence in the face of death is more authentic, more genuine. At this moment, the presence in the world becomes ours, because before that it was not ours, but Das Man’s one. When death comes to us, we begin to truly perceive this breath as ours, this thinking as ours, this feeling as ours. We are returning to our Dasein.

   But here there is a certain point of bifurcation. When we are faced with death in the era of a pandemic, the spread of coronavirus, we enter the authentic mode. At least, we are leaving Das Man, we are approaching ourselves. We cannot afford not to notice death, spread out in fragments. We make up our mind, we are concentrating, we are like frightened animals, striving to attack the victim and ready to jump, we become dense, our presence gains attentiveness, readiness, self-discipline, because death is near, this is not a joke.

   But in this case, there are 2 strategies: even when death is near and you cannot ignore it, there may be two strategies.

   When we come to death, we experience horror, fear, awe. We are starting to tremble. It is interesting that even the concept of trembling was interpreted in religious experience from two sides: there is trembling like an earthquake that starts from below, material trembling. And there is a trembling that comes from the gods of heaven, from Zeus, from Apollo, from the trembling of the holy laurel trees, the oak of the sanctuary of Zeus in Dodona, when the presence of the deity begins with a slight, almost imperceptible trembling of the foliage on the sacred tree. This is a trembling “from above“. Therefore, despite the fact that the presence of death, the presence of sacredness, the presence of that which is fundamentally higher than us and cancels us as ourselves, may come from below, or may come from above. It can be extremely heavy and underground, like an earthquake, and can be subtle, like the epiphany of Zeus or Apollo.

   If we apply this to existential categories, Heidegger divides two forms of attitudes toward death: fear (Furcht) and horror (Angst). Between these two models of attitude towards death there is a fundamental choice (Entscheidung), a fundamental decision of a person (or Dasein) - how to exist further: authentically or unauthentically. When death comes, there is already something authentic - we are already forced to answer the main question, but we can answer it in two ways. Here the fundamental point of bifurcation occurs.

   When philosophers begin to get involved in understanding the pandemic and the philosophy of the plague, we want to say that this is some fundamental chance for a human to change something. I get a lot of questions: what is this chance, how to realize it? I want to say what is the chance from Heidegger's point of view: that we perceive death through horror - through Angst, not Furcht.

   What is the difference between horror and fear? There is a deep metaphysical opposition in this. When we face death, we can turn to face it, and it will be Angst, but we can turn our backs - Furcht. If we turn our backs to death, then because of the fear that it inspires, we will run.

   Running away from death is already good, better than never thinking about it. Turning one’s back to her and collecting all the efforts to survive, to jump from death, to save oneself, the loved ones and others - this desire to avoid this finiteness, which carries death, is already good, but it is a metaphysical failure.

    Here is a metaphysical lapse. The one who turns its back to death and the one who runs away from it, the one who tries to escape from it, survive, save, and even save others - this is not only a question of selfishness, it is an attitude to death. The one, who perceives death as the most fundamental threat, and strives to avoid it, does not make the most important choice that opens up in the plague. That is, for the one who, in general, actually perceives the plague as an object and at the same time makes himself an object that is only saving itself from the plague – it is actually a loss. So, the plague won, then death came to be stronger.

   But there is also another approach, because when a person starts to run from death, it runs away from itself. It runs in fear of discovering its own border, its own cause, its own dark, indistinguishable, metaphysical abyss that frightens it.

   And another attitude, another choice is to turn one’s face to death. To look into its eyes. Not to rush to run away from it.

   To compare, to correlate oneself with it. To look at it, to try in this darkness, in this nightmare, in this horror, in this abyss, to distinguish something, some kind of inscription, some kind of sign that is written in black on black. See something even blacker in this abyss.

   Recognize the rays of the night that speak inside death – it is a very difficult and complex operation. But this means a return to what Heidegger called Selbst of Dasein, that is, the "selfness" of Dasein. It is ourselves. And when we see in the death that the pandemic brings, the image of ourselves, our true, secret depth, then we enter the Angst mode, the horror mode.

    And then death becomes not just an object that instills panic in us, but becomes a subject. We enter into a dialogue with her. And we exchange precisely the status of subjectivity with each other.

   And here it doesn’t matter whether we die or not - in fact, anyone can die on this turn: the one who runs (who can be overtaken by death) and the one who stands and looks at it “eye-to-eye”. It’s not about how to better escape from it, it’s about how to correctly understand the message, the metaphysical message, the message of the plague, the message of death. It is a question of a philosophical movement, and not of a biological and physical salvation or recovery.

   Now we can apply this dualism of attitude towards death, this fork in the philosophy of the plague to other levels of philosophy. For example: if we apply the same thing to Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit”, to the part that deals with the appearance of a slave and a master, then we are dealing with exactly the same situation. Hegel describes the moment of the metaphysical emergence of slave and master exclusively in relation to death.

   When a person is faced with death, it has two choices, says Hegel, either to enter the battle with death - this means taking a chance, or rushing from it racing one another - then this means running away from this risk. As a matter of fact, look: on a completely different level, in a different context, we are dealing with Angst and Furcht, we are dealing with a choice between “fear” and “horror”. And, according to Hegel, there is a separation between the slave and the lord. Who is the lord, according to Hegel? This is the one who looks death in the eyes, the one who accepts its challenge, and enters into an unequal battle with death. In the battle for immortality. And who is a slave, according to Hegel? This is one who is ready to lose freedom and lose dignity, but save his life. The master brings his life to the altar of this risk. He is not ready to run – he is taking risks. He enters into battle with death, and thereby he makes himself the object of this death. What is a slave? One who does not withstand this tension, and is ready to lose everything, including freedom, if only not to meet death face to face. Then Hegel speaks amazingly: yes, of course, the master does not acquire immortality, but he acquires a slave. The slave is in his possession precisely because the master faced death.

   If we apply this metaphysical model to ethno-sociological history, we see that this is how the formation of the state took place. The military class, very often coming from outside, ready to die and kill, received for this readiness - an agricultural, peaceful, hardworking society, which fell under their rule. Actually, this is how the formation of the state takes place, and so is the formation of the upper class.

   Those who are willing to take risks, those who carry metaphysical Angst, that is, horror, those who challenge death, become masters, and those who evade it become their slaves. Accordingly, in this way, the plague (or death, or risk, or, often, war, an extraordinary situation) is the moment, this is a way to determine who is the master and who is the slave. The one who is ready to risk himself, who turns face to face to death, is the master. The one who runs away is the slave, and nothing else.

   A brave slave who sacrifices himself, having his own dignity, is no longer a slave, he is a master. And a cowardly master thinks that his bureaucratic merits, his belly, his stealage and meanness will protect him from imminent death is not a master any more. Today, coronavirus shows us that it knows no boundaries, that it destroys artificial social models, that it comes to ordinary and unordinary people with the same clarity. And everyone should give an answer to this.

   If a person belonging to today's elite escapes from the coronavirus, it becomes a slave. And if a simple person looks coronavirus in the eye, it becomes master. Thus a new assertion of the elites takes place, and any emergency creates a new class of masters and a new class of slaves. This is the second reflection on the existential metaphysical mission of the plague.

   And the third point, the Christian one. One could notice that now it is also becoming very important. Of course, as soon as the coronavirus came, it turned out that modern religious people for the most part are not so, because for them the instructions of epidemiologists or the prohibition of some social services suddenly become much more important than the demands of their own faith. Like this, in general, faith is verified, it says a lot.

   Let’s see what it is for a religious person, a Christian, we can take our religion, the religion of many, all Russian people - Christianity, Orthodoxy. What does our faith, religion say to us about soul and death? It tells us that our soul is immortal. That being in the body, it dwells in a very small part - an infinitely small part of its existence, its being. And that the most important, the most essential - is beyond.

   Depending on how we live this brief moment of earthly life, this will determine a large, very long, incomparably more important, significant, eventful life on the other side of the grave.

   Accordingly, faced with death, we are faced with our own soul, we are faced with what we have to do in this life. We are faced with the commandments, we are faced with Christ, because if Christ did not die, if He did not overcome death, if He did not suffer for us, then He would become an incomprehensible figure, He would lose His meaning.

   And now, on the verge of death, confronting its proximity, we can only truly comprehend the sacrifice of Christ, and the significance that it has for us today, for us living.

   All His commandments, all His actions, all His words, all His gestures, all this is about us, for us, and about our immortal soul.

   And if we choose the opinion of random, completely insane political or social institutions, and believe that our religion is more secondary, more conventional than any decrees, then we determine the price of both our faith and our church , and of our God.

   Of course, we should never listen to anyone except our heart, except the priesthood, except our church regarding how a Christian should behave in these difficult trials.

   Because in the face of death only our faith matters and nothing else. Only our actions, only our devotion to Christ, only our faith and only our love for Him, for God and for our fellow-Christians.

   And here, precisely, is the possibility of trial, here it is our Day of Judgement, it is pointless to wait for the clarion. This angelic Clarion sounds now. It sounds during the plague, during coronavirus.

   It says: “Who are you? Christians? This way. Not Christians, unbelievers - come hither“. And we are called in the face of death to affirm the dignity of our Christian soul, this is precisely our call, and again - one who looks death in the face, can see the deed of Christ coming to life, the content of the Symbol of Faith comes to life, the Gospel comes to life, it sounds already right for us, right in heart. Everything is clear, and the Old Slavic language becomes absolutely clear, each letter of the Gospel, Christ's words and Christ's deeds becomes intelligible, because it is written for the soul, and the soul is what wakes up when death draws near.

   Angst is the only state, horror, in which you can listen to the Gospel, you need to listen to the Gospel. This is not the opposite of love, this horror. In fact, this is the fear of God, the root of all the good, as our religion says. That fear of God, from which begins the churching of our soul.

   Death is what lies on the scales of our existence. This is how our soul is activated. Usually it sleeps, and like these negligent virgins not ready for the Groom's arrival.

   Coronavirus, epidemic, plague - this is a rehearsal of Christ's marriage, this is Him who stands and knocks, as the Gospel says. He knocks at our door and we don’t hear this knock when we are having fun. And when we understand that the last breath is not far away - His knock, His presence becomes fundamental for us.

   Therefore, there is nothing more Christian than a pandemic. Nothing more soulful, sound, awakening, enlightening us than the difficult trials in which we are.

   So, we examined three levels of the metaphysics of the plague: existential, philosophical, Hegelian and Christian. It seems to me that we can talk a lot about this, everyone needs to think about it, but, in my opinion, we groped for the entry point into the metaphysics of the plague. I think it’s worth returning to this, it’s worth thinking about it, and we should stop on it. All the best!

6. Thoughts during the plague No. 5. Nergal and Erra call us to notice the essential

   

   Thoughts during the plague No. 5. Nergal and Erra call us to notice the essential

   Hello, you are watching the series “Thoughts during the Plague.” Today I would like to turn to a mythological story about the gods of the plague. In the Mesopotamian tradition, such gods were Erra and Nergal. It was believed that the beginning of a pestilence, an epidemic, a cattle plague, when it reached people, was implied by a certain epiphany, the discovery of a higher deity that invaded the human world.

   I would like to draw attention to this strange peculiarity: when misfortune occurs, something tragic is happening, people and animals die, rivers are poisoned, starvation, suffering, poverty come up – people associate this with God.

   The ancient Jews in the monotheistic tradition believed that the originator of pestilence or plague was a single deity – Yahweh – which gave people graceful gifts and at the same time punished them when they deviated from the ways of Gods, when they forgot about the deity, became too immersed in earthly concerns. For this, the biblical God punished the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah and inflicted the Noachic deluge on them.

   The origin of the plague in a polytheistic context is a certain epiphany, a manifestation of a deity that shows that a person is mortal, weak, miserable. Man already lives in a world of ashes. The gods Erra and Nergal just remind: you are dust, you are ash from ashes; your will, your pleasures, your sense of security and your joys are nothing in the face of deity. And if the deity wants, it will return you to the state of nothingness – to your ash. It is a mythological context.

   Actually, the gods of the plague recall the scale of the human, which is incomparably smaller than the scale of the divine. If we pay heed to biblical stories, it turns out that the plague, epidemic, pestilence have the same function – God punishes people, demonstrating their narrow-mindedness, weakness. Actually, the epidemic of plague, cholera, and pestilence in the Middle Ages was understood in this way – despite the fact that the Christian God is virtuous and did not pity his son for the salvation of people, yet in some cases he brings people back to the right path adopting cruel pedagogy. If people do not understand in a good way, then God begins to interact with them in a rough way, showing the true path to salvation.

   This interpretation of sacredness of a pest, an epidemic, a plague, a pestilence (both in Christian and pre-Christian – Jewish and even polytheistic context) – has one fundamental feature: the plague, natural disaster, catastrophe have a certain sense, and it is almost always the same: when the mankind’s humanness is overswollen, when people become too convinced of their omnipotence and almightiness, have a sense of grandeur about themselves – a deity who is at a higher level of being, consciousness, power and might, brings the humans back to their positions. You are dust, be humble. You are a servant of God, do not rebel against God. You have concluded an alliance with God (in Judaism), an union, a covenant, you must follow it, you must not rebel on a higher, spiritual, heavenly order. You must abide by certain rules (including family, political, state, hierarchical, religious). And if you say that you don’t want to know any of this, then you get the plague. One would think that the plague will have mercy on the righteous, and punish the sinners. Well no! A righteous man just doesn’t suffer too much during the plague – he is ready for death, for the service of God, he even understands why the Lord punishes humanity, and therefore sees this as a manifestation of divine justice. The righteous is strengthened in his righteousness when the gods of the plague come or when the one deity sends it.

   And the therapy is directed specifically against the sinner – he thinks too highly of himself, he believes that he understands everything so well, he has such a developed science that he doesn’t need God, he can take care of himself. This is just a sinful thought – rebellion against God – and it is sent back to its bounds by the plague.

   The plague has a certain meaning. The plague is a manifestation of the transcendental, divine, sacred dimension in the human world that forgets this dimension. Accordingly, if we now return to this view – to the sacredness of the plague – we can correctly interpret what is happening to us in the era of the coronavirus epidemic. Because it is the same – how do we differ from other eras? Our humanity relies on technological facilities, believes that it can calculate the genome, that it can organize the lives of billions of people on the planet according to the same liberal market logic, that humanity can do without God, without gods, without rite, without churches, without rituals, coping with any challenges only by virtue of the reason.

   And here comes the coronavirus, which says – nothing of the sort! Friends, you are nobody, you are dust. You are small, dirty, weak, boorish insects that got a false idea of your own importance. Return to your proportion. Remember what the fear of the Lord is, what the scourge of God is. You sin, violate the framework assigned to you; violate the covenants that God has given you. You go beyond the bounds of humanity. You are caught up by the devil, Satan, titanism to rebel against the deity – get some: coronavirus, plague, punishment.

   And this is the best of pedagogics – if you do not return again, I will destroy you, I will create another humanity, or even the world will come to an end.

   This is what the divine principle of the plague means – this is the discourse of the plague, the message of the plague, the narrative of the plague: stop being those that you were, return to the path of the Lord, return to the proportion, the scale that is determined for earthly humanity. Stop, rethink your behavior.

   Today, such an interpretation can be within Christian, Islamic, Jewish traditions, other religions (Buddhism, Hinduism). But the religious (in the broad sense) interpretation of the coronavirus epidemic is mostly non-mainstream. Basically, we are talking about how many masks we need, how many lung ventilators we need, how to build new clinics and what measures should be taken so that the virus does not spread further, how to save people.

   Everything seems to be fine. But don’t you think that such an attitude, if you recall the gods of the plague, only aggravates our situation – we say: it’s overcomable, we can cope with it, there is no trace of God, we must rely on our strength, and we must deal with the plague by our human forces. But do we thereby aggravate our situation? Assuming the religious, metaphysical meaning of the plague, should this really be our answer? If the plague makes sense, if the pandemic wants to show that we were moving in the wrong direction, that we need to change the course and foundations of civilization, that we have gone too far in believing in the immanent, we don’t even believe in people, we believe in items, in objects, in technologies, in AI, in genomes, in a completely disembodied rational technocratic mind, which is no longer human and more and more resembles Satan and the devil.

   Interestingly, Nergal - the god of the plague, the classical god of Akkadian mythology - descends to hell with the queen of hell Ereshkigal - and threatens to chop off her head. She tries to make him his captive, but he draws his sword, takes her by the hair and says - and now, swine, I will cut your throat. Then the queen of hell Ereskigal, who fell on her knees in front of the plague god Nergal, says – then I can only ask you to marry me. Akkadian stories end like this. But it is interesting that the solar god Nergal, the plague god Nergal descends to hell in order to put in place and put in order the mistress of hell who has risen against the divine order.

   This is a very important myth. The plague comes for a reason, it comes for something – to make us be humble, to make our earthly, material beginning return to its rightful location in the hierarchy of being, in the hierarchy of creatures.

   The plague gods teach us humility. God sends plague in monotheistic cultures so that a person remembers how insignificant and weak he is. And if we fight the plague by means of a state of emergency, a new number of masks, ventilators, only relying on doctors – then we, as Ereshkigal, say that we are not convinced – we will defeat the plague ourselves, we will not change our way of life, we will make fun and live as before, we will restore the capitalist economy, our secular values, our entertainments, our path of autonomous humanity, our research in the field of high technologies and AI, we will continue to modernize and digitalize our society, we will implant everyone during the epidemic and the quarantine with microchips, and thus overcome the plague ourselves.

   Accordingly, we will simply make our doom inevitable. That's the problem. To fight – yes, to overcome the epidemic – yes, not to allow it to spread –  yes, that's right. But most importantly, if we miss the issue, why this plague, why this coronavirus – and even if we manage to cope without an internal change in our life, our society, our values, will we not make ourselves and all of humanity worse?

   All the best, let's think about this message of the gods of the plague in the era of quarantine ...

7. Thoughts during the plague № 6 – Discipline and Punish

   

   Hello, you're watching our series "Thoughts during the plague". 

   Today I would like to discuss one of the main topics of philosopher Michel Foucault's "Discipline and Punish". The topic is well-known, as are many others taken from this classic of modern philosophy. 

   While studying the history of prison, Foucault draws attention to the fact that already at the beginning of the Modernity, in the era of secular bourgeois culture, a rapprochement was taking place between criminals and the sick. 

   A criminal was considered not only to be a person in full health and consciousness who had made a negative impact, but also as a person marked by a dark spirit. There was something abnormal about the criminal in the eyes of this society. This kind of  abnormality was also associated with disease; for instance, being infected with cholera or the plague was considered a crime. Physical pathology, moral pathology and the commission of a crime were brought closer together in the minds of people, leading to the isolation of both criminals and the sick. 

   It is interesting how Foucault views the organization of early psychiatric practice. While in the Middle Ages a person suffering from a mental illness was considered to be possessed by spirits (justifying the use of physical violence as a method of exorcism), with the transition to secular, bourgeois, materialistic culture, this transcendent dimension of the evil spirit disappeared, but the practice of punishing the mentally ill remained - mentally ill people were ‘treated’ by means of torture.

   Foucault said that one of the basic ideas of Jeremiah Bentham (an english philosopher and the founder of modern utilitarianism) was the creation of the panopticon, a territory in which criminals could be watched and supervised at all times, surrounding them from all points of view by both glass and impervious walls. The idea of constant supervision of an isolated part of the population subject to periodic punishments is put forward as an important form of punishment via transparency and the deprivation of privacy. In the ideal Bentham-inspired prison, a person is punished by the fact that guards are given the opportunity to observe them at any time. 

   This humiliates the inmates, reducing them to the physical and biological level of being. It deprives them of civil and social change. Man becomes a piece of physiological flesh that is watched in the same way we stare at animals in a zoo. 

   The sick, the mad, the infected (lepers, plague carriers) are treated in much the same way as these criminals, leading Foucault to suggest that there is a single root of repressive psychiatry, the modern clinic and the prison. All three of these phenomena - mental illness, contagion, and crime - continued to converge at the beginning of Modernity, resulting each of these groups being outcasted, gathered together and subject to constant observation. Hence the punitive practices of modern medicine - the pain doctors inflict which society writes off and our belief that this temporary pain is the cost of eventual health -  are essentially organized and rationalized practices of torture, not unlike those practiced in the Middle Ages.

   The scalpel is not solely an instrument used for delicate surgical operations, it also an instrument of torture. 

   Eventually, mad houses evolved into the field of psychiatry, while those afflicted with contagious diseases began to be treated with vaccines and criminals began to be handled with rehabilitation in mind. In parallel, there was a decrease in physical violence in all three institutions: in psychiatric practices, efforts were made to anesthetize complex medical operations while torture was prohibited in prisons.

   Foucault suggests that the correlation of surveillance as a form of punishment in all three institutions and the subsequent reduction of the human dignity of those surveilled pushes them into a new, lower state of existence. How did the panopticon change those it observed? What did they feel like under constant supervision, under constant torture? Those subject to this punishment lost their humanity, they even began to forget their own names. This synthesis of the criminal, the madman and the leper became a creature representing the complete outcast. Such a creature, placed in an isolation ward, in a panopticon, has lost all human properties. It has become a piece of dangerous, poisonous, aggressive flesh that performs all basic human functions, but is no longer human. 

   Thus, according to Foucault, the concept of the Other - those not like us, those without status, without freedom, without private property, without the right to privacy, without names, rights, duties or dignity - was born. And at the other end - in the center, behind the glass, we began to see them as bestial, our dark counterparts whose flesh is the same, whose physiology is the same, whose basic needs are the same, and who we have nonetheless deprived of nearly everything else. 

   This idea was later called "bare life" by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben - from his point of view, ‘ bare life’ can be applied to the populations of Nazi concentration camps, where people gradually dehumanized under constant observation and turned into little more than biomaterial, a biomass. 

   When emergencies occur, such as an epidemic, we return to this archetype. Look at how the quarantine has developed: a sharp increase in surveillance, drones are circling like Orwell's 1984, facial recognition systems are activated, it is forbidden for more than one person to gather… these tools are replicating the panopticon on a far broader scale. These actions are considered fully justified, while even worse has become socially permitted for dealing those who are already infected… However, since someone who is not yet infected may easily become so, a broad repressive-medical system is applied to everyone... just in case. 

   From Foucault’s point of view in "Discipline and Punish", the doctor, the psychiatrist and the jailer are essentially of the same type. It seems that one punishes, another treats, and the third helps to cure disease, but in fact they all establish mechanical, abstract norms. As soon as we slip from our civic position, we find ourselves in the position of biological bare life, where all that remains of us is our material, bodily functionality. In this capacity we become objects: restricted in terms of movement, objects for observation. In the end, we lose all ties with other people. 

   Gradually, this structure projects itself onto all of us, not just the jailer. Look at what is happening in the US, where people who are suspected of being infected with coronavirus are treated like dogs, aliens, ‘Others’, and met with the most heinous kind of hygienic racism. We are all quarantined, relegated to life in the panopticon, left to rely on the doctor, the policeman, the military, the psychiatrist-- meanwhile we ourselves have begun policing the infected (or those we suspect of infection), guarding ourselves like sadistic Nazis in a concentration camp. The instinct toward discipline and punishment has been awakened in all of us.

   These are the dark and terrible results of the pandemic. The coronavirus has had diverse results-- it brings with it the possibility for new thoughts and revives many old archetypes. However, in reviving these archetypes, we have awakened something strong, deeply rooted and terrible inside us.

   Our desire to discipline and punish is rooted more deeply than we might imagine. It is part of the possibility of our becoming nothing more than "bare life" under certain circumstances, with all of our physiological demands, desires and instincts annihilated; even the desire to breathe and experience minimal freedom of movement is put under strict control.

   In other words, at the extreme ends of these two poles (Discipliner and disciplined, punisher and punished, healer and sick), we have moved beyond the human.

   Yet, ultimately, we are not “bare life", we are not the sadistic enforcers of the panopticon… we are something else. What kind of “others” we have and where the root of our humanity lies manifests in extraordinary circumstances.

   So far, we have not yet reached the complete stratification of hunters and quarry, executioner and victims: we maintain our ties and solidarity. But if the situation continues to progress, we will gravitate closer and closer to these extremes. It is not easy to get away from the intoxicating belief that we are not like ‘them’, that we are not so bad, that we are not like those Foucault wrote about in the Middle Ages or today-- yet, such distinctions will not hold.

   Instead, we must find something that resonates with these archetypes and allows us to overcome them: it's better to face the truth about our nature. To some degree, Humans must be supervised and punished. Ultimately, we are looking at our tendency to gravitate toward the poles of relations of power, leaving one side as little more than victims fighting for physical survival, to meet their physical needs at any cost, ready to lose all human dignity in exchange for food, water, health, air... but we must remember that while these poles are part of the portrait of humanity, they don’t give us the full picture.