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The translation of an extract of my book «Watching and listening» (2004) is made by Mr. Konstantin Kisin from the United Kingdom.

A few fragments:

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What is one of the modern times’ biggest mistakes? The mistake is that instead of addressing ends it targets means. Literacy, books are ways to culture but not ends in themselves. Look how the majority applies their new literacy: to write what should not be read, and to read what should not be written. This is no accident, it is an appropriate consequence as more important things – the ability to differentiate and judge – were not instilled in the masses along with basic literacy. Supporters of “enlightenment” blamed everything on the “spiteful ignorant fools”. Yet, a good-humored, semi-educated fool is probably no better. “Don’t worry – we are told – people have finally been given books; gradually the masses will grow spiritually, we just need to give them free rein”. It would be shameful to, even, argue with this childish view: when, where and who, ever advanced spiritually after being abandoned, left to himself, without care. Unless, of course, this person was a genius – but geniuses are always on their own, not even psychology, with its tendency for bold suggestions, has invented the idea of a “collective genius”, yet. Man was given a book, but a book is of no benefit, it is only the means to grasping “good”; a tool, but not a product; and, most importantly, abusing a book or superficial literacy, is no harder, if not easier, than misusing the notorious “ignorance”; superficial literacy is that same ignorance, only better dressed and with more self-respect.

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The fathers of contemporary democracy wanted to create a society, where a lonely and self-sufficient individual would be protected against external interference, as much as possible. They were successful and a sturdy wall of “rights and freedoms” was built against the onslaught of the Church and state. The creators of a new order understood the individual to be an invariably suffering party and all precautions were undertaken to its benefit. Time has passed and it appears that the individual is completely protected from society but society has no protection against a malevolent individual. What is worse: this individual is attempting to prove, using all means available, that the idea of “malevolence” itself is obsolete, that there are no good and bad intentions, only lawful and unlawful ones, and the limits of morality, thus, coincide with those of law. The threat proved to be somewhere, where it was not looked for. The state and the Church were, once, too assertive in creating a moral regime – the persecuted individual was protected from them by law. The individual, having freed himself from, virtually, everything, began to preach his own, home-made, ideas, however, ideas of liberation from the burden of morality, of a war of all against all with the purpose of selection of the most fit for life, ideas of pleasure as the highest goal and a general inanity of existence. In short, when the individual, finally, grew spiritually wild and began to live fastidiously in his safe little world – it became apparent that there is no protection against him and his destructive preaching. All of the Western world’s institutions aim to defend the individual from the state and are powerless now, when the time has come to defend against the “free individual”, who has been spoiled by decades of appeasement and lost its footing in the process. Surprisingly, the more daring and intolerable the attacks he makes against the moral regime, the more audacious his preaching of self-divinity (the only way to describe the humanistic view with its “everything is permitted” in combination with a hate for the Divine) – the more readily it is defended in our times. The extent of moral wildness is considered to be the extent of intellectual freedom – a most tempting system, where the weak and backward become judges of others’ intellect and development… I believe that it is time to reject the thoroughly false idea of “equality” and return to a society built not on blindly distributed “rights and freedoms” but on the idea of justified rights and reasonable freedoms. Such a society will be able to defend itself against a tyranny of mediocrities, which proved too powerful for the democracy of the XX century.

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The last few centuries went to great lengths to take care of “human dignity”. Yet time has shown that “human dignity”, set as a goal, is only another step along the path to individualization and pride, moreover, the ideal of an autotelic “human dignity” and harmonious social life are sadly incompatible, if not opposite to each other. “Man should respect himself and be unconditionally respected”. True self-respect, however, is not unconditional, not limitless; we do not judge ourselves only by our achievements , if we have any, but we also voluntarily give up self-appraisal in order to respect and love others. “Unconditional self-respect is an unconditional value for an individual” – destructive conclusions follow from these wonderful words: every individual is good and worthy not in his ideal, not at some imaginary, distant point – but here and now, and he already deserves “unconditional respect”. They wanted to glorify man by honoring him more than he merited but in actual fact he was humiliated as never before, when he was convinced that he “is good as is”. That’s the truth. The idea of “human rights” and “integral dignity” was, perhaps, good in theory but proved to be completely inapplicable in practice.

You can read the rest in PDF format.