Philosopher Serhiy KRYMSKY answers the question of how to survive.

“ An old and simple truism says: it is better to repeat lessons than mistakes. But it is a good idea to repeat even a simple truth, especially if a wise person does it together with us. A “youth who thinks over his life,” a definition quite applicable to the three-year-old Day , needs a tutor like this very much. We are grateful to philosopher Serhiy Krymsky who has agreed to play this role.

“How to survive? is a question I have faced more than once. In times when everything even slightly talented was being deliberately wiped out, there was the method of surviving by feigning idiocy. As did the late Academician M., who would phone Stalin (as a Party Central Committee member, he had the right to do so) and ask him stupid questions to which the latter would reply with great satisfaction.

“I spent about twenty years of my creative life on all kinds of rubbish: it was impossible to write honestly, so I had to switch over to the symbols of mathematical logic. It was a waste of time. To survive means to waste. However, if you want to live, you must first survive.

“Unfortunately, the decades of totalitarianism have in fact eradicated the human capability of social independence, virtually the only thing today to rely on. Today's state will not help us survive: the authorities are too corrupt to tend to anything but their own profit. A year ago, when Leonid Kuchma was in the US, Bill Clinton asked him a straightforward question: where has the $200 million we gave you gone? Our President failed to answer. The population has only one option: to trust their social instincts. Individuals devoid of subsistence means, job, pension, or state support, have to organize themselves and, having adapted to this economic situation, begin to do something him or herself . The state should not, in this case, hamper this activity: like in a blizzard, when a driver who does not see the road drops the reins and trusts his horse's instinct. And I see no steps the state is capable of taking to support people's independence.

“What then is left? Young people have always said: our parents were doing bad, we will do better. And this was the foundation of progress. Now I observe a different trend: young people (in the West, for ours have not yet matured to this point) refuse to do anything at all. They believe, and not without reason, that it is impossible to change anything in this world, so the only thing worth making efforts for is yourself. Human history already had this in the epoch when Christianity was emerging. It turns out that, if you build yourself, your own personality, it does have an impact on the outside world. This begins to act in some way. Morality is also a way of survival. The whole experience of my life says that morality, in contrast to meanness in the long run bears better fruit.”