In one of his works the American economist Milton Friedman describes an
ordinary situation at an American cafe: a customer tips the waiter, so
the latter is in a good mood and wants to service the next one as best
he can, the way he did the previous one. Interesting.
The most ordinary things turn out to be the most complicated. Something
we fail to notice, like the air we breathe or a clean bill of health, things
which, when looked at closely, reveal a brain-twisting complexity of issues,
considering all those multitudinous subtle works done by our organism.
A jetliner looks simple and comfortable for the passenger just because
so much sophisticated work has been put in it by the R&D team and manufacturer.
Largely, the same is true of public life. Daily routine in its simplest
manifestations calls for events on a geological scale. Karl Marx wrote
that it took several wars and revolutions for the occurrence of elementary
things without which the bourgeois establishment could not exist, like
a national market.
One may frequently complain of the lack of elementary things. Proceeding
in this logical vein, however, leads one to the conclusion that the absence
of these things is merely a signal indicating the absence of entire massifs,
continents, components of wildlife (e.g., the absence of the platypus testifying
to the absence of Australia, the animal's only natural habitat).
Sometime in the 1930s USSR People's Commissar of Education Lunacharsky
was posed a rather naive question during a meeting with Soviet youth, namely
what it took to become an intellectual. He said one had to be a graduate
of three higher schools. This was followed by a shower of questions: What
kind of higher school? Majoring in what? To this Comrade Lunacharsky replied,
"It would take your father, grandfather, and yourself to graduate from
such institutions of higher learning."
In other words, when asked how come there is so little by way of erudition
or cultured attitudes in Ukraine, one may well answer that very few people
had an opportunity to graduate from three higher schools.
Life really consists of simple necessary things. They are necessary,
because they cannot be bypassed; they are simple, and consequently they
cannot be simplified. One cannot live without thinking things over, meaning
that clear thinking is necessary. The choice is simple: you are either
clever or stupid. A simple thing, really (here simple does not mean primitive.
In this sense being simple means that a certain thing is impossible to
consider as made of a little of this and that, as being composed of so
many even simpler things; just as a woman cannot be considered "somewhat
pregnant").
But let us go further. The mind exists only in dialogue, in communication
- i.e., in practice, just like courage, kindness, or any other human quality.
It is impossible to remain kind doing nothing or be clever without getting
involved in various forms of communication, whether scientific, political,
or business. And when there is no advanced infrastructure (numerous computer
networks, scientific conferences, periodicals, publishers, etc.), when
free communications are cut short by administrative measures, when the
very nutrient medium of intellect disappears. The natural consequence:
this intellect disappears in a society as a phenomenon (e.g., brain drain).
Merab Mamardashvili dealt with precisely such simple and inconspicuous
links. The key paradox in his description of the situation existing in
the country at the period was the allegation that there was nothing real
about that society. Generally speaking, the very notion of reality shows
that, if nothing living can exist, no live movement can come to pass; there
are not any of those necessary and simple things; they do not work, meaning
that there is no reality and neither could there have been any.
The philosopher's train of thought was simple, despite it being so paradoxical:
justice, good, beauty, and love - things we hold precious but existing
only in the presence of certain individuals, human beings translating these
notions into practice. These things do not exist by themselves. For Good
to exist someone has to do things generally considered good. If nobody
does such things good cannot exist. The same applies to beauty and mercy.
Such things can only occur in the world through human deeds. They cannot
come about of their own free will. This is a universal rule. For example
laws can work in a society only when there are people prepared to observe
them. Likewise, a constitution is effective only when there are people
willing to abide by it.
Let me note in passing that competent understanding of these fundamental
things can be ascertained precisely by perceiving their linkage to a given
individual with his/her own unique visage, the only one capable of keeping
his actions under control. One of Academician Sakharov's friends said:
"Quite recently a middle-aged scientist who knew Andrei Sakharov well told
me that he still was not sure what the human rights movement had actually
achieved in the USSR (Sakharov included). Indeed, they saved several persons,
but this did not help solve any of the global problems. This concept is
widespread, testimony to a complete lack to understanding Sakharov and
his civil, primarily moral stand. On more than one occasion I heard Mr.
Sakharov say in a voice seemingly lacking confidence but in reality dotting
the i's and crossing the t's: "I guess I really did save his life."
Here an extremely strict rule is at play, the true understanding of
"great things" like God, Truth, and one's native land. How can someone
who does not love his brother love a God that he cannot see? In other words,
if one does not appreciate or fails to perceive the value of one's fellow
human beings, however talented or inimitable he is, one cannot be expected
to perceive the true value of the things one seems to be struggling for,
for these things can exist only through a given individual fighting for
or against them.
In other words, there is an unbreakable link between all those simple
things necessary for us and the individual, unbreakable because if there
is no person there are no such things. Without being an individual, one
cannot act according to the dictates of one's conscience, just as one cannot
show genuine mercy or perceive of things truly beautiful. Without such
things life becomes meaningless and we can see as much with our own eyes.
Mamardashvili would say: "Let's take the revolutionizing perestroika campaign.
Is it really irreversible? I do not know. I know only the way to make it
irreversible. Irreversibility is something only man can do. This takes
individual points of irreversibility and it is important to know precisely
how many such points actually exist and against which any counteraction
will inevitably result in disintegration and ruination. Now these are the
values to compose any mathematically valid integral.
What I am driving at is that we will not be able to locate enough personalities
jealously keeping their name clean and their products good, making them
into all those "simple necessary things."
How can we increase the quantity of such things? (One is instantly aware
of all those urgent or top priority measures, building up individuality,
the good old Soviet officialese effectively surviving all political changes
in this country.) Yet a question posed must be answered, and this answer
is like the one about the intelligentsia. Let me tell you about a tourist
looking at a beautiful flower-bed in a British park. The tourist was obviously
a man of means and wanted to know how he could have a similar lawn at his
estate. The answer was: plant grass and such-and-such herbs, water them
every day, trim, and two hundred years later you are likely to have an
exact replica.
Certainly, individuality can develop under any conditions. But to make
it the rule, not exception, a given society must have forces of long duration
and sufficient influence to foster the process. Take the notion of private
ownership. It still hurts many domestic ears, sounding more like theft
than private business. In reality private property is the very basis upon
which rests every individual. It is a fool-proof system warding off any
unwelcome influence from without. In the eighteenth century British Prime
Minister William Pitt declared that a pauper living in his miserable makeshift
home had the right to resist the Crown. The house can collapse, the roof
can be shook, the wind can whistle in every corner or collapse under a
storm, giving way to cold rain, yet the British king cannot step into this
home, for all his power does not give him the right to cross the threshold
of this miserable abode.
It is understandable that when such forces giving the citizen independent
support are at work in a society for generations to come, other absolutely
different individuals emerge who are absent in any other society without
such underlying principles. Mamardashvili recalled history, about how in
that same eighteenth century Prussian King Frederick, finding a nearby
mill marring his view of landscape, wanted to have it torn down. The peasant
owning the mill refused to part with his property. The king threatened
him with confiscation, to which the peasant replied that there were judges
in Prussia. The monarch liked the answer so much he ordered the text carved
on one of the porticos of his summer retreat.
Such forms as private property arise and work naturally as a separate
species. By the same token man cannot do anything to act instead of earth,
yielding wheat, because earth has to do this itself, unaided. Likewise,
it is impossible to replace any effects produced by certain forms on public
life, the market, for example, being one such form. It is not simply a
way to exchange goods but a certain information device, a gamble on supply
and demand producing certain ratios and costs. The price becomes known
to us (the market seems to inform us about it), it is our knowledge; and
at the same time it is a fact: such-and-such a ratio has been established.
Here knowledge does not exist separate from hard fact. We cannot find out
the price without the market, without a definite supply and demand ratio.
To explain evidence and simultaneously illustrate the paradoxicality
of such devices, I will cite other example. Ukrainian political scientist
Mykola Tomenko, analyzing the results of the last parliamentary elections
in Ukraine, stressing that they dispelled some myths, in particular the
one about the general aspiration for a union with Russia, says that two
blocks, Elephant and Union openly declaring their Russia union program
guidelines, collected a miserable number of votes.
The special character of such devices in this case is well seen: knowledge
that can be received only by a natural power play (in this case by casting
votes). The elections give us some knowledge, in other words acting as
an information vehicle. Simultaneously, elections establish a concrete
fact which is made public. Prior to the elections such knowledge was not
available (instead, there was a certain myth, says Mr. Tomenko). We received
this knowledge only as a result of the elections, but this knowledge emerged
only with the fact of elections, when a certain situation was established
by the elections as fact.
This knowledge cannot exist before certain vehicles (elections or markets)
are activated. But after activating them another fact emerges, being evidence,
knowledge that can neither be refuted nor abolished. Such facts have the
structure of human actions: if you play fair, then this fair approach will
have manifested itself in your acts, requiring no comment, as a talented
picture requires no caption: acts (yours and someone elses) can teach a
better lesson than any explanations.
Working with the help of such devices, a given society lives and simultaneously
learns itself. These devices create something best described as a lingua
franca, understandable to one and all, included in this common activity
(actually, here we have an ideal example of the res publica, Latin
for republic, that makes it possible for us to understand and cooperate
with each other. An individual acting independently of others nevertheless
works in the same vein, and in millions of cases there appears an inadvertent
cooperation, as with the customer and worker example cited above.
If man is not included in these processes he is denied this regularized
status; man simply does not understand the nature and mechanism/vehicle
of such life - as was the case with that rich young man whose father demanded
that he learn to earn a living while his mother, pitying her son, gave
him money which he showed his father, claiming it had been earned. Suspicious,
his father threw the money in the fire and the young man watched it indifferently.
Today's Ukrainian society resembles this young man in many respects;
it has received democratic institutions rather than earned them (as is
the case with most other former Soviet republics). It still has to learn
how to use them. So far things often happen the way a French journalist
queried the philosopher about, back in 1990:
"The general impression is that events in Germany meet with complete
indifference in your country. How would you explain this phenomenon?"
"You are right," Mamardashvili replied. "For one to be interested in
such developments one has to live in Europe, not geographically of course;
I mean within the European lifestyle. Europe is concerned about this issue
because its settlement will have a strong impact on the Europe's lifestyle
and opportunities as a whole. For us the whole thing is as remote as the
idea of life on Mars. We may have a common language, but we live on different
planets in this sense."
"Yet we often hear you say that you are part of Europe. How is that?"
"Now this one is a very serious phenomenon in our inner life, because
we do not actually have a common language and concept of the realities.
In this sense the difference between you and us is reconstructed. We use
your language, but our reality does not correspond to the reality of your
language.
"Usually, the head and body are of the same origin, and the information
passing from the brain to the rest of the organism is constantly in a homogeneous
environment. Let's make a metaphorical assumption: the head (where everything
occurring to the body is perceived) and body are of differ origin. This
is precisely what happens in our Soviet and Russian cases.
"It is necessary to be a part of the reality to show an interest in
it. Words allow us to address mentally what is going on in Germany, but
there no communication with the reality. Hence, it is normal to show no
interest in the German issue.
"Thus, we again come back to the problem of the absence of reality.
Certain things are impossible to simulate. For example, it is possible
to present students their diplomas the very next day after they enroll,
but this will not change the actual situation. Any operations of signification
have a limit beyond which they are faced with physical reality. Remember
that story about a parrot? The woman who kept it bragged about the clever
bird talking to her friend, saying, 'See? There are two threads tied to
its legs; the white one tied to the left leg and the red one to the right
leg. I pull the white one and the parrot says hello and when I pull the
red one he says goodbye.' 'Suppose you pull both, what would happen?,"
asks her friend, to which the parrot replies, 'Don't be silly, I would
be knocked off my feet.'
"Once again, without special vehicles, special institutions such as
elections, market, where hard facts are naturally ascertained (meaning
a new reality and knowledge about it), all those simple things without
which society and nation do not exist are impossible. Take the notion of
generation. It would also be impossible; we speak about youth and use words
like generation and tradition, but this usage is illegitimate. For these
notions to make sense and have any effect on public self-consciousness,
the physical presence of young people and their problems is insufficient.
It takes a linkage binding them all (precisely that which formal organizations
and information make impossible to exist), converging in a certain space
in which people could openly display themselves and their problems, and
in which they could be aware of themselves as a 'generation' capable of
being that very organ developing real problems and situations (take elections
in Ukraine: self-awareness and, say, of orientations, is born only in the
definite space of elections - author). In actuality, one idea is separated
from the next by thousands of kilometers (say, between a young man in Riga
and one in Vladivostok, or in Luhansk and Lviv - author), and every such
idea atomized from all others. As a result: these ideas seem to exist,
yet they do not. And the fact some external observer may actually translate
these ideas into life does not really matter."
Here we see that phenomena of such literature, cinematography, and the
press are the vehicles necessary for the existence of a nation. Literature
is not just so many books published (just as cinematography is not just
so many films released); it is a vehicle for bringing forth and discussing
certain problems. While there is practically no film-making in Ukraine,
the press is practically regional, as the print run of even the most popular
newspapers is more often than not in the neighborhood of several tens of
thousands, and this with the populace registering fifty million. This means
that talking of a Ukrainian nation is premature (one could be reminded
of the fact that none of the political parties and blocs received the required
minimum of votes in all regions during the last parliamentary elections).
The problem here is not only - and not primarily - connected with financing.
These vehicles are in an as dilapidated condition as, say, the market.
Note that a lot of discussions closely followed by the press never yielded
any original ideas. But, in the words of Merab Mamardashvili, poetastery
is a manner of writing that has nothing creative about it.
Institutions such as literature, theater, and cinema are necessary,
in order to raise and discuss certain issues of general importance. Without
them it would be impossible even to comprehend the scope of any such problems;
this is something impossible to achieve in with small talk at a party or
over a bottle with your neighbor in your kitchen, with the rest of the
family sleeping; this takes too much argumentation. And how is one to solve
a problem never actually seen or identified? Calling a spade a spade is
not that easy, it turns out.
In one of his last interviews, asked whether people's mentality had
changed after all those Gulag death camps, Merab Mamardashvili said:
"It changed only where certain efforts were being made, where many books
had been written and publicly discussed. Unfortunately, very little if
anything has been done in this country of late. And unless something tangible
is done in this direction we will not learn that bitter lesson and our
self-consciousness will not change.
"This can be done only publicly. Culture is public by definition. There
can be no underground culture, in the sense that such culture is barren.
Everything stews in its own juices. Here backwater provinciality and elusiveness
are inevitable; everything is either past history or vague prospects. Nothing
in the present. And all our significant pauses and meaningful hems and
haws have strictly 'internal value,' something we understand but which
is Greek to everyone else; we can hold whispered discussions and seem to
accept it as our genuine culture. It is not. Culture is inherently meant
to exist in the open, visible and accessible to all. Well, this cannot
be helped, for such is the nature of culture. Thus, we need people with
talent and ideas begotten previously and kept secret because of the existing
regime, now allowed to speak and act in the open. The more we have such
people, the greater will be our accomplishment. This will give us ground
for the next step. We will perceive what has actually happened to us and
why, what it proves, and is to be expected from it.
"I must say that something has been accomplished in Western culture.
Maybe not as much as there should have been but a step has been made toward
digesting everything that we have experienced. I mean Nazism."
"So what has actually happened to that consciousness in which all
this was perceived?"
"I'm not sure. It seems that European culture has made a repetition
of Nazism impossible. I am strongly reminded of the so-called Moscow trial,
intended as an analog of the Nuremberg one with regard to Communism. It
never happened and the public interest it attracted was about the same
as that shown in what happened in Germany. This could be evidence that
we are still to reach the point of no return."
In another interview things were mentioned being very close to Ukraine,
even geographically:
Do you think that Chornobyl has taught us a lesson?"
"I don't think so, barring fragmentary expert opinions that we hear
now and then. And this after all that Herculean self-denial being done
there As for a handful of facts meant to make the situation clear, that
is, The Bell of Chornobyl, facts are intermingled with lies and
vague statements, all drowning in a lot of static. Particularly because
the crux of the matter is clear: Chornobyl is publicly recognized as a
place to exploit, where a pyramid will be erected, higher than that of
the Sun. I was stunned to hear all this on television and read it in newspapers.
A trap for the very idea and all those wishing to take certain active steps.
And the result? Thousands of half-truths that will entangle, forming a
vicious circle, and no one will ever find out the truth."
Mamardashvili frequently addressed the language problem. How can one
make heads or tails of a phrase like "the country's vegetable conveyer,"
he asked. One instantly pictures hefty guys with shovels, and it is absolutely
impossible to imagine how the vegetables fit into the picture. One finds
oneself in a certain force field, being launched by a certain programmed
trajectory. Or how can a living idea, or living feeling, for example, a
mother mourning the death of her son, be expressed by the notion of "soldier-internationalist"
(the Soviet propaganda clichО for those who took part in the Afghan War)?
All this testifies to a problem which was topical under the Soviets
and has remained: creating an autonomy of thought, a "literary republic,"
a living language which could emerge in the course of lively and responsible
discourse, a language one could speak and understand, rather than collapse
as a thinking living being. This sphere is the same device as the market
or elections: a certain fact emerged which simultaneously became knowledge.
Here, too, a language emerges making it possible to think; at the same
time people included in the space of this language exist differently. But
then consider the passionate desire for social knowledge that existed in
the USSR and is still there, remember Raikin, Vysotsky, Zhvanetsky, all
those Soviet pop idols of the 1960s-1980s. They all carried social charge,
an element of creativity. An all those political jokes and anecdotes!
Mental labor more often than not is where one finds a way out of the
deadlock. Even an idiot (i.e., "zero variant" of cognition, destroying
all things best and sacred, which cannot help him simply because he is
a fool: a fool can never do anything right) who is miraculously aware of
his lacking in the upper story (i.e., being able to affirm a well-known
fact for himself) is, actually, no longer a fool.
Mental work, of course, embraces all spheres of life; thinking is possible
and necessary at all times, under all circumstances. In fact, the notion
of industry implies a purposeful well though-through process, not just
so many plants and factories. Just like a logical train of thought cannot
retain integrity if a single link is removed, by the same token an industry
cannot exist unless properly balanced, manned, and equipped. Otherwise,
considering the universal rule whereby simple things require a sophisticated
approach, such trite notions as meat, butter, bread, hot, even cold running
water tend to become extinct. So why mourn the platypus in Australia?
It is possible to say of any present thinker that his/her accomplishment
cannot be possibly exhausted, that this thinker forever remains a living
and genuine interlocutor. This, in turn, keeps us all alive. Thus spoke
Mamardashvili: "If I am thinking of something at the moment, this means
that Kant is alive in my thought; this also means that I exist. On the
othe hand, if I exist, this means that Kant is alive." In fact, the Georgian
philosopher remains our active interlocutor, so we can live abiding by
the dictates of common decency. Thinking must be made a simple little thing
like civility, so we can say of our thinking that nothing is given us so
cheap and appreciated so dearly afterward. Civility is not as simple as
its face value: Being able to say thank you a manner befitting a given
situation is one of those "simple things," yet an art unto itself, one
of the pillars supporting this sinful world, rooted in the mist of millennia.







