Today on our agenda we have one of the most outstanding viruses, which rightfully lies at the foundation of our mentality—if such a thing actually exists. We are talking about a certain subconscious attitude that many people follow when evaluating some activity and when making decisions. This attitude consists in the following: if something is not ideal, then it does not deserve attention; it is better not to engage with it and not to strive for it.
Our person sees only a static cross-section of a process. For our person, time does not exist. More precisely, it is flattened—it reflects only the physical time necessary for the transition from one state to another. And this is exactly why our people so love certain ideal systems in which happiness comes immediately and forever.
I am far from exaggerating here. Let us recall the unforgettable phrase of Leonid Danilovich: “Tell us what we are building.” Everyone always laughed at him, meaning that he didn’t care what to build; the main thing was to know exactly what. Although a more terrible meaning lies in the fact that the “social system” can, it turns out, be “built.” Let us recall the expression “transitional period,” which was used to denote not merely the situation of changing certain laws and rules, but a certain abstract transition from “totalitarianism” to “democracy.” This phrase fell out of usage, apparently because seventeen years is somehow too much for a “transitional period.” But the feeling of the unreality of the present still exists in full. Good illustrations are also the incessant lamentations about the “insufficient legislative framework.” It is considered insufficient because we have a “young country.” At the same time, for some reason, no one will think about why parliaments in Great Britain or the Netherlands still work, because there, in theory, such a “framework” should have been more than sufficient by now. The UNA-UNSO slogan from some elections also comes to mind: vote for us and you won’t have to go to elections anymore. The UNSO people, with their understanding of the subtleties of the native nature, hit the mark—our people want “everything to finally end.”
Well, from more recent examples I can cite the mass of wailing about the bad proportional electoral system, which did not immediately produce results and, in the opinion of many, were even bad. For me this story was especially surprising, because it seemed to me that with regard to elections the concept of a process is completely obvious and unambiguous. In order to have some result from elections—regardless of the electoral system—several electoral campaigns must pass; that is, time must pass. It turned out I was wrong. In the opinion of many quite intelligent people, the transition from a majoritarian system to a proportional one—which, let us note, was presented as the better one—should have produced an immediate result. Well, since it didn’t, this system is not good and we need to look for another one.
Flattened time, of course, affects the perception of life as a whole. But since we are talking about politics here, let us single out several obvious consequences of such perception.
Every one of our elections is a revolt. The reason lies in the perception of elections as a struggle between “good” and “evil,” and in their final and absolute form. The consequences are clear—with such an approach, development cannot exist; there can only be a closed circle of “struggle.” A brilliant example of such consequences is the famous “disappointment in Maidan.” Despite the grand consequences that this event in reality has, the majority is “disappointed” in it. That is, happiness didn’t come again; everyone was “deceived,” etc., etc.
Flattened time leads to cruelty. The substitution of a dynamic process by a static state inevitably raises the problem of “evil people” in power. After all, in a static picture of the world, those who govern poorly, steal, oppress, etc., can only be replaced by others, and “these” should be punished roughly. The behavior of people in a static world does not have causes and effects—or rather, they are also ideal, static: usually these are conspiracies, etc. This behavior cannot be changed, and therefore the conditions that led to the people in power behaving exactly as they do have no significance. Hence the widespread ideas of criminal liability for officials’ activities and support for politicians like Tymoshenko, who profess the morality of “take and divide.”
Continuing this thesis, it must be said that the very phenomenon of Yulia Vladimirovna is possible only in flattened time. What distinguishes Tymoshenko from populists of other countries is how exactly she lies. This lie is not only a conscious deception, personal delusions, or part of some strategy. Yulia Vladimirovna acts on the principle of “any question—any answer,” easily saying one thing today and the absolute opposite tomorrow on any issue. But, note, this does not affect her rating. Why? Because she deceives in flattened time, which has no significance. For Tymoshenko’s supporters, what is far more important is that in some static future she promises an ideal state where everything will be fine. As long as this promise exists, they will believe her.
The next point is the attitude toward political ideas and, consequently, toward the possibility of changing anything at all. Our person considers bad any proposals in which time exists. There are two variants of behavior here. The first is to make a static “cross-section” of a proposal and reject it on this basis. For example, if I say that one of the ways to fight corruption among judges is their election, moreover, with an interval of, say, a year, I will immediately be told that this “won’t solve the problem.” The corrupt officials, they say, will again get into the courts. Of course, they will—in a year, in two years, in five. Only each time there will be fewer of them, and then, let us hope, they will disappear altogether. This argument has no significance in flattened time. Meanwhile, a proposal to introduce, for instance, the death penalty for a judge caught taking a bribe will be received with enthusiasm, because it easily fits into the static picture of the world.
The second variant of behavior is completing this or that idea to a complete static picture, which this idea does not at all require. For example, if I say that only a Constituent Assembly is capable of adopting an adequate constitution, they will immediately start demanding all the details of this project from me. Of course, they are necessary, but they are secondary in relation to the main idea—the adoption of a constitution by a special independent body. The task of the Constituent Assembly dictates methods of its solution, which may be different and depend on the situation. From me, however, they will demand a complete description of all procedures—which at this stage have no significance—and if they are not provided, the idea will also be rejected. As a result, Ukraine is extremely poor in political ideas and even less so in examples of their implementation. Our citizens prefer to wait for divine revelation instead of doing something.
The origins of flattened time were discussed by Nikolai Berdyaev in his book The Origins and Meaning of Russian Communism. Berdyaev saw them in the peculiarities of Orthodox religion and, in particular, in the role that the apocalypse plays in it, which, as is known, precedes the kingdom of God on earth. This, as Berdyaev called it, “apocalyptic consciousness,” leads to the fact that a person considers meaningless everything that does not lead immediately to happiness for everyone. Communism, as a new version of the apocalypse, was supported in Russia precisely because it fit well into existing notions about the world. It is understandable that these notions were shaped by all the preceding serfdom, one fed the other here, etc., etc. Now we inherit not the Orthodox ideology but the Communist one. But the results so far are the same.
It seems to me that the opinion that our very language does not provide for a significant role of time corresponds to reality. In both Russian and Ukrainian there are no perfect tenses—although in Ukrainian they exist in dialects. Our time is past, present, and future, so to speak, without options. However, life is a process, not a static state. Something has ended, something continues, something will be completed in the future—and moreover, upon the occurrence of certain conditions. In our language, explaining such things requires special effort. And this means that “ordinary consciousness,” which certainly does not wish to make an effort, will not do so and will perceive only the static.
In general, one way or another, our people have invented flattened time for themselves. They live between times, hoping that someday the “bright tomorrow” will come by itself.