Are Western values losing their influence in the world? Do Russia need European values? Western values.
It would be necessary to correct the imbalance and say once and for all what is this most secret and enduring thing in the West.
As a person who studied in Britain and the USA, and then worked for 20 years in Scandinavia and on the Euro-islands, communicated with the most diverse layers of Western civilization, from the owners of skyscrapers in Manhattan, regulars of the City of London and to the Eastern European beggars, I confidently and categorically declare - the only and main value of the West is His Majesty Loot, only Loot, and nothing but Loot.
All movements, all propaganda and all the power of the state and society around the clock solve only one problem - to take away and divide. At the same time, the personal computer of Westerners instantly calculates the most optimal way to take money from “savage, uncivilized peoples,” turns on the appropriate program and draws up a plan in which oaths of allegiance can be intertwined in the most bizarre way with mixing hemlock in the morning coffee, and admiration for the genius of the victim with accusing him of the most terrible sins.
If the shortest way to the victim's pocket is through kisses and hugs, the bearer of Western values will be the very example of courtesy and respect. If a violent scenario turns out to be the most cost-effective, you won’t be able to find a more cruel and merciless maniac. Actually, they are maniacs - both gentlemen with “ladies”, and the extremely middle class, and semi-homeless people with zero chances of getting out of the slums. All of them, amazed by Western values, evaluate the world around them, the events taking place in it and the inhabitants inhabiting it exclusively and only from the point of view of filling their own pockets. Everything that fills pockets belongs to the forces of good, everything that does not fill is definitely evil.
Understanding this, it is easy to understand the enduring hatred of Russia, which does not gild its pen every day, and therefore is a fiend of hell, regardless of some incomprehensible culture and even less understandable stupid, because unprofitable feelings, such as duty, honor and responsibility.
By the way, about responsibility. This concept is strictly connected with the religious attitudes that encode the descendants of their bearers, even if they have now declared their atheism. The coding inherent in traditional religions on the territory of Russia declares a set of actions a sin, regardless of what consequences they brought to their author. The predominant Protestant culture in the West considers an act to be a sin only if there are certain consequences. Suppose a robbery that the robber got away with is considered godly, but exactly the same requires repentance if it is followed by punishment.
Failure to understand these subtleties of Western nature and the peculiarities of Western values leads to an abyss of mutual misunderstanding. Russians sincerely do not understand how an obvious sin can be considered valor, and Westerners also honestly do not understand what they did wrong, if as a result they were not only not punished, but even vice versa - they had a very specific profit, which means their behavior was clearly approved by God .
A striking example is the Second World War and the Germans, who, right up to the defeat, absolutely sincerely considered their Reich to be infallible, and only after its defeat it dawned on them that yes, it turns out that Nazism is really shitty and not at all pleasing to God.... Exactly the same encoding stands in the head of our Anglo-Saxon friends, who, even being atheists, are guided by Calvinist principles - whom even the Lutherans considered sectarians... And therefore - Orange over Vietnam is very cool, bombs on the heads of peaceful Yugoslavs, Afghans, Iraqis and Libyans - not a damn thing sinful. And the “wow” at the sight of Gaddafi’s martyrdom is very much conjugated with religiosity, because the result is loot, more loot and loot+...
But all this is so, few people need anatomy. It is enough to understand the Main Value of the Western World to understand the whole logic of the actions of any of their representatives - Forever loot... And the remaining values are trifles and nonsense, causing laughter and irritation of “all civilized humanity.”
Western values are a little different. Thanks to Western values, our European civilization emerged from the villages, reached unprecedented heights and one day flew to the stars. First of all, this is (1) the desire for equality of all citizens before the law, (2) competition, (3) protection of property, (4) priority... Western values are a little different. Thanks to Western values our European civilization emerged from the villages, reached unprecedented heights and one day flew to the stars. First of all, this is (1) the desire for equality of all citizens before the law, (2) competition, (3) protection of property, (4) the priority of business, reason and science over myths. ideology and chatter.
It was thanks to them that Western civilization in the 18th-20th centuries developed science and technology, defeated hunger and disease and conquered living space. Backward societies, where it was more important to talk than to do, and where all efforts were spent on the mutual squabbling of feudal lords, were swept away.
What the author will come about is "anti-Western" values. The virus of “anti-Westernism” has infected both the West and the East. We need to take a closer look. Do feminists and other LGBT advocates advocate values (1), (2), (3) and (4)? Against! They demand unequal, privileged conditions for themselves. They are anti-competition, monopolize themselves as the sole voice of both minorities and majorities, and force everyone to submit. They are against the right of private property, because they want to actively cut the public pie in their favor. They are much more interested in ritual chatter and putting a spoke in the wheels of the entire society than in anything practical. There are anti-"Western values" coming from their mouths.
The details of what happens in bed are generally not interesting to Western society, just as the size and color of the buttons on the trousers of the average person are not important to us. However, minorities saddled the topic and inflated it, taking advantage of society’s complacency and kindness towards various orphans and wretched people. Normal people don’t shout about their normality, about brushing their teeth in the morning or eating potatoes and sausages. If nothing special happens (let’s say the government was stolen) then in “peaceful” conditions it is the marginalized who scream loudest. It is a mistake to consider their cries as the opinion of the entire society and to consider their values as the values of the entire society.
It is necessary to focus on truly Western values: equality before the law and the court, competition, protection of property and priority of the case.
Unfortunately. in Russia the opposite happens. Under the pretext of responding to what marginal minorities are broadcasting under the guise of “Western values,” the Russian regime presents a set of certain “traditional values,” but in fact denies equality before the court, competition and property rights. Slips in harmful poison under the guise of medicine and strengthens matriarchy.
Vasilenkov Sergey 10/02/2013 at 15:46
Many Western heralds, who periodically accuse Russia of a lack of freedom of speech or infringement of human rights, declare that there is nothing like this in Europe and cannot be, since European values apply there. But no one really thinks about what “European values” are? Even leading experts cannot give a clear answer to this question. So do they exist?
There are no European values
Russian Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky announced this yesterday. He is convinced that European values are just a figment of the imagination of intellectuals who are engaged in North Atlantic propaganda. “There are no European values. Each person has his own values. If these people are put together, then they will be united by some part of these values,” says the head of the Russian Ministry of Culture.
Vladimir Medinsky believes that it is wrong to talk about the existence of a certain universal set of common value standards for the whole world.
“The world is very diverse, because God created it that way. Between the aborigines of Australia, the inhabitants of Switzerland, the peoples of Central Africa, the Armenians and the Russians, there can be a lot of differences, in particular in values, in the understanding of good and evil, but based on these views It cannot be said that some are right and others are wrong. It’s just that over thousands of years, a certain way of life has been formed in different nations, in particular a moral one,” the minister explained his position.
What are European values?
Do you know what European values actually are? Most likely no. But don't worry, you are not alone. Nobody knows what European values are, because they simply do not exist. This is just another propaganda cliche, which is convenient to use when there is nothing essentially to say, but you need to attract an audience.
It should be noted that there are many similar stamps. Do you know what "civilized countries" are? "Enlightened humanity"? "Freedom of speech"? "Public opinion"? "Political consensus"? "Human rights"? "Civil society"? Nobody knows the exact answer, since these are just another stamp that someone needs.
For a while, these combinations are considered something serious, but very quickly degenerate into meaningless, empty clichés. However, these expressions still continue to exist in the minds of many people; they are regularly used by Western politicians, as well as journalists, political scientists, and human rights activists who feed from them...
And “European values” occupy a special place in this propaganda. During the times of perestroika and the “formation of a new Russia,” many Western “democrats” spoke most of all about these values. And they continue to talk about them to this day. You see, for Russia the European choice is irreversible, and European values are our everything...
But no one specifically explains what these values are. Maybe Greeks and Germans have the same values? No. Let us note that the differences between the British and the Germans are much more pronounced. But take, for example, Eastern Europe, Romanians, Bulgarians, Poles, Hungarians, especially Serbs and Croats? Where are their “European values”? More precisely, which of them? Perhaps among the Serbs, who consider the socialist past to be the Golden Age, and the role of Saviors is still played by the Russians? Or the Poles who dream of restoring the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth within known borders?
Okay, let’s not take into account Eastern Europe - it has a “difficult” Soviet past behind it, so there’s no point in sharing “European values”. We can compare the Scandinavians with the Italians. Will the Swedes, for example, agree to classify the Italian mafia as “European values”? Definitely not! And if you compare the Dutch and Belgians, it turns out that the former have long been tired of being “first”, so they are increasingly looking at conservative values (even if paid love and marijuana are allowed), while the latter are radicalized to the limit.
Maybe European values imply not political, but religious values? So tell this to the Irish and the same Croats and Serbs. Inform the impoverished Spanish-Portuguese Commonwealth that their religious values coincide with Protestant Germany. Or tell the Poles and Czechs about the same thing - you will get a lot of impressions. Perhaps religious tolerance is meant as a “European value”? So there is a discrepancy here too. Can hijabs banned in France or Dutch comics about Islam be called religious tolerance? Where did the crusaders begin their warlike, bloody campaigns?
Let's leave religion alone. Probably, “European values” are common worldview and ideological positions that do not suffer from specific differences. But then why, because of such “common positions,” did Sweden at one time think about leaving the European Union after the “trade union scandal” - when the European Court acquitted a Latvian company that was engaged in construction in Sweden, but refused to pay employees at Swedish rates? Ignoring trade union demands for the Swedish “bourgeois socialists” is much more significant than “European values”.
Or maybe “European values” are the values of peaceful conflict resolution? But the bombing of Yugoslavia does not fit into them. Where did fascism and Nazism originate and find practical embodiment in their time?
Many from the stands declare that “European values” are, first of all, a high quality of life. But here again there is a problem. Better tell the residents of the above-mentioned Eastern Europe, the Greeks, Italians, and Portuguese about the high quality of life. Looking at their “high quality of life,” I don’t want any “European values.”
As we see, there are no European values. But how beautiful it sounds - “European values”! After all, one can angrily blame other countries for their absence. For example, those who fight in the State Duma, but the main thing is not to remember the English parliament, where they beat each other so hard that it doesn’t end with just a concussion. You can also blame other countries for a high level of corruption, citing its inadmissibility according to “European values,” but it is important not to recall the situation with corruption in Italy and France.
If the world of the East maintained the stability of civilizational foundations for many centuries (neither the invasions of nomadic tribes nor interstate clashes could shake them), then the West experienced several “waves” of civilizational development.
You learned about antiquity, the Christian civilization of the Middle Ages, and industrial civilization from history. Each of these societies had unique features and acted as an independent socio-cultural community - a civilization. At the same time, they can be considered as stages in the formation of a unified civilization of the West - the second side of the bipolar world.
Today, with the concept of “Western society” we associate such features as a market economy, private property protected by law, civil society, democracy, the rule of law, class stratification, mass production, mass culture. We will talk in more detail about how these features were formed in different historical eras in the following paragraphs. Here we will dwell on the most significant spiritual guidelines of Western society: the perception of the world as a whole and one’s place in it, the attitude towards work and wealth, life aspirations and assessment of prospects.
We remember that one of the ideological foundations of the Eastern worldview was the idea of a single world order, which applies equally to all things, including humans. Initially, the “big one” did not frighten the ancient Chinese or Japanese. On the contrary, they sought to merge with him, to become like him. Another attitude towards primordial chaos in the ancient Greeks. Chaos is a formless state of the world, a void in which everything is born and everything disappears. The ancient Romans generally perceived chaos as hell - an all-consuming abyss. This gave rise to the fear of death, which was tantamount to plunging into an ominous abyss.
In the minds of people, the desire inevitably arose to overcome chaos, opposing it to an ordered world - space. And this organized world cannot arise without efforts on the part of man and society. On the basis of this idea, some defining features of the Western mentality gradually emerged. Firstly, it is aimed at replacing perestroika. Centuries later, already in the conditions of an industrial society, this installation began to play a decisive role in the development of society and ensured the scientific, technical, economic and military power of the West.
Secondly, the beginning of a break between man and nature was laid. Man “fell out” of primordiality and broke with it. Subsequently, on this basis, a desire arose to conquer nature, in turn, creating a complex environmental problem for the modern world.
Thirdly, from the idea of the initial imperfection of the world, it followed that the ancient Greeks called “arche” - will, dominion, and not only over nature. Struggle in all its manifestations began to be perceived as an integral part of life. “Struggle is the father of everything and the king. It determined some to be gods, and others to be people, made some slaves, others free,” wrote the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. In contrast to the Eastern idea of non-violence, the idea of the inevitability of “powerful” history began to assert itself.
The focus on transformation gradually led to a break with tradition. In Western society it took place in modern times. The past no longer has the same value as in traditional society. People are interested in the present and the future.
Fourthly, ancient Greek civilization gave impetus to a linear understanding of time (which did not interfere with existence and a cyclical idea of it), highlighting cause-and-effect relationships between phenomena as fundamental. “God... holds the beginning, end and middle of all things,” wrote the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. Thus, the world moves from some initial state to some final state. Based on the perception of time as a linear, directed process, the idea of progress was subsequently born.
Christianity, especially moral precepts, significantly influenced the formation of Western values. Thanks to them, new ethical standards common to all believers were introduced. A real revolution in people's views was made by Protestantism, which, as you know from the course of history, separated from Catholicism during the Reformation. Work, according to M. Weber, was equated to prayer (remember what Weber said about the importance of the ethics of Protestantism for the formation of a capitalist society). Under the influence of Protestantism, an attitude towards work began to form as the most important way of serving God, as a calling. Wealth accumulated as a result of labor can be considered godly only when the work is honest, and it is wealth that is used to expand production, and not for luxury and waste. The education system then began to promote the development of the entrepreneurial spirit. It was during the Reformation that many European countries introduced a system of compulsory education.
It is known that many American films are based on the story of how a “simple” American guy (or girl), thanks to determination, hard work, and self-confidence, rises to the pinnacle of material well-being and public recognition. This “great American dream,” which has inspired more than one young generation, contains important spiritual values of Western civilization and, above all, the high value of achievement and success. To overcome, to be able to, to achieve - this is what millions of people are aiming for. In addition, this dream also reflected such a principle of Western society as individualism, which presupposes the recognition of individual rights, its freedom, independence, and independence from the state.
Of course, the spiritual values of the West are not limited to those noted in this paragraph. But even a quick acquaintance with them shows that in many ways they are the opposite of the spiritual aspirations of the East. It turns out that the “meeting” of civilizations is being postponed?
Inspired by the "Duel" Kurginyan-Zlobin.
If I were standing opposite Zlobin, the first thing I would ask would be: “Why do you think that Western values are really supported by the population, politicians and administration of the West?” I would say a lot of things, in fact, because every liberal PHRASE that was heard on this show caused me dissonance with reality. Our liberals are either so naive or so cunning that they consider what is proclaimed to be reality.
Oddly enough, the majority of applications to the ECHR regarding human rights violations are from Russian citizens. Do you think this is because human rights are violated in Russia, but in the EU everything is orderly and noble? Not at all. It’s just that EU citizens have forgotten how to insist on their rights. They, like sheep, were taught only to humbly await death and allow themselves to be cut to the last hair. That is why we are surprised to see how they are not outraged by the fact that their own money goes to feed healthy men who will never be able to work, because the Dutch responded to the rape of European women with a march of European men in skirts, but fake rape the son of a Congolese minister led to mass protests, fires and looting in France.
Western values are only a means for processing the masses, cutting their hair, the emergence of new markets and suppressing protests regarding the release of the next tax “for bribing the President.”
I am surprised and touched by the naivety of the same Kurginyan, who, when asked a question about a country where there is real democracy, named France. A-ha! France, where the voting system is tailored to “The National Front should not win.” Hollande promised to replace her, but this was before he was elected President, and then he conveniently forgot everything.
What kind of democracy can we talk about if the support of the President is 4%??? Normal people would have already done impeachment, but we are not looking for easy ways, we have forgotten how to fight for our rights. That’s why we allow politicians and their mongrels to mock us, tearing out our hair by the roots on the Internet.
So what are the notorious European values?
Let's not reinvent the wheel and turn to the primary sources. In 2012, at the request of the European Commission, a Report on European Values was published. In 2012, the European Commission asked itself a question: in order to give more or less understandable forecasts of people’s reactions to their often stupid innovations, you need to know how much the people will allow themselves to be pushed in this or that area. If you dare to click on the report itself, you will read that the original question sounded different, but the essence and background do not change.
Firstly, the European Commission thought: have European values changed after the crisis?
Both on! And we are told that European values are an unshakable postulate with a centuries-old history. And it turns out that as soon as the elite loses a little money, values change. Apparently, those are still values, since they depend on the ringing of coins (now it’s clear why they lost all the wars with Russia?)
Basically, they asked themselves three questions:
1. Proximity of European countries to European values.
(WHAT??? This is one gang, all united front and all that! Well, at least they officially declare it... No, or what?)
2. What values are most important to Europeans?? Which of them represent the ideal of happiness? And to what extent do European values reflect personal values? (??? And Merkel is fooling us here about a universal round dance and integrity??? )
3, Economic and social values of Europeans- how they change. (Hmmm... That is, the clinking of coins is a European value. I laugh wildly about Zlobin’s definition of European values in “The Duel” as tolerance, human rights and something else that he himself does not believe in, apparently .But!!!Now you understand that economic values for Europeans are values that come after social ones, and not tolerance-democracy)
Here they tried to understand
- How do people feel about government intervention? A
(in the affairs of the people).
This is another formulation, of course, since the state is a worker hired by the people, but here, it turns out, the state and the people are two different groups.
- How does this all relate to free competition??
If anyone still doesn’t understand, we’re all about European values here, but we haven’t gotten to tolerance yet
- Do Europeans prefer equality to freedom?
That is, “flies - separately, cutlets - separately”? Freedom and equality cannot exist together?
- Is the justice system strict enough?
Interestingly, they did not consider inequality in legal systems and their relationship to elites and people.
- How do people see the contribution of immigrants to society?
It will be interesting to see how people view it now. after the influx of a couple of new millions.
- What to give preference to: environment or growth?
- and, finally, what is the ratio of rest and work?
“Finally” is a translation, so if anyone doesn’t understand: regarding the extent to which a person has the opportunity to relax, Europeans are officially the last thing to worry about. This is less important than the contribution of migrants.
There is no point in translating the entire Eurobarometer: it is 4 volumes. Not "Harry Potter", you know, so, sorry, let's limit ourselves to conclusions.
32,728 people were interviewed, that is, about 1,000 people per country. Let's assume that the sample is representative. Why is it permissible? As a person who has the background to talk about this, I admit that in view of so many criteria, they asked around two people per category of the population, that is, zero without a stick in the sense of representativeness. Well, it’s not for us to judge them; what has grown has grown.
So, essentially.
1. Proximity of European countries to European values.
In the first lines of the manuscript we are faced with what is called the manipulation of consciousness: the relative majority of Europeans believe that their values are similar. Relatively the majority. That is, 49% out of 100. And 42% believe that there is nothing of the kind. A logical person would write that “opinion is divided”, since the smallness of the survey group units gives a percentage error of 20-40% (I proceed from the fact that people of different ages, professions, views, orientations, religions, etc. were surveyed). Moreover, since the criteria were “completely coincide”, “sufficiently coincide” and “coincide more or less”, of the 49% who agreed, 46% indicated that they coincided sufficiently, and 3% - as “more or less”...
But we are not looking for easy ways, that’s why “the majority”.
Note that in 2008, that is, 1-3 years after the famous accession of new countries, 54% of citizens of the “old” countries suspected that they were recruiting members of similar values into the union.
"It gives the impression"(literal translation) that the “old” 16 members have similar values than the new ones, but that their sobering-up stations work better: instead of 54% in 2004, only 47% of the “old Europeans” began to believe in the similarity of European values in 2012... But Slovaks (70%), Poles (68%), Bulgarians (63%) and Czechs (63%) firmly believe that they are much closer to European values than the Europeans of Old Europe! We run ahead of the locomotive, as they say. True, this does not prevent these same countries from spitting in the direction of Brussels when it comes to accepting refugees. I’m not sure that among AS readers there is at least 1 person who cannot explain this situation.
However, along with the promoters of European values Slovakia and Poland (now Polish and Slovak nationalists and anti-LGBT people are tense), there are also backward Latvia (34%), Portugal (37%), France (38%) and Spain (40%), who believe that their values are absolutely different from those of Europe.
But there are also surprising (for Europeans and obvious for AS) trends - 23% of Portuguese distanced themselves from European values over 4 years (only 37% remained relatively religious), 15% of Greeks (43% still believed that they would receive a loan), 18% Spaniards, 16% of Cypriots (although in 2012, 52% of Cypriots still believed that Merkel would help them financially).
The people who most believed that their values were close to the pan-European ones were Austria, which was given money, and Poland, which was apparently promised a share in the division of Ukrainian oil shale just in 2012.
As we see, for some reason, faith in the European values of the people of Europe is directly proportional to the amount of money received by European states from the EU and decreases with the approach of the crisis, when they do not receive money. And not at all with “European tolerance”. But those who pay are disappointed.
As always, it is easier for young people to sell nonsense, so they believe more that their values are similar to European ones. Their parents, people wise with experience and problems of feeding Euro-youth, are skeptical about tolerance as an opportunity to prepare Euro-borscht. Naturally, students pay tribute to European values. That is, the state’s ability to exploit the brains of the state increases with the level of education, and not with television viewing. The working class sends values to hell, while those who can make money from the working class think that they have found a gold mine in European values.
European Union = Trump in the USA 2.0, in general.
64% of Europeans think their vote counts in Europe. Well, as you wish, gentlemen, but elections in the EU are not filmed on video cameras, so I can attribute this exclusively to the increased stupidity of Europeans.... “And then the card failed me,” as they say. In countries where a lot of companies sell people contracts that need to be signed before reading (and are successful) - this is for you to reflect on the Central European mind and ingenuity.
And here we come to the European values themselves.