Mass Stupidisation Of Russians

• Vladimir Pastukhov
• 23.09.2024, 8:48

This process has two main sources.

There is one sensitive topic that is somehow uncomfortable to write about, but it is no longer possible not to write about it. We are talking about the mass stupidisation of the Russian population. Not of everyone, of course, but of many people. A frightening number of people. The general impression is as if there were an epidemic of early dementia: operational memory is failing, the simplest logical actions are difficult, aggression and suspicion are growing, and at the same time - pathological gullibility to obvious lies. People have suddenly become so simplistic that the times when they were cunning and thieving are remembered with nostalgia. This phenomenon has become so large-scale and prominent that it is simply impossible not to notice it. Naturally, the question arises: is it something completely new, born in our harsh times, or, on the contrary, something well forgotten and old, which has now just come out from under the false ‘cleverness’?

Let us temporarily leave aside the moral and ethical side of the question, although it is not easy. Let's talk exclusively about its intellectual component. Here are people competing with each other in how to raise fertility of men and women dying in packs in the war, who are simultaneously being taught about traditional values and instructed not to approach a husband suffering from PTSD from the back. Some suggest special fertility surgery (whatever that means), others suggest regular egg counting in women's ovaries, apparently believing that the counting procedure itself will somehow improve the fertilisation situation. Reading all of this is both useful and entertaining, but every now and then you have to pinch yourself on something, because it seems that this is Zhvanetsky, but it is not him at all. Obviously, I took the first example, which was close at hand. If we go deeper, we could publish an ‘Encyclopaedia of Modern Russian Stupidity’, which would very quickly surpass the BSE in volume.

What is the source of this phenomenal instantaneous mass deafening? In my opinion, this process has two main sources: the upliftment of fools (natural stupidity) and the mimicry of smart people as fools (fake, situational stupidity). These processes pleasantly complement each other, creating together a unique flavour of contemporary Russian life.

As for the first, then, to put it rudely (such is the subject of discussion), there are fools everywhere, and there have always been fools. Physiological stupidity has been studied by ‘great minds’: Serbsky, Kandinsky, Gannushkin. All in all it is reduced to the point that stupidity is when the intellect is low, but it is impossible to recognise someone as insane. There is no problem with this - not everyone has to be intelligent. The problem is that it is only in such historical periods as the one Russia is going through today that these people with reduced intellectual responsibility become the elite and the backbone of power, its main asset. In principle, there is nothing special in this, but the long-standing practice of negative selection is beginning to yield the first visible fruits: quantity, so to speak, is turning into quality. However, for a person who is not immersed in this reality on a daily basis, the picture looks as if he or she is inside a film adaptation of ‘Ship of Fools’.

The second is more complicated. According to the luminaries of psychiatry, stupidity - that is, the inability of a person to think independently and make rational decisions - can be not only congenital, as in the first category, but also acquired. In particular, psychology describes temporary stupidity, which can be due to a defence reaction to psychological trauma. Well, it is hard to imagine a greater trauma than Putin's regime with its terror and wars, at least now. So from this point of view, the voluntary and apparently reversible stupidisation of huge masses of people is quite understandable. In this sense, the next cycle of the Russian revolution will have at least one health-improving effect: a great many people will quickly and unexpectedly become wise. Some of them even excessively wise.

One way or another, but here and now, when viewed from the outside, modern Russia, thanks to these two complementary processes, looks like a giant Saltykov-Schedrin's ‘Town of Glupov’ (which may be translated as ‘Foolsville’ - note), striking the imagination of those who still remember this country being different.

Vladimir Pastukhov, Telegram