Since I am already writing all my books at the same time, let me try to see how do they correlate... Well, I don't see it! Unless, this is some kind of new hyper-structure in them, for web use only?
View Points (VP) (Post-American) is outside of geography and history. The American Book (yes, about the real communism) is as close as we got to it, the ruins of history. MOVIES, THE PRODUCTION OF TIME AND FUTURE, are "American" in origins. They are MOVING the world, the rest is to serve it -- technology, masses, media and etc. That world is beyond historical time.
The three books (Father-Russia, Post-America, Tech) still have some historical aspects, memory of it. Where am I in VIEW POINTS?
.... (when I do not know, I put "...." )
Dear Russians, Russia like everything else has to die in order to be REMEMBERED, only then resurrection is possible. We know it and rash to increase the speed and memory of our hard drives. Memory by definition is a negation of the present; we can't remember something which isn't past yet. We don't have to somebody we videotape, but we act as we do. We make the moment of becoming into BEEN, the being, we spent so must thinking about, is nothing without reflection on it, the first step of memorization. When we will master the killing of the future, we are in KOG -- Kingdom of God (see Virtual Theatre).
Is it possible to have a future event as a past and a memory?
Relativity said -- yes. In our more complicated world the unborn
as the lived and dead is a depressing concept. I am depressed by
seeing the people with the future which already took place. Of
course, I can image the unborn ones, who have it all mapped and
done. That's what our total peace for. The control over mind and body, space, matter and time, transferred "future" into planning.
My arrival from home to office is programmed and we are working
on controlling the Accident. Physics love determination, science
can't live without it. Humans have mix feelings about marxism.
Principle of uncertainty and theory of chaos made it easy to accept a thought that everything is fixed, as if I am dead.
We are confused creatures. We are getting mad, if the car doesn't
start, but we don't want to see our lives prearranged. We talk
about freedom and free will.... I still remember our debates in high
school about "freedom as a recognized necessity" -- when my will
is nothing more that conscious execution of the steps of history.
Tolstoy (under the influence of Oriental drugs) -- whatever is to
happened will happened (Kutusov in "War and Peace") saw Napoleon
as a romantic, idealist and westerner. Marx would tell him that the leader accepts this pre-determined world and uses it for his
personal advantage. We know that the only way to become a master is to turn yourself into your own slave. Then came a good doctor,
physician of mind, physicist of nerves, with a diagnose that
everything has a reason. Mistakes, the unknown and known,
remembered and so-call "forgotten" -- Freud was an illegitimate
son of Karl, who never knew his father. If you listen to the pop
songs of the postmodern, you recognize the lyrics of Diamat
(dialectical materialism). In one of his famous albums Deleuze sings
about Dividuals. The goal of INDIVIDUAL is to break himself into
pieces to become a rhizome, a flow, a field, because this
"individual" is the one who demands freedoms.
Oh, child, grow up! Drop it! There are many choices and each of them wrong step. Find the place where you have no choice and do it. After a century of reading Nietzsche is still misunderstood. He went mad for the same reason, couldn't understand his own writing. His theory of will shouldn't be separated from the idea of the eternal return. The "will" is not MY will said church and communists. You see, this "mine" is here again! We know that I have a free will to express God's will or go wrong. Do you think it's a joke? My experience in the Soviet Union taught me practical lessons in dialectics. Since God's or even the Party will is never concrete (directions only) MY freedom is in discovery of it NOW and HERE. I limit myself in order to have a concentration and FREEDOM OF EXECUTION. It's never a "double freedom" -- "voluntarism" in Soviet language. "Mine" is a discovery of the universal. UNDERSTANDING is mine, not the law of gravity. DISCOVERY of "my" desire is mine, not the desire itself.
If I can't separate one from another, I can't see it, reflect, understand, remember -- to be free. The famous jump "from the kingdom of necessity into the kingdom of freedom" starts with the KNOWLEDGE of NECESSITY. How else can I jump out of it? The dialectics ask for definition of antithesis, the opposite, in order to define the thesis. This drove poor Nietzsche crazy. Computers with their metaphysical build-in binarism drive me crazy, too. I can't believe that memory begins with "1" and "0"! Too bad, the Greeks noticed it millenniums ago. (see Losev) The underground marxists replaced the literature double with "folding" -- bid deal! Still I have to have two in order to have the sense of one. I must have an unescapable situation if I want to learn about absolute freedom. I will never forgive the CIA guys who wrote into my defection papers -- "the reach of artistic freedom"! They weren't well read to understand that ARTIST and FREEDOM are antinomies. A car mechanic has more "freedom" than me! I can't place an ART screwdriver into an ART engine to make it work. Even for a moment. I have to place the exact part (which I have to make) in the exact place (which I have to create) -- I have no freedom at all! "Make," "create" -- read about discovery and innovation somewhere else in my writings.
Memory and freedom are no friends. When I lose facts, I lose mind. Slowly I understand the wisdom of a word "data" -- not information (pre-supposed an act of communication?), not knowledge (possibility of interpretation?). Hard drives do not deal with knowledge, thanks God! I don't want my microwave to get poetic, no, sir. Machines are MEMORIES. They are totally free to do what they have to do. I am glad that we leaving verbal behind in favor of visual, our language is full of nonsense. What is "free fall"? Jump from the window and enjoy the freedom. You know the end of the story. This abuse of the word "free" is amazing. I don't want my memory to be free, I reject to be free from memory, I wish to remember what fall is -- and don't mind stay on schedule. I accept the future where nothing happens, because it organized and protected. I need it dead in order to have freedom to use it. All muses had the same mother -- Mnemosyne. I can't think without the firmament of memory! If we have to turn everything into a museum and library, let it be. Lets record every stupid thing (Internet is the latest addition), lets all become memory....
What did I say? Sounds like a definition of the end of the world.
Oh, I forgot to tell you who was the father of muses. Yes,
the god of electricity, or, electronics, as we say nowadays. The
supreme god of hardware -- Zeus.
.... I hope that little by little I could get the meaning of title of this book. And to the meaning of my Russian-American life. You see, we have to leave father -- and this is what I did. I didn't know that so many after me would the same. Yes, for different reasons, but we won't be back. The 20th century triued to produced what other cultures did before us, the Russians -- the diaspora. The old believers and Jews, the White Russians, two millions who run away from Stalin after WWII -- and now another wave. We did in to the West while the state was expending Russinness to the East and Beyond.
That was the great historical push; Russia wanted to be a part of the big history. To the point of the nuclear war! That bad. And the Individual Russians did their job, trying to escape the fate of the Collective Russians. We all were serving you, father, maybe even more so, when we rebel against you.
Did we succed?
Yes, Russia, America, you and I MUST die to be resurrected. Modernity is a road to grave, Horatio. The name of this pomo cemetery -- heavens. Pomo thinkers got a right sensation that we are working on death. That's all what we do. Only through mastering death, and, yes, killing, we can learn how to defeat the last evil -- death. Military principle behind technology is our war against death. Life is a first victim.... The death of life is a sign of our success. Not full victory yet, not yet. Destruction of life in principle (Apocalypse) is essential for life-creation (Resurrection). How to separate the two is the Judgement.
Bill Gates is our nerdy Napoleon. He was born out of one night stand between GE and Encyclopedia Britannica. He wants to buy every image of the mortal life and store it all in his brain. Soon we will see everything MS Windows only. No, Bill is not Zeus, but a hero of our times. He made military technology available for all, he militarized the world, now we all under arms. If you don't remember what is the name of this weapon called PC, I will remind you what said Einstein about "information" -- the bomb to follow A-bomb. Now, think what we can do to life. It has no chance.
Sorry, Bill.
.... What a strange lesson Russia can offer to the world in the business of diaspora! Russian Jews were busy adapting to the new land of America, the old believers are still hiding in their villages in Alaska, The White Russians dreamed about their return... What kind of diaspora those waves could produced? I guess, I should see what was coming and what the exedus of the Soviet Jews means. Yes, yes, about the future of this Soviet Union and the Russia's future after the end of this global civil war, known as "The Cold War"... Of course, it was the universal civil war; the Communists always were read to say that they know no nationalities and borders...
Oh, yes, it was very cold war, because it was Russia's war against the rest of the world. After we, the Russian People, rejected our Mother-Russia, do you think we would let anybody not to do the same? How many years did we shake the world before it became the United States of the World? After our job was done there was no need for this USSR anymore...
EXCUSES
I have too many unfinished thoughts and I have no time to
complete the thinking. One has to spend hours on a single idea.
Example. The conflict between the real and the spectacle? I feel
helpless because I am suspicious of "conflict" -- even if I can
define the "real" and "spectacle"! I think that I have to write a
book on this issue alone -- the idea of conflict. I envy Deleuze
who can afford to write "Difference and Repetition." I envy
Bakhtin who could write about Dostoevsky. I'll never have this
luxury -- I read with a fascination, bordering with horror, --
the movie reviews! I only wish I can spend a year writing a book
about St. George icon. Maybe this is the best argument for having
immortality, enough time to write poetry.
.... Anatoly, what about this "Russian Diaspora"? The West gave them the name "New Russians" -- and the New Russians were hapy to accept it! Let me tell what does it mean: the New Russians are not the old type of immigrants, they weren't Russians, they were SOVIETS. Never mind USA, even Europe nowadays is a new type of "nations" -- no-nation nations like in the Soviet Union "republics" or the "states" in in the United States. Wait, there will be the "New Chinese" soon! The New Africans and so on. They all will have this new characteristics of those "New Russians"....
Listen, I write about myself to give a portrait of this new creature. My experience as a Soviet, as American... Why do you think there is no "Little Russia" (I hope you understand the difference bettwen "Russian Town" and "Little Odessa"?) Oh, yes, you can find "Little Italy" or "China Town" -- why? Myabe the image of the Greek (the antiquty ones, of course) might help the difference. The Old Greeks were not an ethnicity diaspora, they were speading the new culture (later known as "Western Civilization").The paradox of this "New Russians" phenomena is that they are The New Americans, the post-Americans in essense! More Americans that the "natives" (born here, not the American indians). How could it be? What do you think the three generations of the Soviets were for?
Look, relax, Americans do not know it; they know very little about themselves. They even do not know that live no longer in America, but in the center of the United States of the World...
Of course, The New Russians have no clue what I am talking about. They are too busy doing the business of the new diaspora... You don't believe me? Check in the hotel in Niroby and see for yourselves.
THE WARNINGS
I fear that I repeat the same sentence over and over. Pomo
this and pomo that -- everything is postmodern. I suspect that in
place of one boring book I like to have four. Boring, because I
somehow under drive that the "people" should know my thoughts
ASAP! Why? Why should they know it at all!
There is a reason for this repetition. I can't cross one invisible line. Yes, I am aware of my, perhaps, major contradiction. I can't forget that not that long ago the so-called masses were semi-human peasants and I have no nostalgic feelings for their lost naive universe. With a horror I image myself being born amongst them. My Soviet urban childhood is a soft experience next to some boy's life in Ethiopian village. What a waste!
What a waste! I am looking at the civilized peasants...
I am tore between being proud of modernity and desperation
that the boy is about to grow into an adult idiot anyway. I can't
be soft on Americans, they are around and they are the best we
got. What's the point to scream at Russians or Ethiopians who
still don't know how to drive? No, I have no illusions that by
some miracle Peru or Bangladesh will surface in a future as a
revelation of high culture. I do not believe in nations and even
in the United Nations. What am I left with? My contradiction is
of a suspicious intellectual quality. Perhaps, it's just
emotions. I am inpatient and I am ashamed of myself. I am ashamed
that i don't believe myself. I am walking for over twenty years
with the thought that the so-called "human race" is indeed broken
into two classes. Call them masters and slaves, man and men,
vertical human and ODM -- why can't I take it?
The shameful of all -- I'm afraid to think this idea
through. My thought stumbles at this topic, accidently, I write
the new passage, and leave it again. Why? I ask myself. Why was
it easy for Marx? Because he immediately took the side of the
majority and the weak? There are pages I wrote in anger calling
for a war against them, the ruling weak majority. But it just
pages, nothing grew out of it. There are pages with the
self-advises to learn THE INDIFFERENCE. I don't follow this logic
either -- my radio is on around the clock. There are traditional
versions of love and service. Sometime I feel it, but can't keep
it. Perhaps, I fear the finality of a solitude....
I wrote a lot about it. I wake up -- and I am where I began.
Neither logic nor psycho-analysis helps. I read what I wrote, I'm
in agreement with myself and yet -- I send myself back, to the
people. Why? I came from there! Why should I return? I need to
leave them behind, I have no much time left, I'm not young
anymore.... How sentimental, how primitive! How could you write
about the existence of a soul? The soul means eternity! The soul
means ONE! No wonder that an individual is a vanishing idea. How
strange -- I don't think about return to nature, I don't miss it
-- the sky, the river, the air. I don't miss my body. But the
soul -- the last presence of me -- we heard that i have to give
up it. To sell? What a ridiculous idea, Dr. Goethe! What can you
offer a man who lived already? I have to leave it behind to go
further. Give it to God? Who else would need it?
I do it. Every day. I don't remember myself. I read, I think, I fall asleep. I see this man in bed, I can take his soul away -- if only I would know where is it. My marxist teachers knew that there is no such a thing as soul. I agree with them -- that's something which has to born. I have to give a birth to my immortal soul, or to create if you insist. I guess, I didn't explain in details the story of resurrection. Perhaps, you think that I am already a resurrected soul. No, I am just an apparatus -- I was born as a part of this process, my resurrection is ahead of me. Nobody will ever know it, because it's very personal. Because if I will succeed I will be ALONE FOREVER. Oh, those stories of Jesus-Ghost talking to Martha and his disciples! Or the paradise where the souls are together like at a meeting or a party! Who wrote all this stuff? I guess, when you write a book there is no way to escape the fiction.
I like Rublev's Trinity. Three strangers, they are silent, they can't talk! Even in human forms THE THREE are not a company. The eternity can't be multiple, get the math text-books! In MY eternity there is no place for you, get yourself your own eternity! Nobody lives there but me. In hell or paradise I'll never meet Shakespeare or Christ. Nobody meets anybody there! There are lovers reunited, no kissing and hugging, no sex -- because there is only you out there. Take as much as you can in you heart, remember, feel it -- that's all what you will have. You have an eternity to make THEM ALL REAL. Eternity is a lot of time. Resurrection takes forever to complete. I though that
Einstein explained it all. It must the shortcomings of our failing educational system.
Perhaps, you are having a second thought about immortality. You may chose an atheism any time. Really, why would I need it, the soul, the only place where I can enter the eternity? My problem that I don't want to disappear. Not to die, but to vanish. I told you, I contradict myself. But my dilemma isn't mine. You tell me how different it is in your times -- what year are you in -- 3003, 4004? It's unacceptable. It's not up to me. My body struggles for its existence even without my active participation. The same with the soul, it fights for immortality, the sources of its life. Too late. I was born, I live -- my soul will never listen to the logic of my mind or cravings of my body. It has life of its own. But what about the Lake of Fire? The Second Death. It's all ahead, there, after, in eternity.
That's what holds me back, the choice. I am afraid to chose
myself. I don't know why it's difficult to understand. The soul
is the entrance into KOG and it's very different world. I resent
these romantic images of a soul we all know. I know about my
inner world, you know yours. I fear myself perhaps more than the
people. I can't believe it!...
I can't believe that I am writing it. I don't know about the
technology of resurrection, I'm writing about the subject of it.
Perhaps, the sight of so many who killing or killed themselves --
forever! There will more who will, the waves, the flood.... Again
I ask -- is it possible? I ask myself, who else I have to ask big
questions? The pouring of chances, the possibility of God's
existence -- and wasted? What can I say about a short-story of
Christ? What about THIS epic I see? I better leave each of you at
your own mercy. As if the physical death isn't enough, as if one
death isn't too much....
I am not used to myself. Yes, I prefer my own company, but
my relations with myself are not easy. Perhaps, you noticed it
already. Perhaps, it takes that long, forever, to accept
yourself. Nothing new in this thought -- how long does it take to
understand God? You know the answer. That's me. I hope that you
understand by now that I treat the subject not metaphysically,
but, should I say, physically. I write "God" with a capital
letter, the way I write "Anatoly" -- I can't get accustomed to
the grammar of the Internet. I don't mind to spend the eternity
with God. Sometimes it gets tough but never boring.
About the contradiction I mentioned before. This division
between classes -- I have it. I have them both in me. The great
split is something I experience. I have to bury myself. This is
not the most difficult task, the resurrection is much more
complicated. There is a lot of things I have to let go -- and I
have a problem with that. Any arrival begins with departure, the
goodbye is my problem, not the hello. If only I can solve it in
my heart! Did I say "heart"? Oh, no!
.... My reader, I do not know how to help you -- you have to read all my books in order to understand what I mean. Very much like I, who must write all of them, in order to understand what I mean. In which order? It depends. In HIM (African Book) I talk about the the pre-American times, the ancient history -- through the life of the Emperor Haile Sellassie. In my American Book -- the analysis of what is known as "postmodern," but practical, personal terms. The Book of Self, POV and Theology of Technology -- my journey inside myself...
(See DEATH directory)
CLASSICAL LANGUAGE
I never had a chance to learn Latin and Greek, never mind,
the living modern languages. Too bad and too late. I don't even
write in Russian anymore. I don't care -- I write in DEAD
LANGUAGE anyway. Instead of declaring the "death of book" my
older pm brothers should take an extra step and look at reading
and writing as CLASSICAL language (global English). It's some
sort of a new Latin for the clergy, who has to know how to read
"books." Our educational system senses it, because we are not
interested in "languages"! The words are outdated in principle!
Now, the situation of "writing" -- what is it? When Augustine was
writing in Latin, it was obvious who his readers were and how
many. He used Latin as the most suitable media for his subject.
So do I -- I can't dance out my thought. I see the world singing
it out, the spectacle of movies and other celebrations of the End
-- and I know that they are not interested in KNOWING but in
EXPERIENCING KNOWLEDGE.
We better part with the notion that "understanding" is the
way of "getting it" -- I am referring to the famous formula:
"Knowledge is power." Pomists smell it, they USING is HAVING.
Present (and especially future) "humans" have enough to LEARN and
understand. Common sense tells us that I do not have to
UNDERSTAND what I eat. We have specialists, companies and
organizations for that purpose. Bible refers to having sex and
knowing and it's wise. I'm annoyed by those theories of
communications, my tv doesn't ask for understanding. I don't ask
radio to understand me. I see a positive development in new
politics when not the understanding but the effect matters. What
is so interactive about video games? Is the Internet
"dialogical"? Discourse itself is the old news.
I question the absolute value of thinking. Animals and
plants function in their environment organically. We created our
new human environment, the second nature, civilization -- why
should we think now? The new paradise is supposed to satisfy us
and we constructed it for that reason -- what for is thinking in
such conditions? It would be a contradiction in logic and plain
stupid. This critical or analytical "thinking" was needed before,
when we were in process of getting there, now it's an extra, a
hobby or luxury. When I go through a supermarket selecting
products, I do not need analysis, only INFORMATION. We still can
have a conversation, but it has nothing to do with Plato.
"Problem-solving" and "brain-storming" -- give me a break!
Looking for an answer which is UNKNOWN TO THEM -- what a
caricature of thinking! Philosophy has a different task -- to
CREATE QUESTIONS.
I have to say -- writing is a desire NOT TO BE UNDERSTOOD.
You can't have it both ways. Most of the pomo books are about
sharing of UNDERSTANDABLE. Why should I read a book in Chinese? I
don't understand Chinese! I read about something I KNOW. Our
publishing INDUSTRY with astronomical number of books is possible
because they produce ANTI-BOOKS. "The Great Books" were pushed
out of schools because they are useless. Their intend and address
is not me, but God. Let him read them. Why should I read
Shakespeare, for instance? Instead of watching a movie BASED on
something from Shakespeare? The most obvious indication of our
situation is disappearance of poetry. A poem has no intentions of
"informing" me. That's why our poets pay for their books.
There is a "film-situation" and there a "book-situation." Book has no place in paradise. What would you say seeing cat reading a book? Abomination! What for my cat should read a book? Cat has no "book-situation." I have to make cat's life really miserable, to create a different environment where will be a need for questioning and start thinking? It's not a need for reading but CONNECTING with oneself (God). What in our new social architecture of time and space does for it? Each of us is isolated from the rest (trivial fact) and craves for breaking out of the bubble -- car radio, walkman, tv. Anti-book situations. If it gets really tough -- drugs. Getting together with yourself, getting out of whatever is left of you.
How to write in a dead language? Let say you decided to
write a book in Aramaic. First, you must know that your readers
are dead. Second, you will write about Aramaic issues, which of
no interest to anybody anymore. Let say you are a genius and
since something Aramaic is left in us, you still have a chance.
Let even imagine that you have a publisher! Now you have to
translate your book into their "book".... You think I am ironical
and things couldn't be so bad. No, I am dead serious. Writing and
reading is an act of resistance, almost a heroism. You should
know that it's a protest! A declaration of war, a destruction of
the world we paid so dearly to have.... Well, it all is already
describe before me. In science fiction.
Of course, things are not that bad. They are bad for the
dead people. Maybe that's the reason why they are dead. The
future will make the difference between the dead and the living
even stronger. Here I am again with this resurrection. But you
see, it's impossible to talk about it with mentioning the
Apocalypse, the bad news. The end of the world is bad thing. You
have to remind yourself that it has to be done for a good reason.
Everything at the Judgement Day -- yes or no, noting in between.
No, we won't burn books, we will COVER the world with books. Not
censorship, the overload of everything. Plenty is our answer. We
will insist that all should read! (ALL -- the method) Read is
good! Did you see the public service commercials? The direct
propaganda! Do you understand what does it mean that the MESSAGE
comes from the MEDIA? "Read!" -- written on TV screens is a death
sentense to books. You know what it means when an executioner put
his hands on you. The end.
Ab Imperio is a new international multidisciplinary journal dedicated to academic debate on history and theory of nationalities and nationalism in the former Russian Empire, Soviet Union, and Russian Federation. This quarterly, published in Kazan (Tatarstan, Russia) and distributed internationally, will not only enhance academic exchange but also provide policy recommendations in the spheres of national policy-making and international relations. Ab Imperio's editors include Sergei Glebov (Rutgers University, USA), Alexander Kaplunovsky (Freie Universitat, Berlin), Marina Mogilner, and Alexander Semyonov (CEU, Budapest). The editors currently accept manuscripts for thematic issues on Liberalism and Nationalism, Crime and Ethnicity, Liberal Nationalism and Imperialism, Ethnicity and Nation. There is no restriction on the language of manuscripts. For further information, contact Ab Imperio, P.O. Box 157, Kazan, 420015, Russia; tel/fax: 7(8432) 644-018; e-mail: ai@bancorp.ru or Sergei Glebov at glebov@eden.rutgers.edu or Alexander Kaplunovsky at akapluno@yahoo.com or visit the journal's web page: http://www.knet.ru/~ai
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