An American friend has recently asked if the Russian government is going to ban travel abroad and if we’re going to be separated from our children and our granddaughter. The scenario is very difficult to imagine, but we in Russia are more and more often forced to consider utterly unrealistic scenarios. Very few people, mostly the sci-fi types were thinking of a war in Ukraine with our involvement. Almost no one, including Putin, thought Russia would ever annex the Crimean peninsula. Very few envisioned the witch-hunt against Russian NGO’s. The images of perfectly good – albeit contraband food – being burned and bulldozed – strike me as surrealistic preview of things to come – or perhaps a bad dream one forgets quickly.
The truth is – everything is possible. Everywhere our imagination can take us – we can take ourselves. Such is the strange gift of imagination we, humans, received. We use imagination not only to predict, but also to cause the future. And in human affairs – there is very little difference between the two.
I am not sure how to stop the horrible, paranoid nightmares that a number of my compatriots are having right now. They cannot wake up, and their dreams are all repetitive, obsessive, sweaty, and dark. Other people, the minority of us, are as horrified as we are fascinated by their dreams. What people fear becomes the reality, just like in The Sphere by Stephen King. Our own dreams of free, democratic, spirited Russia fade away, overpowered by the images of the new World War, the Realpolitik, geopolitics, the zero-sum-game, or whatever other nonsense they invent – and start believing in. The insane pundits on state TV tell tall tales of conspiracy of all against us. Another group of freaks tell how Russia is older than Rome, and how we’ve possessed the unimagined power in the past; it is ours to retake, we’re only years away from reemerging as the world’s superpower. All those people cannot stop; they are caught in their own nightmares, and the world - of course! – provides endless confirmations of their lunacy. The reality of dream is self-conforming. How do you wake up a nation, when TV, the most powerful dream-inducer is spitting out nightmares. I know exactly what Goya had meant by the “Sleep of Reason.” I see the monsters, and the monsters are us.
The truth is – everything is possible. Everywhere our imagination can take us – we can take ourselves. Such is the strange gift of imagination we, humans, received. We use imagination not only to predict, but also to cause the future. And in human affairs – there is very little difference between the two.
I am not sure how to stop the horrible, paranoid nightmares that a number of my compatriots are having right now. They cannot wake up, and their dreams are all repetitive, obsessive, sweaty, and dark. Other people, the minority of us, are as horrified as we are fascinated by their dreams. What people fear becomes the reality, just like in The Sphere by Stephen King. Our own dreams of free, democratic, spirited Russia fade away, overpowered by the images of the new World War, the Realpolitik, geopolitics, the zero-sum-game, or whatever other nonsense they invent – and start believing in. The insane pundits on state TV tell tall tales of conspiracy of all against us. Another group of freaks tell how Russia is older than Rome, and how we’ve possessed the unimagined power in the past; it is ours to retake, we’re only years away from reemerging as the world’s superpower. All those people cannot stop; they are caught in their own nightmares, and the world - of course! – provides endless confirmations of their lunacy. The reality of dream is self-conforming. How do you wake up a nation, when TV, the most powerful dream-inducer is spitting out nightmares. I know exactly what Goya had meant by the “Sleep of Reason.” I see the monsters, and the monsters are us.
I watched Tomorrowland on the flight from Germany earlier this month. The third to the last sentence was taken on as a theme in the film. Good stuff. Put a smile on my face. The Day of Knowledge is just around the corner. --Maggie
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