Give me something to believe in

A compelling inside view of racial hatred and bigotry in contemporary Russia.


Yes, people are poor and unhappy in Russia. I'm sure there is bad planning and widespread corruption. Simple people need simple answers and "drive out all the foreigners" seems to create enough feeling of empowerment and exhilaration that it serves as a good-enough coping mechanism for the fear of Other. But aggression is the last resort of the powerless. People rally behind neonazi beliefs, mistakenly projecting the problem into immigrants because that at least is something they feel they can deal with.

We have been looking at the way we function for, oh, I don't know, ever since the Golgafrinchans first landed on Earth and started making documentaries about themselves. So the ironic (understatement) thing is that everything is known about humans and their behavior. By somebody. People studying the origins of prejudice tend to conclude that we are wired so that we first create a separation into "our" group and "their" group on whatever basis, then find reasons to fear and oppose the other group. Just the other way around from what conventional logic would have us believe.

Unfortunately it does not do much good to condemn and punish racist behavior, as it is merely a symptom and not a cause. It's a more ancient human way of existing, and is disappointing in a modern context where we know that we can do better. Punishing by imprisonment is part of that same ancient paradigm that has not been rethought yet. Education, cooperation and discovering commonality of interest would probably be far more productive in the long run.

I met an honest-to-god Bush supporter yesterday. I was taken aback when this normal-looking and sounding guy suddenly declared "I love president Bush", and went on to claim that none of what is happening was Bush's fault, that he is doing the best he can and even though "some people" don't think the war in Iraq is a good thing, Bush is just doing what's necessary. That prices are going up because that's how "the world" is right now and it has nothing to do with our president. I saw no possible utility in arguing the point, and conceded lukewarmly that the situation was complex and many factors were involved. But it reminds me of the sort of blinded vision that current Neo-Nazis promote in regard to "innocent" Hitler and the Holocaust. The death of the ideal - more so than the man - is what is not permissible. Again, people adjust data to fit their needs: they build a god first and then find ways to worship him with conviction. When the Creationist Museum opened in Kentucky, I saw a video of two of the interviewed visitors with big smiles, who were quite upfront about it: we like it very much because it supports what we believe in.

What "Age of Reason"? Three centuries and it still hasn't penetrated. Wouldn't it be more sensible to describe an "age" in terms of where the moral sense and intellectual development of the masses lie? In some ways, you could say that individuals in our society live side-by-side but in many different ages, where grouping is much less dependent on race or ethnicity or wealth than on the level of personal accountability and rational thinking faculty. There are white middle-class Americans who I would only approach with all the curiosity of an anthropologist.