Amature Intro Comps of the Russian Idea and American Dream at the 3 am last night at work level
Oh ho ho. You only wish the title were a joke.
As many of you know because you were present, I had a CD release party the other night. Many of you also left unopened booze at my house. Thank you, I will take care of that for you. There ended up being more people there then I frankly knew how to communicate with, but as a result I did feel extra loved and sheepishly talented. Or at least adorable enough that people thought they ought to support me, and I am okay with that too. Also it was a blast! I should probably be blogging about the party and the egg toss that happened and the conversations and friends meeting friends and music etc. or at least how big of a pain in the ass it was to get copies made of CD art or even how hard it was just to get copies made so I could poster for no shame this morning… but frankly I don’t feel like it, so I’m going to get hot and heavy with a big sizzling sexy entry about nineteenth century Russian philosophy and my own personal reflections about American nationalism and how it relates to ideas of human identity. (Basically as thoughts inspired by reading the philosophy by Decembrist sympathizer and great inspiration to Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Pushkin… Peter Chaadaev)
I promise that this dirty trend of Mirri-thoughts-dribble will continue to spread its pasty white legs in the wake of the internet monster I have been threatening for weeks involving my own psycho-analysis of my obsession with Heath Ledger’s Joker as soon as can get my brain behind it. So far the thesis I’m working with seems to be that the Joker represents the way the world is as supposed by the movie to be and brings the standard roles of the good evil battle frequented in modern folklore (comics, fantasy etc) into a broader spectrum that I have only been exposed to previously by having read The Watchmen. The focus will not be on how the movie is unique to its genre, as I have limited knowledge in comics though am well informed in other fantastical areas of literature, but rather on the representation and discussion of world views and human nature as brought up in the film. And lastly, what my deal is in relation to that. Oh don’t worry. There’s no escaping this one.
Chaadaev is the first Russian thinker to notably coin the use of the terms “Westernizers” and “Salavophiles” to determine the dichotomy of ideas about Russia’s destiny as a country. This argument and concept is one of great focus in a lot of Russian thought and has been termed “The Russian idea”. It becomes, to Chaadaev and his contemporaries as grand an analogy as how Russian contributes to humankind as well as the search for Russian identity. My sense and observations of ideas about American nationalism and human identity brings me to reflect on his thoughts in relation to how I perceive the worldviews of the nation and other individuals in it today.
To begin with Chaadaev would undoubtedly be characterized as a Westernizer, due to his beliefs that Russia ought to look to the West (imparticular to some ideas of Roman Catholicism as opposed to Russian Orthodoxy, though he never did actually become a catholic) for as to how it might work towards unifying human kind into a positive state of being he, as a Christian, chooses to refer to as the kingdom of god. It should be made clear that this is not an idea of how everyone can get into heaven in that sense of the religion; it is more like the idea of human utopia rather than a physical place. Though there is no reference made by Chaadaev himself to this, my understanding of Russian paganism and folklore has a concept that this can be easily likened to. In Russian folklore and pre-Christian religion the gods live in a realm called “Prav” which is not like heaven so much of a state of reality that is truth. The really real, not necessarily spiritual or mystical or a justice as how we might think of it, but a world of whatever might be truth and right. The right way. I imagine Chaadaev as referring to the Kingdom of God basically as this concept put through the lens of Christianity. I could reference and tell you why I think that. But this already sounds like a paper enough. Trust me, that notion is pretty implicit in his writings and this is just the best way I can get it across.
Anyway. Chaadaev thought to examine the Russian experience and identity in relation to these higher goals of finding happiness and truth, i.e. the kingdom of god. The basic human question brought to a national level basically. And he really wasn’t pleased with how things were going. He describes Russians as a people who have done contributed nothing to history and therein have no sense of a future, with everything occurring in the present and passing them by leaving them as strangers to everything. Because they are an empty people, he supposes in later letters (after tsar Nicholas the 1st declared him insane and put him under house arrest) that there is the right time for a social revolution if Russians cast of the egoism of their nationality and sense that Russia is basically the moral leader of the world and everyone else must pay attention to what they have to offer as a mix of Eastern and Western ideas. He is not calling for this revolution, or saying it in so many words, nor is his sense that it would be at the level of everyday Russians but rather through the elite, however he attempts to address what he perceives as an arrogant national identity brought on through Russia’s view of its leadership of Christianity and therein the moral right. Chaadaev goes on to make claims about the surrender of egoism and freedom on a personal level to the truth of god which will then make itself known, but that it is not what interests me about his line of thought.
What interests me is the concept of the Russian Idea itself and its exploration. We see it throughout Russian literature, as Chaadaev is a great influence in that era and how it moves to apply itself to the whole human experience of the levels of such great writers as Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. The search and anguish of Russian and human purpose and identity as felt in Russian literature is a profound part of what makes that literature and thought so identifiable. For my purposes I see embodied in the portions of a novel I read by Leshkov called “the terrantas” (which if anyone finds me an English copy of I will do all kinds of unforgettable favors for). I came across this story as part of my class on the Roma, or gypsies, with an emphasis on their influence in Russia. I think my teacher Oleg Timofeyev had translated the chapeters for our purpose, but the novel is essentially about a group of people desperately searching for a place where they can find something really Russian. They fail, pretty much, and ironically come the closest when they meet a group of sad and traveling gypsies who wander from place to place.
The sense I get of American search for identity and place in the world is basically void of the concept of a search, of the acknowledgement that human beings are lost souls looking for meaning. The national identity seems to be to say, “Hey! We found it!” “We a country of a million identities and backgrounds knows exactly who we are so pay attention!” Now it’s true that this is basically the idea behind all nationalism. The difference I am attempting to point out is that while Americans make the claim of an American dream and perspective of individual liberty, Russian thought embraces the “Russian idea”, or the search for that dream and perspective. And as a writer who believe the American dream is a lie, like thousands of American writers before me, I believe that we should be looking for our national identity and place in humankind. One of the reasons I am so obsessed with Hunter S. Thompson is his search and exploration of American identity. There are plenty of people on the national stage who search for what America has to offer humankind. It’s an agenda both sides of policies lay claim to, but few voices seem to try to look for American identity as if it isn’t already known where it exists, or where the identity of the subculture is. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, is about the search for the death of the American dream, and American identity as it exists. However it exists.
Obviously I have reached a strange realm indeed where I am talking about Chaadaev who berates egotism and lifts up ideas of the search for national destiny as submission to unknown and unfathomable realms of a god… and Hunter S. Thompson who triumphs egotism and drives over 100miles an hour on acid through the desert to search for a press-paid hotel room and the big idea of where it all went wrong. Indeed such a long sentence alone begs questions. But the Russian and American identities are indeed probably just this different. I am most certainly not putting these figures up as representatives of those kinds of identities. No. I am in no position to even hint at that, particularly sense I am not nor will ever be Russian. Those are basically just some of my thoughts as to the kinds of searches national-oriented philosophy begs for. And I think America could use a hell a lot of it. We’re arrogant enough to try it, so why not? Obviously these are just my thoughts after I did a lot of reading for a class. Please keep that in mind.
Chaadaev’s idea of God and the kingdom of God is vast an unknown as a pure and true reality, his answer to Russian identity is to keep searching and the godly instincts left from creation will guide. His answer is the identity of Russia is that Russians are searching for right and identity. The right truth. I want us to be searching for ourselves and talking about it too. Instead of an answering a bullshit scholarship essay question asking us “What does it mean to be an American?” I want us to be asking where we can look for America, how have we failed so far, and finding a million ways to ask that question ourselves. Because let’s face it. We have ideas, but we don’t know, and we had better start exploring what and why.