Educational trips
Students of the MBOU Gymnasium participate in the work of specialized educational and scientific schools. These are educational centers in which conditions have been created for identifying and supporting gifted children through the formation of a developmental environment rich in updated educational programs, corresponding to modern scientific and technological demands. The educational environment of scientific schools allows children to be immersed in educational situations aimed at solving problems relevant to science, art, sports, business, and society as a whole.
- Educational and scientific schools of Tyumen State University
Since 2017, Tyumen State University has been a Regional Center for the Development and Support of Gifted Children of the Tyumen Region. With the support of the Government of the Tyumen Region and the Sirius Educational Center, it conducts specialized on-site Educational and Scientific Schools. Participants schools– these are students of grades 8-11 of general education institutions who have high personal achievements at various stages of the All-Russian Olympiad for schoolchildren and other high-status intellectual competitions. The school's teachers are employees of Tyumen State University from among the teaching staff, as well as scientific and innovation departments of the university; invited specialists from specialized organizations and enterprises of the Tyumen region. School program is aimed at identifying highly motivated and talented children, creating conditions for their intellectual development, creating a positive life outlook, obtaining additional education, popularizing scientific knowledge, education and socialization.
Students of the MBOU Gymnasium are participants in all five projects:
1) Spring specialized session “Humanitarian”. Session profile - humanities: history, social studies, literature, Russian language.
2) Winter profile session “Descartes Square”. Session profile – physics and mathematics.
3) Natural science school “Quintessence”. Session profile – biology, chemistry, geography.
4) Engineering and design school "Ratio". Session profile – robotics, computer science.
5) Autumn profile session “Idefix”. Session profile – foreign languages.
Educational camp "Foxford"— 8 days of active preparation for the Unified State Exam with teachers from Moscow State University, MIPT and HSE, problem writers and Unified State Exam experts. Preparation in subjects is carried out by candidates of sciences, members of the jury of olympiads, authors of school textbooks and manuals, members of the inspection commissions of the Unified State Examination and the Unified State Examination.
Chemistry school "Ouroboros".The school's profile is chemistry. Teachers from Moscow State University take part in the educational session. M.V. Lomonosov; Russian Chemical Technological University named after. DI. Mendeleev (Moscow); Magnitogorsk State Technological University named after. G. I. Nosova; Chelyabinsk State Pedagogical University; UrFU named after Gorky, Yekaterinburg, as well as teachers: MBOU Secondary School No. 24, MBOU "Lyceum No. 23", MBOU "Lyceum No. 39" in Ozersk and MAOU "Lyceum No. 77", MAOU "Lyceum No. 37", MAOU "Gymnasium No. 80" » Chelyabinsk.
Beloretsk Computer School (branch of the private educational institution "Ural Regional Energy Commission"). Beloretsk Computer School has the status of a secondary school with in-depth study of mathematics. The school is one of the recognized leaders in Russian school education. During the holidays, specialized camps (schools) are organized for schoolchildren in grades 3-11 on the basis of the BCS and OTC. Traditionally, during the summer holidays the following are held: math camp (2 shifts), physics and computer science camp, camp in English(2 shifts). During the winter holidays there is a mathematics camp where the program developed by D.Yu. is implemented. Kuznetsov (Nizhny Novgorod) a game form of teaching mathematics “Tournament of new math games" The tournament program is designed for junior schoolchildren, while seniors prepare for performances at Olympiads and learn to solve non-standard problems. During the autumn and spring holidays, mathematical races are held and, in parallel, groups are formed based on applications from general education institutions in physics, chemistry, computer science, and English.
Summer scientific school “Mathematical anthill” of the Laboratory of Continuing Mathematical Education (hereinafter referred to as LNME).
The LNME Summer School is a real “school of intellectual maturation.” These are studies, travel, friendship with interesting and bright people, sports, quests, games, theatrical performances. As part of the Summer School, 120 academic hours of classes in mathematics, programming, and biology are mastered. Every day the guys discuss the masterpieces of world and Russian cinema, read books together, their free time is occupied with intellectual, role-playing, sports games, and mathematical battles.
The organizer of the Summer Scientific Mathematical School is the Laboratory of Continuing Mathematical Education (St. Petersburg), working under the leadership of I. A. Chistyakov. At LNME, students receive education according to proprietary programs in the fields of mathematics, physics, and programming. LNME graduates are doctors and candidates of science, the majority make successful professional careers in large Russian and foreign companies. LNME students are repeated winners of international olympiads in mathematics and computer science.
Thanks to the high level of teaching subjects and comfortable conditions for students, specialized vacation camps are known all over Russia and are in demand by parents who want to improve the educational level of their children and effectively organize their vacation.
This week, at the Orlyonok children's health center, located near Snezhinsk, classes are being held at the Ouroboros All-Russian visiting chemistry school, the founders and organizers of which are Ozersk teachers.
Last Sunday, 130 high school students, passionate about chemistry, and highly qualified teachers with extensive experience working in vacation specialized schools and leading universities in the country, who have trained a considerable number of winners and winners of Olympiads in chemistry at various levels.
During the week, they will intensively study their favorite subject and relax in a circle of knowledgeable peers: studying at this school is combined with creative and sporting events, and involves communication between teenagers in their usual leisure format.
The conditions created for children meet all safety and comfort standards. "Orlyonok" is a children's educational and health complex, which includes residential buildings, an administrative, educational and medical center. Students are provided with quality meals a complete diet and are located in capital two-story buildings, equipped with all necessary furniture, toilet rooms, showers, tennis tables, etc. Classes at the school itself are held in specially equipped classrooms and laboratories.
Natalya Azieva, head of the All-Russian visiting chemistry school "Ouroboros", director of secondary school No. 24 (Ozersk):
- Our chemistry school has existed in the district since 2002 with the support of the education department (L.N. Grushevaya was at its origins) and was created with Ozersk schoolchildren in mind. We reached the all-Russian level 10 years later - when gifted children from Moscow, Tatarstan, the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk and other cities began to come to us. Most of it is still local talent.
Gradually, Ouroboros formed an authoritative teaching staff; this year they are cooperating with usteachers from Moscow State University (MSU), Chemical-Technological University named after. Mendeleev (RHTU),St. Petersburg State University (SPbSU), Ural Federal University (Ural Federal University), leading educational organizations in Magnitogorsk and Chelyabinsk, as well as teachers in Ozersk.
We organize trips three times a year - during the holidays and, depending on the period, we prepare children either for participation in olympiadsmunicipal, regional, Russian, international levels, or to state final certification. Interest in “Ouroboros” is shown mainly by students in grades 8-11; some of them are smart and clever who attend each of the 12 shifts for four years.
Stay at school for young chemists organized on a group basis - depending on the level of their preparation, different teachers work with them. After 18:00 until lights out, children's leisure activities are provided by counselors; they conduct quests, competitions on the dance floor and training sessions at the stadium. At the end of each race, the guys take unique tests to test their acquired knowledge - this is how their subject growth is revealed (above and beyond the regular curriculum).
The main goal of Ouroboros, according to its organizers, is to provide an opportunity for schoolchildren to expand their knowledge and feel more confident in matters of chemistry, and for teachers to gain experience communicating with gifted children and colleagues.
Marina Bogorodskaya, associate professor of the Russian Chemical Technical University (Moscow), also teaches schoolchildren of the Dolgoprudny physical-technical lyceum:
- It gives me great pleasure to work with children who sacrificed their holidays to deepen their knowledge of chemistry. For our part, we are trying to teach them to think outside the box, which is necessary to win at Olympiads at various levels. And I like that, unlike Sirius, different children study at OuroborosBylevel of training. Everyone is passionate about chemistry: the “stars” go to Moscow State University and Mendeleev University, while the rest simply find chemical knowledge useful in life.
Now at the university I am teaching courses in nuclear physics, and one of the students once approached me: Marina Anatolyevna, you remember me, I was with you in Ozersk at the chemistry school, and now I have entered your department.
In this regard, I would like to wish the officials from the Ministry that they not only include successes at competitions in their reports, but also plan the training of future champions. I believe that Ouroboros is a huge achievement in our educational process.
Mars Vakhidov, teacher of the highest category, head of the Resource Center of MAOU Lyceum No. 77 (Chelyabinsk):
- I have been coming to Ouroboros for 10 years now, because it is very important both for children (who here become friends, then colleagues and, often, after university, work together in leading scientific centers in Russia), and for me: I meet here like-minded people, in such picturesque places nature itself inspires discovery.
I am glad that the school is constantly changing - I would like to hope that in the future it will expand its chemical and biological profile and become a development complex.
Sergey Krotov, junior researcher at the national society “Radio Institute” of the Rosatom State Corporation, former graduate of a multi-disciplinary school:
- At Ouroboros, we teach children not only special knowledge, but also a philosophy of life, a culture of behavior in society - without all this, indeed, there can be no science, since chemistry is not only dry numbers, not just information. A real chemist must have sparkling eyes, a high interest rate, accuracy, a creative approach and an understanding of how the world around him lives.
The participants of the field school have not spent much time together yet, but they have already managed to make friends and form an opinion about Ouroboros.
Sergey Volnov (Moscow):
- I visited different subject schools, including Sirius. There is something to compare with and I can say that Ouroboros has a very decent level of teaching, they give us fundamental knowledge - such a base is laid out, right brick by brick, and there is still time not only to learn, but also to have fun.
Rinat Sidakov (Chelyabinsk), Evgenia Yastrikova(Chelyabinsk), Ivan Goncharov (Ekateriburg) are winners of the highest level Olympiads, they dream of connecting their professional lives with chemistry and are extremely interested in projects such as Ouroboros:
Ivan Goncharov (pictured on the right):
- I was attracted to this school by a number of factors: firstly, it’s quite fun to relax here, and secondly, much of what we go through here will remain closed to most people on this planet for the rest of their lives - and this makes us move forward , makes us individuals. Thirdly, the gigantic work that we do here keeps us in absolute good shape: despite the fact that many talk about the balance of work and rest, in fact, many come here precisely because Ouroboros allows you to study from morning to evening favorite subject.
The organizers of the All-Russian visiting chemistry school "Ouroboros" express gratitude for the support of the administrations of the Ozersky urban district and the Snezhinsky urban district, as well as the parents of the schoolchildren for whose benefit the training is being conducted.
Ouroboros(ancient Greek οὐροβόρος, from οὐρά “tail” and βορός “devouring”; lit. “devouring [its] tail”) - a coiled snake biting its own tail. It is one of the oldest symbols known to mankind, the exact origin of which - historical period and specific culture - cannot be established.
Although the symbol has many different meanings, the most common interpretation describes it as a representation of eternity and infinity, especially the cyclical nature of life: alternation of creation and destruction, life and death, constant rebirth and death. The Ouroboros symbol has a rich history of use in religion, magic, alchemy, mythology and psychology. One of its analogues is swastika - both of these ancient symbols mean the movement of space.
It is believed that this symbol came to Western culture from Ancient Egypt, where the first images of a coiled snake are dated to the period between 1600 and 1100 BC. e.; they personified eternity and the universe, as well as the cycle of death and rebirth . A number of historians believe that it was from Egypt that the ouroboros symbol migrated to Ancient Greece, where it began to be used to denote processes that had no beginning or end. However, it is difficult to accurately establish the origin of this image, since its close analogues are also found in the cultures of Scandinavia, India, China and Greece.
The symbol of a coiled snake is found in implicit form in Mesoamerica, particularly among the Aztecs. Despite the fact that snakes played a significant role in their mythology, the question of a direct connection between the pantheon of Aztec gods and Ouroboros remains open among historians - so, without any detailed comments, B. Rosen calls Quetzalcoatl, and M. Lopez - Coatlicue.
Interest in ouroboros has persisted for many centuries - in particular, it plays a prominent role in the teaching Gnostics , and is also an important element (in a metaphorical sense) of the craft of medieval alchemists, symbolizing the transformation of elements into philosopher's Stone , required to transform metals into gold, as well as personifying chaos in the mythological understanding of the term.
In recent times, the Swiss psychoanalyst C. G. Jung has given a new meaning to the symbol of ouroboros. Thus, in orthodox analytical psychology, the Ouroboros archetype symbolizes darkness and self-destruction at the same time as fertility and creative potency. Further research into this archetype was most reflected in the works of the Jungian psychoanalyst Erich Neumann, who identified ouroboros as an early stage of personality development.
For more detailed information readUtopia is a special genre of philosophy and literature that describes plans for building life. Now this genre is more relevant than ever - the world is changing and we need to understand in which direction it is changing and what can be offered for change. A new section about this
I
Milk rivers and jelly banks are not an image from science fiction; they simply describe the land of dreams in fairy tales. Illiterate storytellers put the same meaning into the metaphor as educated science fiction writers did when they described unknown planets: somewhere beyond the boundaries of the familiar world there is a land of happiness; there are rivers of milk from which you can drink just like that, without exhausting labor; there is a country of happiness, where a person is not humiliated by the “painful tar of labor”, is not glued together by the “resin of circular patience.”
Religion talks about Paradise, which will be a reward for the hardships of earthly life, but there is no need to wait for the Kingdom of God - we want to be happy today. We are not condemned to the existence that we are forced to eke out; If we make an effort, we will find the blessed land.
Going around the world to look for happiness is the most famous motive folk tale. This motive guided real life millions of emigrants fleeing from unbearable bondage. British beggars made their way into the holds of ships to sail to unknown America, Belarusian Jews fled from pogroms in Argentina, Dutch adventurers went to South Africa - thousands of memoirs and hundreds of novels have been written about this. Remember the Mayne Reed settlers? Remember Jack London's "Valley of the Moon"? These are not science fiction, but realistic stories: people go wherever they look to find a dream.
The reluctance to accept a gray fate is in human nature. Gauguin quits his position as a clerk and goes to Polynesia, Van Gogh leaves the dim North Brabant and settles under the scorching sun of Arles, and the widow of engineer Durrell from rainy English Bournemouth moves with her children to the Greek island of Corfu - and here we are reading novels by Gerald and Lawrence Durrell about a fabulous land Mediterranean. These novels are akin to utopias, but the utopian fairy tale of the Greek islands was created by the will of one person who decided to change his unsightly fate.
Man is the master of his destiny, he is not condemned, he can change everything. But what if we seek happiness not individually, but all together? What if the land of your dreams is not far away? And if it’s not on the map, then it can be built, you just have to really want it! In four years there will be a garden city here!
Project of a monument to the Third International. Vladimir Tatlin. 1919
And the colonists, described by Jules Verne, build a republic on the Mysterious Island, and the philosopher Plato goes to the tyrant Dionysius in Syracuse to teach the tyrant how to build a society of justice and happiness. We need to agree on basic things: we need fair laws, the desire of everyone to work for the benefit of the common cause - this is so logical and so understandable!
The tyrant did not heed the philosopher’s advice; as a result of his mission, Plato himself was sold into slavery, but he did not give up his attempt to change the world.
The desire to build a new and fair society in spite of everything: nature, culture, tradition, climate, power - is ineradicable; A person can be prohibited from everything, but the ability to think and dream cannot be prohibited. Another thing is that power and tradition do not encourage dreams.
Henry VIII cut off the head of the humanist Thomas More, the author of a treatise about the island of Utopia, on which the rule of a single law reigns and there are no kings; the monk Tommaso Campanella was kept in captivity for twenty-two years, subjected to daily torture, while he wrote “The City of the Sun”; Antonio Gramsci dreamed of the intellectual transformation of humanity and wrote about it in prison, sentenced to twenty years in prison.
“Utopias turned out to be much more feasible than previously thought”
Nikolay Berdyaev
History is moved not by wars, not by political intrigues, but by persistent thought, a great and noble project - only a few believed so. The own fate of these people, however, was deplorable: Cyrano de Bergerac was killed by the hand of a hired killer, Thomas Munzer was executed, Van Gogh shot himself, Gauguin died in poverty, and this list can be continued endlessly. But that’s not even the main problem. How many characters die and suffer?
So Richard the Lionheart languished in captivity, and Archduke Ferdinand was shot, although they, truly, did not dream of general prosperity. The main trouble is that the activities of utopians and dreamers are being taken over by that very pragmatic reality that they tried to abolish and which in turn abolishes all beautiful-minded fantasies.
Van Gogh's paintings, which should have belonged to a peasant freed from backbreaking labor (Van Gogh's desire), today have become the subject of financial speculation by immoral people; the peasant sermons of Thomas Münzer turned into a bloody peasant war, and what happened to the teachings of Marx, who dreamed of universal freedom - you should ask the prisoners of the camps about this. It is possible to change the life of one person, it is worth trying to change the life of a family, but is it possible to change the life of everyone?
“The Kingdom of Freedom” is not a fairy tale, but a term from the lexicon of Marxism, as Karl Marx defined communism, but it sounds quite fabulous, and therefore unrealizable. A realist and a skeptic will say that the prophecy of the communist poet Mayakovsky (“and happiness with the sweetness of huge berries will ripen on red October flowers”) is no different from the fantasy of milk rivers and jelly banks. Equally irresponsible.
Dreams of a shining Eldorado, an international of the oppressed, a world Christian monarchy, a universal global democracy have remained dreams. What’s worse is that attempts to implement them cost the lives of thousands of fanatics.
Financiers and economists analyzed the projects of More, Campanella, Marx and Plato and showed: in principle, there is no “common cause”, equality exists only among the rank and file in the barracks; in fact, the experience of socialist dictatorships confirmed this. Someone must work so that another can indulge in high leisure; people's abilities are not equal from birth; the managerial class needs privileges; forced labor is necessary; There is no consciousness among the masses, and where would it come from?
Athenian democracy was supported by slavery, and slavery was not provided for in the utopias of modern times (More assumed forced labor of criminals and prisoners of war, but within gentle limits). Any student of the Faculty of Economics can explain the mistakes of the projectors today; the utopian thinker looks like Don Quixote among sensible scientists (it is not for nothing that the winner of Don Quixote in Cervantes’ novel turns out to be a bachelor, that is, a graduate of Salamanca, Samson Carrasco).
The positivist philosopher will decompose the beautiful declaration into its component parts and show its insignificance. Oxford nominalism has become proverbial. From time immemorial, it turned out that beautiful generalizations were refuted by factography. The boring professor takes dusty volumes with dry numbers from the shelf and points out mistakes and miscalculations to the projector.
It is one thing to proclaim freedom to the oppressed, but a completely different matter to organize the creative work of these same oppressed people. There were too many utopias in the 20th century, every second politician promised heaven on earth, there are so many concepts of prosperity that the average person cannot fit into the brain - and we are accustomed to being skeptical about the latest welfare projects.
So, during election campaigns, deputies promise pensions and hot water supplies, but then it turns out that there is no budget for pensioners and the water supply is broken.
With the same tired contempt with which we look at the next tribune, the philosophy of postmodernism observes the declarations of the twentieth century (the style of postmodernism itself arose as a reaction to declarative modernism).
Postmodernism formulated the task of dismantling the pompous structures of the twentieth century. Philosophers of postmodernism dismantled the concepts of 20th century projectors into their component parts - and the projects crumbled into dust.
Common Home? Impossible. Workers' International? Lifeless. A society of equals? Can not be. Mutual language? Nonsense. Isn’t that what the Lord God himself did with the project of the Tower of Babel - a daring plan that was destroyed by him?
“We lift up the towers of Babel in pride again, but God destroys the city into arable land, interfering with the word,” and so it continues from century to century. Nations, strata, people, having barely united for a great goal, scattered in different directions, and again the formidable specter of internecine war arose, and the unrealistic thought of unity again came to the minds of dreamers.
How many times has the European world made attempts to unite - in the Roman Empire, in the Holy Roman Empire of the Habsburgs, in the Napoleonic Empire, in a united Europe! And every time the overall project ended in failure. How many times have defenders of the poor written declarations of equality, only to end up making the first among equals dictators and saying that some people are “more equal than others”!
But neither history nor God's will is a decree, and, having collected the fragments and debris, they put the utopian puzzle back together, again pull towers into the sky, write declarations again, repeating the same plot - the flight of a dream and its collapse. The Tower of the Third International, designed by Tatlin, is painfully reminiscent of Bruegel's Tower of Babel, and the fate of the Third International, like the fate of the Tower of Babel, is predictable in advance, but has the design itself lost its appeal?
It is impossible to come to terms with the given, to agree that you are dependent, that everything is predetermined. And it seems that let there be one more attempt, one more effort - and people will finally understand that they must live in justice, guided by love, and not by self-interest; together, not apart.
II
Predictions of the future are divided into utopias and dystopias. Utopias are blueprints for a bright tomorrow, dystopias are warnings against realizing a hasty dream.
Utopias were written by Thomas More and Tommaso Campanella; they were designing a new society - arbitrariness reigned in their contemporary world, and they offered a recipe for a fair way of life. Orwell and Zamyatin wrote dystopias; they showed how the triumph of order turns into barracks and camps.
It is difficult for us to admit to ourselves that our fantasies about the future are utopia(s) and dystopia at the same time: what is a utopia for one person is a dystopia for his neighbor. Let's say Malevich dreamed of a world that Chagall saw as a nightmare; Mayakovsky dreamed of a society that would horrify Nabokov. Ernst Jünger's utopia "The Worker" frightened those who believed in Antonio Gramsci's utopia.
It’s unpleasant to say this, but Hitler’s work “Mein Kampf” (banned in Russia) is also a kind of utopia, it is nothing more than a plan for the future world order; and “Thus Spake Zarathustra” by Nietzsche is also a dream about the ideal embodiment of an idea, about a “superman” standing above base passions. Other researchers compare Mayakovsky’s “Man” with Nietzsche’s “superman” - and even find similarities.
Take a look at Kustodiev’s canvas “Bolshevik”: here he is walking, a huge man-mountain (as Gulliver’s Lilliputians called him), across our everyday life with a giant red flag; look at the fiery horse of Petrov-Vodkin, the apocalyptic horse, we remember that there was a pale horse and a black horse, but now a scarlet one has been revealed to you - look at these formidable symbols of change and ask: is it for the good? I wanted something new and grandiose, I wanted to overcome the dull everyday life, the old order had rotted - there was a war ahead for the redistribution of the world, the artists felt it.
"Thus Spoke Zarathustra" by Nietzsche. Another dream of a "superman"
Ahead of the war (or calling for war, who can say for sure?), dreamers drew blueprints for a bright tomorrow. Futurists of the 20s of the last century, Marxists of the late 19th century, progressives and populists - they are all a kind of utopians: they created a project of the future, sometimes sloppily written, not always thought out in detail, but so bright! “Budetlyans” and “tvoryans” (the terms of Velimir Khlebnikov) marched through the city, defending their project - and battalions of the same projectors, inspired by a different utopia, marched towards the “Budetlyans”; often the slogans of the two armies coincided.
The terrible harvest of the 20th century is also the price of utopian thinking. Some of the projects were even brought to life - at the cost of great blood.
In any case, dystopia is a direct consequence of utopia: they built something and were horrified. It seems like they built it carefully, everything according to the drawings - so maybe the drawings were crooked? Or is every utopia at the same time a dystopia - are our fantasies simply ambivalent?
It is difficult to say what Plato's fundamental "Republic" is. It seems to some that a project for an ideal society has been created, while others believe that a plan for a barracks has been created, where there is no place for individual freedom. Karl Popper even wrote a book, The Open Society and Its Enemies, about how philosophers, drawing up plans for “ideal” rational dormitories, actually created barracks, and he pointed to Plato as the first among the barracks builders.
III
What is America if not an embodied utopia, a promised land, open to daring? new world? There, in the Old World, it failed: slavery, feudalism, wars - so let's find a flourishing virgin land where we can start from scratch. And the fact that the conquistadors paved the way with fire and sword through the territories inhabited by the Aztecs, that the missionaries burned alive infidels, that the Indians in North America were driven from their territories - these are, so to speak, overhead costs for the new justice, the dystopia that is contained inside every utopia.
The “American Dream” has become a nightmare for some, but for others it remains a great utopia. What is America if not a continuation of the classic “island” fantasy - a society built outside the continents and far from a civilization that has not lived up to expectations? Atlantis, Thomas More's Utopia Island, Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, Robinson Crusoe's Island, Cyrano de Bergerac's Islands of the Moon, Jules Verne's Mysterious Island - these are all fantasies of the same order.
Robert Merle’s utopia is called “The Island” (the author took the Bounty episode as the basis for the plot and made a parable out of this episode). Hemingway’s last novel is called “Islands in the Stream” (translated into Russian as “Islands in the Ocean”), and the metaphor: man is an island, independence is island existence - sounds clearly.
The traveler (who is also the builder of a new society) exclaims: let's find a new land and build something that was unthinkable in the old world!
To start with a clean slate - for such a dream the foundations are painfully obvious: the finitude of biological life. Of one of his heroes, Dickens sarcastically remarked: “The old man was about to begin new life(the old man wants to marry the young woman. - Author’s note), and just in time, since the old life was not enough for long.”
There are countless attempts to prolong vanishing youth with a new marriage, a new career, a new medicine, but on a societal scale this need is a thousand times stronger. Empires do not want to disintegrate, cultures do not want to come to terms with the fact that everything in the world has an end: both the greatness of Rome and the greatness of samurai Japan are not eternal. A new concept emerges that promises eternal youth: the utopian project of Mussolini or Mishima.
“The youth of America is one of its oldest jokes,” said Oscar Wilde. “Other countries have a hundred. History is the mouth of the coffin. And my country is a teenager - create, invent, try!” - Mayakovsky wrote about Soviet Russia, which, of course, was the heir to a thousand years of Russian history, and the problems of the peasantry, barren land, etc. didn’t go anywhere, but how the poet wanted to see the world new and washed with dew!
The redivision of the world is always a consequence of someone’s retro-utopia: old cultures begin to talk about a “new order” and a “new man.” Strictly speaking, the “new man” cannot differ in any way from the old-style man; this individual has the same lungs and kidneys, the same life expectancy and amount of knowledge; however, both the Bolsheviks and the heroes of the Third Reich called themselves “new people” - that was the official term; they were carriers of utopian thinking.
It seems that the membership card makes the difference between individuals as significant as between Neanderthals and Cormagnons. As a rule, the “new man” establishes a new world through war, and history is forced to accept this paradox.
The rejuvenating elixir of war was prescribed by Nietzsche; in the industrial utopias of Ernst Jünger, the motif of war sounds major, this is how the “new man” asserts himself. It would never have occurred to the collector of European lands, Napoleon or Charlemagne (Charlemagne), who conquered Spain from the Moors, that war is evil. This did not occur to Mussolini and Hitler; on the contrary, the leaders of the “new people” believed that war hardens utopia and casts the dream in bronze.
Besides war, utopia expresses itself through revolution.
The French Jacobins were so passionate about change that they even changed the calendar. An idea takes hold of the masses, and in order for this idea to give the strength and courage to break everything that has already been built “to the ground” before starting to build “our new world”, the idea must be very attractive. It is often forgotten, however, that sometimes it is not so much the idea of the new as the blatant unbearability of the old.
“Don’t be afraid of ash, don’t be afraid of blasphemy,
Don't be afraid of hell and hell,
And the only thing you should be afraid of is
Who will say: “I know how to do it!”
Who will say: “To the one who follows me,
heaven on earth reward" -
sung by the anti-Soviet bard Galich.
The words and mood of the song are clear to us: it seems that humanity was plunged into the bloody history of the 20th century by the fantasy of the utopians, the fanatical belief of the founding fathers that they could build heaven on earth.
And in many ways Galich is right: the revolution brought a lot of blood. However, the song is silent about the fact that revolutions (the October Revolution, the French Revolution, the Thomas Münzer revolts and peasant uprisings) came as an alternative to war, often even bloodier than the revolution. Thus, the coup organized by the Bolsheviks arose against the backdrop of a world war, for which a utopia of a completely different kind was to blame.
There is a third possibility: a construction utopia that does not need revolution and war; but to build such a utopian structure requires a virgin continent, a distant planet or an uninhabited island.
The history of mankind, like the history of an individual, consists of a long history, and often the history determines life. But you always want to deceive nature.
IV
So the settlers settled on a clean island, began to create societies from scratch, and now they must decide: should they achieve technological progress or enjoy the pristine nature and warm themselves by the fire? Utopias are divided into two categories: those that call forward, and those that warn against movement and advise to return. Is the ideal in the past or the ideal in the future?
Plato himself, who stood at the origins of projective thinking, dreamed of the past; Other authors believe that, while traveling through Egypt and Mesopotamia, surveying the ruins of ancient (already ancient for him) cities, the philosopher discovered papyri depicting the coordinated work of a team. This example, in such striking contrast to the civil chaos contemporary to Plato, seemed to inspire him to the philosophy expressed in the Republic and the Laws. It is impossible to say whether the legend corresponds to the truth, but Plato himself refers to Atlantis, a semi-mythical island state that sank in the distant past.
The Old Testament prophet Daniel (unlike Plato, who considered history cyclical) approved the evolutionary development of society from kingdom to kingdom, until “the God of heaven erects a kingdom that will never be destroyed,” and the ancient Greek poet Hesiod described historical evolution as a descent from "golden" age to "iron" age. It is not difficult to calculate how differently both treated progress.
The concept of science as research and the concept of science as true knowledge are very different. And according to this difference, the life of a citizen of a utopia changes. Science fiction writers, describing the inventions of the future, believed that they promised freedom to humanity, but whether this is so cannot be said with certainty.
Engineer Cyrus Smith (the hero of The Mysterious Island) transforms the world by inventing new machines, but one day the machines will make the work of his servant, the African Nab, unnecessary, and Nab himself will be deprived of his pension. Where is the line beyond which progress ceases to benefit the employee?
The evils of workhouses and coal mines are described in Dickens's moving novels, and Dickens offers no other way out of such a situation than technological progress and individual decency. Mechanical labor will replace the labor of workers in factories, the bosses will become kinder, and the views of the oppressed will brighten. Dickens did not live to see the introduction oil industry led to the closure of coal mines - and the miners went on strike, clinging to jobs in which they, of course, were oppressed, but the work of the oppressed was better than unemployment.
The hero of David Thoreau's utopia "Walden, or Life in the Woods" convinces the reader that one must abandon the temptation of cities, and science fiction writers like Asimov promise the benefits of the introduction of robotics in huge cities. Both are utopias. Holden Caulfield (the hero of Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye) dreams of a house by a stream far from civilization, and H.G. Wells invents machines that will destroy houses by a stream.
Tolkien (author of the epic "The Lord of the Rings") believed that the aesthetics of the Middle Ages was the only way to stop the mechanization that was killing the tradition of Europe; in this he repeated the concept of Chesterton, who saw a lost ideal in the Catholic Middle Ages.
The medieval world most likely did not seem so bright to the inhabitants of the medieval cities of Europe (epidemics and dependence on nature made life very short), but Bradbury shows in the novel Fahrenheit 451 that a society of technological progress, which excluded individual art and craft as hindrance, will one day end in a nuclear war - and the survivors will inevitably return to the saving Middle Ages.
Scientific and technological progress leads to disaster, believe supporters of natural, “Rousseauist” utopias, for the sole reason that moral education gives only the individual character of labor, and industrial conveyor capitalism with a unified product excludes such labor.
“Now the painful question is: how to avoid the complete realization of utopias?”
Nikolay Berdyaev
Socialist William Morris believed that artisans, united in guild communes like the medieval ones, would be able to resist capitalism (see “News from Nowhere, or the Age of Tranquility”). He himself was a craftsman: he built houses, made furniture, painted pictures, even painted wallpaper - in a word, he played the role of Robinson Crusoe on the inhabited island of Britain, with the significant difference that the new Robinson was not surrounded by wild nature, and technical progress and Robinson, producing simple things, wanted to return the world to a pre-mechanistic state - he hoped to re-educate society.
Russian dreamer Chernyshevsky in the utopia “What to do?” described similar workshops of Vera Pavlovna: it is necessary to humanize labor, humiliated by capitalist anonymous production.
Fifty years will pass (only), and another socialist, Mayakovsky, will write about the Brooklyn Bridge: “I am proud of this steel mile, my visions stood alive in it - the struggle for structures instead of styles, the harsh calculation of nuts and steel.”
Bauhaus and VKHUTEMAS, these embodied workshops of Vera Pavlovna, considered as their ideal the exact opposite of what Chernyshevsky and Morris conceived, namely, not an individual thing that remembers the hand of the master, but mass production of standardized products. Both are for equality, they are all against oppression, but they interpret work itself in completely different ways.
These are polar concepts.
According to Morris, a union of artisans creates a unique thing that has its own face; the thing embodies the individual nature of labor. Work performs an educational function in society; work is a social religion.
Lithograph of a painting by John Absolon, which depicts an ornithopper - an aircraft invented by Leonardo
The Bauhaus masters proclaim “functionalism”, the thing becomes a servant, the thing programmatically has no face - it can be used in different ways and is a part of the assembly. The objective world is taken beyond the boundaries of a society engaged in high leisure activities.
The Bauhaus concept is, so to speak, a scientific and technical projection of the ancient polis: mechanized production and functionalism play the role that slaves played in Athenian democracy. Needless to say, this is the path chosen by Western society, which moved the production of the overwhelming number of products to the third world.
A consistent supporter of democracy, D. Moore insisted that the salvation of democracy lies in the mass robotization of labor, but a counter theory that interprets consumer society as an inevitable consequence of progress (see “Future Shock” by Alvin Toffler) argues with this plan.
Isaac Asimov believed that robots would sooner or later become animated and have equal rights with people - he transferred the idea of abolitionism to robotization; but if this happens, the oppression of robots will become the same shame as the oppression of small nations.
Utopias calling for individual labor (Rousseau, Tolkien, Salinger, Chesterton, William Morris) and utopias promising victory over simple labor (Jules Verne, Mayakovsky, VKHUTEMAS, Bauhaus, futurists, science fiction) are two dissimilar concepts moral education. Accordingly, the objective world, the environment, the very appearance of man, created by such utopias, are not similar in any way.
Compare the modulator (that is, that person, that being, which is designated as the measure of surrounding things) by Leonardo and the modulator by Le Corbusier - and the difference between the utopia of the Renaissance and the utopia of constructivism will become clear.
Leonardo painted a complex, beautifully organized, spiritual man, inscribing his proportions into a sphere, repeating the sphericity of the Universe. Corbusier depicted a schematic, soulless figure, inscribing it in the square of the barracks. Here it is appropriate to recall Malevich’s square-nested utopia.
The Renaissance is anthropomorphic; in the Renaissance concept, man is at the head of the plan of being; at the same time, the Renaissance seemed to “forget” about the presence of slaves building aircraft and weaving canvases for painting in the Fontainebleau Palace.
Drawing by Leonardo Da Vinci. His version of a flying machine.
It is appropriate to mention the third path, which is embodied by Vernadsky and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, namely, the synthesis of religion and science. There are no concepts of “past” and “future” here - knowledge is directed to the cosmic region of the infinite spirit; Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote hymns to God and the Machine at the same time, without seeing a contradiction between intense knowledge and faith.
However, the pinnacle of the process of cognition of humanity, according to Chardin, is its physical disappearance - dissolution in the ocean of spiritual existence (cf. “Solaris” by Stanislav Lem; Vernadsky’s thoughts on the noosphere), and such a goal will not seem attractive to every citizen of a utopian polis.
The fact that the disappearance of humanity will not happen literally tomorrow is reassuring and makes this utopia more attractive than a rejuvenating war and a cleansing revolution, but the desire to live now, and to live happily, to live a full-blooded life of heart and mind, is irrevocable.
V
The Italian Renaissance (primarily the Florentine aesthetics of the Medici court), understood as a utopian version of the golden age of antiquity, is in no way a retro-utopia, despite references to ancient authors and a constant dialogue with the world of antiquity. Here is a synthesis of inventive (Leonardo), conceptual (Michelangelo), theological (Mirandola), civic (Valla), state - in the broadest, global understanding of such (Dante) - thought.
This synthesis of disciplines made the citizen of a modern republic an accomplice of the entire historical process at once; his moral improvement and free will were a condition for both faith and knowledge at the same time - no contradiction arose. Actually, the thought of Christian ethical philosophers of the Renaissance (Erasmus of Rotterdam is a typical example) is that the personal freedom of the creator is the weapon of the Christian warrior and freedom organically cannot express itself through aggression, violence and evil: freedom is good by definition.
This is not the dissolution of the individual in the ocean of the spirit (Chardin), and not submission to the master as the personification of God's providence (Luther), and not the construction of a victorious empire (Mussolini), and not an escape from such to the natural state of a wild man, not the creation of a new stratum of slaves from robots etc. and so on.
The utopia of the Renaissance did not promise anything in the future (utopia lived here and now and lasted less than fifty years, the reign of Lorenzo himself was 23 years) and in the past it was looking not for a model, but for material for work.
The Renaissance utopia is not about a return to the ancient world, but about the unity of the ancient world with the Christian faith - and this utopian project gave us the utopia of Rabelais and Dante, the utopia of Michelangelo and the moral lessons of Erasmus.
To the extent that Christianity is a utopian project for the Western world, it constantly appears - in one form or another - in the teachings of communists and Fourierists, science fiction writers and researchers of the Middle Ages.
photo: personal archive of M. Kantor; LEGION-MEDIA; BRIDGEMAN/FOTODOM
