Deja Vu All Over Again.
Another violent act in Ukraine (or former Ukraine, if you want to be geographically precise). Another set of mutual accusations. Another set of self-righteous posturing, and appeal to international courts. Now the plane is taken out in the skies, now people are burned in Odessa, now the soldiers are killed/not killed by Russians on the island near Odessa, now murdered civilians left behind, and just yesterday, the Ukrainian POW incinerated by air strike. Kiev blames Moscow, Moscow blames Kiev.
I might have my own opinion based on my knowledge of language, culture, sources, history and so on, but again and again, I would tell my highly intelligent interlocutors in US or Europe, that in the war, and in confrontations of such intensity, it is important to wait and see the data and investigate, since everything is so heavily politicized.
What do I hear in response? Why wait? It is Russians. It is Russians that interfered in American Democracy, It is Russians who installed Trump, it is Russians who are behind any outrage that occurs in Ukraine. Furthermore, just doubting these obvious facts, is an act of stupidity and immorality, and I should be ashamed of myself That’s exactly what I hear, explicitly, or more politely, from professors, bankers, lawyers, journalists, writers, teachers, politicians, and other people of consequence. Not the hicks who watch TV, no! Real educated people.
Why this certainty? Why refusal even to entertain the doubt, let alone to acknowledge that the other side consists of people too, prone to venality, greed, stupidity, or cruelty.
And I don’t mean just “westerners.” Plenty of my Russian speaking friends, friends from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev or Odessa, have suddenly turned into bloodthirsty monsters, who post admiring pictures of Ukrainian sharp shooters, who praise new weapons coming from US for its ability to kill, who cheerfully report British Intelligence news about thousands of Russian soldiers decimated by HIMARS or Javelins.
Frankly, I see only one explanation, old fashion as it sounds. Treason of Intellectuals. Or to use more precise terminology of Julien Benda, who coined the phrase. Trahison Des Clercs, “clercs” being the ecclesiastical officials, monks, scribes and so on.
These are the people, who, according to Benda, were supposed to warn the masses not to surrender to their violent passions, and not to entertain their violent prejudices, but who now have decided to add fuel to the fire, providing masses with more and more arguments in support of their violent passions: ethnic, racial, class, sexual or what have you.
The concept of “clercs” is important as it points to “ecclesiastical” roots of modern intellectuals. Doesn’t matter what religious denomination we are talking about, all major religions presuppose the acceptance of God and the Universe, too complex for our human minds to comprehend.
Spelling out what Benda was suggesting (and he was a secular French Jew, not some religious fanatic of whatever denomination) we can say, intellectuals began to fuel human passions rather than pointing to divine love and brotherhood, because they lost their sense of “incomprehensible” universe, their sense of world’s complexity, their recognition that we only “see through the glass darkly.”
Out of the blue, the world began to be inhabited by certainties. Marxist certainties, bourgeois certainties, racist certainties, antisemitic certainties. All of the sudden intellectual began to know who is a friend and who is an enemy.
Russian intelligentsia, for example, had always been certain about the enemy — the Russian State, and it continues with this certainty to this day. Same applies to liberal western intellectuals, who are damn certain about their “wokism” and its values, to counter-culture with its corporate imperialism, or to some leftovers of British Empire, with their “white man burden.”
The fundamental issue of religion, the embrace of “un-knowable” Universe and equally inscrutable will of God, is gone.
Of course, I hear the objections, coming from intellectuals, who’ll claim that it is religion, which is the source of certainties. Well, maybe for some ignorant masses yes, but not for Newton or Milton or Blake, or Einstein, or endless amount of mystics and visionaries.
In the long run, ignorant masses and liberal intellectuals are the same, preferring the certainty of ideology (including religious ideology) to the mystery of faith.
And that’s why — in my view — today’s intellectuals are as willing to gobble up the certainties of BBC and NYT, as their cultural counterparts, consume the certainties of The Sun or The FoxNews.
