Your latest novel, a “Text” is largely about how modern technology is changing human life. Today in connection with the quarantine, many say that the world is completely converted into online. What do you think?
I did obey the quarantine for two weeks, and I can definitely say: humanity is not ready to care online. Replacement of live communication on Skype or Zoom conferencing, virtual tours instead of real visits to museums, eating in front of the screen of the phone delivery from some institutions instead of a morning coffee with a girlfriend or dinner with a friend – it still is perceived as ersatz forced a tasteless substitute for war-time we need all of those human pleasures, without which life turns into existence.
Yes, when it comes to survival, or, like now, when people think that talking about it is, they are ready with astonishing ease and speed to lose almost all their privileges, rights and freedoms, to put up with digital surveillance, and with the closures, and curfews – but it’s a shock, is the power of fear, fear for his life and fear of the unknown.
once the tsunami subsides, we’ll want to go back to his normal life. In life, where you could get out of the house, meet and touch each other in the open world. We want to live with redoubled force.
it is said that one of the symptoms of the coronavirus that causes temporary loss of smell and taste. Life in quarantine it is, it is devoid of taste and smell. Yes, communication technology – primarily high-quality video calls – and delivery of products and goods make this quarantine is quite portable, and survived any of the past terrible epidemics ancestors would laugh at our current suffering.
it May be good that our generation, the generation spoiled and very skinny, got just such a sea – slightly worse than the flu, like training and rehearsal: with this plague we would not have coped. But to celebrate, when the pandemic subsides, we will like you survived the Black death. I’m sure of that.
– How do you survive the quarantine?
– I have in recent years led a very expansive life for two weeks in a month traveling, flying around the world to work first and foremost; for me, the best in the journey was doping, without which I do not feel alive. Now all this has stopped and I have two weeks almost never leave the house.
to be forced down and locked in his apartment is like in front of the mirror for two weeks to sit. Willy-nilly, to meet with him, which you might be, and tried to actually escape or hide in their home for their business. Sitting, studying himself – reluctantly. Finally, instead of, as I used to, to go outwards, we have to go deeper.
In this case, however, there is something. The apartment, which have now been spending day after day, you begin to see flaws that I didn’t pay attention the mess and the cracks in the whitewash. And in itself, these cracks and chaos begin to be too visible, an eyesore. N
because of this and the chance to do a clean, repair. Read things that are a hundred years off from school or not read – Shakespeare, Stoppard, Plato, Tolstoy. Look what always was going to, but constantly postponed – Tarkovsky, Bergman, Hitchcock, and of black-and-white all the classics. Plaster foreseeable part of yourself. Maybe up to the Foundation it comes.
in Order not to spread, as the trough, jump with a rope. That was not so sad, take a glass of whiskey with friends on Skype. But more and more filled with a thirst of activity. But she will overcome laziness. It seems the days of going down for a new novel. Damn quarantine.
You caught the collapse of the Soviet Union, whose symbol was the empty shelves. How do you think the current situation with raskatyvanie buckwheat and toilet paper are similar to the late 80-ies?
Me personally, the phenomenon of the popularity of tualenoi paper unclear: generations of Russian people were treated mug and newspaper “Pravda”, and then suddenly there’s this hype, as if our butt is not accustomed to the printed word. Newspapers, however, almost no one reads, here online revolution something really can explain, Yes. But other applications to official reports is still there, the state propaganda is trying to dictate its own rules of life and, as always, her picture of the world is bursting at the seams when this hostingu trying to pull on reality. Here they bring us closer to the situation of the eighties, exactly.
And the aging of the elite, living in a cocoon divorced from reality – another similarity; just before these elites existed in relative austerity of the nomenclature of social welfare, and now they have the way of life of Asian billionaires redundant, stuck in the Golden bling of the late nineties; they have for decades convinced themselves of their exclusivity at the expense of isolation from the people and hysterical consumption – all those hours for half a million dollars, all these boats, all this novorusskiy bad. And listen to their interview – funny and sad.
as for empty shelves… In the Soviet Union the economy is never on a living human was not designed. It was designed for ideological struggle, for the conquest of space, in a tank conquest of Europe, the colonization of the Third Rome in the third world. A Soviet citizen would be maintained by the planning Commission in the same column, and nails, and other building materials. While the goals justify the means, people groaned, but endured. When it became obvious that the goal is unattainable or ridiculous, and are encouraged to suffer, as in time of war, people went crazy.
And now here again it begins to seem that etc some goals – to win the damned, the producers of shale oil in the US, for example, or to pull the Saudi king’s beard – is more important than life and the interests of the common living of Russians. The agiotage around buckwheat – just a coincidence. But the boredom of the elites from the consumer everyday and her desire perekljuchisI’m on something more global and heroic – very similar to Soviet times.
And Yes, people do not worry so much about toilet paper – you can always wipe information broadcasts and political talk shows.
Another concern today is the return of the “iron curtain”. It is justified, or back in Soviet Union we will not go back?
– We already as though have returned to the Soviet Union symbolically. What we Bay from the TV, the impression of this, with minor amendments, of the late senile insanity. Parades under Soviet anthem, new war movies in the trendy color correction, and how well-trained parliamentary bureaucracy salute to the Supreme commander, three cheers, responding to any perturbation of the eyebrow is all Soviet, of course – but Andropov, not Gorbachev.
But it’s not real, it’s all role-playing games. The truth of fact, no one in the Scoop doesn’t want. The people know the safe word.
Just a coronavirus launched a real blitzkrieg, the situation is changing too fast and the measures that we have introduced and continue to introduce, people are caught off guard, no one has time not to respond even to understand them plainly. Once the virus will come to naught, we require our normal life back.
And I must say, Russia is still not the head of a restrictive trend. The ban on flights and the closure of borders, first introduced in the United States and in Europe. Surveillance of mobile subscribers to identify potential contacts of the infected – first in Israel and now the EU is going here. With the use of face recognition to track who came from Europe – seems to be domestic know-how, however…
And Yes, it sucks that the power of this know-how will be loved and she will begin to apply it to all who have returned from Europe body, but continues to occupy the soul, and the mobile contacts and geolocation will track including those who are infected with the Bacillus of liberalism.
But I personally do not believe that Russian and North Korean people, so much so that the brothers. We still always compare ourselves with the West: and if the goal (the building of communism throughout the world, for example, or the revival of the Empire) cease to justify the means (our suffering), then we go still on the streets. So briskly to torment us for no good reasons the power is not solved. Control technology and sealing of the country, of course, will be worked out – Yes, it’s sad. But to abuse them I would place the authorities was not.
moreover, Putin’s simulation of Soviet Russia is not socially oriented state and even the cost of dealing with the coronavirus power PSSR wants to shift onto the shoulders of the middle class and business, and the oil jug and its further use for war ego on the world stage.
Willy-nilly pandemic compare with the plot of fantastic novels. And how do you see the world after this epidemic?
the Main conclusion is that catastrophic world completely unprepared. If coronavirus was the same incubation period, as it is now, and the mortality rate – as the Ebola civilization in a year would cease to exist. But we are given the opportunity to rehearse the Apocalypse in the island. And humanity will emerge from this crisis strengthened.
global Initial confused reaction – deny the threat, then protective, protective and fragmentation of national governments – perhaps inevitable in the initial stage. In the end, all of this generation of rulers for the first time faced with a crisis of this magnitude.
But the virus – the problem of cross-border, worldwide. And it can only be solved to the global common efforts. Isolation measures political and economic systems, the destruction of world trade will cause humanity much more severe blow than the virus, the restrictions will soon be loosened and undone.
the Pandemic will accelerate the adoption of digital platforms across all segments of the population, digital communications will be included in the life of eachDogo person completely – but no alternative will not, because of all the emotional needs they don’t close. I’m afraid that the short cycle is inevitably increased intrusion of the state in people’s private lives under the pretext of caring for the health of the nation – but when the panic passes, people will try to regain lost freedom.
the Book “Metro 2033”, in my opinion, primarily about human relationships, a kind of moral test and find the meaning of life. How, in your opinion, to preserve humanity in extreme conditions?
– I think the main problem is that people deep down the don’t trust each other. In contrast to communities, from villages in atomized communities, for example, in large cities, you even really your neighbors in the stairwell don’t know. With friends, with friends you can identify with, can you imagine their train of thought. But strangers often – and especially in extreme situations – ascribe evil intentions, he behaving as if ready at any moment to repel the attack and even the first attack, because they think that the other was going anyway to do it. All behave, not recognising the other in ourselves.
Trust and communication, developing empathy, creating community is the main way to save humanity in this situation. The suppression of fear, the overcoming of selfishness. A critical look at the situation, detachment.
it is Difficult, of course, sincerely empathize with other people, if you do not see ourselves in them. But you can at least take care of those who are closest to you and who needs your help. When worried about others, not enough time for myself – and it is also a way of dealing with fear. Evil generally is the excessive focus on yourself, the willingness to sacrifice others for yourself. And good willingness to bring their interests to the sacrifice of others. At least the ones you love.
see also: Ukupnik after working with Leshchenko closed in the house
