The world’s cultural decline and our lightest holiday

The fact that at the same time as the rapid wise of artificial intelligence, we are witnessing the rapid degradation of the natural, has already been said. But alas this anecdotal finding is not an exaggeration at all.

Not only because of the aging of the population, especially in developed countries, not only because of the transition of education and information from human hands into the hands of algorithms in electronic « media » and large linguistic models that write the essays of students, but also because of the low intellectual capacity of some of the aging leaders or non-interchangeable dictators.

In the past, it was a practice of journalists to ask presidents what their favorite book or literary character was. I remember that George Bush Jr. had said that the Bible was his favorite book, and Jesus Christ his favorite hero. Indeed, the Gospels, like the whole Bible, can be read as fiction and I’m sure Bush Jr. has read it. However, I deeply doubt that Donald Trump, whom many evangelical believers voted, read her. I doubt he has read many books throughout his life, except maybe accounting, but he did not read them well if he is judged by his « business-oriented » policy.

Of course, protesters against Putin in Russia in the recent past (none are none – all protesters are in prison or in the grave if they have not escaped abroad) were called national traitors. There must have been protesters in Harvard who raised anti -Semitic slogans. But this does not mean that because of these Indias, all foreign students and the entire Harvard University should be punished. Or that the president must interfere with academic policy.

It is obvious that Trump hates prestigious American universities, considers them too liberal and academic freedom. Moreover, it seems that he hates education at all (after he even wants to close the ministry). He seems to hate intellectuals and highly educated people – all who read or write books (not accounting), or allow themselves to express a personal opinion on political and cultural issues other than his. Alas, we are talking about the largest and most influential and political, and economic, but also cultural world power-the United States. It was most influential until recently because Trump wants to isolate it and close it to the world.

Of course, the situation in Russia is far more frightening. It is no longer a great power, but it is still a huge (territory and weapons) world power, extremely dangerous for its close neighbors, such as Bulgaria. Lastly, Putin said the Soviet Union, in fact, legally, had not fallen apart. He denies the right to exist both of the Ukrainian state and the Ukrainian people. There is no such people for him. But it means that he is killing, following the example of Stalin, his own people. His semi-intelligent applications for the « Russian world » actually mean that he sees all former Soviet republics as part of his new post-Soviet empire. With Emperor a former KGB officer. He sees the « Russian world » as isolated and opposed to the European, the Western world.

In the Russian Empire, a culture was created in the 19th century, which was European and world. The Russians were some of the biggest European writers, playwrights, musicians. Russian culture was also important in the era of modernism, in the early 20th century, while the « spring » and socialist realism did not prevail in Soviet Russia by the late 1920s. At that time, the Russian Iteliants were banned, expelled, closed, or killed. Culturally, Putin returns Russia in the darkest Stalin times of cultural isolation from the West and the world.

And what happens in Bulgaria, which Academician Lihachov called a « state of the Spirit »? In Bulgaria, which gave the world the Cyrillic alphabet and the Slavic-Byzantine foundation of Russian culture (because not only the Cyrillic alphabet, but also the first translation of the Holy Books comes from Bulgaria, which accepts Christianity a century before Kiev)? On the eve of May 24, our threateningly watching Patriarch decided that he should oppose nestinarism, a centuries -old and unique Bulgarian cultural tradition placed on the list of UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage, and stop access to the nestinari icons in Strandja.

Alas, cultural, spiritual and intellectual decline seems to be a worldwide phenomenon. But let us not forget that Lihachov did not accidentally call us a side of the Spirit, that St. Constantine-Cyril The Philosopher was declared by Pope John-Paul II as a saint of all Europe and that, as Grandpa Vazov said, and we gave something to the world and to all Slavic book to read. « 

Culture is a stronger weapon than bombs and missiles, and interest and duties.