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The Eurasian Politician - Issue 1 (May 21st, 2000)
Ph.D. Prof. NIYAZI MEHDI
0.0. EACH CULTURE WORKS OUT SPECIAL MENTAL AND INSTITUTIONAL TOOLS FOR OVERCOMING AND PREVENTING OF DIFFICULT AND COMPLICATED SITUATIONS. THEREFORE, THEY CAN BE DESCRIBED IN TERMS OF OVERCOMING DIFFICULT AND COMPLICATED SITUATIONS
0.1. THE CONVICTION THAT THE COMPLICATED SITUATIONS SHOULD BE OVERCOME BY TAKING STRONG MEASURES AND DECISIVE STEPS IS NOT VALUED IN THE SAME WAY IN VARIOUS CIVILIZATIONS AND CULTURES. "To manage the situation" is a typical European expression, and it forms the first element of the binary opposition "decision - indecision". According to Mahathir Mohammed, prime minister of Malaysia, a curious difference is revealed while comparing the Oriental and Western cultures. This difference exerts influence on differences in the Oriental and Western political cultures. Delicacy in mutual relations of parties is of the utmost importance in cooperation in the Orient. The partners express their views and desires by making hints and do not interfere into each others affairs. But the Westerner thinks that he/she has the right to criticize the partner severely and expresses his/her remarks directly. Historical and cultural differences in understanding complicated situations
1.0. THE ONLY DANGER IS COMPLICATED SITUATIONS, ONLY THREAT IS ITS MANIFESTATION. Originally complicated situations were recognized only in the form extreme and dangerous situations in various cultures. Institutions of heroes and breeding of bravery (training for overcoming of fear, creation of an atmosphere of disgrace) were aimed only at overcoming extreme and dangerous situations.
1.1. DANGER MAY SPRING ONLY FROM EXTERNAL SPACE AND FROM INTERNAL AGENCY OF THIS SPACE. Institutions of heroes and breeding of bravery were aimed at overcoming dangers which came from the alien. Accordingly, in the early stages of the cultures the sources and reasons of extreme, dangerous situations were perceived as existing beyond them. They were recognized in terms of events, plunged into the culture. Threat and danger met people in all spaces, where they set feet on, leaving the geographical boundaries of their own culture.
1.2. DEVELOPMENT IN THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE NATURE OF COMPLICATED SITUATIONS HAS BECOME AN EVOLUTIONARY LINE OF CULTURE. An essential step in the development of culture has become the realization of a permanent existence in the society of a wide diapason of complicated and difficult situations. An indicator of cultural development has also become the acknowledgment of reasons of the birth of complicated and difficult situations immanent for culture and human psychology.
1.3. EVOLUTION FROM HEROICALLY ENCOUNTER OF COMPLICATED SITUATIONS TO THE STYLE OF WISE MAN. Realization of inevitability of complicated and difficult cases of life, understanding reasons of the birth complicated situations immanent for culture gave created a type of wise man with an unyielding spirit. Originally the Turks approved and cultivated deeds by signs of impulsive psychology and actions. It is notable that impulsiveness as the basis of the heroic deed was considered to be characteristic also for the Russian Cossacks. Patience as an inextinguishable pathos of life began to acquire cultural significance in the Turks with birth and development of the Moslem life. On external and internal reasons of complicated and difficult situations in countries of the world
2.0. COMPLICATIONS AMONG THE STATES. The sources of complicated and difficult situations for the country may be external forces. Geopolitical findings, strategic practice and Realpolitik have been specialized well enough in fixing this sources. The latest work of S. Huntington "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remarking of World Order" making a further step notes that the sources of difficult and complicated situations for one civilization lie in depth of the cultural life of other civilization and in the mentality of its people.
2.1. HOW DIFFICULTIES AND COMPLICATIONS BECOME THE REASONS OF HOSTILITIES AND ALLIANCES. Countries quarrel, suspect each other in being the "author" of malicious actions which lead to complicated and difficult situations. Countries form alliances proposing each other means of overcoming complicated situations. Nevertheless, it becomes quite complicated in close consideration: historically soon or later there emerge complicated and difficult situations in each alliance. All the time the allies have to bring clearness to the relations among them.
2.2. IN WHAT CASES THE POLITICAL ELITE MAY IMPOSE ITS OWN COMPLICATIONS AS THE PROBLEM OF EVERYBODY. It becomes even more complicated when in a country a closed political elite group possesses power for a long time, forcibly excluding the chance of elections of opposition. In this case this group gives the danger existing for itself as danger for everyone. From this point of view Iran, Libya, Iraq are tragic examples in the present epoch.
2.3. REALITY OR IRREALITY OF COMPLICATED SITUATIONS OF THE COUNTRY IS DETERMINED WITH GREAT CERTAINTY ONLY IN CONDITIONS OF DEMOCRACY. Only periodic and democratic changes of the power, discussions in the democratically elected Parliament and free mass-media allow to know the reality or irreality of complicated situations incited by actions of another state, and allow also to know "is given problem is really the problem of the whole society or not.
2.4. MANY COMPLICATIONS AND DIFFICULTIES IN CULTURE ARE CAUSED BY IMMANENT AND SPONTANEOUSLY FUNCTIONING REASONS. How immanent are the sources of difficult and complicated situations for the culture? A part of them originate from the psychology of the bearers of the culture. Exposure to epistemological difficulties of understanding complicated events by philosophy and psychology as well as interpersonal mutual understandings refer to complicated situations in culture. Irrational powers in the spiritual world, which have been spoken much beginning from Freud to Jung, are also prerequisites to the birth of complicated situations.
2.5. Culture has generated complicated and difficult situations and at the same time work out means of overcoming, preventing them. CULTURE IS A MACHINE OF GENERATING, OVERCOMING, AND PREVENTING COMPLICATED AND DIFFICULT SITUATIONS.
2.6. THE FORMATION OF MULTIPLICITY EXPANDS THE SPACE FOR A DEVELOPMENT OF COMPLICATIONS. Topologically many complications in the culture originate from the conversion of Unique into multiplicity. Namely in this process emerge contradicting interests, differences in views and positions, etc.
2.7. COPERNICUS' REVOLUTIONARY THEORY ON DEMOCRACY LIES IN THE REHABILITATION OF MULTIPLICITY EVEN IF IT INEVITABLY GENERATES COMPLICATIONS AND DIFFICULTIES. Platonism, Neoplatonism and the Moslem versions of Platonism (Ibn Sina, Suhrawardi and others) saw in the transformation of Unique (God) into multiplicity the reason of spailing and violence. The Copernican revolution of pluralistic democracy for the first time clearly and decisively rehabilitated multiplicity (pluralism) in social and spiritual life. The postulate of democracy means that plural is inevitable, therefore it is better to use it as a means of solution of complications than to try prevent it. The motto of liberal democracy is that pluralism is bearing information. The monotheistic model of building society on the top of which stands the monarch as the Single God, was changed by a ramified power (the enemies of democracy unconsciously took it as the restoration of the polytheistic model of society. Perhaps the very unconscious negativism to polytheism generated in the Russian nationalists, anti-Semites and Eurasians such a confirmation that as if democracy is the result of the deeds of the Devil. Many antidemocratic articles in the journal of Russian Eurasians by title "Element" have such type of accusation).
2.8. THE THEORY OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY AND THEORY OF SYSTEMS ARE BOTH THEORIES OF COMPLICATED SITUATIONS. It is notable that the epoch of development of the pluralistic democracy coincided with the period of creation multi-form application of the theory of systems. Contrary to original (classical) imaginations the ruling situation effective behavior in it emerge from the aggregate productivity of multiplicity Means and ways of overcoming, preventing complicated situations. how they differ in various civilizations and political systems
3.0. DEMOCRACY AND TOTALITARIANISM PRINCIPALLY DIFFER IN THEIR REFERENCE TO COMPLICATED AND DIFFICULT SITUATIONS. An appropriate difference is also observed between the Western and Eastern cultures. In democratic culture the picture of the world has minimal bans to the things of the world. Postmodernism led this picture to virtuous, amazing eclecticism. In the culture of totalitarian state the picture of the world has a tendency to a quantitative minimization of presented events, things and their aspects.
3.1. TWO APPROACHES TO COMPLICATIONS. THE FIRST APPROACH - BIRTH OF COMPLICATIONS AND OVERCOMING THEM. Democracy oriented to the solution of difficult problems, to overcoming complicated situations with the rating of enterprise. TWO APPROACHES TO COMPLICATIONS. THE SECOND APPROACH - TO SUFFOCATE THE COMPLICATIONS IN THE CRADLE. The totalitarian regimes have been oriented to total prevention of complicated and difficult situations. In this sense they to a known extent remind the traditional societies. Preventive methods in democracy are individual. In the totalitarian regimes the whole state policy is preventive.
3.2. THE COMPLICATED SITUATIONS CAN NOT ALWAYS AND NOT IN ALL THE THINGS BE EXPLAINED THROUGH THE LINE OF THE DIALECTIC DEVELOPMENT. It is not obligatory in democracy "to justify" the orientation towards pluralism in terms of dialectics and development. Pluralism (ideological, political and economic pluralism) simply create wide spiritual and social space for expansion, maneuver, movement to all sides (but not all the sides can be covered by the line of development). Pluralism as well as oppositions are the sources of energy (K. Jung) of culture. The democratic society is "full events to the brims". THE TOTALITARIAN SOCIETY IS A WORLD WHERE NOTHING HAPPENS. A TOTALITARIAN SOCIETY ALWAYS LIVES IN OPTICAL ILLUSIONS. Whenever an disagreeable event emerges the society tightens itself in order to make it appear as if emerging and arriving from outside. Democracy lacks such optical illusions. The space of the culture is apprehended so wildly that it looks like a theater for a large number of people and events. This difference is also visible in the approach to the system of news. In totalitarian regimes, particularly, in the former Soviet Union, a big part of news was devoted to foreign news, because their own country sensed quite little space in the informational plane. In democratic countries the mass-media are mainly concerned about the of their own countries.
3.3. IN CULTURES OPEN TO COMPLICATIONS THE SPIRIT OF MULTI-LEADERSHIP "ALGORITHMS" OF BEHAVIOR ARE CULTIVATED. The Western Culture is open to complicated situations from the beginning, therefore the systems of leaderships, rules for successful behavior in complicated and difficult situations are well developed in it. In democracy methods of preliminary training on complicated and difficult situations are widely spread in every possible way. Non-modernized and non-westernized oriental cultures mostly rely upon the institution of the total banning. Algorithmic system of leadership is weakly developed in them.
3.4. FORCIBLE SIMPLIFICATION OF COMPLICATED SITUATIONS AS MEANS OF TOTALITARIAN THINKING. In democracy the success of a political subject is valued as one's effective behavior in situations open to various kinds of complications. In totalitarian societies the success is appreciated as one's ability to simplify the situation and solve the problem by repressive means. The type of political leaders of the West and East may be distinguished on the basis of these parameters.
3.5. FIGHTING AGAINST THE COMPLICATIONS BY MEANS OF "FREEZING" OF THE CULTURE. The Islamic fundamentalism relies on the principle that the best way to fight against the complicated, difficult situations is to prevent their birth. Freedom of women, industry of entertainment are understood by the fundamentalists as sources of complicated situations, therefore the fundamentalists think that they must not exist in the society.