Evil in Western Culture and in Russia
About 10 years ago in the U.S. I had a conversation with a complicated man who was reflecting on the fact that American "shooters" successfully reformat the minds of Americans and Western Europeans, but not Slavic and especially Russian children, in the way they wanted them to. He asked: "Why do you think that is?" And I answered that question.
I told him that Russia has a fundamentally different laughing culture than the West. We can be both very funny and very scary at the same time. Moreover, the nature of evil in Russian culture is not absolute. Evil is absolute only in Western culture: it can be Sauron, it can be Lucifer, it can be the sperm whale in Moby Dick. It is such a black, unadulterated evil. And in Russian tradition, even Baba-Yaga is partly a comic (laughing culture!) character, she is not absolutely evil. When Ivan gets to her and she promises to roast and eat him, he replies: "No, first you make me a bath, feed me and get me drunk." Where is it seen in the West that the ultimate evil would feed and water you? Even in Russian fairy tales you can come to terms with Koschey the Immortal. The Russian person does not perceive the blackest evil as absolute, and this gap is often filled by the comic.
I am convinced that even on the current very much modified Russian, Russian person blackness will not affect the same way as on the Western people, because attempts are made to intimidate, and we are not afraid. Sometimes our real life is scarier than the "shooters" and movies with absolute evil. I'm sure American society could barely survive what we went through in the 1990s. That's not the best reason to be cautiously optimistic, but still.
Andrei Fursov
https://zen.yandex.ru/media/govoritfursov/let-10-nazad-vssha-umenia-sluchilsia-razgovor-sodnim-neprostym-chelovekom-63081e17266c74668489f760#
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