Why do we go and don’t go to rallies?

Politics is one of those areas that quickly, aggressively and quite painfully divide society into two opposing camps. Members of the former are ready to go to rallies themselves, urge others to do so, and openly speak out against injustice on the part of the authorities; participants in the second believe that making open statements is a useless and even dangerous undertaking.

“I am far from politics,” “this is not for me,” some say. They are answered: “If you are not involved in politics, one day politics will be involved in you.” Does each of us have a button that, when pressed, turns the most apolitical people into fighters?

“Up to a certain point, I looked at the activity of others with caution. I keep thinking about my son who is sick,” says 42-year-old journalist Irina. – If I go to a rally and, God forbid, they take me away in a paddy wagon, who will stay with him? I am responsible for it. But when a story happened recently with a colleague Ivan Golunov, I realized that I could no longer be silent. I posted bank cards at home, wrote pin codes for my son, told my family where I was going and what to do if something happened to me.

I realized that this is my responsibility to my son – to protect people like me, because tomorrow they will do the same to me unfairly. The rally was canceled, but at that moment I was ready to go to it, despite all the previous counterarguments. Because for me it was the very critical point beyond which you can’t go with me. ”

Apparently, everyone has a lever that starts the process of activating our political identity? And this is a matter of time and reason – does it work for everyone?

Voice from below

Society is us, the people. We are all influenced by the rules established in it, but at the same time everyone, if desired, can participate in changing them and in creating new ones that will make life better.

“We live in a society, and our life is regulated by certain social mechanisms, whether we think about it or not,” explains psychodramatherapist Anastasia Bashlykova. – Man is a social being. Connecting with other people is our natural need. People communicate with each other with varying degrees of openness, which is largely determined by previous life experiences. For some, due to difficult, even traumatic experiences, it is not easy to get in touch with others.

But everyone has a need for communication, for jointness: it is included in our “basic package”. People never lived alone, our ancient ancestors gathered in groups. The community of like-minded people supports us: we are still looking for communities, groups of “interests” for ourselves – a sense of elbow is important to us.

Man is originally adapted to live in a social structure. The group structure assumes that all its members agree on the observance of both their personal interests and the interests of the group as a whole. But, of course, they may not coincide, and the larger the group, the more pronounced social stratification, the greater the likelihood of a conflict of interest.

The state is a huge heterogeneous human community, and it is regulated by well-defined social mechanisms. “Large groups are always a hierarchy: the vertical structure makes it possible to maintain the integrity of the community,” explains the psychologist. – But in such a structure, installations, “how to live”, come down from above. Under a totalitarian form of government, when power is absolute, any discontent “from below” is severely suppressed. The other pole is democracy. It is based on the idea of ​​collective social decision-making”. It is understood that citizens can influence the course of social processes by expressing their wishes, expressing their opinion based on personal social experience, and this opinion will be heard “at the top” and will be taken into account in the process of developing legislative acts.

Gaslighting at the state level

“I have always believed that history does not repeat itself. But what I have been observing lately suggests that our society is close to what we have already gone through: repressions, 1937, says 30-year-old programmer Sergey. Are we close to it? And this despite the fact that the memories of eyewitnesses are still fresh in the memory. It seemed to me that there was no chance of something like this happening again. But now I doubt. Or the price that this generation will have to pay will be very high.”

We are seeing attempts to “tighten the screws”, to stop any disagreement with the actions of the authorities. We reassure ourselves that now there is information transparency, there are social networks. It is no longer so easy to hide this or that information.

“The feeling of surrealism is recognized today by many active thinking people. The situation is reminiscent of gaslighting, only at the state level,” comments Anastasia Bashlykova. – When you are deliberately immersed in an atmosphere of unreality and thereby forced to doubt your own adequacy, constantly emphasizing that “everything is in order in our society, something is wrong with you”, if you are dissatisfied with what is happening. The surge in the popularity of political jokes, anecdotes, memes is an indicator that people have a lot of steam and it needs to be released. Jokes release a lot of tension, it’s our tool for self-preservation.”

“Relieve stress in a situation where there is no way to do something, naturally. But there are those who are sure that something can always be done. People who are ready to publicly state their position are individuals who are well aware of the importance of a personal contribution to social processes, with high social responsibility, those who are aware of their values, feel their place and role in society, the significance of their social inclusion, ”comments the psychodramatherapist. It was they who at all times constituted the energy core of the active social stratum.

A relatively small number of people have a high level of social awareness. These are thinking people who understand that positive changes in society do not happen by themselves – they are always initiated by the activities of activists. These are those who do not mindlessly consume information provided by officially approved sources, but are able to search for it on their own, compare, notice the discrepancy between the declared and the real, analyze, check and double-check sources, and draw conclusions. Developed critical thinking allows not to blindly accept what is said even by an authoritative person. These are those who, as they say, “work on themselves and increase their own awareness.”

At the same time, each of the representatives of this category has its own rate of growth of social awareness. Someone notices adverse trends faster, someone slower. Also, everyone has a different energy reserve, circumstances, various kinds of restrictions that prevent them from participating in events – not all sufficiently conscious people are socially active, that is, there are actually more conscious people than it seems at first glance.

Power saving mode

Enlightenment does not come out of the blue. “People live on autopilot by default, and that’s okay. Our psyche is arranged in such a way that it prefers the least energy-consuming way, – explains Anastasia Bashlykova. “But something out of the ordinary happens, and this incident leads to a failure of the usual algorithm, makes it slow down and … gives us the opportunity to look closely and analyze what is happening.

As a result, someone chooses to adapt to changed circumstances, and someone decides that it will cost him more to adapt, and chooses to do something. Chooses not to cave in to reality, but to try to make it more conducive to maintaining a quality life. A person is motivated to active performances by a situation that is felt as destroying personal value meanings. People go to rallies when they realize that what is happening concerns them personally. It affects their lives, so much so that it becomes important for them to protect themselves.”

The only village school was closed, the last surgeon or endocrinologist in a hospital serving several villages quit, an acquaintance or a member of a certain social group, for example, a mother of many children, was treated unfairly. And we understand – this is it, it’s very close. But even in this case, not everyone is active. Why?

“In our culture, as it happened traditionally, there is a strong belief that “at the top they know best what is right.” And if they don’t know at the top, then … it remains to hope for “maybe”. “The illusory hope that everything will settle down by itself is very stable,” explains Anastasia Bashlykova. “It is even reflected in popular expressions: somehow everything will work out, you just have to be patient, maybe it will fly by and not hurt.”

And yet our country is so large and the bureaucracy is so cumbersome that communication between the people and those in power has long been difficult. To hear the voices “from the locality”, the authorities need to make special efforts … or the people need to speak very, very loudly. Many Russians are used to this learned helplessness, when the only thing that can be somehow influenced is life within the walls of their home, and even then … it happened, and the authorities came here. Resenting social injustice by default feels like a futile and draining effort.

In the end, “everything is the will of God” – one hears the voices of ancestors living with a religious picture of the world. “Not much depends on me.” And serfdom! Formally, it was abolished in 1861, but the echoes of the helplessness of the serfs before the will of the master are still echoing. It was only in 1974 that passports began to be issued to the peasants, and thus they were given freedom of movement, and until that moment they were actually attached to state and collective farms – it was pointless to object. It is also an imprint of our history, influencing the way we make decisions in the present.

The power-saving mode is also enabled for those in power. Listening to everyone before making decisions is too much work. Negotiating is hard work. Recognition of another experience, taking into account a different view – this is also the recognition of a possible one’s own wrong, one’s own ignorance of something, and this is already an attempt on one’s own indisputable authority. Pressing, applying force, pushing through is much easier.

The power of force is a traditional model from which progressive communities are moving away. The need to revise it is something that feminist activists are loudly proclaiming.

Is it possible, despite all the peculiarities of our habitual perception, to come to a different model of the relationship of people with each other, and the authorities with the people? “It is important to increase your level of awareness of reality. Think, read, listen, ask, ask questions to other people and to yourself, – offers Anastasia Bashlykova. – We all live within the boundaries that society sets for us. Living consciously means learning to see the limitations dictated by him, at the same time understanding that it is possible to influence them. The voice of the people is the voice of individuals put together. Look for like-minded people, raise the visibility of social problems by informing about them. Believe in the power of your voice, the importance of your own participation.