The Future of Russia is Bleak
For Arendt, “consistent lying, metaphorically speaking, pulls the ground from under our feet and provides no other ground on which to stand.” The result of consistent lying is that we come to experience “a trembling wobbling motion of everything we rely on for our sense of direction and reality.”
There are increasing indicators that Russia is embracing a more medieval way of doing business. I mean, going back to an era when citizens were kept ignorant of many things. This post via Ateo Breaking is one of them.
By the way, this refers to university training. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia adopted many of the West's ways regarding higher education. This included parallel certifications and degrees, meaning you got a bachelor's, a master's, and a PhD. This was already abandoned, so a Russian graduate will have more trouble if they move to the West.
The duration of education in the Russian Federation in the coming years may be reduced due to the demands of the times; it must be compressed, Medinsky stated.
“Classical 5–6-year education will become a thing of the past in the next 10 years. Education… will be more specialized, it will be designed for the foreseeable future… the next 10 years, and then… it will be necessary to retrain,” he said.
This is a country that once had great mathematicians and engineers. It’s a place that has prided itself on its competent prowess in recent years. Russia, it seems, wants serfs back. And given their skill set, serfs cannot be trained very well.
If you wonder why protests are rare, this is one reason. Over the decades, people have had all kinds of intellectual tools removed. It’s also the now broken social contract. You stay on your couch; you live however you intend to. Just don’t interfere with your betters.
And there is more:
*Darwin’s theory has been proposed to be removed from Russian textbooks because it “contradicts religious education” and contributes to the “spiritual decay” of children. This initiative was put forward by Muslim Khuchiev, assistant to the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, former mayor of Grozny and former Prime Minister of Chechnya*
Our religious right would love to remove Darwin from education. The idea that there is a process to understand life on earth separate from holy books does not play well with many religious people.
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