09.11.2006 Accepting Others, you Get the Whole World

There are not so many programmes on our TV, which we watch with pleasure. One of them is «Around the World».
First the author of this programme Michael Kozhuhov with his all experience, self-conceit and self-love of a soviet and later a post soviet journalist sometimes looked funny when talking to Bedouins, coconuts gathers, flamenco dancers and other foreigners. This is he, as it first seemed, who was the key figure of his reportings from different parts of the world. But the big and wonderful world, which he was telling the TV viewers about, fortunately, soon tore off the mask of void vanity from him.
Time has passed and the programme has developed: people and circumstances which Kozhuhov was dealing with became the key issues of his reportings. More upon, the philosophy of the programme became obvious. His main idea was that the world is united in its varieties, it’s unique due to variety of life and all things that are artificial, restricted and national are not important.
We can only begrudge the author who could overcome locality and provincialism –the category typical of all town and capitals all over the world. As if he had hugged the whole world, admiring its multiculturalism, unity and beauty. He interflew with the world, having cleaned his consciousness from programming and stereotypes and having broadened its boundaries.
This is a difficult process, when a mature person rejects his previous values and beliefs. Other environment is a stress and a crisis. To experience a crisis means to be devastated. To accept others is very difficult even if they are your country people. By having done so the TV anchor got more, he got the whole world and himself in the world. It’s very brave and risky! And even if the complete juncture with other cultures is not possible due to drawbacks of previous experience, language and mental stereotypes, we have a unique opportunity to get in touch with «otherness» and this is the opposition to racism and nationalism.
Precisely this pluralistic world is the projection of the polycentric world discovered by Einstein. Here we can’t see total conformity and unification. The ground for social structures which can exist only in democratic society with variety of its forms of life and ideas is found on the space level. Total unification, rendering to the common denominator mean making an unvital structure, social catastrophe and triumph of entropy. The programme “Around the World” opposes to such a tendency and is a guide for multiculturalism, united world and democracy.

Maxim Efimov, post graduate student of Philosophy Faculty, KSPU