The national idea, in general, includes a statement of what a) is available and what b) is not ashamed to share with others.
There used to be nothing to be ashamed of at all, because it was customary to give others their concepts by force. The tool is simple and intuitive.
It all came down to the principle of “who’s who. The Greeks, the Athenians to be exact, were spreading democracy. Romans – order and statehood. They had something to share in terms of a national idea.
And those who just wanted to live, or who had nothing to give to others, lived by the principle of “what they are rich for, what they are glad for” – going through, like rosaries, a list of national peculiarities and riches.
These two principles of “who gets who” and “what’s rich” have always worked. And it was clear to everyone.
And only recently, literally, almost yesterday, it became incomprehensible. It turned out that it was better not to touch those “whom” you want: the degree of integration suddenly turned out to be such that if you touch it, it will be worse for you.
When the resources are yours, the money to use those resources is another’s, and the technology needed to do so is a third’s, and the needs for the product you could produce from your resources are not so much yours as others, and for the money you will get for the products you will once produce from your resources with the money of the second using the technology of the third, you already owe the fourth, the fifth,…in short, many others, not to mention the first two, – then you can only touch one another by not supporting the resolutions, and that after tiring
There you go. And “what’s rich” has fallen sharply in price. Even in terms of national ideas.
In the past, for example, you could lure the youth of other countries with the colorful toys and jutting chins of your supermen, calling it all the fruits of freedom and democracy.
When the wreckage of the walls went to souvenirs and the iron of the curtains that separated them from you fell into privatization, everyone saw that behind the expensive ideal of freedom there was a cheap desire to expand markets.
But if only high ideas…. Especially since there are suddenly so many people in the world who aren’t at all clingy to your ideas. It’s just by nature. So an idea crisis is half the trouble.
Another thing turned out to be more frightening. The Americans, under the thunder and brilliance of the national idea, made themselves the world’s monetary and banking center, bought up all the technology and the best brains. And as a result, the value of all these riches is falling before our eyes! Because, as it turns out, the main thing is demand and production.
Brains grow everywhere. Technology itself is inedible. But demand suddenly turns out to be strong in quantity. No amount of quality demand will outweigh it and create wealth. Whoever, like China, can set up production to meet quantitative demand, however simple, will become the center of the world.
If he starts to accumulate money, he will really need technology. And they will come to him because he will pay for them. And it will have real money, not security papers on the rustle of which the rest of the world’s production and life will supposedly be based, as the Americans used to think.
They thought about it, but there were those who realized that to make America “Great Again,” they had to work with their own hands. Produce, not just cut coupons.
Thus, “what we are rich in” is no longer welcome. America’s supply of the best brains, information, and information technology has become like any supply of mothballed soft junk in grandmother’s coffers. Surprising but true.
The rich are not those who have, but those who can give to others.
Americans have forgotten this – and have gone from being the people of the future to being the people of the past. And yet at one time it was they who took the world with their bare hands just by giving it what it needed to develop.
Gave ideals and models of the future. When everyone else was still tangled in the folds of the robes of their royal dynasties and ashamed to show themselves in cafes without their family coat of arms, this young, vibrant people offered everyone the standards of life, to which the world had already come in the war-torn twentieth century. The standard of man is a free individual who achieves everything by his own labor. The benchmark of a mutually supportive free society and its members. The standard of all values in the world is the dollar.
By disassembling into molecules and elementary mechanisms, they have technologized everything that can and cannot be done. From the production of wine to the production of laughter. After the war, they gave Germany, Europe and Japan the means and technology – develop.
But all this splendor of paternalism, their whole national idea of a guarantor and a key factor in development has faded and faded for one, as yet little understood, reason.
It was only because they were doing everything for themselves and not for the prosperity of everyone.
In many ways, understandably, in the confrontation with the “evil empire” pulling its tentacles out from under the Iron Curtain. But ultimately, it’s for myself.
A pale copy of such “altruism in reverse” was the assistance provided by this very empire, the USSR, “progressive” regimes and “people’s democracy” countries.
Therefore, in the future, the peoples of the world will come to understand that the national idea of each of them turns out to be not in the statement of their peculiarities, but in the mission. And that everyone has the same mission, because only mutual assistance can survive on Earth.
Let them remember then the sad experience of the once glorious America: when helping another, do not do it for your own sake.
