"Culture:
The Origins of Enmity" by Evgeny Elizarov, summary

This book is a profound philosophical essay written in the 1990s. The text connects the highest achievements of the human spirit with biological processes, arguing that the origins of ethnic hatred lie in the body’s physiological rejection of alien life rhythms.

The problem of culture and civilization

Evgeny Elizarov begins his reflections with a paradox. Culture unites people. At the same time, differences in traditions serve as the main pretext for bloodshed. Ideologies fuel suicidal confrontations. The author cites the classic example of Taras Bulba’s merciless revenge on the Poles for desecrating sacred customs. Pointed and unpointed, Catholics and Huguenots, Whites and Reds readily kill each other over the most trivial differences in their way of life. People give their lives for the abstract concepts of their ancestral faith, often completely unaware of their true meaning.

To explain this phenomenon, the thinker draws a strict distinction between culture and civilization, drawing on the concepts of Oswald Spengler. Civilization encompasses tangible forms: palaces, canvases, printing presses, computers. Culture conceals its spiritual meaning behind them. The material substance of any sign is dead in itself. The Apostle Paul directly called this the "dead letter," denouncing the Pharisees for making man a slave to the Sabbath. Comprehending true revelation requires an effort of the soul, sometimes taking a lifetime. The gradual removal of superficial veils blurs the line between dry civilization and living culture.

Mechanics of perception and body memory

A material sign lacks internal information. Understanding the world occurs solely through practical human interaction with the environment. Developing the concepts of George Berkeley and Karl Marx, Elizarov demonstrates the impossibility of an object’s existence without a perceiving subject. Any object acquires reality at the moment of practical contact with a person. A book comes to life only when read, like a mirror in which a reflection appears only when viewed by the beholder.

The body remembers external objects in a very specific way. The human brain doesn’t work like a computer’s magnetic disk. The body records its own movement patterns, which it uses to navigate its environment. The author gives the example of simple worms in a T-maze. The animal memorizes the number of steps and turns. Memory functions as a mechanism for continuously reproducing once-learned actions in the form of condensed motor skills. At the subcellular level, living tissue constantly vibrates, preserving the ability to independently recreate experience. Microscopic movements adapt to the geophysical and climatic characteristics of the region. Individual experience leaves its mark on every cell. The unique "etotype" of any social community is created precisely by these imperceptible pulsations.

The emergence of consciousness from ritual

The transition from animal to human began with the integration of several different tools into a single technological chain. Animals are unable to grasp the connection between a heavy stone and the sharp axe it produces. Humankind’s distant ancestor was able to master this subtle connection through ritual action. Ritual arose as an imitation of real activity, as a collective pantomime performed without direct contact with the material. Collective repetition welded together primitive communities and synchronized their rhythms.

Over millennia, the ritual was reduced to a simple gesture. The gesture became the first true sign. It began to denote a complex sequence of labor acts, no longer visible to the outside observer. Gradually, the artificially created material world began to dictate the body’s modes of movement. Bodily movement became subordinated to the cut of clothing, the rhythms of production, and the shape of tools. The objects surrounding humans separated them from animal instincts and shaped abstract thinking. The need for activity for its own sake replaced the simple satisfaction of hunger.

Thought transference illusion

The author challenges the conventional notion of information exchange. Sign systems do not transfer ready-made thoughts from one mind to another. Information does not fly from speaker to listener through the void of space in the form of messages. The sign acts as a physical stimulus, a trigger. It causes the internal biological mechanisms of the recipient to resonate. The listener or reader independently constructs images within their mind.

Elizarov cites the example of Socrates from Plato’s dialogue "Meno." The ancient philosopher didn’t teach his slave anything directly. He asked leading questions, challenging the young man to discover complex mathematical laws on his own. Immanuel Kant, in his "Critique of Pure Reason," also argued that space and time are determined by the structure of consciousness itself. A successful exchange of ideas requires a profound match between the biological etiologies of the interlocutors. When internal rhythms differ radically, understanding disappears. One person’s words can cause the neurons of another to become completely deaf.

The meaning of a word isn’t limited by a dictionary. Each sign draws upon a person’s entire individual experience. The word "bread" evokes completely different feelings in those who survived the siege of Leningrad than in their well-fed contemporaries. Elizarov recalls Academician Shcherba’s famous phrase about a "gloka kuzdra." Artificial words lack dictionary meaning, but their syntax instantly forces the brain to construct a vivid picture. People always create their own meaning.

Subcellular roots of hatred

Here we discover the true root of human enmity. People from different natural environments and material environments possess different etitypes. Their cells pulsate at different frequencies. When alien cultures collide, a severe biological dissonance arises. The author recalls the law of rejection of donor tissue in medicine: foreign cells are killed by the body. The social reaction mirrors the biological one.

The body instinctively rejects anything that disrupts its internal harmony. Physiological fear of alien rhythms is shaped by the mind into religious or patriotic myths. Ideology serves as a screen for living matter’s subconscious horror of a foreign body. The Crusaders, who plundered the altars of Christian Constantinople in 1204 under Western leadership, and centuries-long European anti-Semitism, culminating in the Nazi Holocaust, illustrate the horrific consequences of deep cellular dissonance. Alienation and fierce hatred of the foreigner are dictated by the protective functions of the flesh. It is impossible to change this process through logical arguments. Legal nihilism in Russia is also explained by the discrepancy between Western legal abstractions and the organic Russian sense of personalized justice.

Mystical plasticity of the spirit

The body possesses amazing flexibility and the ability to adapt to other people’s algorithms. A writer can become so immersed in a character that their body reacts physically. Maxim Gorky, when describing a murder scene, would develop a bleeding stigma in the liver. For centuries, religious fanatics have demonstrated the wounds of the crucified Christ appearing on their own bodies.

Elizarov describes the phenomenon of complete transference of individual experience. American journalist Frank Edwards documented the astonishing story of Shanti Devi from Delhi, India. The three-year-old girl recalled a past life in Muttra. She named her husband, Kedarnath, recognized her house and relatives, and recalled the circumstances of her death in childbirth. Scientists found no evidence of deception. The philosopher sees this as striking proof that the human body is potentially capable of attuning to any rhythm of the universe and reproducing the fate of another.

Dreams of Unity and Mass Standards

High culture constantly records discord. At the same time, for centuries it dreams of a golden age and universal truce. Napoleon’s dream of world domination was paradoxically fueled by the idea of uniting nations into a single harmonious family with common laws and a single currency. Great conquerors attempted to eliminate fear of the alien through forced state unification. Karl Marx’s economic theory, linking the development of productive forces with the disappearance of class discord, also served as a way to save the world from bloody disunity. According to Marxism, things and goods convey social relations. The shared ownership of identical goods unites people.

The researcher offers an unexpected perspective on modernity. Despised by intellectuals, mass culture fulfills a grand historical mission. Identical pop rhythms, standardized plots, and fashionable items forcibly align the cellular vibrations of people around the world. They aggressively mold a single planetary etitype. Unification erases biological differences. The standardization of everyday life dampens subcutaneous physiological dissonance and erases ancient tribal enmities.