OPINION

“Heroes” and “Traders”

Moris Simashko

ALMATY, January 5 (Specially for the GLOBE)

It has started ten thousand years ago. Or, perhaps, twenty thousand, who counted. Having caught huge amount of fish, someone, which was living on the banks of the river, considered that he and his family are not able to eat this entire amount. While on the other end of the forest his neighbor was drying soft and warm animal skins. There was an old tested way of buying these skins, which existed from the time when a man has just begun to walk straightly. Nevertheless, this time a man has not taken a stick with many boughs in order to kill the neighbor and obtain his skins. At the same time it was possible to eat him, rape his wife and kill all his relatives (at a later stage, with intellect development, wives were taken into the harem, which remained from the times when people had the tales, and folks were taken into slavery). After long thoughts a man has chosen another way. He has loaded the scraper with fish and dragged it to his neighbor. The last one has kindly received him, treated to him as good as he could and gave him sheaf of skins for cloth making. Thus the first exchange on the Earth has taken place.

The thousand years had passed. People learned to work up the stones, fire the dishes and fuse the metals. They were willing to exchange their products with the close and via them with the remote neighbors. But once the moment has come, when the entire clan, settled down around the kaolin hill, began to produce tremendous amount of nice painted dishes. It was enough for close and remote neighbors, with whom it was exchanged for fish and meat, but it was lack of salt for its storage. And then, the other man having loaded the excess dishes on the camel that was domesticated at that time, and began to make long movements to unexplored places, where he changed it for salt, which he was carrying back. Now he knew that it was required to produce as much of such dishes as possible and of the good quality in order to provide successful business. It has forced him to think out the potter’s wheel and many other things, the wheel itself, for instance. And he has needed the world.

Such people were carrying not only the dishes, salt, spices or silk. Together with them legends, traditions and believes were managing their invisible way making close and enriching the clans spread over the land, combining them into the unified nation. And the nations were getting acquainted with each other by this way. Thus the “trading” nature has revealed in the humanity, as the “heroes” are scornfully calling it. They were not dreaming all this time as well: they padded the club with the iron, were thinking out slings for throwing the stones, sharpened the arrows and did not want to exchange for something – they took everything by force. Remember from Firdousy:

My throne is my saddle, my fame is in the field,

My crown is the helmet, the whole world is my power!

Thus they had passed through the whole history till nowadays: “heroes” and “traders”.

One way or another they represented the contrasts.

Primeval Hercules and cunning Odyssey represented different ways of the mankind. That is way the kings and emperors were fighting with intractable cities – sanctuary of the “traders”, and the last ones were defending themselves with real heroism.

This oppositions reached the culmination in the new times. In the Netherlands, England and France the “traders” bridled the “heroes” by means of the knife and guillotine immediately giving the birth to the new heroes from their own surroundings. Together with kaisers and tzars there are twenty million lives, which were lost by the mankind in the World War I, on their account.

At the middle of the century both wars have taken away even fifty million of lives. It was we, who were signing:

How do you do, the land of the heroes!..

The nations that have grown wiser one after another refused from “heroic” way and the God gave them. It is interesting that militant nations were the first who had done that. Switzerland, which has once conquered the whole Europe one and a half century ago signed up for being “trader” and is living in clover.

At the edge of the third thousand years A.D. the world becomes entirely different. Without giving up its national originality, as it was imagined by primitive cosmopolitanism, the nations are more and more representing unified mankind. This is an irreversible process and the “heroes” in this world are loosing more often. Once “heroic” Baghdad decided to attack “trading” Kuwait and it was put on the universal bridle, from which it can not get free. Many other traditional “passion followers” are feeling this bridle today, tomorrow it will become the rule. And there is not a great number of “heroic” regimes on the Earth.

Current electoral campaign, when people start to realize that there own fortune depends on the future of their state, forced me to take the pen. There is no one to blame in the wrong choice – which way Kazakstan must choose, that is the hard truth of democracy.

What is the politics in understanding of an ordinary man? It is a clew of alternative interests, kind and unkind passions, acceptable and, unfortunately, unacceptable means of struggle. Tribal patriarchic clan, which is the sign of “heroic times” is ceasing the dominating role. Interest clans are removing it. Whether it is good or bad, it is the reality of today, with which it is useless to argue. However, besides this utilitarian, so-called “internal” policy, there is a global strategy, on which hard formation of the state, its joining to the world economic, political and moral system. In this sense, “heroic” actions, which are finishing its life, are just contra-indicated. It is obvious even from the situation occurring close to us in Afghanistan and Tajikistan. It is necessary to remember that global strategy is one way or another directly connected to the internal policy. Reconstruction, or renewal, to be more precise, of the industry, agriculture, cut-throat struggle against corruption, legible activity of the state authority must be the main care of all branches of power and President, first of all. The same uncontrolled “heroism” becomes the major threat in this situation. Fortunately, Kazakstan has avoided such way with all cost, with which it is characterized. We are not living very wealthy, but still living, hoping fore future.