Modern civilization is in the deepest crisis, more and more resembling a deadlock. There are dozens of reasons for this deadlock crisis, but if we look at the very essence of the problem, the main reason is the disappearance of the meaning of History. What do we exist for, what are we created for? Does civilization have a meaning and what kind of meaning is it? Now it is obvious that the idea of material progress leads to ecological catastrophe and degradation of mankind. A purely religious picture of the world frightens modern humanity, oriented to the idea of comfort and life benefits. The traditions of many peoples have disappeared or have already been severely degraded under the onslaught of modern civilization. But answers and solutions will still have to be found if humanity wants to remain humanity and not wild herds of bipeds. Conceptualizing these possible answers is one of the most important spiritual and intellectual tasks of our time.
Let us first consider the phenomenon of modern civilization itself. It is not always realized that “modern civilization” is a Western civilization. The values and models of the liberal West became the reference for the whole world in the twentieth century. To put it succinctly, the essence of liberalism is individualism, the rights and comfort of the individual, the private person in terms of his physical existence. All the values and institutions of liberalism are based on these fundamental spiritual foundations. Now, in the twenty-first century, all of humanity is essentially “liberal” and “Western”.
The West as a civilization is the result of a long cultural work, symbiosis and synthesis of many civilizations and cultures. It is the heir not only of Europe proper, including ancient Greece and Rome, but also of Sumer, Egypt, Persia, Judea, Byzantium. Intellectual mobility, scientific efficiency, innate pragmatism of Europeans allowed them to absorb, to master the fruits of even very distant in all respects civilizations, such as the Islamic world, India, China. The result was conceptual dominance and domination over the world.
With a certain degree of schematism, humanity can be divided into “sedentary” and “nomadic” civilizations. This initial division is reflected in the biblical story of Abel and Cain, the sons of Adam. Cain, a farmer, kills Abel, a herdsman. Farming is associated with a sedentary lifestyle, herding with a nomadic one. The biblical story points to the victory of the sedentary way of life, settled peoples, the city over nomadism. By the way, Cain is considered the founder of the first city.
So, the West is the cumulative legacy and apotheosis of sedentary civilization, the “line of Cain.”
And what about “nomadic” cultures and civilizations? In the world history nomads most often acted as conquerors, destroyers, they swept like a tornado, sweeping away armies, cities and states. In place of separate isolated states, nomads created great empires, promoting the acquaintance of countries and peoples, cross-fertilization of cultures, erasing unnecessary borders. The Arabs created the Caliphate from the Atlantic to China, the Turkic Great El stretched from the Yellow Sea to the Black Sea, the Mongol Empire became the largest state in history, stretching from the Pacific Ocean in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, the Kyrgyz left their mark in the names of tribes and places from the Yenisei to the Caucasus. But having created great empires, nomads, as a rule, in the second or third generation fell under the decomposing influence of subdued sedentary peoples, adopted alien religions, ways of life, got bogged down in laziness and intrigues, and in the end were absorbed by the conquered peoples, disappeared without leaving a trace. At best, they were left with a name and a bad memory, because chronicles and chronicles were written by sedentary peoples. Cain invariably defeated Abel.
Modern representatives of “nomadic cultures”, infected with Western humanistic attitudes, shyly “justify” their violent warlike ancestors, mumble about “the contribution of nomads to world culture and art”, talk about “Eurocentrism” and “cultural racism”. Their very behavior clearly demonstrates the aforementioned Western intellectual dominance.
From a metahistorical and metaphysical point of view, the nomads’ mission in history was to destroy the “sedentary order” as an excessive concern only for material, physical things. And this is how scholars of the traditional settled world viewed them, when they wrote of the “scourge of God,” of “punishment for sins,” of “redemption” through the fiery lava of nomadic raids. “Blessed be thy coming — Scourge of God I serve, and it is not for me to stop thee,” was the address of Pope Leo I to Attila, leader of the Huns. When man succeeds in material, external, material things, he is overcome by the pride of personal power, he imagines himself equal to God or at least God’s favorite, God’s chosen one. In the heat of accumulation and building, he forgets the main thing, the spiritual, the thing that is “above this world”. According to tradition, this is what happened to Atlantis, which did not heed Noah-Nuh’s sermon. God sank the wicked Atlanteans. In human history, nomads have acted as a “flood” for the rich kitschy sedentary kingdoms.
It should be pointed out here that according to sacred symbolism, nomads belong to the male pole of manifestation, and sedentary ones to the female pole (of course, we are not talking about gender here). According to the traditional caste division, a nomad is a warrior, so many dynasties in sedentary states descended from nomads, while a person of sedentary agricultural culture belongs to the Vaishya caste: peasants, artisans, traders, townspeople. This caste needs spiritual guidance and gravitates towards priests, priests. That is why the role of organized religion and ministers of cult, the church, as well as hermits, monks, initiates, is so important in sedentary states. By the way, the original impulse of Islam is “nomadic”, that is why the Koran and Sunnah say nothing about clergy, it appeared in Islam already under the influence of sedentary culture, “illegally”. The “militancy” of Islam is also “nomadic” in nature. It is interesting that monotheism, the Unity of God in the most clear and distinct form was revealed to nomads or their direct descendants. This applies both to Tengriism for the Turks and Mongols, and the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) for the Semitic peoples. It is not without reason that Prophet Muhammad said that “all prophets were shepherds”. It is also no coincidence that the majority of Turkic peoples adopted Islam.
But all this is in the past. Today, there are no full-fledged “nomadic civilizations”. There are modern states that are fully in the modern (Western) development paradigm, using the remnants of nomadic culture for tourism or propaganda purposes. But as mentioned at the very beginning of our conversation, modern (“sedentary”) civilization is in the deepest systemic crisis. Former “nomadic” countries, trying to become “modern” and “advanced”, are implementing the same mechanisms of deadlock. What can we learn from our own “nomadic” origins?
The problem is the complete conceptual helplessness of the elites of once nomadic civilizations. Admittedly, there is no elite, actually… But, as a working hypothesis, let us call the “elite” certain tops, those in power. This elite is completely inside the Western, not even values, but clichés, liberal stamps. “Nomadic themes” are used to manipulate their own population, to foment nationalism, to divert attention from pressing socio-economic problems, to camouflage political despotism and the looting of their own country. “Raising the spirit of nomads, the spirit of the nation” covers a new round of deceitfulness of the people, strengthening the power of comprador-plutocrats. They are ready to trade everything, including their own nomadic heritage.
But if we are seriously talking about finding a way out of the impasse of modernity, we need ruthless intellectual honesty, clarity, sobriety, avant-garde, free thinking. We must take from our ancestors (awaken in ourselves) the warrior spirit, heroism, bravery, courage, manliness and manifest it in the intellectual sphere. In which so far we have resembled unintelligent defenseless infants. This is what Chinggis Khan’s advisor Yelui Chutsai once said to Hagan Ugedei: “You can conquer the world sitting in the saddle, but it is impossible to rule the world from the saddle”.
Several important points need to be raised here.
No return to the original nomadic way of life, and even on a national scale, is not only impossible, it is absurd in the XXI century, and will lead to total systemic degradation. By “nomadic civilization” we should understand not ethnography, not folklore, but the attitude to the world, the type of consciousness, philosophy (future).
As once Scythians, Huns, Turks, Mongols, Arabs, Berbers-Tuaregs crushed “settled” civilizations, so we need to spiritually crush the modern civilization. We need to make a bid for active participation in world history. Nomads played a colossal role in the past, but they were not able to create strong forms for broadcasting their spiritual impulse, it was absorbed by the “globalists” of the past centuries. We, the people of this century, must try to solve this most difficult task, our conquests must become intellectual. Our weapon is culture. It is the “soft power” of the descendants of nomads. This is what we can build our geopolitical state positioning on. Acquiring our own conceptualization is true sovereignty and subjectivity. Then it would be possible to work purposefully and consciously, albeit slowly, but in the right direction.
At the dawn of time mankind was nomadic, people moved around the white world and settled the earth. But, apparently, everything external, stable, material was considered temporary, sinful, distracting from the main thing. Man in this life was a nomad, a wanderer, a guest, he should not be attached to anything. In the depths of human (whether “settled” or “nomadic”) fore-memory remained this good news, this call. We are physical beings and need sustenance and shelter from the weather. These primal needs are the source of the emergence of society and the state. Therefore, the nomad does not reject the material world altogether. He simply does not make an idol out of it. This world is a bridge, one should cross it, not build a house on it.
Although it should be said that a degraded nomad who has lost the organics of the mother soil culture, but does not want to master the complexity of modern civilization is an extremely unsympathetic and destructive phenomenon. For example, in relation to nature and the environment, he often acts as a barbarian and predator, seeking to exhaust, destroy, destroy, cut down and sell everything, without thinking about the future and without burdening himself with moral anguish. At the same time, he may profess his love for his native land, talk about “the harmony of nomadic culture and ecology”, etc. It shows the negative side of “cosmic nomadic destruction” and a special “nomadic laziness”. It is also necessary to take into account the decomposing nature of globalism, in which the descendant of nomads is now lost.
It is necessary to study and identify some cultural codes in our own traditions and build the philosophy of “nomads” on their basis. For the Kyrgyz intellectual, the study of “Manas” and the small epic “Er-Toshtuk”, as well as the study of modern Kyrgyz culture as a continuation and refraction of the nomadic spirit will be of paramount importance.
What is the ideal of the “nomadic world”? It is unity with Genesis, not incorporation into the doomed globalism. Unity with Genesis means unity with all things, with all peoples and people for the sake of continuation of life and cognition of oneself.