Secret Services and their Humble Charm
This text is a short work by Evgeny Golovin, presented alongside other works of late 20th century and contemporary philosophy in the upcoming anthology Chort Hydroponics, all of which have been translated into English for the first time by Wylfing's in-house translation team. Artwork, of course, by our commendable S.I. Smith.
'... You’ve been unmasked, Lieutenant Kvasov! I advise you not to fight me on this!' — Andrey felt his beautiful eyes narrow. He began wanting to spit in the nazi’s bloated face. 'Patience! Get a hold of yourself, little Andrey! Life depends on your self-control…'
Let’s try the bleen from a different pan: 'His highness Malko Linge bent down and swung his club. The special golf ball—the latest innovation from Los Alamos Laboratory—struck the smiling fat man in the chest. Nothing remained of the treacherous Samsonov—only his hat, which the explosion had blown right onto the tenth hole...'
And so on and so forth. Reconnaissance — they are straightened out, broad-shouldered, grey-eyed, sure in their righteousness; counter-reconnaissance — ordinary, spring-tensioned, bavaro-dialectal; spies — pretty, well dressed, unprincipled, priapic… Every young boy dreams of growing into a spy and getting old being their boss. An energetic myth of a new epoch.
But some will ask, is spying not one of the most ancient professions, akin to the prostitute or reporter? No. The aforementioned callings have appeared relatively recently. The idea of espionage and secret agencies came from the French Revolution, in particular, from the genius, Fouche. This idea was born together with the bureau of weights and measures, together with the 'Goddess of reason'; its incarnation became possible only in the environment of mass civilisation. Yes, it is true: when men transformed into 'humanity' and then into the 'world community', there appeared a chance to manipulate the uniform mass, which has equal 'rights', identical virtues and vices, similar viruses and habits, in various ways, all this but only slightly tinged with national paints. The state became a conglomeration of human particles, conditional on the national area’s curvature where the class hierarchy was replaced by sporadic movements of flowing layers, reminiscent of alluvial processes. What best coordinates the relative resilience of such a formation? Fear. Fear of the enemy. This enemy gradually loses any concreteness, disintegrating into an ever-present haze, bleeding out poisonous emanations. This enemy threatens not just a particular country, but 'humanity' as a whole. This concept owes much to Christianity. But if Satan, the 'roaring lion' and 'enemy of mankind' previously would prey on souls, lying in wait for the spat-eager, the lustful and the avaricious, then now, due to the general downfall into bodily materialism, the Opponent makes an attempt on life itself, i.e. the protein molecule. Fear provokes the herd to bunch up around shepherds, not particularly thinking about the kind of shepherds they are. And what is most effective at generating fear? The great inquisitor in 'Brothers Karamazov' named three human mass movers thus: miracle, mystery, authority. Science conjures up miracles, politicians create authority, special services manufacture mysteries, especially, the 'state mysteries'.
The idea of 'mystery' or 'secret' is by itself intriguing... La Rochefoucauld — a memoirist and master of the XVIIth century’s aphorism — expressed it thusly: 'The secret must be safekept like the zenith of the eye. There’s nothing sadder than an uncovered secret: a medallion without a portrait, a wallet without money.'
The lust-filled pull towards secrets, the hoarding of secrets — a fairly strange psychological peculiarity of an individual or group, since 'being in the world', as such, is already THE secret.
A frightening quantity of scientific, political, military secrets — a peculiarity of our time, totally unknown prior to our age. For example, Damascus steel or Philosopher’s stone creation recipes weren’t 'secrets' in the modern sense. Craftsmen or artists knew the components of the ligature: the mystery was contained in the identity of the operator and the mode of his action. But now the role of the secret has changed: it became the main generator of fear. Mass media dump with a laudable persistence upon our poor heads 'news' about a heretofore unheard-of build-up of 'weapons of mass destruction' and unlimited 'data banks', threaten us with 'total bugging and surveillance', console us with 'nuclear football is in trustworthy hands'. But not even all this gibberish can satisfy the insatiable special services: in the last few years, they have begun spreading rumours about some sort of a 'psychotronic weapon' — as if the masses weren’t already sufficiently dumbed down by their secret archidrivel.
Botticelli’s dazzling 'Venus' has nothing to hide. Hence, we can deduce a psychological constant not entirely frivolous: the more jealously something is protected, the more secretly it is guarded, the more this 'something' is boring and silly. Special service’s structure unveils the key feature of the modern world: the overwhelming superiority of form over content. This means that the schema, the outline, the form, are laid over completely inadequate matter. Secret service workers are even more susceptible to the mass suggestion than the rest of humanity, i.e. they are sure of the usefulness of their work, of the cruciality of their mission etc. Some of them, perhaps, feel ashamed to yawn in their office while looking through illustrated journals.
Hence yet another conclusion: when the inscription 'Bengal tiger' adorns the badger cage at the zoo, don’t believe your eyes.
