it is also the mark of the whole project: the book is its foundation
The Political Unmanifest
Or How to Break Out of the Vicious Circle
“The state always becomes the visible form of society’s invisible condition.”
About the book
Parties, laws, institutions, elections and reforms cannot be understood at the level of their external construction alone. They are the expression of a deeper layer: the condition of society from which they arise and with which they are subsequently filled.
The Manifest
The state, the economy, laws, parties, institutions, bureaucracy, elections, reforms and political programs.
The Unmanifest
The condition of society from which these forms arise: values, fears, habits of thought, and conceptions of the human being, power, freedom and justice.
If the Unmanifest remains unchanged, new forms begin to reproduce old errors. Society changes parties but preserves the old culture of power. It changes laws but preserves the old attitude toward rules. It changes leaders but preserves the old need for a savior. This is how the vicious circle of politics arises.
This does not mean that institutions and reforms are unnecessary. On the contrary: without them, good intentions never take form. But form does not save by itself. Even a well-written law passes through the person who has to apply it. Even a well-designed institution passes through the culture of those who work inside it.
This book does not propose abandoning politics for the sake of inner self-perfection. Nor does it propose replacing institutions with beautiful spiritual rhetoric. Its task is different: to see the source from which political forms arise.
From what state of consciousness is a person trying to build society?
Contents
The first three chapters describe the mechanism, the next two how it reproduces itself in forms, and the last three what can be built instead.
The introduction, in full and free of charge
No registration, no email address. A book is better judged by its text than by a description of it — which is why the introduction is open in full.
Introduction. Politics Begins Before Politics
Humanity has grown accustomed to telling the story of its development as a story of external progress: we moved from an agrarian society to an industrial one, from an industrial society to a post-industrial one, and from a post-industrial society to a digital one. We built cities, factories, universities, financial systems, international institutions, satellites, the internet, artificial intelligence, and technologies that only a few generations ago seemed impossible.
This is indeed a great achievement. Technological progress is neither a mistake nor an enemy of the human being. On the contrary, it shows what the human mind is capable of when imagination, discipline, knowledge, labor, and the capacity for cooperation come together. Yet it was precisely the greatness of technological progress that created one of the most dangerous psychological traps of the modern age. Finding themselves within a world of advanced technology, the human being began to regard not only that world but also themselves as developed. They live among complex systems and conclude that they themselves have become more complex. They use the fruits of reason and begin to believe that their own consciousness has followed the same path. This is how the central illusion of modern civilization arises: we mistake the development of the environment we have created for the development of the human being who lives within it.
Moreover, even the technological progress of which humanity is so proud does not mean the even development of humanity as a whole. Most people do not create technological civilization — they enter it as users. A person holds a smartphone, but they created neither the microprocessor, nor the operating system, nor the communication network, nor the programming language, nor the global logistics of production, nor the scientific base on which all of it rests. They use the result of someone else’s knowledge, someone else’s discipline, someone else’s labor and someone else’s inner effort. There is nothing wrong with this. Civilization is arranged this way: some create, others use, others develop further. But here it is important not to be deceived. To use the fruits of development is not yet to be developed.
Technological civilization develops faster than the human being develops inwardly, precisely because its achievements can be placed outside: in an object, a mechanism, a program, an instruction, an infrastructure. One person can create a tool that millions will use. One group of engineers can change the lives of entire generations.
The text breaks off here in the mock-up. In the working version the full introduction stands in this place — about four pages, taken verbatim from the English edition.
What is not here
There are no reviews on this page. Not out of modesty: someone else’s assessment, read before the text, becomes part of your own impression, and separating the two afterwards is almost impossible. The book is about how judgment is formed — beginning with a ready-made one would be strange.
For the same reason there is no biography of the author and no story about him. Whether to read is decided by the text, not by who wrote it. The introduction is open in full precisely for that.
This is not a pose and not a device. It is the same rule that applies across all the projects: not to hand over a ready-made position before a person has formed their own.
Where to read and buy
The book was written in Russian; the English edition is ready and awaiting publication. The introduction on this page is open in both cases.
English edition
The translation is ready. A publication date has not yet been set.
An email with a link has been sent to this address. Confirm it — after that you will receive exactly one email, on the day of publication.
If the introduction gave rise to a thought of your own, the most useful thing you can do is send this page to someone you would like to talk to about it. The introduction is open: it can be read without buying anything.
The system
The exhibition lets you live through the problem. The Political Unmanifest uncovers the mechanism. The school develops the capacity to work with that mechanism.
The book is the philosophical foundation of everything that follows. Each project explains itself: neither the exhibition nor the school requires reading it. The book answers a different question — not what to do, but which layer the things already happening grow out of.
The Political Unmanifest
The conceptual frame: how fear, closedness and the failure to distinguish become political decisions and recurring social forms.
you are hereThe Practice of Judgment
The same philosophy in education: systematic training of the capacities that make up a person’s maturity — and consequently the quality of everything they build.
Project →Migration. Layers of Reality
Experience: the path from automatic judgment to the comparison of scales, faces, risks and consequences. Knowledge arises in the body, the pace and the distance.
Project →What next
The book ended where the work begins. Understanding that remains only understanding becomes yet another private conviction that one is right.
Answer the book
A question, an objection, an observation or an impression. Substantive objections matter more than formal approval.
Go to Response →Set out your readiness
Which changes matter to you, what you could be useful for, and in what format you are prepared to take part. No commitments on either side.
Complete the profile →