What does it mean to be independent? It seems to me that the answer is very simple: not to be dependent on any external circumstances and any limited idea. The contemporary Armenian oligarch who has built a mansion with 40 bedrooms appeared in dependence on this circumstance. Although he does not need all 40 bedrooms, he will feel great sorrow if their number becomes 39, and because of this spiritual suffering, the extra bedroom becomes a vital necessity. A person may be dependent on the position, and we’re witnessing everywhere that people are so glued to their chairs that no technical liquid will tear him off.
Dependence, in short, is a situation when a person seeks a support and believes that this support helps him to live and endure life’s challenges. In addition to money and power (incidentally, it is not necessarily that it be a public authority, many people satisfy this thirst at home or at work), it could be the alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and Facebook but also the reputation, spiritual teacher – the “guru”, and even the religion if we understand it merely as a system of rituals: prayers, candles, baptism and so on.
In the second half of the 20th century, some “technologies” were in fashion, which allegedly arise a sort of supernatural powers in people. (It looks like the students drinking a “memory pill” before the exam without realizing that the memory should be trained every day rather they obtain under the chemical influence).
But the most difficult overcoming dependence arises from the limitation of thinking. Usually, they are caused by the dualism of estimates: this is a good (evil) man, this is a good (bad) event, this is useful, this is harmful. The mental dependence forms respective expectations, programming, which make our behavior and our actions similarly predictable as the conduct of a heavy tobacco or drug user. When it is talked (now, already at the state level) about “non-standard solutions”, I first of all think about overcoming this dualism, outside of dual and “paired” thinking.
When I am watching videos on the websites in what “choir” of questions our young journalists surround the officials, it seems to me that our profession also has the greatest dependence on “mental limitations”.
The one who is guided by such stereotypes, as they say, will not invent gunpowder.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
