民主转型与民主困境

政体要么民主要么不民主？这是政体类型的经典两分法，这种两分法在1974年启动的第三波民主化之前并无大碍。但是，第三波以来的重要现象是出现了大量的“两不像政体”（hybrid regime）。这一现象国外已经有较多研究，国内学界对此介绍较少。“两不像政体”顾名思义，就是既非标准的威权政体，亦非标准的民主政体，而是介于两者之间。其常见特征是：主要行政长官和议员通常由定期选举产生，普通选民的投票能发挥实际作用，选举过程中存在不同力量的政治竞争；但是，这些国家的选举过程并没有做到自由和公正，通常存在不同程度的选举舞弊和欺诈，当选的执政者则常常利用行政资源压制反对派和媒体，进行各种政治操纵，甚至为一己之私而推动修宪。正因为这些特征，国际学界通常把“两不像政体”视为威权色彩浓厚的政体类型。借助这一概念，大家就更容易理解一些转型国家正在发生的事情。
 
在政治上，宪政本身是无法自我实施的。背后的深层逻辑是，不少人把民主的文本或宪法简单地视为一套可拆卸的政治装置。一旦一个国家安上这套政治装置，该国就变成民主国家或立宪国家了。但实际上，民主的文本或宪法本身不过是几张纸而已。民主的文本或宪法能否生效，能否运转起来，以及能否运转得好，全赖实际的政治过程，全赖主要政治力量的所作所为，全赖政治家的领导力与选择。所以，民主这套政治装置究竟怎样，不仅取决于这套政治装置本身，更取决于安装和操作这套装置的人。
 
搞好民主的复杂因素
 
民主搞不好的直接问题是不会搞民主。民主要搞好，既涉及一套基于民主文本和宪法条款的制度安排，又涉及政治精英和主要政治力量的信念与行为，还涉及最初的民主实践能否常规化、惯例化与稳定化。这里的任何一个方面要搞好，都太不容易。转型困难国家的一个重大挑战，是此前的旧政体没有给新政体留下多少有利的遗产，反而是留下了很多沉重的包袱。一位美国学者在评价埃及转型时这样说：“对民主而言，威权政体是一所糟糕的学校。”以埃及为例，复杂的教派冲突、政治上强势的军队、缺乏充分民主信念的精英阶层、落后的经济社会状况都是转型的阻力，当然也都是政治搞不好的原因。但是，这些问题没有一样是民主本身造成的，而都是此前统治的遗产。所以，这样的国家民主搞不好很可能是此前的负资产过于庞大，而不能简单归咎于民主本身的问题。
 
对不少转型国家来说，无法通过民主的方式形成有效的政府能力，是民主搞不好的重要原因。政府缺乏效能的常见情形包括：行政权与立法权的冲突、无法形成多数派执政党、议会政党数量的碎片化、政治领导层阶层缺乏领导力和政治技巧，以及缺乏功能健全的官僚系统，等等。在保证政治参与和政治竞争的同时，民主政府同时还必须有所作为，这样才能维系其民主政体本身。如果民主政府缺乏效能，从消极方面讲，政府可能会陷于瘫痪，政治竞争与分权制衡将演变为不同政治家与党派的恶斗；从积极方面讲，政府将无力应对重大的政治经济问题，无法在市场改革与经济发展等关键问题上达成绩效，也就无法通过提高新政体的绩效合法性来强化程序合法性。有民主而无效能，终将损害民主本身。

- 包刚升，《被误解的民主》，2015

民主的政治平等与多数暴政

民主就是“选主”？既然现代民主的核心是竞争性的选举制度，那么民主会不会沦为“选主”呢？“选主”的英文是electocracy，可直译为“选举统治”。国内有著名学者指出现代民主已经沦为“选主”，意指两个主要的含义。
 
第一，“选主”是指选举统治者，然后由选举出来的一个或一群统治者行使统治权，而这已背离了“人民当家作主”的本意。
第二，“选主”按英文本意是指选举决定的统治，选举本身成为统治或政治的核心问题。这样，可能影响乃至操纵选举的力量就有可能左右政治。倘若财富能够控制选举，民主甚至会从“选主”沦为“金主”。
 
约瑟夫·熊彼特认为，民主并不意味着人民的直接统治，而只是意味着人民有选择谁来统治的权利……实际上，与非民主政体相比，民主政体的巨大优势就在于人民有权选择统治者，而其他政体下的统治者要么是自我任命的，要么是一个小圈子任命的。
 
第二种批评的观点也有类似的问题。民主政治既然承认“一人一票”，就意味着民主在基本的方面是“数人头的政治”。当然，每个人的政治影响力是不同的。那些有较强的组织动员力量、较大的言论与话语权以及丰裕的财务资源的人会拥有更大的政治影响力，从而可以在更大程度上左右选举与政治的结果。从这个意义上讲，民主确保的是权利与形式上的政治平等，而不能确保结果与实质上的政治平等。即便如此，投票规则仍然是一人一票和多数决定，这就是人类社会可能实践的一种政治平等。想让每个人发挥完全同等的政治影响力，这是任何社会、任何制度都做不到的。而且，普通选民还可以在同样拥有巨大政治影响力的不同政治精英团体之间做选择。此外，为了防止资本力量过分干预选举，很多民主国家还设定政治献金法，规定个人与企业政治捐款的上限。
 
民主会导致多数暴政？
 
民主思想史上，多数暴政是最著名的概念之一。这个概念由于法国思想家托克维尔和英国思想家约翰·密尔的论述而广为流传，深得人心。尽管多数暴政被保守主义思想家视为民主可能的弊害之一，但在近现代历史进程中，严格意义上的多数暴政情形并不多见。较为著名的例子恐怕要数法国大革命过程中的群众政治。比如，他们未经审判就把不少贵族和政治活动家送上了绞架。而对古典自由主义者或自由至上论者来说，一国内部具有“民粹化”取向的公共政策都可以被视为多数暴政的情形。比如，过高的税收与过高的福利相结合的公共政策，在他们看来有可能构成穷人对富人的变相掠夺。当然，这是否属于多数暴政肯定会存在争议。
 
尽管多数暴政是民主条件下可能出现的一种极端情形，但现代民主政体已经发展出了抑制多数暴政的两种主要机制：一是民主与法治的联姻，二是民主内部的权力制衡。法治所崇尚的法律至上原则，不仅确定了政府权力的边界，而且规制了民主决策可能的边界。此外，现代民主制下政治权力不会集中在一个人或一个机构手中，无论是美国式的总统制还是英国式的议会制都有分权制衡机制。所以，作为一种制度组合，现代民主政体不唯独强调政治参与和多数决定，还强调法治与权力制衡——后者通常是多数暴政的刹车片。
 
从全球范围看，民主并不必然导致高质量的公共治理。民主能否带来高质量的公共治理，主要取决于该国的政治家与选民如何运作民主。
 

- 包刚升，《被误解的民主》，2015

 

民主是一个政治哲学命题？

目前学界和媒体通常把民主当成一个政治哲学问题来处理。比如，最常见的讨论议题包括民主是否优于其他政体，以及民主的优势与弊端等；最经常被提及的人物包括法国启蒙思想家卢梭，法国思想家托克维尔和《民主新论》作者萨托利等；最著名的引用语包括“民主是个好东西”（哈佛大学教授塞缪尔·亨廷顿在《第三波》前言中的话），以及“多数的暴政”等。这些热点内容大致反映出国内对民主问题的关注重点与普遍认知。
 
民主的哲学思辨当然非常重要。但是，最近半个世纪以来，民主主要是一个转型问题。离开转型谈民主，意义不是太大。与哲学思辨相比，转型研究更多关注经验世界已经发生什么和正在发生什么，而非“应该”发生什么。
 
如今，大众视野里的民主要么是政治哲学意义上的民主，要么是作为发达国家民主典范的英美民主。前者往往把民主理解为一个“应然”的问题，后者容易把民主过分理想化。但是，特别是对于发展中地区来说，经验世界里的民主与实际发生的转型，跟前面两种解读都相去甚远。所以，只有关注转型问题，才不会以过分简单化的思维来理解民主。
 
转型是一个单向线性的进程？
 
即便进入经验世界，不少人容易把转型理解为一个单向线性的进程，众所周知的转型三步曲是：旧政体的瓦解、新政体的创建和新政体的巩固。顺利完成转型三步曲的最著名案例要算美国。美国人第一步是通过1776～1783年的独立战争赶走了英国人，旧政体瓦解了；第二步是1787年制定宪法以及随后建立联邦政府，新政体创建了；第三步是宪法的有效运转及政治制度的完善，新政体巩固了。
 
但是，需要提醒的是，美国通常被视为政治发展的特例。其他大国——诸如法国、德国、意大利、日本等，从传统政治向现代政治的转型都经历过较为曲折的过程，这些国家至少都经历过一次民主政体的崩溃。
 
从很多国家的经验来看，转型就如同新政体的分娩过程，可能伴随着巨大的痛苦与反复的挣扎。这样，就不难理解乌克兰的转型难题与政治危机。有的国家至今还在转型道路上徘徊，比如泰国。

- 包刚升，《被误解的民主》，2015

The Meanings of the “World”

In the New Testament, the term world (Gk. kosmos) has three basic meanings: (1) the earth, the created order; (2) the nations, the human community; (3) the ways of fallen humanity, alienated from God and his truth. It is this third sense of the term that I have suggested is largely equivalent to "modernity" in contemporary Western culture. It is worthy of note that this sense of the term as it appears in the New Testament signifies not a sociological reality but a theological reality. This may explain why worldliness is so frequently being missed, or misjudged, in the evangelical church today: it takes theological sense, theological judgment to recognize it, and that is precisely what has disappeared from the church.

This "world," then, is the way in which our collective life in society (and the culture that goes with it) is organized around the self in substitution for God. It is life characterized by self-righteousness, selfcenteredness, self-satisfaction, self-aggrandizement, and self-promotion, with a corresponding distaste for the self-denial proper to union with Christ. As comfortable as this self-centered reordering of moral and spiritual reality may seem, however, it is inevitably attended by "worldly grief" (2 Cor. 7:10), because, having displaced God from the center of our personal universe, we have made it impossible to care for ourselves as we should. The triumph of the self is always Pyrrhic; it amounts to a paradoxical abandonment of the true self, a ruin that begins to cast its shadows over the human spirit long before the day in which God's judgment is heard.

There is a clear line, then, between those who belong to Christ and those who do not, a line separating two very different ways of viewing self and world. If we stay with John, we can easily see how sharply he differentiates these two spiritual realms. "Those who belong to the church have been born of God (1 John 3:1-3); those who belong to the world have not (1 John 4:4-6). The church belongs to Christ (1 John 3:7-10); the world belongs to Satan (1 John 5:19), its "prince" (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11). All that is of Christ endures forever; all that is of the world is transient, fading (1 John 2:17), and under God's judgment (1 John 4:17). Love for God, therefore, is utterly incompatible with love of the world (1 John 2:15).

Bultmann has suggested that John shaped this antithesis between the character of God and the nature of life in four ways, contrasting light and darkness, truth and falsehood, freedom and bondage, and life and death.(' These categories are not mutually exclusive, of course; in fact, they overlap in significant ways.

 - David F. Wells, God in the Wasteland: 

The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams, 1994.

The West Is in the Midst of Huge Cultural Shifts?

 What are these cultural changes that have contributed to the marginalization of the church? 

First, we are in the midst of a shift from modernity to postmodernity, postmodernity. This shift represents a challenge to the main assertions of modernity, with its pursuit of order, the loss of tradition, and the separation of the different spheres of reality, expressed, for example, in the separation of the sacred and the profane at every level. More often than not, the church has found itself taking the side of modernity, defending its project against all viewpoints.

Second, we are embroiled in a shift from Westernization to globalization.

Third, we are engaged in a communication revolution, as we shift from a print culture to an electronic-based culture. 

Fourth, we are in the midst of a dramatic shift in our economic mode of production, as we transition from national and industrial-based economies to economies that are international, information based, and consumer driven. 

Fifth, we are on the verge of significant breakthroughs in understanding the human at a biological level. Sixth, we are seeing a convergence of science and religion that has not been seen in centuries.

- Gibbs, Eddie; Bolger, Ryan K. Emerging Churches. 2005.

Who is 'Pharisee'

The Pharisees (cf. NBD, pp. 924–925) were spiritual descendants of pious groups that had successfully opposed the notoriously cruel government of Antiochus Epiphanes (175–163 BC). This Syrian monarch had attempted to obliterate the Jewish faith. The Pharisees were extremely scrupulous about observing every minute detail of the law of God as they understood it, and were engaged in establishing an oral tradition about how that law was to be obeyed. At the same time they were in certain respects innovators, not mere traditionalists, for the creative and innovative manipulation of the oral tradition meant they were able to meet new challenges and situations more imaginatively than could mere traditionalists. Josephus, a first-century soldier-historian, tells us that there were about six thousand Pharisees in his day (Jos., Ant. xvii. 42). They met in ‘fellowship groups’ and controlled the teaching of many synagogues around the country. Most priests and Levites, however, belonged to the party of the Sadducees (whom John does not explicitly mention, probably in part because they were no longer a significant power at the time of writing). The Sadducees held to the authority of the written word alone, and judged the Pharisees to be both too innovative and too particular on many fronts. Their power was centred in Jerusalem and its temple–and therefore in the priests and Levites.

- The Gospel according to John, by D. A. Carson. (PNTC)

Rose of the World: The Sect

“Trainings for personality development” is how the Rose of the World describes itself. “Our seminars will teach you how to find your true self, realize your goals and achieve material wealth,” its Web site states—lit up by photographs of happy, shiny people standing on the top of a hill, shot from the bottom up, their arms out embracing a strong wind so it looks like they’re almost flying.  
 
On Internet forums and in chat rooms there is some discussion, though not much, about the Rose. A couple of people write that it changed their lives forever and they are transformed. Others write that it’s a con. Still others write that they think it might be dangerous. The posts in the chat rooms are all anonymous.
 
The Rose of the World runs its trainings in a Soviet-gothic palace at the All-Russian Exhibition Center (VDNH) in northern Moscow. VDNH was commissioned by Stalin to celebrate Soviet success, with great gothic pavilions and statues dedicated to every republic from Armenia to Ukraine and every accomplishment from agriculture to space. Now it is rented out to petty traders selling anything from kitsch art to kitchens, furs, and rare flowers. Stray dogs hunt in packs between gargantuan statues of collective farm girls and decommissioned rockets. The Rose’s trainings are in the old Palace of Culture.
 
Day 1
 
When you walk in at 10:00 a.m. there’s a table with name tags on it, just like at a professional conference. You’re directed up the grand staircase toward the main hall. It’s closed. All the participants of the training stand around in the foyer looking a little awkward. There’s some tea. There are roughly forty people: a few stolid fortysomething businessmen and a lot of younger women in their twenties who are clearly well looked after. Suddenly you’re startled by Star Wars music blasting from inside the hall itself. The doors burst open. The music is really loud, so loud it almost hurts. A woman is standing at the entrance:
“The doors to our auditorium are open! Come inside! Come inside!”
 
She shouts this over and over as you enter. Inside it’s almost pitch black, and all around the sides are people shouting: “Quick, quick, take your seats, put your bags away.” This is the “group of support,” volunteers who have been at the Rose several years. They’re shouting at you all the time, and they seem to be everywhere in the darkness. From the moment you walk in you’re lost, disorientated, somewhat stunned.
 
You take a seat on chairs that spread in a fan several rows deep around the stage. The volunteers are seated in the row behind you—so you can’t see them but their voices are shouting at the back of your head: “Sit down! Hurry! Hurry!” Then everything is silent.
 
A bright light comes on up on the stage, and the “life coach” enters… He talks fast, very fast, and in provincial Russian with some grammatical mistakes… He keeps on talking very fast, the microphone pitched at a level that slightly hurts the ears. Your head begins to ache mildly. He brings out a huge white board and draws flowcharts, complicated shapes and arrows showing how you will transform and what your personality consists of. You try to keep up with all the formulas and arrows and flowcharts, but at some point you start to get confused, lose your orientation. The more clever and alert you are, the more you focus on what he’s saying and drawing, but it never quite makes sense, and you get confused all over again. This is the point of the introduction. The shouting, the darkness, his jokes, and the frenetic drawing: your brain starts to get scrambled.
 
After a period (you’re not sure quite how long) of this a woman gets up to leave the room.
“Where are you going?” the life coach says, suddenly angry.
“The toilet.”
“You can’t go,” says the life coach.
Everyone thinks he’s joking.
“But I need to,” smiles the woman.
The life coach shouts back at her: “You want to change your life? And you can’t stop yourself from going to the toilet? You’re weak.”
Everyone is shocked. The woman explains that she really does need to go.
“Off you go then,” he says, light again, and waves her away.
What was that?
He talks on, jovial. A few minutes later another woman wants to go to the bathroom. When she’s at the door the life coach, stern again, says:
“Forget about coming back if you leave.”
She turns back.
“Why?”
This time he screams louder, longer, waving his arms in front of her face: “Why? We’ve come here to transform. Change. I could just wander off and grab a snack. But we’re here to perfect ourselves. You’re weak. You’re just weak!”
 
“That’s ridiculous,” says the young woman who wants to go to the bathroom. At first everyone in the audience backs her up; the life coach is being a tyrant. In her time Ruslana was one of the loudest and brightest in the audience, the first to pick a fight with the life teacher. The life coach starts to negotiate with the audience. Their transformation starts now, today, he argues, this minute. Don’t they want to change? Defeat all their fears and inner demons? Be free? Together they can do it. And the only person holding them back is the woman who wants to go to the bathroom. She’s betraying them. They’ve spent how long now discussing this? Ten minutes? Fifteen? So she didn’t really need to go, did she? It’s all in her head. “Yes, she didn’t really need to go,” repeat the volunteers from the back of the room. The woman looks uncomfortable. What if they are right?
 
And without you noticing, the life coach has brought the audience around to his side, and the whole audience is calling on the person who needs the bathroom to be strong, she can make it, if she can make it they all can. She sits back down. Everyone applauds. They have crossed a little Rubicon together. The life coach has their attention.
 
“In the next days,” says the life coach, “you will feel discomfort, fear, but that is good, that’s because you are changing, transforming toward a brighter, more effective life. You’re like a plane, experiencing turbulence as you rise higher and higher. We all know you can’t grow without discomfort. Don’t we?”
 
The life coach calls up anyone who is ready to join him on the stage. Ruslana had been one of the first to try this. He asked her why she came, what were her aims, what was holding her back in life. She said her problem was men: she couldn’t get any relationship right. And then the life coach ploughed into her: it was her own fault she let men leave her, she had an “inner monologue” that made her a victim. Ruslana tried to fight back—she was the innocent party, she explained. But the trainer spun her words back at her: she wanted everyone to think she was a “good girl” and that made her weak. The more you push back against the life coach, the more he argues: “Ha, the fact you’re fighting me shows how scared you are to admit you’re wrong! Scared to change!”
 
You find yourself first outraged and then slowly nodding.
Then everyone stands and has to recite together, like in an army, the “Commandments of Training”:
I will not tell anyone what goes on here.
I will not make any recordings.
I will not be late.
I will not drink alcohol for the duration of the training.
 
After lunch you go back into the hall and there’s some ambient music playing. “Who’s strong enough to tell their darkest secret?” asks the life trainer. He seems suddenly gentle now, caring. Everyone is sworn to secrecy, he repeats; this is one community. Someone stands up and tells how she was sacked at work. Someone else how a girlfriend left him. Then a woman stands up and talks about how she was raped when she was still a child, raped repeatedly. She breaks down afterward and cries; the volunteers cradle her. It’s the first time she has told anyone. There’s a hush around the room. There’s a lot of crying. When it was her turn Ruslana talked about her father: how she had felt when he departed. Anastasia remembered her parents’ divorce when she was young. For the first time the models had a place where someone would listen to them. They felt for the first time that they could be themselves. No one even knew they were models here.
 
And now the trainer moves in for another kill: all these events were your fault. If you were sacked—your fault. Raped—your fault. You’re all full of self-pity; you’re all victims. Now break into pairs, he orders, and tell each other your worst memories, but retell them as if you’re taking responsibility, as if you’re the creator, not the victim, of your life. This will go on for hours. And as you retell the worst moments of your life as if you were the creator, the one who made everything happen, you start to feel differently, you feel lighter, more powerful. Now you look at the life trainer a little differently. He’s bullied you and then he’s lifted you up and then confused you and made you cry, and now something else entirely. Without noticing you have been in the room twelve hours, but the time has just flown past, you’ve lost all sense of it.
You feel soft by now, somehow rubbery. You feel very close, closer than anyone you have ever known, to the other people in your group, as if you’ve always been meant to meet them.
 
“Transformation,” “effective,” “bright”: as you walk home these words ring through your head like gongs. You think about seeing the trainer tomorrow. You want to please him, to let him know you didn’t smoke, as you had promised. You feel a wave of warmth when you think about him. He’s tough, but he means well.
 
Day 2 
 
In the morning you’re there early. So is everybody else. When the doors open everyone rushes in, keen to show that they made it here on time. The doors are shut at 10:00 and any spare chairs removed. One guy comes in late, but there’s nowhere for him to sit. The trainer screams at him:
“You promised to be on time. You made a pledge. Why are you late?”
“I was hesitating whether I should come at all,” says the young man.
“Yesterday I saw you didn’t confess to any painful memories. You just looked at the others as if they were a show. That’s how you see everyone, entertainment, and now you want to run off. Is that the case?”
And if you were sympathetic to the young man when he was late, you now find yourself shouting: “A show! You think we’re just a show for your entertainment!”
The young man squats in the corner of the hall, ashamed. “Yes,” he admits later, “I was just afraid to leave my comfort zone.”
 
The trainer begins to draw more diagrams—arrows that show how you are going in one direction, and the people you know at home and work are going in another. That’s why they might not understand you after you do the trainings. You’re changing; they loved you for the person you were before, but you’re growing. This is a test for them: only the ones who really love you will be able to cope, to love the new you. And for those who don’t accept you, you should ask yourself: Are those relationships holding you back? Should you lose them?
 
The girl who yesterday talked about unspeakable things that happened in her childhood takes the microphone and says she regrets confessing now: some people in the hall seem wary of her, she says. But instead of feeling sympathy, everyone in the hall turns on her: “You’re just a victim,” they shout. “You’re enjoying showing off your feelings.” The life trainer doesn’t even have to tell them anymore what they should think.
 
Now the trainer’s talking about death. Death is no big deal. The other day some Russian tourists died in a bus explosion in Egypt. Is it a good or a bad thing? Well? It’s neither. A friend of his died recently. It’s neutral. Just a fact of life. Everyone here will die. You all, you all will die.
 
Toward the middle of the day your head will start to feel light, like bubbles are rising through it. There are role-playing games and team-building games. Everyone has to walk around the room shouting at each other, “I need you, I like you,” if they think the person is transforming, or “I don’t need you, I don’t like you,” if they think the person is not. The girl who felt bad after she told everyone what happened during her childhood now takes the microphone and admits she’s a victim and she’s ready to transform. Everyone’s applauding her, the life trainer is saying how proud he is of her, and you’re sitting there just waiting for him to praise you and frightened that he won’t.
 
During the lunch break you’re told to sit quietly for half an hour. Not a sound. Just think about all your mistakes in life. All the relationships you messed up, all your failures in your career. When you come back inside the hall there’s dancing, lots of fast dancing with loud, banging music, and you’re happy now and hugging people. Then the music changes to ambient. You’re told to stand in two lines opposite each other. You look into the eyes of the person opposite. You look for one, two, three, four minutes. Longer. It’s uncomfortable to look into the eyes of someone you barely know. You feel it’s the first time you have really looked into someone’s eyes. “Now take a step to the right, look into the next person’s eyes, imagine they’re your mother,” says the life trainer, “how she raised you when you were small. Her lullabies. How she felt when she sensed you growing inside her womb, how she looked at you when you were in the cradle.” Everyone softens. “Now imagine the eyes of someone you have lost. A loved one.” Ruslana thought of her father, Anastasia of her best friend, a fellow model who had died in a car accident the previous summer on the road between Kiev and Moscow. Everyone’s eyes are wet. “Now take a step to the right, look into the eyes of the next person, and imagine it’s the person you’ve lost, and think of all the things you didn’t have a chance to tell them.” Everyone is crying by now. The volunteers are walking around with tissues. You use dozens and put them in your pockets, and your legs grow wet from the number of wet tissues you are using. “Now take a step back to the left, look into the eyes of the person opposite, and imagine, for a moment, the person you lost is back with you, they’ve returned. Now you may hug them.” At this point everyone breaks down.
 
You’re lying on the floor. The trainer tells you to close your eyes. Breathe deeply. His voice takes you through a deep wood; the wood is your life, then you find a hut, in the hut there’s a room, and in the room are all the times people have let you down, betrayed you; beyond that is another room, where are all the times you let others down; and now you’re running, running free through the woods, ready to change, to lead a bright, effective life.
 
As you walk home you feel warm inside. Everything around you, the whole evening, seems to be dissolved in a slightly fuzzy light. People look beautiful. The trainer has given you homework: you’ve been told to walk through town and hug at least ten strangers. And you do it. You can do anything. You feel free. They look at you funny, but no one reacts badly. You’ve made them smile. You can break free of all barriers and limits, you can change. A bright, effective life. You won’t be a victim. You’ll take responsibility.
 
Day 3
 
You’re back at the training next morning a good half hour before it starts. You want to be the first to tell the life trainer you’ve managed to hug ten people as he told you to. The others are there, too. No one has slept. Everyone is so glad to see each other. When you go inside the hall everyone swaps stories about how they hugged people on the street. Others rang their neighbors’ doorbells and said they wanted to be friends with them, phoned long-lost friends or parents they barely speak to. The ones who failed in the homework confess to failure. You attack them for being weak, victims, not transforming. The life teacher barely says anything; he just stands at the side: you’re doing it all yourselves now.
 
And then you’re playing another game. You’re in little groups of seven all screaming at each other, “I am your aim” or “I am your obstacle,” and you have to scream past your obstacles to reach your aims. Everyone is screaming, but instead of being painful it’s like rocket fuel, and now you’ve been told to stand opposite each other and the other person is shouting at you, “What do you want? What do you want?” And it’s like that for forty minutes. Your desires start to come out of you like intestines, first cars and houses and all the easy stuff and then the silly stuff like painting the floorboards yellow or dressing up like a fairy queen, and then the really heavy stuff about wanting to hit your mother or stab the ex who dumped you. By the end you just feel free, and for the first time you can see what you really, really, really want. Then the life trainer comes out and says if you want your dreams, now that you’ve finally realized what they are, you can achieve them if you pay another $1,000 and come to the advanced course.
 
There’s a one-on-one consultation afterward with a volunteer. You sit at a table with that person, who says that if you sign up for the advanced course this week, then you can get a hundred dollar discount. You say, “there’s something funny with my head right now, I can’t think critically,” and the volunteer says, “but that’s good you’re not thinking critically, the trainings are all about learning not to think, your thinking holds you back, you’re learning to use your emotions, don’t you agree?”“Yes . . . but I’m not thinking. . . . ”“ . . . and because you’re not thinking you should sign up now. Don’t you want to live a bright life? Transform? Become effective? Take responsibility?”And every time you hear those words your whole body starts to rush.
 
Post-script
 
Alex’s friends keep a close watch over him the next few days; they’re worried a call from the Rose will entice him to go back. Over the next weeks his sleep is ruined; he starts to wake up in the middle of the night and yearns to go back inside the training. Alex is the only one from the group not to have signed up for the advanced course. Every time anyone mentions words he heard inside the training he starts to feel nauseated. He dreams of the life trainer, can hear his voice.
 
The real problems start in about two or three months. Alex loses his appetite. He starts to skip deadlines and fuck up at work, shouts at his editor. Everything hurts. He starts to cry in the middle of the day, for no reason.“I just can’t find my way back to myself,” Alex tells me when we meet. He’s shaved his hair off and lost weight.
 
At work they tell Alex he needs medical help. When Alex goes to see the doctor, he takes one look at Alex and prescribes a course of antidepressants, massages, acupuncture.
 
Meanwhile I have been doing some background checks about the Rose. On a small corner of its Web site, behind several tabs you would never think to open, is a small reference saying the trainings are based on a discipline called Lifespring, once popular in the United States. What the site doesn’t mention are the lawsuits brought against Lifespring by former adherents for mental damage, cases that caused the US part of the organization to go bankrupt in 1980, though spin-offs would quickly reopen under different names. In Russia Lifespring is in vogue; few have heard about its past. When I contact Rick Ross in New Jersey, head of the Cult Education Forum and the world authority on Lifespring, and tell him about what happened to Alex, Anastasia, and Ruslana, he replies that he has seen the pattern dozens of times: “These organizations never blame themselves. They always say, ‘It’s the victim’s fault.’ They work like drugs: giving you peak experiences, their adherents always coming back for more. The serious problems start when people leave. The trainings have become their lives—they come back to emptiness. And just like with drugs, some will just move on. But the sensitive ones, or the ones who have any form of latent mental illness, break.”
 
…what is clear is that the Rose’s advertising doesn’t provide information about the risks associated with Lifespring, and the organization preys on those members of society—young, lost women—who are vulnerable. Girls from the former Soviet bloc are particularly fragile. Six of the seven countries with the highest suicide rates among young females are former Soviet republics; Russia is sixth in the list, Kazakhstan second. Emile Durkheim once argued that suicide viruses occur at civilizational breaks, when the parents have no traditions, no value systems to pass on to their children. Thus there is no deep-seated ideology to support them when they are under emotional stress. The flip side of triumphant cynicism, of the ideology of endless shape-shifting, is despair.
 

- Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible:

The Surreal Heart of the New Russia, 2014.