English Summary
Editor’s Letter
The New Sincerity
A new sincerity, only one that’s heard by all sides. What happened to the old sincerity? Did it go out of date? Or perhaps we were insincere for many years? And it’s only now and out of nowhere that we’ve started speaking openly, and this magical transformation is what’s being called “the new sincerity”? Of course not. Hypocrisy is an integral part of adult life. We lie to our parents, so as not to upset them. We don’t say the whole truth to our friends, so that they don’t put a hex on us. We deceive the occasional fellow traveler — they don’t need to know anything about us, who knows who they really are. By playing by these rules, we ourselves stop believing in other people. Simply because we are sure: they are playing by exactly the same rules. And so we’ve played ourselves out. Music and theater critics are drowning in the syrup of their own laudatory odes. People in the film industry are constantly trembling about the fact that they “don’t want to offend anyone.” It’s not even worth talking about fashion, that endless stream of narcissism. Any critical observation brings about a stupor in the designer and causes his PR directors to faint. One sincere phrase behind the curtains after a show and, voila, everyone is struck dumb.
It wasn’t always like this. Constructive criticism was welcomed once. Honesty was considered one of the most important moral virtues. But something went wrong, as it’s now fashionable to say. Whether it’s the fault of social networks, where we create a sterilized reality, or whether it’s the quickening pace of the flow of information, a tsunami of which can wash away any untruth in a matter of minutes, and it will be entirely forgotten. So far, it’s not clear.