The Russian hero in the modern world: ontology, social reality, and technology

Abstract

The image of the hero as a cultural institution is one of fundamental problems as it is crucial to the self-determination of any society, including such a complex one as Russia’s. This explains why heroic culture is becoming a priority target in the West’s hybrid proxy war against Russia conducted through social engineering technologies. The traditional image of the hero is being destroyed and replaced by simulative constructs. These are actively created and promoted by global mass media, which primarily exploit unconscious psychic structures of associated with human drives and instincts. The cultural archetype of the hero represents a subsystem of the collective unconscious as a suprapersonal structure. On the one hand, it acts as a connecting and unifying concept, transforming the population into a people; on the other hand, it facilitates the self-identification of each person in their daily life as a representative of a given community who shares its mythology. The process of socialization realizes itself, among other things, as the adaptation of the hero archetype, through which it acquires specific cultural and civilizational characteristics across different peoples and eras. Currently, the mechanism of social manipulation has developed to such an extent that the very possibility of the emergence of more or less stable suprapersonal structures, both local and global, has been undermined. Manipulation of public consciousness has replaced the formation of the image of the hero as an archetype embodied in the mythologies of specific cultures. However, manipulation is a short-term action, while cultural influence and transformation refer to the strategic (cultural, civilizational) level. From this strategic perspective, we can speak of the evolution of ethics and heroism as a moral ideal and value revealing the heroic archetype in a specific culture and civilization. The social ontology of heroism must not only be embedded in everyday life but also supported by a corresponding system that should be formed, with all its elements enhancing its significance. Essentially, an ecosystem of heroism must be created.