Published on: 2026-04-24
Source: Mosfilm Film Concern – An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.
Philosophers and politicians have been drawing schemas for centuries. They derive impeccable formulas for happiness, where x equals the common good, and y is the renunciation of the personal in the name of the general. In this symmetry of communist ideals or corporate campuses, there is only room left for one thing – for the chaotic, contradictory, and completely illogical human essence.
Rebellion against the formula
Let’s recall world literature. Who, if not Dostoevsky, was one of the first to boldly dispute any utopias? In “Notes from Underground,” his hero refuses the “crystal palace,” all the blessings guaranteed by a “proper” society, only to prove this: a human being is not a peg, not a piano key in an organ valve. He doesn’t need “happiness” issued on command, but the right to suffer, to be capricious, to have “stupid will.” This is not a miscalculation of reason; it is a fundamental property of his nature. Utopia requires statics, but a human is a dynamic error, a malfunction that says: “I do not want to be an element of your equation, even if it is correct.”
This very idea can be traced in the anti-utopias of the 20th century. Orwell’s Winston Smith rebels not for victory, but for the very feeling of rebellion. In Zamyatin’s world “We,” the human personality does not die when it is set against the wall, but when a “great operation” is performed on it to remove fantasy. It turns out that the only uncountable element that can destroy any political mathematics is imagination and the irrational desire to remain “oneself.”
Cinema gave us an image that became the visual synonym of this era. HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” is the perfect computer, reducing the logic of a man’s mission to the stars into a single puzzle. But it breaks down precisely because it failed to grasp human psyche with all its contradictions. Agent Smith in “The Matrix” offers humanity yet another diagnosis: we are not mammals, but a virus. We reproduce, consume, and destroy any ecosystem, including the digital one.
That is, a person is the very mistake that destroys any calculations. It is on seemingly rational behavior and clear forecasts that we build the economy, and then suddenly! – global stock markets collapse. For example, because of another hysterical tweet by Donald Trump.
Personality in the digital mirror
In the 21st century, an interesting turn has occurred. If earlier we learned about this “mistake” only from treatises and novels – in other words, from a creative act, today the human personality has received a technological mirror for the first time. It seems that for the first time we can comprehend human life most fully, but this comprehension turns into a frightening transparency.
Let’s take, for example, blockchain (a data ledger, a technology that provides maximum security, transparency, and the impossibility of altering recorded data – for example). In essence, it is just a digital ledger, an accounting book that cannot be forged afterwards. Utopians thought: “Here it is, the chance! If every step is transparent and recorded forever, a person will begin to behave ideally.” But the person made their mistake here as well. The identity of a person in this system is, in essence, equal to a key, a line of symbols. And this line remembers everything. For example, what you bought, to whom you transferred money, how much you donated to charity, and how much you lost.This is not a profile in a resume where you are a good fellow. This is your silent double, who knows the truth about you and will never forget it. The perfect monument to our imperfection, cast in code!
On social media? It seemed like a new step in the social utopia — a global library of knowledge, a celebration of social connections. But we broke everything again. Before, we still knew how to be silent. Now, a person on the Internet is identical to a continuous show. We think we create a self-image, but in fact, algorithms have known more about us for a long time.
Here, however, lies an important nuance about hypocrisy. Yes, on social networks, we desperately pose: we do not lie when we pack our lives into the format of a postcard. But the devil is in the fact that the social utopia of the past was built precisely on such “everyday hypocrisy” – on the ability to politely remain silent, hold back the mask, observe the ritual. The network, however, demanding constant publicity and ostentatious sincerity, paradoxically deprived us of this saving armor. We no longer know how to feign this, for the sake of wounding the common world. We either exhibit everything ostentatiously in a grotesque form, or break down into hysterical comments, which were previously trusted only to the diary.
However, the most honest imprint of our soul is probably revealed in the search bar. There is a space where a modern person finally stops posing. There, in a silent dialogue with the search engine, our personality remains before the abyss of Yandex or Google, just as it really is. It asks the input line what perhaps even God would not ask. “Why am I in so much pain?”, “Is it normal to hate your mother?”, “Rash on the elbow photo.” This gigantic database of queries is perhaps the most accurate collective portrait of the human personality throughout history. We have stopped being a secret behind seven seals.We have become an ordered collection of information that simply screams that we are imperfect, broken, and existential. By the way, this database is already being analyzed and used for training artificial intelligence, but that is a separate conversation.
Error as the main value
Everything stated above precisely triggers the author of these lines… a paradoxical acceptance. Yes, if you like, we are a mistake. A “defect” in the program of the universe. We spoil any drawings with our anger, greed or stupidity. Or, on the contrary – with compassion, mercy, the desire for justice. But it is precisely in this failure that the only thing is laid, for the sake of which, perhaps, the whole game was conceived. Technologies designed to “correct” and average us have unexpectedly proven that this mistake cannot be erased, not erasing… the person themselves.
We cannot live in utopia because utopia is death. It is a stopped moment where there are no desires, and therefore, no time. The mistake (the one shamefully hidden in the history of the search engine) is precisely our authenticity, the main value.
After all, a human personality is not a sum of correct answers. It is a failure into the entropy of feelings that no artificial intelligence can calculate, because it contains no mathematics, only pain, irony, and hope. Therefore, the only “utopia” in which a person can fit is the utopia where a mistake and the right to this mistake are embedded in the system’s parameters.
Are we spoiling or beautifying this world – that is, of course, a matter of discussion, but we are definitely making it alive. And a glitch is proof that the machine of the universe was not started just like that.
The author’s opinion may not coincide with the position of the Mosfilm.ru editorial board
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