Reality in Focus. Thesis of the speech of Sergii Rogol, the Aspen Institute Kyiv Supervisory Board member, at the annual pre-Christmas meeting of the Aspen Reunion
Based on the thesis of the speech at the annual meeting of the Aspen Institute Kyiv seminar alumni, the Aspen Reunion
December 14, 2024
Reality is a familiar term. We use this word when we want to emphasize something tangible that is true. When we say “he or she is doing a real thing,” we mean that the person is not theorizing or philosophizing but is working, bringing value. When we say “a real person,” we mean someone tangible, not an abstract Vitruvian figure or a social media profile. A flesh-and-blood person. They were born and raised by their parents. They have a job and a residence permit. They have friends and colleagues. They are someone you can interact with. When we say “real situation,” we are describing a dramatized story unfolding before our eyes with “real people” in “real conditions.” Only when we say “real politics” can we mean something vague… Nothing is certain, in any case…
The “real people” present in this room, you and I, were mainly raised in materialistic beliefs. In our country, any kind of metaphysics is impossible. Almost from childhood, we took notes and memorized the leader’s definition that everything around us is an objective reality given to us in our senses… Objective – existing outside subjective perception, real, unified…
Ten years ago, war came into our lives. And since then, especially in the last three years, it has become almost our only objective reality. The pain and stench of war are now tangible to us. Destroyed cities. Posthumous columns and mournful rituals. Alarms and curfews. Close bombings. Relatives far away. Frightened children and adults with PTSD. Fatigue. Loss of the past. Misunderstanding of the future. Heroes in uniform and civilian clothes are not in books but nearby. All this is the reality of every Ukrainian today. But is this the only one?
Philosophy opposes the real to the illusory, the ideal, the imaginary. But philosophers are weird. Plato, for instance, believed that only ideas are fundamental and that everything we see is the imprints, the “shadows” of these ideas. Descartes thought we could talk about the existence of only those who believed in Cogito, ergo sum.
Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order, attracted, gathered, and guided his followers in the sixteenth century, believing that imagination about the structure of a better, Divine world can manifest itself in reality. Imagination is nourished by knowledge and mental exercises. The Jesuits began to build universities and schools—powerful instruments of change and transformation of reality. The Renaissance – the future – was making its way from the Middle Ages, which also nurtured its tool for perpetuating its existence – the Inquisition.
In the 20th century, the sociologists William and Dorothy Thomas formulated an exquisite theorem that, as it is easy to see, now completely rules the world. “If people define a situation as real, it is real in its consequences.”
Did Desdemona betray her beloved Othello? The famous general’s conviction that she did was enough to cause the tragedy. Have chemical weapons been found or not in Iraq? Only the consequences of the belief that it was found are real. Did the Vietnamese attack an American ship in the Gulf of Tonkin? The deaths of about two and a half million civilians in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos and about one and a half million soldiers in the American-Vietnamese war are actual. Did the Jews betray Germany in the First World War and lead it to defeat? The Holocaust was the consequence of this belief. Did Ukrainian kulaks hide food from people during collectivization a hundred years ago? Even today, we cannot fully recover from the Holodomor, what the confident communists and those who ordered them to believe it did. Unfortunately, this list is as endless as human history itself. History is an insoluble knot of imaginary causes, their real consequences, and biased and incomplete stories about both.
How many ridiculous beliefs are around us? Many people on Earth are still convinced that COVID-19 is spread by 5G technology and that any vaccine is dangerous. Almost everyone believes that the aggressive Israel Defense Forces has occupied the original lands of harmless Palestinians, legitimately led by the peaceful, enlightened Hezbollah. Our enemy lies about its greatness and invincibility in the past, present, and future. It spreads falsehoods about the inferiority of the nations it has conquered and deceived. These lies inspire its citizens and parts of the world to believe that resistance is futile. They promote the idea that there is no alternative to the future it envisions.
Soldiers who came to us with the war to restore order are brought up with false ideas about the “eternal empire,” that “Russians have always lived on Ukrainian lands,” and that “Ukrainians are corrupted Russians.” Our enemy is building an idea of the future as a false description of the past, which never existed. Our war is a real consequence of this imagination. Again, against the Renaissance in the Middle Ages, the Inquisition is fighting the Truth.
What is the basis of our resilience in this war? Beliefs influence people’s behavior, and people’s actions shape the real world. Look around you — we live in a world created by people. Humans have not touched very little in the material world around us. Of course, this does not mean the laws of nature have stopped working. But it does mean that people have learned to use the laws of nature to change the world around them to their advantage. When we say today that the world is changing, we mean that the world is not changing by itself, that people are changing it.
Niels Bohr noted that in the quantum model of the world, the presence of an observer affects the results of an experiment. In this way, the results depend on the observer. This dependence is crucial because, during the observation, the quantum system stops being a “possibility” and becomes a “reality.” The results depend even more on the experimenter. We share our past with our enemy, and there is no escape. We have always been convinced that in objective reality, nothing depends on us, even if we have managed to become observers. We should not observe. We should not witness. We should not count on alternatives. The teaching is omnipotent because it is true… Our enemy believes in it. But we do not. We have a different self-determination. We are not “absent”. We are not observers. We are experimenters. We dare to imagine a different future — one in which there is our freedom, independence, and Victory. Therefore, we dare to fight for our future, even if we interpret these words differently.
In the twenty-second year of the twenty-first century, our enemy expected to capture Kyiv in three days and conquer Ukraine in three weeks. The third year of the full-scale invasion is coming to an end. Today, the enemy is much further from realizing its plans than before. Our war is a battle of ideas about the future of our world. Our ideas about the Victory inspire all of us to act to make it a reality.
What do we do at Aspen Institute seminars? Our reflections on the texts of the past and our dialogue with holders of different points of view transform our view of the world, of our possibilities, and of our future from flat to convex, stereoscopic, and multi-dimensional. We have to be ready for the battle.
The reality we create. Our gathering of materialists today is not unusual in itself. But because today is not a performance, and we are not in a theater, our meeting is still unique in Ukraine regarding the number of Sophocles fans present here. That is why we are prepared for Robert Merton’s idea about self-fulfilling prophecy. Belief in specific future scenarios encourages people to consciously or subconsciously act so that these scenarios become real history. In a sense, this is a gathering of constructivists who create the future by basing their actions on the imagination of the best possible future.
Reality in focus is our ability to see not only what is but also to imagine what may be. It is our freedom to choose what we believe in. It is our ability to form our ideas based on a comprehensive understanding of the world’s phenomena. We determined to act effectively based on these ideas. We can shape reality through our actions.
I thank the Aspen Community for the inspiration to focus on reality and dialog with you. I thank the members of our Aspen community because we are all partners in this… I thank everyone who came today for the pleasure of meeting. Furthermore, I thank the Executive Team of the Aspen Institute Kyiv for the extensive real work that ensures the existence of our space of thoughts, concepts, and ideas — our dreamed Castalia created by Hermann Hesse. I thank my colleagues on the Supervisory Board for the balance and integrity of all decisions and for the high-value level that has never been lowered for any reason. I thank our defenders for the opportunity to live our lives. In these early Christmas and New Year days, I wish us all the happiness of Victory!
