I’m a child of American and Japanese culture but living all my life in one place. In the place of nowhere, In the middle of two big Russian cities - Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Maybe it was the main reason why I wanted to start to explore the world outside of.
I was born in the late 80s. I remember the last years of the USSR, the battle for the White House with tanks. And that's what I remembered from the negative side of my childhood. My parents do their best to protect me, my brother and my sister from the reality of the first years of new Russia. In addition to the collapse of the Soviet Union, a new free economy began to form. Videotapes with American action movies began to be brought from abroad. At that time, people earned quickly for their own cars and apartments from the illegal business of making copies of videotapes.
My father was one of them. He left the plant because he made more money over the weekend than he did in a month. It was then that I began to get acquainted with American culture. Thanks to this money, my father was able to afford to buy all the modern technology: video and audio player, a computer, the Internet. They also gave me an education that gives me nothing those days but the ability to write this blog.
I grew up in a visual culture of free minds. At the beginning of the 21st century, we had the best examples of independent cinema of Europe, US and Japan on the shelves at home. Russian culture lay in ruins. It could not give teenagers anything but alcohol and drugs. This invisible wall between me and other societies grew up from year to year. After school and college, my friends and I went home. But I went home, where there was the Internet, and they stayed to play on the street, where the best activity was to sit on the hot water pipes with cheap cigarettes and a pocket with glue…
Long story short. When I meet my surviving friends from the streets, I realize that I have nothing to talk about with them. I do not know the culture code that they remember and on which most of the new Russia grew up. However, I understand that now this is their country and now they are determining its future. It was the time when I realized for the first time that the lack of education and high culture among the majority of the population would in no way affect their standard of living, income and ability to receive everything the same as me. But it's easier for them to live here. In terms of life, these people are better adapted to life. They don't know what could be better, that people can say “Hello!” to strangers, just smile, or just treat them to a free coffee.
The 90s and the 00s was a time of video piracy, free internet, and no fear of speaking out. The times in which you live cannot be chosen, you can only live this time. I have known people from the network who ended their lives by suicide or an accident because they could not adapt to a system with a cultural code alien to them. In computer terms, people like us are bugs in the system. I have already mentally emigrated from Russia for a long time, but my body remains to live in the same place. Every time I left for Japan for a long time, I felt that I could start a new life here. However, any system does not need bugs. Bugs create problems. But the world needs bugs. I believe.