Says Mikhail Dvortsov

Sometime back in 1995 two persons almost simultaneously were struck by a seemingly serendipitous epiphany. An on-going intense struggle to discern the meaning of their fate shrank and dissolved into the cosmos of an omnipresent freedom. In the same time they sensed afresh the vividness of being hard-wired, the free will’s placid compatibility with being biologically driven, chemically caused and destined by, so to speak, stars long dead and never seen. Those two persons were us, of course, - the creators of this film, Elena Balyberdina and Mikhail Dvortsov. The revelation was this: Nothing in our inner experience of self and its numerous faculties or in perception of the world outside contained and never in our lives before had contained any knowledge of our origin as conscious beings. I say “seemingly” serendipitous ‘cause in fact Elena and I spent years debating and researching the ideas of god, happiness, goodness, freedom and similar damned subjects. Since that moment our lives have never been the same as this change in perspective led to profound consequences in how we were to understand what is true and what is not.

I came to the States in 1989, Elena a year later from Moscow, USSR. We hadn’t known each other before but met in a small, now gone into oblivion Russian Orthodox Church on 108th street in Manhattan. I had a background in theater. Elena was a Bolshoy ballerina. I also held what a credit translation agency determined to be a Master’s degree in political science from Moscow University. Elena was looking to break away from her arranged dancing past and get “a real job”.

We dealt with cultural, linguistic and material anxieties of our new life like everybody else – attempting to improve our conditions. I went on to found a currency trading company that to this day support our intellectual pursuits; Elena’s real job was a home attendant first, then a nursing aid, turning then into an RN nurse with Bachelor in Nursing, then earning Bachelor in Psychology, then Bachelor in Philosophy.

Elena’s passion for philosophy grew relentlessly nurturing both her and mine intellectual rigor and especially our infatuation with the issue of how we know what we say we know.

Says Elena Balyberdina:

Our impetus to immerse into a process of conceiving a new explanation of human problematic behavior and its possible solutions is primarily associated with the growing awareness of the ramifications of bold affirmations and obstinacy in such delicate matters as concern human understanding. We hope that our philosophy is designed to suggest the ways to abate human arrogance and correct errors concerning the distinction between knowledge and sophistry.

Our determination to discern true beliefs from false beliefs started with our frustration with the ways how people form beliefs and subsequently cause actions. It resulted in growing suspicion towards the body of conventional wisdom, which humanity claimed it possessed, including the knowledge of essence of men and essential difference between right and wrong. We followed our natural curiosity and resistance, feeling unable to conform to the widely accepted notions of human civilization. It was not the case that there was such a person that was able to give us answers as to how he knew those notions were true.

We were deeply unsatisfied with the answers that we received to our questions regarding virtue and vice, social justice and happiness. In addition to our hardships of not knowing how humans accumulated such a vast body of objective knowledge without being able to show it without a controversy, there was a growing conviction that there is a connection between what humans judge as knowledge and their actions, thus prompting us to investigate a mechanism, by which humans supposedly form their beliefs.

It turned out to be a medley of brute will to live and an inefficient intellectual functioning. Our theory purports to restore and vindicate an intellectual functioning in its true vocation and to refine instincts, severely affected by a psychological desire for happiness. Since, this desire is so tumultuous and sublime and much preferred to intellect - we personally see the destruction of the human spirit (not to confuse with anything divine) and the human body as a consequence of succumbing to this desire and subsequently failing to work out a proper criterion for what can be known objectively. Our theory is where this criterion reveals itself, while of course other powers are ripping their fruits of affirmations and fulfillments of their unexamined notions and desires.

The struggle goes on, and so is our life. We strongly believe that humility with regards to the operations of the faculty of human understanding is something valuable as the means that would afford mankind not only safety, but also having more natural, free from sanctimonious, prejudiced (be that secular or religious) interactions between free people of Earth.