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As we could see from the previous analysis, carding is a complex phenomenon, which, in addition to legal qualifications, has at least:
- its own dynamic structure, composition of persons, their actions, interactions and reactions;
- idea or plan, plan (scenario) of carding action and purpose;
- appropriate technology, i.e. carding itself appears as a procedure or a series of procedures, actions performed not only with the help of sleight of hand, but also with the help of high and expensive technologies, equipment, structures, etc.;
- your psychology, or more precisely, the psychology of the persons participating in the carding, voluntarily or unwittingly;
- a range of consequences, results that vary (a) from one hundred percent success to complete failure, i.e. from the triumph of criminal deception to the sentencing of carders to real prison terms; (b) from irreparable damage to the objects of carding to effective resistance to it or adequate compensation to victims of carding for the material or moral damage they have suffered by a court decision.
Since this textbook was written not for professional lawyers, economists and financiers, but for citizens who are potentially and actually involved in carding, i.e. for buyers, patients, viewers, listeners or readers, which we all are in one way or another, then we were and will be talking not about special types of political, economic or financial carding schemes, but about, so to speak, everyday ones that concern us all and are accessible analysis and understanding from a common sense point of view. Accordingly, understanding the psychology of widespread types of carding also does not require special psychological, economic or legal training. Let us note that the psychology of carding is generally the same for both its routine, small and traditional forms, and for the latest high-tech and large-scale ones. (Let’s remember the failed scam with “structured” water.) The main difference here is only in the possession of special knowledge, competencies and capabilities among “advanced” scammers.
Due to the basic structure of carding: the carder (carders) and the deceived (the deceived), the psychology of carding is divided into two types of psychologies, respectively, into the psychology of the carder and the psychology of his potential or actual victim, i.e. object of carding.
Psychology of a carder
In general, carding psychology is based on two essential and natural qualities or abilities of a person - his thievery and deceit. A carder is always a thief and a liar. Unlike a non-carder, his ability to steal or deceive is not suppressed and is not under the control of a person’s positive potentials: honesty, truthfulness, decency, respect for the law, a person, his property and health, etc., but is put into action, manifested and realized in appropriate actions. This alone already sets a number of psychological traits for the carding consciousness. This, on the one hand, is the secrecy and closeness of the carder, on the other hand, his increased and keen attention to both “bad” things, simple-minded or helpless people, “holes” in the legislation, etc., and to “guardians of the law.” and the target of carding, considered both as a potential victim and as a whistleblower; suspicion and a high degree of anxiety, mobilization, dynamism of consciousness and emotional reactions, due to the awareness of the criminality of their plans and the risk of exposure and punishability of a carding act. Dynamism of the psyche helps to overcome failures, thanks to the high activity of the repression mechanism. This is due to the “search-experimental” nature of the carder’s thinking, working on the principle of “trials and errors/luck.”
Another series of features included in the psychology of carding is associated with the underlying deceitfulness. Falsehood generates or presupposes insincerity, deceit, cunning, treachery, indifference, callousness, heartlessness, dishonor, cruelty, unceremoniousness, cynicism, arrogance, humiliation of one’s own kind, trampling on their rights and dignity, etc.
However, lies and deceit are offensive to everyone. Including those who are committed to selfish deception. Those who resort to carding belittle and violate, first of all, their own dignity. In essence, a carder is a nonentity who almost consciously chooses the path of degradation and disintegration of his humanity and all that positive and constructive resource that is inherent in each of us by the fact of birth. The situation is aggravated by the fact that any degree of awareness of one’s own insignificance, any degree of feeling like a carder, generates a negative feedback loop leading to an increasingly bitter individual, to even greater cynicism and baseness. Rarely does anyone manage to get out of this loop, but there have been and still are cases of breaking the vicious circle of degradation. They are always possible if a person finds strength in himself, when he gains courage, determination and will to become a person worthy of true respect and self-respect.
The carder isolates himself and deprives himself of many human values, especially those related to friendship, mutual assistance, openness to goodness, and justice. It is difficult, if not impossible, for him to establish and maintain honest, open and selfless relationships with people, to have reliable friends, close and sincerely loved ones. The psychological atmosphere that the scammer creates around himself and into which he immerses is generally negative and flawed, it is full of alienation, isolation, secrecy, mistrust and even rejection.
A carder, like any criminal, is selfish in a special way. This egoism has a strong tendency towards ever-increasing captivity, imprisoning oneself in the cage of one’s own loneliness and secrecy. The most dramatic thing here is that the egoism of the carder, like any criminal, is forced, objective, practically violent due to the criminal nature of the carding. In contrast to the positive, free and voluntary privacy of the individual - primarily in his private life as a pure and reserved zone of relaxation, uninhibition and creativity - the closeness of carding psychology is a product of egoism, a careful disguise of one’s affairs and oneself as its subject. This is the selfishness of suspicion, hostility and fear. Negative isolationist egoism as a feature of carding psychology is similar here to a cage or underground, which is built and dug not for freedom and peace, but for ambush, deceit and treachery, at best - for “licking wounds”, i.e. those mental traumas that are inevitable and which open up and become obvious precisely in the underground, at the bottom of the soul of every criminal, when he is left alone with himself. This partly explains the tendency of criminals to alcoholism and drug addiction, these means of forgetting and distracting themselves from themselves.
Psychology and content (i.e., idea, scenario and goal), as well as procedures, tools, tools of carding, the action itself, as well as the range of its possible consequences, form certain general attitudes of the carder. Perhaps the main thing in them is - this is a special, self-interested openness of the situation, striving to fully embrace and take into account both what is known, controllable in it, and the varying degrees of uncertainty, unpredictability and uncontrollability that exist here, and randomness.
Its second feature is what can be called hypocrisy, otherness, transformation and perversity of carding consciousness and behavior. The acting consists here in a really embodied lie, fiction, deception, in a special kind of “performance”. It is based on the same two fundamental human vices: theft and lies. The latter is combined here with the ability to transform. Both the carder and his actions are the opposite of what they are to others, i.e. for those to whom and to whom the carding is directed. Carding makeup, declared script, scenery, acting, etc. always, one way or another, attractive, they position themselves as good and beneficial, as legality and enterprise, as charity and even nobility, as goodness, help, compassion and support for people in difficult situations.
The third feature of the scammer’s attitude is related to what I.Ya. drew attention to. Foinitsky, defining carding as an “intellectual weapon.” In carding, the intellectual element is contained both in the idea and plan of carding, and in its execution, which requires a lot of mental work, intelligence, prudence, resourcefulness, cunning, etc. The combination of the second and third features of carding gives rise to what can be called the art of selfish deception, since it includes both acting and an intellectual element, as well as skill, skill, and mastery of deception.
Fourthly, a carding installation, no matter how bad it is to admit it, includes its creativity, i.e. creative, innovative, so to speak, innovative nature of both the consciousness and actions of carders. At one time there was a sad and funny expression in use: “There is not a single deceived investor who cannot be deceived again.” Today this expression can be modified: “There is not a single deceived shareholder of construction companies who cannot be deceived again and again.” It is no coincidence that the status of the deceived changes and is updated every time due to the dynamic and “creative” nature of carding consciousness and technology.
The fifth feature of a carding installation is its immorality. This immorality is predetermined by those basic qualities of the individual, the implementation of which gives rise to this destructive act - thievery and deceit. The immorality of carding is obvious, no matter how intellectual, hidden, and complicated it may be. The immorality of carding consists of deceit, treachery, cynicism, dishonesty, cruelty, heartlessness and many other dark sides of the human being.
The sixth feature of this immoral attitude is its criminal nature. This is obvious from the fact that it is extremely immoral and is aimed at selfish deception or misrepresentation with the aim of causing financial or property damage, as well as harm to the moral, mental or physical health of a person. Otherwise, this side of the carding installation should be called criminal, prosecuted by law. Understanding and experiencing this gives the consciousness and actions of a carder a particularly cynical and immoral appearance; this is the type of crime that is clearly recognized by its subject and therefore cannot deserve any leniency.
Taken together, these characteristics constitute what can be called a carding complex. Most likely, the listed qualities do not exhaust the essence of the entire phenomenon of fcarding, but they form its basis. These words should be understood, first of all, to mean that we must consider this complex as constantly changing, modernizing, always unexpected and unpredictable in some way, and therefore especially dangerous, insidious, multifaceted and massive.
Psychology of the deceived
As we know, the other side of carding is the deceived, the potential or actual victim of malicious deception. It would seem that the situation is obviously polar: on one pole there is a minus (a carder who clearly deserves censure and punishment), on the other there is a plus (a victim who definitely deserves protection, sympathy and support). In reality, everything is not so simple, since there is almost always something in the person being deceived that makes him similar to the carder. Let's try to clarify this rarely covered side of the matter.
Let us assume that the impossible is possible in practice, but that is possible in theory. Let’s assume that we, as targets of carding, have all at once become so smart, quick-witted and decent that we have acquired the ability to get out of carding situations not as victims, but as exposers and winners. What will happen in the end? In this case, carding as a type of human activity will most likely wither and die, like a plant deprived of soil. But this hypothetical death of carding will occur not only because those being deceived will develop critical thinking and skills to defend against deception, but also because they will be freed from some of the less than noble qualities that, as it turns out, motivate carders and even make them see them as victims. a kind of unfortunate competitors, losers in this game between the carder and his client.
What I mean? First of all, those attitudes and qualities of those being deceived that are not only reprehensible, but also largely encourage, even give rise to, certain types of carding. Perhaps the main one among them - so widespread in Russia - is free labor, i.e. the desire to receive something either for free, or for almost nothing, or faster, or more than it should be, etc.
Freeloading is a kind of “passive theft.” A synonym for the word “freebie” is the concept of “freebie”. Free shipping has a long Russian history. It was born centuries ago and manifested itself as beggary, wandering, hoarding, begging, etc. Under Soviet rule, gratuitousness changed its forms. Taking away from a person almost everything that he earned, the state “donated” or “distributed” this taken among the “working people” as a kind of mercy or a manifestation of the highest, “socialist” justice. The Soviet man, although in principle he understood or felt that he was not the master of himself and the results of his labor, that he was being exploited and robbed, nevertheless, he was accustomed to viewing social programs and many “benefits” as precisely gratuitous. Of course, the “social welfare state” [1] (V.S. Barulin) corrupted the consciousness of people, made them dependents involuntarily, developed in them laziness, obedience, passivity, hack work, low production discipline, which, perhaps, was one of the the reasons for the collapse of the USSR economy, and then of this state itself.
This small digression into political problems is nothing more than an illustration of that very common feature that has been preserved in slightly modified forms in the post-Soviet consciousness. Although today we are told that free cheese is only in a mousetrap, we are drawn to freebies, to freebies, especially since there are more and more of these “moustraps”, and their variety is increasing. To be fair, it must be said that freeloading is not only a Russian trait, but also a universal one. Another thing is that in Russia it is expressed, perhaps, more strongly than in many other civilizations, and there are certain historical reasons for this.
The concept of gratuitousness can also include the desire for easy money, quick and easy profit, i.e. everything that carding technologies catch us on. To one degree or another, almost all of us contain something of freeloading, greed, or the desire for some special benefit, which makes us potential accomplices in carding. We are, as it were, ready to be deceived by the very attitude towards gratuitousness. We are unable to free ourselves from it largely because we do not see any particular sin in it. Thus, we show not only condescension towards her, but also favor. But, as the proverb says, even a fool hits a bowed head. And the carder is even more so, since he is by no means a fool.
I dwelled in such detail on this quality of the deceived because this is required by objectivity and realism in understanding the phenomenon of carding. Any illusion or idealism in talking about carding is unacceptable. Otherwise, we will never understand its deep foundations and will not learn to adequately resist this vice.
Other centers of attraction for scammers are, firstly, certain natural (innate) human qualities, which are discussed below, as well as a greater or lesser degree of human ignorance.
But what features of psychology, besides those noted, allow scammers to consider us as their potential victims? [2] What is it about ourselves that makes us weak opponents, a kind of semi-finished product for the deceiver?
If we talk about the innate qualities of a person, which are somehow involved in carding as a process and on which the carder relies, then there are not so few of them. We have already spoken about the frankly negative ones. Along with them, human nature also has completely neutral and deep abilities that we can combine or realize in any way: neutral, positive or negative.
Curiosity and inquisitiveness are perhaps the first to be pecked by carding. These two, in themselves, attractive qualities of a person without proper guidance from the mind, especially if they are strongly expressed by birth, can be those “claws” that, having gotten stuck, make the “bird” “lost.” Carding is always an intrigue, something enticing that appeals to our curiosity. It most often begins psychologically with him. And all scammers know this very well. I dare to suggest (I am not aware of experiments of this kind) that if you pretend to be an indifferent, very indifferent person, stubborn and even a little idiotic, then many types of carding simply will not be able to “stick”, they will fall off like tape from an oily surface.
To these psychological characteristics should be added our natural craving and desire for something unusual, surprising or even miraculous. In carding there is always this element of extraordinaryness, there is the temptation of something special. This special can consist both in external content open to the deceived, i.e. in the stated idea and goal, and in the method of achieving it declared by the carder, which is usually easy, convenient and fast, almost miraculous.
The intrigue of carding is designed specifically for our need for the unusual, even for novelty, which attracts us in a natural, but difficult to explain way. Here the intrigue of the scam is addressed not only to our curiosity, but also to the desire for something special, incredibly “cheap”, “fast”, “easy”, “prestigious”, etc. In people with a strong desire for the unusual, but with weak reflection and critical thinking, these qualities easily degenerate into a thirst for adventure, more precisely into adventurism, frivolity, recklessness, gambling, which can be expensive. It is people of a frivolous and adventurous nature who usually become the first victims of carding. And isn’t the swindler himself an adventurer? Like goes with like!
Among other psychological qualities of those being deceived, gullibility, excessive gullibility, naivety, and infantilism are especially attractive to malicious deceivers. These qualities are a negative continuation of completely natural neutral human gifts: the ability to believe, trust oneself and people, be open and understandable, maintain the purity and sincerity of feelings and perception of reality. But if these features of the human psyche are distorted, primitivized and not nurtured, i.e. do not acquire their maturity and meaningfulness, if they are not taken care of by reason, then they become our weaknesses, the prerequisites for our mistakes and defeats.
So we gradually move on to those properties of our psyche or such states that are the product of a kind of synthesis of natural human qualities and ignorance, ignorance, one or another measure of our bad manners.
Learning is light, ignorance is darkness, as people say. And it’s hard to argue with this, this truth is so obvious. But why is there so much ignorance, deception, mistakes, failures, and finally, misfortunes and failed lives, people, families and destinies around?
In order not to turn this question into a philosophical, social and political one, we will limit ourselves to the psycho-intellectual side of the matter.
Firstly, teaching is work. The work is hard and long. On sober reflection, this is a lifelong road forward and upward. At the same time, it is natural for us to want to avoid difficulties. But not all of them should be avoided. This applies primarily to training, knowledge, enlightenment, education and self-education. Our nature as rational people simply leaves us no other worthy choice but to use reason to become human and correspond to our true nature. But the same nature tells us that this is a constant matter, that knowledge is one of the ways of our survival and existence. Happy is the one who wants and knows how to learn throughout his life.
It is the mind that helps us understand the role and mission of reason in our lives. Reason clarifies, persuades, convinces and makes the situation easier; it encourages you to make sometimes difficult, “laborious”, but honest choices. And in the end, victory, success, joy awaits us.
Another important condition for understanding the vital significance of reason and thinking is the natural and social environment that surrounds us. If the conditions of survival are extremely harsh and unfavorable for a person, then the opportunities for his growth and development are also narrowed, not allowing him to be a full-fledged person. At the same time, we are witnessing how, in equal social and everyday conditions, one person slides down, another goes up. This means that very, very much depends on ourselves. Much more than we think, because human reserves and capabilities are truly unlimited.
Bad manners, anti-intellectual attitudes of a person, his sometimes militant ignorance and stupidity, the conviction that “there is no trick against crowbar”, that “you have strength, you don’t need intelligence” is the most favorable soil for carding, one of the conditions for its success.
What is anti-intellectualism? This phenomenon is so serious and it is so poorly understood in Russia that it needs to be talked about at least briefly. Anti-intellectualism is a tradition and sociocultural attitude within which the mind, reason, consciousness, intellect, awareness and meaningfulness are considered as something negative, alien, dangerous and even hostile to a person.
What, what mental experiences in a person fuel anti-intellectualism? First of all, an instinctive, almost animal fear of knowledge, a knowledgeable person or a social institution that personifies knowledge and enlightenment: a school, a university, a museum, etc. By and large, this fear is explainable (it cannot but be instinctive, subconscious and animal, since it is the fear of an unenlightened person), and it is even justified: in a competitive social environment, an ignoramus is almost always doomed to lose, he is doomed to be an outsider, a lag behind.
The psychological underpinning of anti-intellectualism is the same thirst for freebies, freebies and, in addition, mental laziness, turning into militant stupidity. Adjacent to the psychological sources of anti-intellectualism is the psychology of defeatism and desertion, which manifests itself in a variety of forms: from street hooliganism and contempt for reason to irony or poetry like: “Whoever does not smoke or drink will die healthy.” It seems that such a “verse” could only have been born in Russia - anti-intellectualism, in other words, nonsense, is so militantly, directly and primitively expressed in it.
A negative attitude towards reason and consciousness dooms anti-intellectuals to getting bogged down in the darkness of instincts, in the emotional sphere, in the twilight of the subconscious and irrational. Researchers of Russian culture and psychology write: “The dominance of the sensory-emotional sphere in the national character gives rise to dissatisfaction with consciousness. Consciousness is diminished and assessed sharply negatively. There are two main ways to deny consciousness. The first is psychological. Consciousness is opposed to the emotional-volitional sphere, and the latter is recognized as having undoubted superiority... The second path is religious.”[3]
Another source of intellectualism and, at the same time, an opponent of reason is irrationalism. Most often, it acts as a “canceller” and a substitute for reason, as supposedly something more fundamental, more reliable and truly a vital quality of a person. Irrationalism has many forms of expression in culture. This includes voluntarism, vitalism, reckless romanticism, utopianism and various forms of aesthetics and decadence. Today, the main exponents and defenders of irrationalism are postmodernism and irrational-mystical movements in religions.
Most often, attacks on reason by irrationalists are based on a misunderstanding or mistake. The irrationalist confronts different aspects of human nature and argues using a non-alternative method, the method of exceptions. One of two things: feelings or reason, faith or reason, heart or head, instinct or reason, will or reason, emotions or reason? - this is how the irrationalist poses the question. And he chooses anything but the mind. However, this formulation of the question is erroneous, since man is quite broad and multifaceted. The task is to bring a person’s different-quality talents into harmonious unity, into creative agreement, so that they manifest themselves and are realized in life in the right place and at the right time, in the right combination and to the proper extent, so that they do not conflict, but interact and help each other. After all, in a good way, they are all a kind of faithful servants, means through which we can make our lives full, interesting and creative.
But, returning to the topic of our conversation, to carding, it should be emphasized that both anti-rationalism and irrational attitudes make a person equally helpless in a situation of carding; he is an easy prey for any deception, any carding scheme, since there is always an intellectual moment in it that requires not so much faith or feeling, but sober reflection, analysis, skepticism, criticism and prudence.
In conclusion of the topic about the psychology of carding, it remains to draw attention to the fact that psychology is one of the essential aspects of this unfortunate phenomenon. Carding is a clash, competition and struggle between two psychologies; it is the defeat of one psychology and the victory of the other. Analysis of two psychological complexes, understanding both the actions and psyche of the carder, and one’s own mentality, i.e. oneself as its potential victim provides a serious basis for self-defense, for protection from error and defeat, but, ultimately, for worthy resistance to carding, for defeating it, exposing it.
Questions to the topic:
1. Name the main components of carding.
2. From what basic human qualities is carding born?
3. Name the psychological features of a carding consciousness.
4. What is the general attitude of the scammer?
5. What does the psychology of the deceived relate to the psychology of the carder?
6. What innate human qualities does the scammer seek to exploit to achieve his goals?
7. What role does ignorance play in carding?
8. What are anti-intellectualism and irrationalism and how do they relate to carding?
Notes
[1] “Sobes” is an abbreviation for the expression “social security”. The scale and forms of this social, or rather state, provision were exceptionally large in the USSR, which is not surprising due to the equally obvious ways of functioning, first totalitarian, dictatorial, and then bureaucratic and authoritarian state socialism (or state capitalism - scientists have not been able to determine what was built in the USSR over its more than seventy-year history). The state assumed maximum rights, but due to this alone it necessarily had to fulfill some obligations in relation to citizens deprived of many rights.
[2] In thieves jargon, a set of derogatory and contemptuous definitions is always prepared for us, ordinary citizens: “loch”, “burdock”, “man”, “tolerated” (victim), etc.
[3] Kuznetsov V.G., Nerusheva L.G. Universe Russia: Truths and Imaginaries. Vinnitsa: PE Usatyuk, 2000, p. 50. It would be a mistake to think that a suspicious and hostile attitude towards reason is inherent only in certain segments of the Russian population. For example, in the United States anti-intellectualism also exists, although in milder forms due to the pragmatism of the American mentality. But it is in this country that scientists can be ironically called “eggheads.” One of the significant reasons for G. Bush's victory over A. Gore in the presidential election campaign was the former's “simplicity” and the brilliant intellect of Gore, which frightened many ordinary Americans who had difficulty understanding what the then US Vice President was talking about. The author of a work on “strategies for increasing practical intelligence,” V. Rugero, begins his book with words full of drama: “For a whole century, American education treated the intelligence of students with disdain, so that it affected everyone. Knowing how this tragedy happened is the first step to overcoming its consequences in your life" (Ruggiero, VincentMakingYourMindMatter. Strategies for Increasing Practical Intelligence. Rowman & Littlefield Publisher, Lahman - Boulder - New York - Oxford, 2003, p. xiii .)
(c) http://www.humanism.ru/education/cours/thinking/166-thinking10.html
- its own dynamic structure, composition of persons, their actions, interactions and reactions;
- idea or plan, plan (scenario) of carding action and purpose;
- appropriate technology, i.e. carding itself appears as a procedure or a series of procedures, actions performed not only with the help of sleight of hand, but also with the help of high and expensive technologies, equipment, structures, etc.;
- your psychology, or more precisely, the psychology of the persons participating in the carding, voluntarily or unwittingly;
- a range of consequences, results that vary (a) from one hundred percent success to complete failure, i.e. from the triumph of criminal deception to the sentencing of carders to real prison terms; (b) from irreparable damage to the objects of carding to effective resistance to it or adequate compensation to victims of carding for the material or moral damage they have suffered by a court decision.
Since this textbook was written not for professional lawyers, economists and financiers, but for citizens who are potentially and actually involved in carding, i.e. for buyers, patients, viewers, listeners or readers, which we all are in one way or another, then we were and will be talking not about special types of political, economic or financial carding schemes, but about, so to speak, everyday ones that concern us all and are accessible analysis and understanding from a common sense point of view. Accordingly, understanding the psychology of widespread types of carding also does not require special psychological, economic or legal training. Let us note that the psychology of carding is generally the same for both its routine, small and traditional forms, and for the latest high-tech and large-scale ones. (Let’s remember the failed scam with “structured” water.) The main difference here is only in the possession of special knowledge, competencies and capabilities among “advanced” scammers.
Due to the basic structure of carding: the carder (carders) and the deceived (the deceived), the psychology of carding is divided into two types of psychologies, respectively, into the psychology of the carder and the psychology of his potential or actual victim, i.e. object of carding.
Psychology of a carder
In general, carding psychology is based on two essential and natural qualities or abilities of a person - his thievery and deceit. A carder is always a thief and a liar. Unlike a non-carder, his ability to steal or deceive is not suppressed and is not under the control of a person’s positive potentials: honesty, truthfulness, decency, respect for the law, a person, his property and health, etc., but is put into action, manifested and realized in appropriate actions. This alone already sets a number of psychological traits for the carding consciousness. This, on the one hand, is the secrecy and closeness of the carder, on the other hand, his increased and keen attention to both “bad” things, simple-minded or helpless people, “holes” in the legislation, etc., and to “guardians of the law.” and the target of carding, considered both as a potential victim and as a whistleblower; suspicion and a high degree of anxiety, mobilization, dynamism of consciousness and emotional reactions, due to the awareness of the criminality of their plans and the risk of exposure and punishability of a carding act. Dynamism of the psyche helps to overcome failures, thanks to the high activity of the repression mechanism. This is due to the “search-experimental” nature of the carder’s thinking, working on the principle of “trials and errors/luck.”
Another series of features included in the psychology of carding is associated with the underlying deceitfulness. Falsehood generates or presupposes insincerity, deceit, cunning, treachery, indifference, callousness, heartlessness, dishonor, cruelty, unceremoniousness, cynicism, arrogance, humiliation of one’s own kind, trampling on their rights and dignity, etc.
However, lies and deceit are offensive to everyone. Including those who are committed to selfish deception. Those who resort to carding belittle and violate, first of all, their own dignity. In essence, a carder is a nonentity who almost consciously chooses the path of degradation and disintegration of his humanity and all that positive and constructive resource that is inherent in each of us by the fact of birth. The situation is aggravated by the fact that any degree of awareness of one’s own insignificance, any degree of feeling like a carder, generates a negative feedback loop leading to an increasingly bitter individual, to even greater cynicism and baseness. Rarely does anyone manage to get out of this loop, but there have been and still are cases of breaking the vicious circle of degradation. They are always possible if a person finds strength in himself, when he gains courage, determination and will to become a person worthy of true respect and self-respect.
The carder isolates himself and deprives himself of many human values, especially those related to friendship, mutual assistance, openness to goodness, and justice. It is difficult, if not impossible, for him to establish and maintain honest, open and selfless relationships with people, to have reliable friends, close and sincerely loved ones. The psychological atmosphere that the scammer creates around himself and into which he immerses is generally negative and flawed, it is full of alienation, isolation, secrecy, mistrust and even rejection.
A carder, like any criminal, is selfish in a special way. This egoism has a strong tendency towards ever-increasing captivity, imprisoning oneself in the cage of one’s own loneliness and secrecy. The most dramatic thing here is that the egoism of the carder, like any criminal, is forced, objective, practically violent due to the criminal nature of the carding. In contrast to the positive, free and voluntary privacy of the individual - primarily in his private life as a pure and reserved zone of relaxation, uninhibition and creativity - the closeness of carding psychology is a product of egoism, a careful disguise of one’s affairs and oneself as its subject. This is the selfishness of suspicion, hostility and fear. Negative isolationist egoism as a feature of carding psychology is similar here to a cage or underground, which is built and dug not for freedom and peace, but for ambush, deceit and treachery, at best - for “licking wounds”, i.e. those mental traumas that are inevitable and which open up and become obvious precisely in the underground, at the bottom of the soul of every criminal, when he is left alone with himself. This partly explains the tendency of criminals to alcoholism and drug addiction, these means of forgetting and distracting themselves from themselves.
Psychology and content (i.e., idea, scenario and goal), as well as procedures, tools, tools of carding, the action itself, as well as the range of its possible consequences, form certain general attitudes of the carder. Perhaps the main thing in them is - this is a special, self-interested openness of the situation, striving to fully embrace and take into account both what is known, controllable in it, and the varying degrees of uncertainty, unpredictability and uncontrollability that exist here, and randomness.
Its second feature is what can be called hypocrisy, otherness, transformation and perversity of carding consciousness and behavior. The acting consists here in a really embodied lie, fiction, deception, in a special kind of “performance”. It is based on the same two fundamental human vices: theft and lies. The latter is combined here with the ability to transform. Both the carder and his actions are the opposite of what they are to others, i.e. for those to whom and to whom the carding is directed. Carding makeup, declared script, scenery, acting, etc. always, one way or another, attractive, they position themselves as good and beneficial, as legality and enterprise, as charity and even nobility, as goodness, help, compassion and support for people in difficult situations.
The third feature of the scammer’s attitude is related to what I.Ya. drew attention to. Foinitsky, defining carding as an “intellectual weapon.” In carding, the intellectual element is contained both in the idea and plan of carding, and in its execution, which requires a lot of mental work, intelligence, prudence, resourcefulness, cunning, etc. The combination of the second and third features of carding gives rise to what can be called the art of selfish deception, since it includes both acting and an intellectual element, as well as skill, skill, and mastery of deception.
Fourthly, a carding installation, no matter how bad it is to admit it, includes its creativity, i.e. creative, innovative, so to speak, innovative nature of both the consciousness and actions of carders. At one time there was a sad and funny expression in use: “There is not a single deceived investor who cannot be deceived again.” Today this expression can be modified: “There is not a single deceived shareholder of construction companies who cannot be deceived again and again.” It is no coincidence that the status of the deceived changes and is updated every time due to the dynamic and “creative” nature of carding consciousness and technology.
The fifth feature of a carding installation is its immorality. This immorality is predetermined by those basic qualities of the individual, the implementation of which gives rise to this destructive act - thievery and deceit. The immorality of carding is obvious, no matter how intellectual, hidden, and complicated it may be. The immorality of carding consists of deceit, treachery, cynicism, dishonesty, cruelty, heartlessness and many other dark sides of the human being.
The sixth feature of this immoral attitude is its criminal nature. This is obvious from the fact that it is extremely immoral and is aimed at selfish deception or misrepresentation with the aim of causing financial or property damage, as well as harm to the moral, mental or physical health of a person. Otherwise, this side of the carding installation should be called criminal, prosecuted by law. Understanding and experiencing this gives the consciousness and actions of a carder a particularly cynical and immoral appearance; this is the type of crime that is clearly recognized by its subject and therefore cannot deserve any leniency.
Taken together, these characteristics constitute what can be called a carding complex. Most likely, the listed qualities do not exhaust the essence of the entire phenomenon of fcarding, but they form its basis. These words should be understood, first of all, to mean that we must consider this complex as constantly changing, modernizing, always unexpected and unpredictable in some way, and therefore especially dangerous, insidious, multifaceted and massive.
Psychology of the deceived
As we know, the other side of carding is the deceived, the potential or actual victim of malicious deception. It would seem that the situation is obviously polar: on one pole there is a minus (a carder who clearly deserves censure and punishment), on the other there is a plus (a victim who definitely deserves protection, sympathy and support). In reality, everything is not so simple, since there is almost always something in the person being deceived that makes him similar to the carder. Let's try to clarify this rarely covered side of the matter.
Let us assume that the impossible is possible in practice, but that is possible in theory. Let’s assume that we, as targets of carding, have all at once become so smart, quick-witted and decent that we have acquired the ability to get out of carding situations not as victims, but as exposers and winners. What will happen in the end? In this case, carding as a type of human activity will most likely wither and die, like a plant deprived of soil. But this hypothetical death of carding will occur not only because those being deceived will develop critical thinking and skills to defend against deception, but also because they will be freed from some of the less than noble qualities that, as it turns out, motivate carders and even make them see them as victims. a kind of unfortunate competitors, losers in this game between the carder and his client.
What I mean? First of all, those attitudes and qualities of those being deceived that are not only reprehensible, but also largely encourage, even give rise to, certain types of carding. Perhaps the main one among them - so widespread in Russia - is free labor, i.e. the desire to receive something either for free, or for almost nothing, or faster, or more than it should be, etc.
Freeloading is a kind of “passive theft.” A synonym for the word “freebie” is the concept of “freebie”. Free shipping has a long Russian history. It was born centuries ago and manifested itself as beggary, wandering, hoarding, begging, etc. Under Soviet rule, gratuitousness changed its forms. Taking away from a person almost everything that he earned, the state “donated” or “distributed” this taken among the “working people” as a kind of mercy or a manifestation of the highest, “socialist” justice. The Soviet man, although in principle he understood or felt that he was not the master of himself and the results of his labor, that he was being exploited and robbed, nevertheless, he was accustomed to viewing social programs and many “benefits” as precisely gratuitous. Of course, the “social welfare state” [1] (V.S. Barulin) corrupted the consciousness of people, made them dependents involuntarily, developed in them laziness, obedience, passivity, hack work, low production discipline, which, perhaps, was one of the the reasons for the collapse of the USSR economy, and then of this state itself.
This small digression into political problems is nothing more than an illustration of that very common feature that has been preserved in slightly modified forms in the post-Soviet consciousness. Although today we are told that free cheese is only in a mousetrap, we are drawn to freebies, to freebies, especially since there are more and more of these “moustraps”, and their variety is increasing. To be fair, it must be said that freeloading is not only a Russian trait, but also a universal one. Another thing is that in Russia it is expressed, perhaps, more strongly than in many other civilizations, and there are certain historical reasons for this.
The concept of gratuitousness can also include the desire for easy money, quick and easy profit, i.e. everything that carding technologies catch us on. To one degree or another, almost all of us contain something of freeloading, greed, or the desire for some special benefit, which makes us potential accomplices in carding. We are, as it were, ready to be deceived by the very attitude towards gratuitousness. We are unable to free ourselves from it largely because we do not see any particular sin in it. Thus, we show not only condescension towards her, but also favor. But, as the proverb says, even a fool hits a bowed head. And the carder is even more so, since he is by no means a fool.
I dwelled in such detail on this quality of the deceived because this is required by objectivity and realism in understanding the phenomenon of carding. Any illusion or idealism in talking about carding is unacceptable. Otherwise, we will never understand its deep foundations and will not learn to adequately resist this vice.
Other centers of attraction for scammers are, firstly, certain natural (innate) human qualities, which are discussed below, as well as a greater or lesser degree of human ignorance.
But what features of psychology, besides those noted, allow scammers to consider us as their potential victims? [2] What is it about ourselves that makes us weak opponents, a kind of semi-finished product for the deceiver?
If we talk about the innate qualities of a person, which are somehow involved in carding as a process and on which the carder relies, then there are not so few of them. We have already spoken about the frankly negative ones. Along with them, human nature also has completely neutral and deep abilities that we can combine or realize in any way: neutral, positive or negative.
Curiosity and inquisitiveness are perhaps the first to be pecked by carding. These two, in themselves, attractive qualities of a person without proper guidance from the mind, especially if they are strongly expressed by birth, can be those “claws” that, having gotten stuck, make the “bird” “lost.” Carding is always an intrigue, something enticing that appeals to our curiosity. It most often begins psychologically with him. And all scammers know this very well. I dare to suggest (I am not aware of experiments of this kind) that if you pretend to be an indifferent, very indifferent person, stubborn and even a little idiotic, then many types of carding simply will not be able to “stick”, they will fall off like tape from an oily surface.
To these psychological characteristics should be added our natural craving and desire for something unusual, surprising or even miraculous. In carding there is always this element of extraordinaryness, there is the temptation of something special. This special can consist both in external content open to the deceived, i.e. in the stated idea and goal, and in the method of achieving it declared by the carder, which is usually easy, convenient and fast, almost miraculous.
The intrigue of carding is designed specifically for our need for the unusual, even for novelty, which attracts us in a natural, but difficult to explain way. Here the intrigue of the scam is addressed not only to our curiosity, but also to the desire for something special, incredibly “cheap”, “fast”, “easy”, “prestigious”, etc. In people with a strong desire for the unusual, but with weak reflection and critical thinking, these qualities easily degenerate into a thirst for adventure, more precisely into adventurism, frivolity, recklessness, gambling, which can be expensive. It is people of a frivolous and adventurous nature who usually become the first victims of carding. And isn’t the swindler himself an adventurer? Like goes with like!
Among other psychological qualities of those being deceived, gullibility, excessive gullibility, naivety, and infantilism are especially attractive to malicious deceivers. These qualities are a negative continuation of completely natural neutral human gifts: the ability to believe, trust oneself and people, be open and understandable, maintain the purity and sincerity of feelings and perception of reality. But if these features of the human psyche are distorted, primitivized and not nurtured, i.e. do not acquire their maturity and meaningfulness, if they are not taken care of by reason, then they become our weaknesses, the prerequisites for our mistakes and defeats.
So we gradually move on to those properties of our psyche or such states that are the product of a kind of synthesis of natural human qualities and ignorance, ignorance, one or another measure of our bad manners.
Learning is light, ignorance is darkness, as people say. And it’s hard to argue with this, this truth is so obvious. But why is there so much ignorance, deception, mistakes, failures, and finally, misfortunes and failed lives, people, families and destinies around?
In order not to turn this question into a philosophical, social and political one, we will limit ourselves to the psycho-intellectual side of the matter.
Firstly, teaching is work. The work is hard and long. On sober reflection, this is a lifelong road forward and upward. At the same time, it is natural for us to want to avoid difficulties. But not all of them should be avoided. This applies primarily to training, knowledge, enlightenment, education and self-education. Our nature as rational people simply leaves us no other worthy choice but to use reason to become human and correspond to our true nature. But the same nature tells us that this is a constant matter, that knowledge is one of the ways of our survival and existence. Happy is the one who wants and knows how to learn throughout his life.
It is the mind that helps us understand the role and mission of reason in our lives. Reason clarifies, persuades, convinces and makes the situation easier; it encourages you to make sometimes difficult, “laborious”, but honest choices. And in the end, victory, success, joy awaits us.
Another important condition for understanding the vital significance of reason and thinking is the natural and social environment that surrounds us. If the conditions of survival are extremely harsh and unfavorable for a person, then the opportunities for his growth and development are also narrowed, not allowing him to be a full-fledged person. At the same time, we are witnessing how, in equal social and everyday conditions, one person slides down, another goes up. This means that very, very much depends on ourselves. Much more than we think, because human reserves and capabilities are truly unlimited.
Bad manners, anti-intellectual attitudes of a person, his sometimes militant ignorance and stupidity, the conviction that “there is no trick against crowbar”, that “you have strength, you don’t need intelligence” is the most favorable soil for carding, one of the conditions for its success.
What is anti-intellectualism? This phenomenon is so serious and it is so poorly understood in Russia that it needs to be talked about at least briefly. Anti-intellectualism is a tradition and sociocultural attitude within which the mind, reason, consciousness, intellect, awareness and meaningfulness are considered as something negative, alien, dangerous and even hostile to a person.
What, what mental experiences in a person fuel anti-intellectualism? First of all, an instinctive, almost animal fear of knowledge, a knowledgeable person or a social institution that personifies knowledge and enlightenment: a school, a university, a museum, etc. By and large, this fear is explainable (it cannot but be instinctive, subconscious and animal, since it is the fear of an unenlightened person), and it is even justified: in a competitive social environment, an ignoramus is almost always doomed to lose, he is doomed to be an outsider, a lag behind.
The psychological underpinning of anti-intellectualism is the same thirst for freebies, freebies and, in addition, mental laziness, turning into militant stupidity. Adjacent to the psychological sources of anti-intellectualism is the psychology of defeatism and desertion, which manifests itself in a variety of forms: from street hooliganism and contempt for reason to irony or poetry like: “Whoever does not smoke or drink will die healthy.” It seems that such a “verse” could only have been born in Russia - anti-intellectualism, in other words, nonsense, is so militantly, directly and primitively expressed in it.
A negative attitude towards reason and consciousness dooms anti-intellectuals to getting bogged down in the darkness of instincts, in the emotional sphere, in the twilight of the subconscious and irrational. Researchers of Russian culture and psychology write: “The dominance of the sensory-emotional sphere in the national character gives rise to dissatisfaction with consciousness. Consciousness is diminished and assessed sharply negatively. There are two main ways to deny consciousness. The first is psychological. Consciousness is opposed to the emotional-volitional sphere, and the latter is recognized as having undoubted superiority... The second path is religious.”[3]
Another source of intellectualism and, at the same time, an opponent of reason is irrationalism. Most often, it acts as a “canceller” and a substitute for reason, as supposedly something more fundamental, more reliable and truly a vital quality of a person. Irrationalism has many forms of expression in culture. This includes voluntarism, vitalism, reckless romanticism, utopianism and various forms of aesthetics and decadence. Today, the main exponents and defenders of irrationalism are postmodernism and irrational-mystical movements in religions.
Most often, attacks on reason by irrationalists are based on a misunderstanding or mistake. The irrationalist confronts different aspects of human nature and argues using a non-alternative method, the method of exceptions. One of two things: feelings or reason, faith or reason, heart or head, instinct or reason, will or reason, emotions or reason? - this is how the irrationalist poses the question. And he chooses anything but the mind. However, this formulation of the question is erroneous, since man is quite broad and multifaceted. The task is to bring a person’s different-quality talents into harmonious unity, into creative agreement, so that they manifest themselves and are realized in life in the right place and at the right time, in the right combination and to the proper extent, so that they do not conflict, but interact and help each other. After all, in a good way, they are all a kind of faithful servants, means through which we can make our lives full, interesting and creative.
But, returning to the topic of our conversation, to carding, it should be emphasized that both anti-rationalism and irrational attitudes make a person equally helpless in a situation of carding; he is an easy prey for any deception, any carding scheme, since there is always an intellectual moment in it that requires not so much faith or feeling, but sober reflection, analysis, skepticism, criticism and prudence.
In conclusion of the topic about the psychology of carding, it remains to draw attention to the fact that psychology is one of the essential aspects of this unfortunate phenomenon. Carding is a clash, competition and struggle between two psychologies; it is the defeat of one psychology and the victory of the other. Analysis of two psychological complexes, understanding both the actions and psyche of the carder, and one’s own mentality, i.e. oneself as its potential victim provides a serious basis for self-defense, for protection from error and defeat, but, ultimately, for worthy resistance to carding, for defeating it, exposing it.
Questions to the topic:
1. Name the main components of carding.
2. From what basic human qualities is carding born?
3. Name the psychological features of a carding consciousness.
4. What is the general attitude of the scammer?
5. What does the psychology of the deceived relate to the psychology of the carder?
6. What innate human qualities does the scammer seek to exploit to achieve his goals?
7. What role does ignorance play in carding?
8. What are anti-intellectualism and irrationalism and how do they relate to carding?
Notes
[1] “Sobes” is an abbreviation for the expression “social security”. The scale and forms of this social, or rather state, provision were exceptionally large in the USSR, which is not surprising due to the equally obvious ways of functioning, first totalitarian, dictatorial, and then bureaucratic and authoritarian state socialism (or state capitalism - scientists have not been able to determine what was built in the USSR over its more than seventy-year history). The state assumed maximum rights, but due to this alone it necessarily had to fulfill some obligations in relation to citizens deprived of many rights.
[2] In thieves jargon, a set of derogatory and contemptuous definitions is always prepared for us, ordinary citizens: “loch”, “burdock”, “man”, “tolerated” (victim), etc.
[3] Kuznetsov V.G., Nerusheva L.G. Universe Russia: Truths and Imaginaries. Vinnitsa: PE Usatyuk, 2000, p. 50. It would be a mistake to think that a suspicious and hostile attitude towards reason is inherent only in certain segments of the Russian population. For example, in the United States anti-intellectualism also exists, although in milder forms due to the pragmatism of the American mentality. But it is in this country that scientists can be ironically called “eggheads.” One of the significant reasons for G. Bush's victory over A. Gore in the presidential election campaign was the former's “simplicity” and the brilliant intellect of Gore, which frightened many ordinary Americans who had difficulty understanding what the then US Vice President was talking about. The author of a work on “strategies for increasing practical intelligence,” V. Rugero, begins his book with words full of drama: “For a whole century, American education treated the intelligence of students with disdain, so that it affected everyone. Knowing how this tragedy happened is the first step to overcoming its consequences in your life" (Ruggiero, VincentMakingYourMindMatter. Strategies for Increasing Practical Intelligence. Rowman & Littlefield Publisher, Lahman - Boulder - New York - Oxford, 2003, p. xiii .)
(c) http://www.humanism.ru/education/cours/thinking/166-thinking10.html
