punctuation. This is not even a criticism of the school course, this is a statement of fact. It's just that in school they teach that, not that.

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Attempts to move towards the text and communication began at school in the post-perestroika period, but faced certain problems. Assessing the results of such work is much more difficult than assessing trivial literacy, and in our education the main goal is still assessment. Focusing on evaluation is not always meaningless, but some activities are ruined in the bud. For example, an essay. If a student in his essay speaks freely on a certain topic, then this is wonderful. But that doesn't happen. Firstly, an essay is graded, and secondly, an essay has been a key exam for many years, often determining the fate of a person. This means that either a specific teacher or a non-specific examiner should like the essay. Hence - the emergence of many patterns, following which is almost mandatory, since individual creativity is dangerous. It is dangerous not even from an ideological point of view, as in Soviet times, but simply from a practical point of view: of course, an unknown examiner may like it, but, rather, it may actively dislike it, in contrast to some stereotypical presentation, which is unlikely to please much, but and will not cause strong negative emotions that are important when grading.

A complex communicative activity (which includes both understanding and reasoning) has two important features. Firstly, it is difficult to evaluate (any evaluation of it is subjective, and objective criteria, as a rule, are absent), and secondly, being oriented towards evaluation, it is highly distorted (one thing is free reasoning, another thing is reasoning for the sake of the five) . The first of these features is very inconvenient for school education, which adapts to grades, graduation and entrance examinations. The second feature largely makes the teaching of communicative activity within the framework of such education (where everything is evaluated) meaningless.

At the same time, it is obvious that the value of communication skills is much higher than that of literacy. Both for life and for the profession (the only exception is the profession of proofreader).

Testing in the Russian language does not provide for assessing the communicative abilities of the examinees (for example, the level of understanding of the text), which, on the one hand, is good, since it is objectively impossible to assess these abilities, but, on the other hand, it is bad, because these abilities are extremely important. In addition, this is bad for education in general, since since these abilities are not evaluated (relatively speaking, they are not an Olympic sport), they will not be developed at school. And they will, as before, teach spelling and punctuation.

Is there a way out? I suspect that in our conditions there is no way out, at least a realistic one. The meaning of testing in the Russian language in particular and the unified exam in general, in my opinion, is not to improve the process of testing and assessing knowledge in a meaningful way and to promote the selection of more talented and prepared children. The goal is to destroy the system of corruption in universities, and the success of such an exam will not be determined by the fairness of the selection (which, of course, cannot be achieved with the help of such tests), but by how much the existing injustice (corruption, bribes, tutoring and all related to them).

Nevertheless, communication skills at school, of course, should be developed. Moreover, the situation when they are not specifically assessed on a vital exam is quite fruitful. After all, then they are developed not for the sake of evaluation, but for their own sake. In fact, today this is the way out. The question is, is the school ready to do this? A negative answer seems more realistic.

I return to the case above. At first I was surprised and even annoyed by this attitude towards the text. If there is no goal to understand the text, then why all this? Why write and why read reviews? Why then the theory and practice of communication? Later, on reflection, I realized that the communication was just successful. My pretty and positive students would not like rude films anyway, despite their positive assessment by a certain reviewer. On the other hand, tender films about nature and love would be more to their liking, and it does not matter at all what the reviewer thinks of them. In the review, they caught those words that are unpleasant for them, and gave an assessment of the film directly, as if bypassing the reviewer. More precisely, they attributed to the reviewer their own assessment of the film, obtained from his own review on the basis of indirect data (and not on the basis of the direct assessment of the reviewer himself).

I persistently demanded that they understand the text and guess the opinion of the reviewer, but they ignored this opinion and made up their own. From a practical point of view, they are certainly right. My task did not contain any practical meaning. Indeed, why do we need to know what some unknown and therefore uninteresting person is thinking and trying to express? This is his problems.

It is obvious that I myself, as a rule, use the same strategies when reading a review. Usually it is important for me not to understand the reviewer's thought, but to decide whether to watch this movie, read this book, and so on.

In short, as a result of reading the course, I

On this page, which I wanted to make interesting and exciting for readers, there are materials, ours and other authors, reflecting the complex and ambiguous process of a person's knowledge of the world and himself and the efforts of different people in search of the truth and meaning of what is happening around and in themselves for the benefit of all. Some materials of the page are voluminous and complex, like the truth itself, others are very original, for example, the article by Zimbuli A.E. "Paradoxes, paradoxes..." I would like to hope that for an inquisitive and active mind they will not be superfluous and trivial. However, it is not at all necessary to read them all at once and in a row - they are for you and as long as the Internet is functioning and our site is alive - at your disposal.

In search of truth and meaning

Introduction or what kind of search, truth and meaning are we talking about?

Truth, as more and more adequate knowledge about the world and oneself, is searched for by each person in his own way, and one hundred thousand "whys" of the child and Internet statistics, for example, the number of requests for the word "TRUTH" in the Yandex search engine, is about 9000 in confirmation of this. month, and the pages where this word is mentioned are approximately 14,000,000. And this despite the fact that, again according to statistics, only 2% of users are interested in serious semantic issues of their existence. Until people engage in consistent self-knowledge and improvement, which is the result of a general misunderstanding, this is done by enthusiastic researchers, inquisitive people who are able to rise above the momentary, whose efforts and discoveries give new knowledge and food for thought to others. What do we mean by truth and meaning? First of all, what gives a person a more objective and true knowledge of the world and himself for a real, and not material, improvement of life! Well, meaning means the meaning of a person's life, about which they speak vaguely and indefinitely, as well as about his essence, which predetermines the content and meaning of his actions - individual, in society and nature!

1. Who, why and how seeks truth and meaning? New: progress and conservatism. Vital, Momentary and Eternal

Each person seeks the truth as more and more true knowledge about the world and himself in his own way in order to live better! As A. De Saint-Sucupery said: "The truth of a man is what makes him a man." In the cognition of the truth, a new one is born, perceived differently by people, often negatively, like some kind of nonsense ... This has natural psychological reasons and is a reflection of the fact that people own the vital and momentary, and the more, the less they are able to rise over their desires, realizing their necessity and benefit, which connect the momentary with the universally significant and eternal inherent in our essence.

1.1. Who, why and how seeks truth and meaning?

Everyone is looking for the truth: scientists and politicians, researchers and practitioners, children and the elderly. TRUTH, as “correspondence of knowledge to reality” (encyclopedic), or otherwise, knowledge that corresponds to reality is difficult to achieve, and as long as a person lives, he will seek the truth and comprehend the meaning of what is happening, including in himself. Moreover, each person, starting life as if "from scratch", is forced to seek and comprehend what others have done before him, in order to stand on their shoulders and see further in order to live better. Not everyone succeeds, and some people pay with their health and even life for their laziness and mistakes. How important it is to help each person make the right choice, and how can one not remember about human studies, the most important task of which is this! Man is an integral part of nature with its essence, which must be known in order to follow it for your own good. Having a mind, a person in the process of self-knowledge and with favorable development is able to realize his essence and realize himself for the benefit of himself and with the highest benefit for everyone. Unfortunately, this most important task of life has not yet become relevant for all people for a number of reasons, and above all because they do not teach how to solve it, and each person solves it to the best of his ability or rather does not solve it, and a lot of life's problems are proof of this. People get stuck in the routine of everyday life and rush between their desires and necessity, trying to find and not finding their balance ... Many things prevent this, but above all, the inability to use what nature has given to each person - the mind and its ability to seek and find the optimal and shortest path to the goal. Human science and education in accordance with the essence will help people learn to desire and do what is necessary and useful, and the search for truth will cease to be the lot of single enthusiasts. This will be done by many - and reasonable, kind, eternal, now accessible to a few, like the search for truth, will become essential for everyone!

The search for truth is not an easy task because a person can only approach it, and this process is endless, and because each person has his own experience, his own idea of ​​the truth of a particular phenomenon or fact. In claiming that their personal opinion is true, some neglect the need to prove its truth and fool others as gullible as themselves. As a result, and this is a typical picture for the humanitarian sphere, in particular, for philosophical anthropology, there is an accumulation of diverse and heterogeneous ideas that do not bring closer to the truth - understanding the essence of man, but move away from it. Acting on the contrary, it is natural to go the other way and seek the truth not speculatively and subjectively, but objectively, systematically and conclusively. An example of a systematic and constructive approach to the study and definition of a person is our human science, and as a model of a scientific attitude to truth, we can recommend the work of A.A. Krasilova "What is truth?" The following is an introduction to it, which shows how many conditions must be met in order for what we consider to be true to be really so ...

"A true statement creates comfort. Other true statements can be built from true statements. Maybe that's why a person is busy searching for truth. Often the search for truth determines the goal of a person's material, energy or information activity. In information activity, the goal can be the formulation of the concept of truth, which is so necessary for realization search for truth.In this activity, the formulation of the concept of truth should include sub-goals of the definition of concepts in which the concept of truth will be defined.The procedure for defining the concept of truth can be endless.Search for truth can be considered fruitful if you start with a simple description of truth and establish the relationship of the concept of truth with other concepts.Important fix the language in which the definition is built.The language establishes the relationship of concepts.It is important to remember that what is true in one language may turn out to be false in another language.A language can be natural or formal. at least two initial categories: terms and lexemes. In addition to the working language in which statements are formed, it is necessary to consider the language description language or metalanguage in which the working (object) language is defined. The metalanguage must be described in an object language. Then one can find the meaning of the metalanguage term.

The definition must be in the language itself, which considers the concept of truth. It should be self-service and not resort to a metalanguage. After defining the concept of truth, it is necessary to determine the scope of this concept. The volume may be large, then the search for truth will be more successful. There are a number of forms of definition of the concept, they will be applied to the definition of truth. Each concept is expressed as a pair: name (the term of the concept) and value (the current meaning of the concept). Truth follows from any definition of an object (they are usually given without proof). Truth or a true statement as a concept consists of the names of terms and meanings - lexemes defined in the language. The name TRUE has the meaning truth, as a token of the language. The requirement that a statement be true can lead to a search for truth conditions. The task of determining or inferring a condition is important in this case. In the process of inference, contradictions can be found that invalidate the search and everything connected with it. The search must start over. Contradictions do not allow to fulfill the main thing - it is to determine the meaning or meaning of the concept and statement. We can assume that a process that does not lead to contradictions allows us to determine the essence of a concept or statement.

1.2. New: progress and conservatism

It seems strange that everything new, progressive is very often perceived by people not only without enthusiasm, but warily, with distrust and rejection. However, and such is life, the new is far from always progressive, not all people are able to determine the true value - the necessity and usefulness of the new, finally, the new often requires a serious restructuring of the existing one and large funds are needed to implement it. In such circumstances, it is natural to treat the new critically with a certain degree of conservatism, however, not too much ...

Thoughts of prominent writers and scientists on new ideas and discoveries:

Invent and you will die persecuted like a criminal; imitate and you will live happily like a fool! Honore Balzac

A new scientific truth paves the way to triumph, not by convincing its opponents and forcing them to see the world in a new light, but rather because its opponents die sooner or later and a new generation grows up that is used to it. M. Plank

It is jokingly noted that all great discoveries go through three stages. At first they say about the discoverer: "He is crazy", then - "There is something in this", and in the final stage - "it's so simple". In a word, it turns out, like that schoolgirl, not devoid of humor, who said: "Poor geniuses, they were forced to discover what we go through at school."

The factor that attracts to the old paradigms is the so-called "halo effect", which is always surrounded by scientific authorities. The hypnosis of the great is so great that people follow his instructions without hesitation. But the authorities are full of old paradigms. These are not necessarily the laws that were discovered by them, but they share them, taking them as a model of scientific thinking. That is why conflicts are inevitable. From the book by A. Sukhotin: Paradoxes of Science. M., 1978.

There is a fatal inexorability: the larger the discovery and the more significant the threatening changes in science, the more desperate the resistance, dooming the new to a fruitless existence in the rank of unclaimed knowledge.

There is no doubt that they will fight only with what is really new, significant. Why fight with the void? Therefore, we have to agree that the touchstone of the theory put forward is its ability to withstand not just criticism, but stronger storms - ridicule, persecution, and even a war of annihilation.

Fateful ideas are often doomed to pass the test of survival, to prove their usefulness in the heat of battle. However, this should also have its own proportion. Let the struggle go on, but let it take place according to the canons of honor and be carried out in a circle of theoretical clashes, according to the rules of the game written by science.

The usual scheme of the movement of a big discovery goes through three stages: silence, unstoppable criticism, and finally recognition. Of course, there are specific variations. But this through line is almost always maintained. From the book by A. Sukhotin: The vicissitudes of scientific ideas. M., 1991

It is not enough to be convinced of your ideas for yourself - they need to be passed on to other people. People may not understand, reject, and even ridicule and desecrate new ideas and conclusions. This can be done first of all by their own colleagues - scientists who are convinced of the inviolability of their views, in their academic infallibility, philistines in academic chairs and professorial chairs. A. Alexandrov

1.3. momentary and eternal

This topic has appeared on our site for the second time (See situation 3.36 on the page "World events and man") and, of course, not by chance. Note that the first development of this topic was carried out by us spontaneously without working through the available materials in response to the interest that arose in it, which by no means makes it shallow and weak. Having started working on this page and giving such a request in several Internet search engines, we received so much and such diverse information that it became clear - firstly, this topic is much richer and broader than we imagined, and secondly, it is so often and on various occasions it is mentioned that they wanted to understand it better and draw on materials from other authors to illustrate its nuances and ambiguity. First of all, let us recall the context of our first development, which is that many people live in short cycles in the particular and momentary and do not rise above it in order to come into contact with the general and eternal for their own benefit. But why rise above the essential, everyday? Maybe then, in order to see farther ahead, it is better to live in the present. Climb up to see the best path and avoid obstacles to consider if you are living and acting well and is there a better way? But in order to do this, you must have a mind with which you can determine what is good and bad for you, and a science about the laws of life, yourself and the world around, which will teach you to act in accordance with your essence and expressing its necessity and benefit.

In this sense, the actions of many in the current crisis are very indicative: people think about how to get out of the crisis, which is so natural and seemingly logical, but do not think about how to live without crises?.. The last, far from ambiguous, is to survive, Indeed, we need to think about how to get out of the crisis, but we shouldn't stop there!.. Why isn't this happening? Yes, because people live by urgent needs, momentary and do not want to rise above it. Why do they not want to, because this is necessary to achieve their greater benefit? Because they do not realize this because they are not intelligent enough. But people are not born, but become rational, and only a few are able to rise above the momentary mind in order to, having united with the world and eternity, see the contours of a better life and the path to it ... A lot in people's lives depends on education and the pedagogical basis, on on which their development and education was based. Unfortunately, now the process of upbringing and education does not contribute to the effective development of a person and his mind. The unreasonableness of what is happening and the triumph of the profitable momentary, which has been going on for an eternity, has given rise not only to the natural expectation of the apocalypse, but also its likelihood, which increases with the deterioration of the environmental situation in the world and financial and economic problems. However, only a few are aware of the insecurity of what is happening and the need for changes, primarily in the upbringing and education of people, not to mention science - human studies, with the help of which this can be recognized and done effectively, in contact with eternity.

Below are the materials of two wonderful authors, each of which is original and interesting in its own way in revealing the topic of the momentary and the eternal, which intersect not only with what we have formulated above on this page, but also with other topics and materials of the site. Get to know them and we hope that they will not leave you indifferent.

Maxim Krongauz. About high and eternal, low and momentary

The discussion about education has been thundering, making noise, and sometimes even hissing for the last fifteen years, that is, in fact, since the beginning of perestroika. True, in recent years it has acquired a completely definite direction. What are we arguing about? About how many years to study or how to enter the university, who to give or who not to give bribes. Of course, the topics are important, but, how should I put it, practical and external in relation to education itself. Disputes about the content of education are much rarer, and they mainly concern history. What to write about the Soviet period? how to evaluate the restructuring? In fact, this problem is general - it affects all subjects. It is easier to give examples from the humanities. So much more interesting and somehow clearer. So, whose poems should be taught at school: Lermontov or Brodsky (or, for greater clarity, Prigov)? Whom to pass: Turgenev or Pelevin? Whose activity should be subjected to historical evaluation: Peter, Lenin, Gorbachev or Putin? Teach Latin and Ancient Greek or conversational English (preferably the American version)? In Russian lessons, report the number of cases or teach how to write advertising texts? In short, what to teach: eternal or actual, valuable (more precisely, priceless) or useful? The answer of the romantics and idealists: "everything" should be discarded at once. The program is not rubber, and everything will not fit into it. If we want the actual, we will have to sacrifice something eternal. If we want the eternal, we will have to do without the actual. So the choice - like it or not - will have to be made. Oddly enough, things are much simpler with the eternal. For many centuries, forgive me for an unfortunate expression, it somehow settled. In culture and in the humanities, a certain system of values ​​and a certain hierarchy have developed. Well, it's silly to argue whether Pushkin is the first poet of Russia and whether Alexander Sergeevich is ours, even if you prefer Lermontov's or Pasternak's poems. It is foolish to argue with the fact that Shakespeare is Shakespeare, and Homer is Homer, precisely in the sense that culture interprets them, even if in fact Shakespeare is Bacon, a woman or two, or even three people, and Homer is not at all existed. World culture is quite stable, and it makes little sense to overestimate its components and fragments from an aesthetic point of view. As Faina Ranevskaya said about the Mona Lisa, she herself can choose who likes and who does not like. To prove to the world that the Mona Lisa has no aesthetic value, and that Lermontov is better than Pushkin, apparently, will no longer be possible.

For school education, this situation is almost ideal. The amount of knowledge recognized as valuable is known, and there is an established hierarchy of values. Essentially in culture, although it is not a sport, there is the first poet, the first painter, the first novelist, the first trio of poets, or, to put it more correctly, poets of the first row, second, and so on. Time selected the best cultural figures, the most significant works, and finally formed a strong opinion about them. What more could a teacher want! Culture itself writes the program and prompts the teacher with the right words. There is only one problem with the eternal and the high. The less relevant knowledge is, the further it is removed from us in time, the less motivation to master it. That is, if a person likes to learn languages, he will learn both ancient Greek and Sanskrit with great pleasure, and if he likes poetry, he will read Tyutchev and Pasternak himself. But if a student is indifferent to some activity, then without motivation by relevance or usefulness, he will not touch knowledge. So they read Tolstoy more than Tolstoy, because the first is in fashion, and the second is just eternal. And such a student will learn English, overcoming reluctance, because now there is no way without English. However, it is obvious that it is impossible to simply replace everything that is generally valid with the actual one. First, we will lose culture. Secondly, the relevant is more difficult to select. Thirdly, the actual and teaching, and teaching, oddly enough, is more difficult. It is difficult to select the actual because there are not always clear selection criteria. Let's say everything is clear with English. It has practically become international and is necessary for many people. But modern literary tastes are different for everyone. Who is considered worthy of the school curriculum? Even more difficult with historical characters. Is it appropriate for us now to assess President Putin, and the Americans - President Bush, or should we wait a couple of decades, or better, a hundred years? History, like culture, must "defend". Political, literary or any other fashion is fleeting, and it is better to evaluate a person or phenomenon when the fashion for them has passed. Following the political fashion, Clinton should have been either praised or terribly scolded (as well as Gorbachev and Yeltsin), and following the literary fashion, either Tolstaya, Sorokin, Pelevin, or maybe Lipskerov should have been included in the program or thrown out of it. And teaching the topical, as I said, is extremely difficult, because there is no single and generally accepted opinion about the topical. Imposing an assessment of the eternal is a cultural norm, while imposing an assessment of something close is violence against someone else's taste. All this means that each teacher must form his own opinion, and this is fundamentally impossible in general (not every teacher of literature follows the modern literary process), and in some cases it is simply dangerous (in one school a history teacher is for Lenin and the Communists, in a neighboring school - for Yeltsin and the Democrats). The school is far from always ready to teach the topical.

Nevertheless, the actual is slowly crowding out the eternal, but it is important that this process be slow. The reproaches that the school is lagging behind life are certainly fair, but at the same time, in my opinion, they are fundamentally wrong. The school must be behind life. It should be more conservative than life, especially as fast as it is now. Otherwise, the connection between life and culture and between generations will break, which, however, is partly happening now. In addition, we must remember that children and adults acquire relevant knowledge not only and not so much at school. It comes from conversations with friends and relatives, from TV, from newspapers. No one teaches our children rock and rap at school, and they know about it better than about Tchaikovsky and Beethoven. The eternal, on the other hand, exists as a permanent background, it exists, but almost no one talks about it. Indeed, how often do adults discuss Pushkin's poems among themselves (we are not talking about Pushkinists, this is a special article), but reading families will definitely say something flattering or unflattering about Marinina or Pelevin. The loss of background knowledge is a very culturally unpleasant thing, this is what is called "losing one's roots". On the other hand, very few are able to exist only at the expense of background (eternal) knowledge. A compromise is needed, which is extremely difficult to achieve. The banality lies in the fact that the school and the content of education must be changed, but this should be done slowly, at least for the sake of teachers and for our own sake, so that we understand our children, and they understand us. P.S. Of course, the words "eternal" and "actual" are very conditional. Sometimes "eternal" is just a familiar element of culture or life, which is inevitably replaced by technical achievements or novelties. For example, I was glad when I was finally allowed to write with a ballpoint pen and when spelling lessons were canceled at school. Indeed, Russian culture is very different from Chinese, and, apparently, calligraphy is not an important and obligatory part of it. Although I know many people who are upset and annoyed by the disappearance of the culture of writing. Now, when they ask me what to teach children in the first grade in the Russian language lessons, I confidently answer: - In Moscow - to print on computers. Although... Maybe not. Either they already know how, or they will learn later. But where, besides school, will they be taught to write with a pen?

Lev Maksimov. momentary and eternal

In a student audience, it is very difficult to answer a seemingly simple question: what is the main function of a person? The difficulty in answering this question is most often explained by the fact that, due to their youth, most students have not yet thought about the problem of what is only human in a person. I think that this question is not often asked by many adults. Take a closer look at yourself, analyze your actions and thoughts, what will you notice? What you will notice first of all are the IMMEDIATE problems (food, clothing, housing, building relationships with others, money, love, entertainment for tonight, etc.) that surround you, do not allow you to look around, require immediate action, take away almost all of your time. But after all, these are just problems of preserving life and getting pleasure in it and nothing more. So what, man, as a rational being, appeared on Earth only to self-preserve and enjoy? How is such a life different from the life of a rat, a horse, or any other animal on our planet? Two problems constantly loom before us: a) the problem of the purpose of man and b) finding out that there is a non-animal in us. I will talk about the first one some other time, but the second can be reformulated as follows: can a person break out of the circle of ordinary momentary problems into the sphere of truly human activity. How the momentary and eternal, human and animal collide in each of us, you can read in the article below.

Strive for the high, the beautiful
The affairs of life interfere with us,
And if we managed to achieve the blessings of the earth,
That higher good we refer to dreams.
Goethe "Faust"

In a hotel in a small village where I happened to spend the night, on the wall of the room provided to me hung a picture, or rather a copy of Aivazovsky’s painting, in which huge shaggy waves are ready to absorb something in the form of a collapsing raft with seven people desperately fighting for their lives. These people are solving at the moment (now) one single problem - the problem of survival. The world around us and the events taking place in it directly affect our senses and thereby constantly immerse us in the "now", sometimes making it as if the only time for a person. Now I want to eat, drink, keep warm, heal, etc. Now I am sick, now I am afraid, I worry, I rejoice, I suffer, I dream. However, one should be aware that these experiences arise most often about the non-principal, that is, about what is not directly related to the fate of a person, to his inner spiritual life, the meaning of his existence. However, the “now” has a stranglehold on us. It is real, tangible, obvious, and at the same time, not everything in it is essential and true, much is distorted by our very perception. The fact is that, being in the present time, we are in the world of phenomena, in the world of fears and illusions about the manifestations of the essences of things and events, and not directly under the influence of the essences themselves. Now, if I am hungry, I do not think about food, but about something tasty, and in a similar way, I do not think about warmth, but about fashionable and new clothes, not about cleanliness, but fragrant soap and my own appearance, not about business , but about when it starts and ends and what it will give me, not about rest, but about a place where it can be spent, not about communication with others, but about what I will tell them, what they will think of me, etc. .P.

All this is now. It attracts us, it compels him to notice, to experience him, to think about him. It does not give us peace for a moment, does not allow us to concentrate, to think about something important, essential, to answer the fundamental questions of the meaning of being, our own destiny. And we feel that only by getting rid of such a “now” are we able to see or realize the eternal, only in this case we can look inside ourselves, we can notice world connections, we can begin to know the Truth. It turns out that “now” blocks the World, ourselves and the Truth for us. Overcoming such a "now", Heraclitus renounced the royal throne, Kant did not start a family, many true sages and saints sought to overcome desires. Gautama secluded himself in the forest, Mohammed took refuge in a cave, Diogenes lived in a barrel, Christ did not know where he was for thirty years. And only after leaving the momentary problems, they were able to know the Truth, after which, having returned to the people, they had the right and reason to teach. But those citizens to whom they addressed with the word of truth were for the most part immersed up to their necks in “now”, therefore they were not up to the eternal and true. They understood that they were being taught the truth, but they could not live according to it, because they were overcome by momentary problems, they thought how to live the day and survive the night. “Man,” Pascal argued, “is undoubtedly created in order to think: this is his main dignity, and the main business of life, and the main duty is to think decently. And he should begin by thinking about himself, about his creator and his end. But what do people think? Not at all about this, but about dancing, rattling the lute, singing a song, writing poetry, playing ring, etc., making war, achieving the royal throne, and not for a minute not thinking about what it is: to be a king, to be a man…” (I quote from A.I. Nekless, Transmutations of History. //Problems of Philosophy. 2001. No. 3, p. 198).

So Aivazovsky, in a storm at sea, 7 people “now” solve one most important problem for them - to save their lives. For them, “now” is the most important thing. But you can also take a philosophical look at the situation, although this will seem cynical to many: why do they fight so passionately for life when they are well aware that they will die someday anyway? After all, the longest life is no different, according to, for example, Marcus Aurelius, from the shortest. Why are they in such despair? Maybe they have a life ahead of them that will be worse than death? Maybe they obey the prescription of a higher law that gives them a certain period of life, which they instinctively want to realize? They can’t think about anything at the moment, they were seized with fear, they are afraid of pain, and we can understand them, because they would have acted in exactly the same way in the face of the threat of death. In moments of a calm “now”, a person is able to connect his momentary problems with eternal ones, he can explain this connection theoretically. But still, in practice, in the vast majority of cases, he is not able to break through the problems “now” to the Eternal truth and truth. He is unable to think, comprehend and understand the essence of being, being immersed in the problems of "now". So, when does he really live, does he live precisely as a man, that is, a thinking being? Maybe when his shoes are pressed, he gets sick, when he gives commands, when he protects himself from cold or heat, consumes what most do not have. Or does an individual feel human life only when he is blissful in an excellent sauna or on a resort beach, sitting at a rich table and drinking fine wines? Or, perhaps, he lives really humanly when he rejects such “pleasures” and experiences as “important”, significant, raising him in the eyes of others. When does he think about the Eternal and the basic, when his soul “seeks for what is true and eternal,” when exclusively this true and eternal becomes his life, everyday life, his “now”?

Before every normal person, at some point, the question will inevitably arise: what is true life, what are its truly human, non-animal functions? If every day I cook, wash, do unnecessary things for me (or even for anyone) at work, eat, drink, have fun, worry about what does not depend on me; and all this only because this is accepted in society or must be done with the necessity, then do I live? Of course I live, but what kind of life is this? Is such a life truly human? Every minute external problems and the thoughts that arise about them do not allow a person to go deep into himself. They force him to experience and think, to be clever and to get out, to make up his mind and doubt, in short, to fuss, to run who knows where, to move without direction, to exist exclusively in the world of external problems and circumstances, to sail without a rudder and sail in the stream of his own consciousness. What can pull a person out of this constant whirlwind? What can push him to reflection, to an attempt to look at the flow of life from the outside, to induce him to strive to understand everything that happens and himself in it all? Perhaps it is possible to escape from the hustle and bustle by an effort of will, which many wise men did? But even the will needs a push. It is necessary, for some reason, to want to first isolate yourself from the momentary, to abstract from it, that is, remaining in everyday life, stop thinking mainly about it. Knowledge plays a role in this. But in order to acquire it, again, a strong-willed effort is needed.

It seems to me that the beginning of a person's conversion to himself, to philosophical reflections on being, is rooted in this very momentary vanity of life and in a person lowered into it. Of course, everyday life itself does not allow a person to concentrate and think, interferes with this, but in the same everyday life there are momentary things that a person wants to do, which give him pleasure. Then maybe the true (human) life is getting pleasure from anything and absolutely nothing else? In this case, it turns out that when I cook with pleasure, eat and drink with pleasure, bathe in the bliss of love, solve problems with interest, work with pleasure, plant potatoes with joy, write because I want to live? The main thing is that while having fun, I listen to myself, I feel myself, in the end, I feel like a unique person. It is the joys of such life episodes that I remember, and therefore they form my actual personal history. “We look for the need for pleasure when we suffer from the lack of pleasure; and when we do not suffer, we no longer need pleasure. That is why we call pleasure the beginning and end of a happy life,” said Epicurus. The rest of life, that is, life without receiving pleasures, is not life at all, but only preparation for joys and pleasures, the expectation of the latter, the fear of failure of hopes and grief from their non-fulfillment.

In the history of personal life, in addition to extraordinary pleasures, misfortunes, cataclysms, experiences of failures and disappointments are also remembered. Historically, this is also life. Practically, this is a state of refusal, reduction of time, cessation of negative experiences. This is not real life, but in essence the rejection of it, the non-recognition of such a life for life, the desire to shorten it or, even better, avoid it. We strive with all our might to evade suffering, not noticing that at the same time we evade life in general, we try to leave it behind as quickly as possible, in the past, in the ever-remembering sad past, moving faster towards new joys, often imaginary pleasures. Along with the avoidance of suffering, that is, those necessary everyday boring and unloved things that do not give the human soul anything and which are, nevertheless, necessary as conditions and prerequisites for the survival of the body. Thus, there is natural life (existence) - this is the life of the body with its sensations and work to ensure this life. Such a life is characteristic of all living things, it is true, that is, carried out according to the objective laws of nature, it is the foundation, the basis for the realization of another unique life, human life, rational, spiritual and largely illusory. At the center of this second life is an exaggerated, unique in comparison with all living things, human insatiable and constant desire for pleasure. And although the enlighteners of the 1111th century and the Marquis de Sade argued that Nature endowed us with this desire, it seems doubtful to me, because Nature cherishes only proportionate, adjusted to the conditions, harmonious, adapted.

The human desire for pleasure is so boundless and sophisticated that it does not fit into the natural framework. It upsets the balance, it threatens natural life. It is redundant in the biological sense, and it is peculiar to only one kind of animal - homo sapiens. It is this that, first of all, distinguishes man from Nature and opposes it. It puts the human mind itself at its service, encourages its development and sometimes denies it, overcomes the rational, goes beyond its boundaries. The desire for pleasure is the meaning and the highest principle of human existence as some kind of non-biological species. All the troubles of life, all suffering ultimately come down to a state of deprivation of pleasures, to a feeling of dissatisfaction with existing pleasures, their limitation and smallness in comparison with those possible and available to others. We can say that man is an animal, striving for endless pleasures, creating pleasures for himself. Man is the only animal that has a special form of expression of pleasure - a smile. The hope of getting pleasure is a source of activity, illusions, idealism, self-deception. Thus, constantly thinking about the possible momentary delights of life, plunging into the world of fantasies about the pleasures of wine, women and songs (P. Sorokin) and sometimes really getting these pleasures, most people turn their lives into a game, into an easy flirtation with the outside world. They consciously turn away from the depths of reality, from themselves as individuals with unlimited possibilities. They seem to agree with the existing consciousness drawn by them, with their own little joys. They protect their tiny world of consumers, where there are small but real joys, from the big world around them, the world of truth, knowledge and creativity. They protect themselves from fate, their own destiny, which exists, as it were, outside and above their world.

Most people, most likely, do not want to know about the existence of a limitless world. Or rather, they know that it exists, but they do not want to know anything about it. “The less you know, the better you sleep” is their motto. They do not perceive themselves as part of the big world. And when reality inexorably reminds of itself with epidemics, wars, crises, ozone holes and meteorites, eclipses and terrible results of human ingenuity, these people fall into hysterics, rush about in search of a savior and die like mosquitoes affected by chemicals. Nature endowed us with the desire for self-preservation and pleasure. However, the pursuit of pleasure has become the goal and meaning of human existence. This pursuit relegated the problem of self-preservation to the background, belittled its importance, as if dividing between pleasure and survival. For the majority, pleasures have become more important than survival; they have become life itself, that is, a one-sided phenomenon, a phenomenon without essence. Momentary problems seem to have become more important than the problems of life as a whole. Those who think and talk about the eternal have actually become outcasts. They don't want to listen to them, they don't want to think about their words, their goals are ridiculed, their virtues are presented to the majority as shortcomings. That is life. In it, some enjoy what they have something to enjoy. They are completely lost in today's everyday problems, believing that this is real life. An ancient Chinese wisdom says: “If a person leaves his desires and is freed from passions, then he will not be tired until the end of his life. If he dissolves his passions and is absorbed in his affairs, then there will be no escape from troubles. (Tao de jing. M., 2004. P. 109). In contrast to such people, other citizens want to look beyond the glitter and noise of phenomena, want to see and know what lies at the basis of this life; what is higher and stronger than man; what allows a person to be so careless and not die at the same time; what inevitably awaits us all and can we, people, control our own destiny. These, the second, are people who know and create. The feeling of pettiness, temporality and limitation of everyday (momentary) pleasures pushes such people to search for boundless and eternal pleasures hidden in the very infinity and infinity of the World. There are few of them, tearing apart the web of everyday life, wanting to know the truth. But they are the life guards of all, they are the hope of all. They fight in the "now" nets, trying to throw them off. And we, the majority, laugh at them, we tighten the nets of everyday problems for them more strongly. It's as if we want there to be no exceptional individuals who are not like us, so that everyone is the same; so that all rejoice and grieve from the same thing, from today's, transient, temporary. /25.05.09/

This topic provoked us so much that we developed our own version in the 7th cycle of articles, published in No. 42 for 2010 of the ethical and philosophical journal "Edges of the Epoch", which we bring to your attention

Cycle 7: "From Desires to Necessities"

About the captivating vanity of the momentary and the elusive peace and wisdom of the eternal

Introduction

The phrase "Momentary and Eternal", like the thoughts and associations that arise when it sounds, is very interesting and ambiguous. In it, as it were, the finite and the infinite, the relative and the absolute, the transient and the eternal come into contact. So many works have been written on this topic, among which there are many very curious and deep ones, that it seems that there is nothing to add ... But a person and his life are so diverse and dynamic, and the mind is inquisitive, that they will write more and more. This topic is a semantic reflection and manifestation of the still incompletely known essence of man, and in it you can discuss and find so much more that is enough for our and future generations... If you look at the momentary and eternal from the point of view of human science and the essence of man, which it studies, one can see them as different and mutually complementary sides and reflections on a microscale of a person’s life and his vital and everyday affairs and the whole world in the infinity of space and time, which are perceived and realized to some extent, intersect and influence him. Throughout his life, a person is constantly between the momentary and eternal, and the individual embodiment of this alternative is an incessant internal struggle between his body and spirit, instincts and mind, desires and necessity, knowledge and ignorance, egoism and altruism. At the same time, it is by no means necessary to neglect the essential in favor of the eternal, because the latter does not exist by itself, but as a positive collective experience of the existent, but it is necessary and useful to live this minute, remembering eternity, so as not only not to get lost, but also to leave your good track...

1. Between momentary and eternal

Having a mind and being a social being, man does not cease to be an animal with his needs of the body. This community predetermines not only his urgent needs and concerns, but also his vision of himself, the world around him and himself in the world. However, in contrast to the rigidly limited instincts of animals, people are able to recognize their desires, see themselves in time, society and space, and vary their actions. However, this ability is not inherent in everyone and many people see themselves no further than one day, week or month and get stuck in the present and their desires, underestimating or neglecting the necessity and benefit of the whole - a whole life. People are dominated by the essential and momentary, and the more they are able to rise above their desires, realizing their necessity and benefit. If our reasoning were only an intellectual exercise? Alas, many momentary desires and pleasures of people, as well as their excess, are by no means only not useful, but also shorten their lives ... Thanks to the mind, if it is sufficiently developed, people are potentially able to rise above the instinctive predetermination of behavior and not only analyze, but and optimize it, both in individual life and in their social and natural interactions. However, people often primitivize their behavior, preferring to be guided by instincts rather than reason. It seems that rational behavior is the highest logic of life, it is a manifestation of the rational essence of a person and everyone should be interested in this, but the life goals and values ​​of people orient them towards enrichment and achieving a higher position in society, which is a continuation of the behavior of animals in a pack . Of course, people are not the same in their development and see their benefits and ideals in different ways, but most of them rarely or at all do not rise above the momentary and, moreover, do not think about the reasonable, good and eternal, in other words, about a better life. ..

It will not be a mistake to assert that the life of modern man is the triumph of the momentary. He, by his nature, must live vitally because he depends on many things: air, water and food, he needs clothes and housing, he needs communication and interaction with people like himself and the opposite sex. He lives in one or another place and ethnos, depends on many factors and circumstances that capture him in the morning and do not let him go until the evening. Urgent and momentary needs and desires accompany a person throughout life and keep him in constant tension. Some people are dominated by dependence on a lack of livelihoods and they are in the majority, while others who have them in abundance are concerned about how best to preserve and increase them. Some want to be no worse than others, others seek to win the audience's sympathy, and someone - and the favor of the authorities. All people are constantly preoccupied with something and it seems strange and somehow inhuman when there is someone nearby who is happy with everything or not worried - such people are considered abnormal or not of this world ... People live in the essential and few of them try to doubt in its necessity and expediency. However, with age and experience, a person becomes more reasonable, sometimes acquiring not only the ability, but also the need to analyze and even criticize what is happening, albeit in the form of grumbling ... Well, at all times there have been and are people, of whom there are few, prone to contemplation and philosophy and who have found the opportunity to manifest it, having managed to pacify their body and spirit! .. Probably, they don’t need a lot of them - thinkers, as long as people are so immersed in everyday life, live in the moment and do not realize the need and benefit of something else - better ! And how can you wish for it when you are carried by some huge multibillion-dollar flow of life on earth with its colossal inertia of the usual centuries-old existence, which seems beyond the control of the human mind and given from somewhere outside: is it nature, God or some higher comic mind? .. However, everything in the world is relative, and a person with his mind is able to recognize his imperfection and overcome it, striving for hard-to-reach heights of wisdom that shine in eternity.

The path to the high, the eternal is difficult. Man came out of nature and is its organic element - he is connected with it and dependent on it. A person is social and, being a part of a community, he must be aware of this; finally, a person is mortal and by reason is able to recognize the finiteness of his life in the endless stream of human life. In these relationships, which are not easy to understand and, moreover, to rationalize, the subjective and the objective, the particular and the general, the present and the future, the momentary and the eternal come into contact. But this is where the rational essence of a person is manifested, in order to collect, accumulate and transfer to other people knowledge about the unity of man and nature, as well as about the inextricable connection between the individual and the momentary with the universally significant and eternal. This way of comprehending the meaning of existence and achieving its highest benefit is difficult and long, but gradually a person acquires the ability to recognize himself as an individual and part of a community, a separate grain of sand and an integral microcosm. Most importantly, a reasonable person, through awareness of the finiteness and uniqueness of his life in the endless stream of life of the human race, is able to learn to value his life more and strive to make it better by improving himself. Rising above momentary desires and pleasures, a person will be able to see what distinguishes him from animals and elevates him above them - the ability to know and improve himself, without which his life will never get better! ..

2. Body and desires, low and high

Religion teaches: the human body is the center of vice and in its desires it is sinful and primitive. But the soul is pure and blameless, if it aspires to God and subjugates the body... This and similar oppositions contain a very important thing - the body with its desires and the mind with ideals exist, as it were, independently and alienated, as non-native, and only a certain a higher power is able to subjugate them and reconcile them for some higher benefit. Human science connects this with the level of development and rationality of a person - the less intelligent he is, the more he is dominated by the desires of the body and he needs outside help. And vice versa - the more reasonable a person is, the more self-organized, the higher his thoughts and purer desires, the closer the connection between body and spirit. Considering a person in the unity of body and spirit, as a whole, which he is, human science connects them through the categories of necessity and benefit, which are understood differently by people. From birth, the needs of the body naturally predominate, expressing their desires and the pleasures associated with them. As a person develops, to one degree or another, he learns to correlate them according to need and evaluate them according to their degree of usefulness. However, the power of pleasures is so great, and the power of the mind is insufficient, that people naturally prefer the first to the second, and not because they are so bad, people are an integral part of this world, they are mammals and breaking away from the earthly, material is not always necessary for them and it is difficult.

Waking up in the morning and coming into contact during the day with the sea of ​​worries and problems that surround him, a person plunges into them, gets bogged down and sometimes dies ... How, being dependent on something and not obeying it? It captivates and captures a person, and he does not resist as long as he has the patience to experience inconvenience. When there is no more patience, he tries to find a way out of a difficult situation, and then it is so important to stop, look around, rise above the momentary ... Like people themselves, their life is imperfect and relative to their ideas of necessity - it is dominated by the needs of the body and acute sensations that are not always vital. However, some people, and the more reasonable they are, the more able to analyze their needs and desires and even anticipate what they want to do, firstly, and realize their benefit or harm, secondly. However, this is not always associated with their essence and expressing its necessity and benefit. The absence of a single and generally valid idea of ​​the essence in the unity of the body and spirit of a person results in a variety of ideas about the benefits and ideals, reflecting the height and hierarchy of his aspirations and deeds, individual and socio-natural. The ideals of a person, like himself, are dual and contradictory, expressing his spiritual and bodily hypostases...

By virtue of their nature, ideals are formed and exist in the minds of people, and their significance and impact are as great as people are able to recognize them. Despite the fact that ideals show the highest goal of a person, their meaning in life is relative to his rationality and life orientation. The problems of modern life indicate that the value orientation of a person is still far from his ideals and, ultimately, is a derivative of his development and spirituality and will improve with him, reflecting the process of harmonizing his spirit and body and unity with the surrounding world of people and nature. The essence of a person is in the harmony of body and spirit, but the primitive desires of the body and high ideals, despite the opposition, are interconnected and formed in the mind, which is relative to its development and essence. In the same connection are the momentary and the eternal, which are by no means opposite, but complementary, being a reflection and two sides of one human life. The momentary is what is here and now, and the eternal is what is around and always. Between them - the mind and life experience. The more and more positive the experience and the higher the mind, the closer a person is to ideals - eternity. The whole person: and his body in harmony of metabolism and relations with other people and nature, and the spirit-mind, conscious of his essence and helping a person in its knowledge and action, consistent with it! A person is one and if he lives by his desires and feelings, not listening or not hearing the mind, then he is like that - not developed and not reasonable. On the contrary, if a person is spiritual or rational, he controls his feelings, desires and does what is necessary and useful. The ideal of a reasonable person is to follow his essence in the implementation of vital necessity in order to achieve the highest benefit - the improvement of the whole species. And this is possible only in the harmony of body and spirit, man and the world of people and nature. And the more harmonious a person is, the more momentary will elevate him, bringing him closer to the high and eternal!

3. On the Necessity of the Momentary and the Benefit of the Eternal

No matter how lofty his ideals, a person cannot neglect the momentary - being a combination of spirit and body, or, in other words, an animal with a mind, he naturally realizes and, as far as possible, realizes his animal physiological needs for self-preservation. And without this, there is no person, which means not a denial in principle of the momentary and needs of the body, but a choice of vital ones. That is, having ceased to be an animal, whose instincts mainly determine its behavior and, using the mind, it must desire the necessary and useful, organize and rationalize its life and its resources for a more complete solution of the problems of existence. It can be assumed that over time, the momentary, essential will become more and more reasonable and natural, and no one will speak critically or arrogantly about it, as about something low, inferior and unworthy of a person. Another thing is that in today's daily life there are many routines and inconsistencies - for the sake of daily bread, some step over their abilities and ideals, others, having no open opportunities to satisfy their needs, take the path of crime, others abuse pleasures and harm themselves and others. And behind all this, one can see the idea that one must immediately strive to live intelligently, with greater benefit - individually, in society and nature. And it is very indicative in this sense how people solve the urgent problem of procreation.

In the animal world, the continuation of the race and natural selection are mainly built on strength - the strongest survive and continue the race. People have a lot in common with animals in procreation, but thanks to economics, science and medicine, this process takes place in more favorable conditions and natural selection is gradually replaced by rational selection, however, very slowly, not everywhere and in everything. Moreover, in the last century, the problem of procreation is solved by people to an ever lesser extent - among civilized peoples, the birth rate is declining, the institution of family and marriage is by no means flourishing, relations between the sexes are ambiguous, they are less and less built on love and more on sex, and humanity is growing. mainly at the expense of developing countries - the yellow and black races. Perhaps there is some sense in this - maybe he is in a fresh stream of renewal, or you can look at what is happening differently, for example, as the primitivization of sexual relations in sex and its excessive protrusion due to the incongruous essence and vital necessity of behavior and non-fulfillment by people of the most important tasks of procreation. The phenomenon of excessive human sexuality, which has no analogues in the animal world, as Z. Freud correctly noted, is associated with a simplification of the solution of the problem of self-preservation, which leaves him a lot of strength and, in the case of primitive desires or their hypertrophy, contributes to the passion for sex. All this would be good if there were no demographic problems and the population reproduced normally ... And here the mind should turn on and help people realize the need for not just procreation, but rational, ensuring reproduction with an improvement in the gene pool. The latter is impossible for animals, but possible and necessary for people, only then in the momentary, connected with the relationship of men and women, another song should sound, - not a one-day casual connection and lust, but something more serious and reasonable, consistent with their essence and connecting with the foundations of being and the infinity of life on earth...

Unlike animals, a person has a higher goal and benefit - the improvement of his entire species. It seems that to say this in relation to the sphere of intimate relations of people means to forget about instinct and feelings, so strong that people cannot resist them and are fully aware of them? , it is always necessary, because you are a man! However, this is too high for many, but it is not alien to anyone, because everyone has a head on their shoulders, which should do its job well ... What kind of business is this? And in short, then - to treat the momentary, as irrevocably leaving, and try to live it as best as possible, in accordance with your essence! So. Well, if the overestimation of the momentary can still be somehow understood, although not simply, then what does it mean to live in accordance with one's essence? The latter is possible when you know well what you are, what you can and should, and what is necessary and useful for you as an individual, part of the community and all of humanity. But what is it and why do people not know this and do not tell children about it, just as they do not teach them to do what is necessary and useful. The answer is unexpected - for the most part, people do not realize the need and benefit of this and therefore do not want to do it. Well, and how to relate to this, if not philosophically, as momentary and transient with our development and improvement. But a person develops and improves naturally and, it seems, it is not worth interfering in this process? Violence is not worth it, but wisely - through the knowledge and more and more effective realization of the essence of man, the gradual awareness of one's highest benefit and its implementation is vital ... Historical experience contributes to the understanding that the development process has its own internal logic, and people will not change their behavior until they choose to do so. It becomes more and more obvious that this problem can be solved only by reasonable, not forceful actions, and its solution is impossible without the science of knowing and realizing the essence of man. Human science is called upon to help a person to live rationally in accordance with his nature, acting in an increasingly organized and rational way using life resources, harmonizing the spirit and body in their interaction with each other and with the outside world, and linking the private and essential with the universally significant and eternal.

4. How to rise above the momentary and get in touch with the eternal?

Nature arranged it so that a person - her most complex and perfect creation - is not born as such, but becomes and happens for quite a long time. Not everyone manages to realize themselves completely due to various unfavorable circumstances, one of which is that people are not taught this. However, the latter is secondary, and primary is that the life values ​​of people now consist in something else - enrichment and power, for the achievement of which self-knowledge and improvement are not so important as self-interest and focus on money, resourcefulness and enterprise. That very momentary, immediate benefit - the cherished dream of many, and especially not the most developed and perfect people, leads them through a life in which the reasonable and the perfect, the good and the eternal are abstract and unclaimed categories. Among such people, discussions about the momentary and the eternal may not find an echo, if they make sense at all... Is it possible and how to positively influence this? Probably, but at the same time one must be aware that it is very difficult to quickly and significantly improve what we have now. But it’s worth thinking about the future, especially since in the absence of high and consistent guidelines, people have accumulated so many problems that the regular mention of the apocalypse and the uncertainty of many in their future are obviously not accidental. Since our children have to live in the future, it would be natural to help them become better and teach them a more intelligent and perfect life. On this path, they will open up such opportunities that they don’t want to waste their time on trifles and get stuck in the moment, and without stopping, move forward to a better life, which will only get better when they themselves become better. However, this is easier said than done...

A feature of human behavior is its inertia with polar varieties: enthusiasm and inertia. By doing something interesting for yourself and doing it regularly, a person learns to do it better and success stimulates his enthusiasm and high results. On the contrary, if you do nothing, do it irregularly, or do something you don't like, say, studying at a modern school, you will not expect success and lose interest in the matter. This comes from the essence of a person, which encourages him to continuously act in body and spirit in solving more complex problems, so that both muscles and thinking develop and improve. If there is no increase in load and complexity, development stops and the reverse process of degradation of the human body and mind begins. Another feature of human nature, and there are many of them, is that much in a person is laid down in childhood. Then it happens more efficiently, the child absorbs everything like a sponge, both good and bad - look at the educator here and try to turn the child to his essence and teach self-knowledge and improvement in more and more natural behavior. And this is the most important task of modern pedagogy and education, the solution of which will lead the child away from the momentary and forbidden to the necessary and more useful, which are achieved by a more developed mind and body.

And what helps a person to come into contact with the eternal, or at least sometimes think about the reasonable, the good, the eternal, because in life, as in the search for truth, a hundred paths lead away from the goal and only one single one leads to it? / M. Montaigne /. Maybe some moments or situations, a fleeting mood or bright thoughts about the high and ideal? Perhaps, but bright thoughts cannot arise in a dark head and dense brains, this happens all the more often and is more desirable for someone who is more developed and richer spiritually, who is more natural, conformable and free. Alas, there are relatively few such people, and those for whom the momentary and especially its benefit are the basis and essence of existence prevail. They set the tone and define the rules of this life, which is dominated by private profit and mass culture, vulgarity and glamour, for which it is more important not the content, but the form, not the meaning, but the effect, finally, not reasonable, kind and eternal, but sensual, evil-sharp. and momentary... Thank God, not everyone is like that, but, unfortunately, there are no serious prospects for changing this situation yet. However, as you know, quantity turns into quality, and if people do not learn something useful systematically, then they learn from their own experience, by trial and error, and not always without loss. The logic of life is wise and inexorable - there is an accumulation of knowledge and experience, an increasingly true picture of the world and man is being formed, but people still do not know much, do not know and do not see. And above all, oneself - individually, in society and nature, in space and time ... When the human spiritual principle itself prevails in a person, and for this it is necessary to cognize and effectively realize his essence, he realizes himself as an organic component of a single stream of life in its development and infinity, and for him the alternative of the momentary and the eternal will cease to exist, because he will become the master of himself and his time, managing it and pushing its boundaries!.. /23.07.09/

2. Reason and instincts. Reason Criteria

The mind is not born together with the human body, but is formed as it develops and realizes itself and its actions in relation to the surrounding world of people and nature, which determine the meaning of its life. The mind is not equivalent to the intellect as a non-spiritual information-logical processor, it is wider, including the semantic criteria for the goals of the existence of the person to whom it belongs, and the ability to correlate the essence and actions of a person according to the criteria of necessity and benefit. Reason arose as a supplement and continuation of instinct and is the ability of a being to which, for example, a person belongs, to recognize more or less what is necessary for itself according to the degree of its usefulness, but on a primitive level, and the lower the level, the less, according to how pleasant or unpleasant it is. An important manifestation of rationality is the ability to realize the meaning of one's existence, which is immanent to a rational person and unthinkable for the most highly developed animals. In this context, the meaning of a person's life lies in the realization of the necessity and usefulness of his actions, in which his essence is manifested. Summarizing, we can say that any creature, starting from the simplest, feels instincts are formed, which are supplemented by the mind, developed depending on the degree of self-consciousness and the ability to realize the need and benefit for self-fulfillment, which is a measure of reasonableness. And the necessity and benefit, predetermined by the essence, are the manifestations and expression of reason!

2.1. instincts and mind

Instincts, like complex unconditioned reflexes and unconscious unconscious feelings, and feelings, like the ability to feel and the sensations themselves, are very close physiologically, in essence, and in that they have not quite clear and unambiguous interpretations. Also close to the instincts and feelings of a person and even less clear and definite is his mind, which in the views of the inhabitants can mean mind and intellect and brain and consciousness, and in a number of philosophical movements - the highest principle and essence (panlogism), the basis of knowledge and behavior of people. (rationalism). It would be possible to continue listing the interpretations of the mind, but this is only useful for philosophizing "wise men", while others only get harm from it, complicating the understanding and definition of the fundamental essential components and concepts that form the meaningful, semantic content of human life and its actual understanding. Human science rises above this "high mental mix" and, considering the instincts and mind of a person in the context of his essence and the vital necessities and benefits immanent to it, the tasks of existence and behavior consistent with the essence, connects them with quite definite relationships and determines the functions they implement.

Below are a few materials on this topic from the Internet, not all of which, unfortunately, are authorized through no fault of ours, but due to the lack of names of the authors.

Instincts and human behavior

"Man, as you know, belongs to the order of primates, the species homo sapiens. Classification relationship with other primates is determined by greater or lesser similarity of genetic material, outwardly expressed in the similarity of body structure. For example, human and chimpanzee genes coincide by more than 95%. However, species-forming signs - not only structural features of organs, but also behavior, habits (hunting, protection, mating rituals, etc.) Since all species-forming traits are rigidly inherited (that's why they are species-forming), then the behavior inherent in the species is also transmitted For example, the ability to make a stance for dogs of hunting breeds is inherited, and is associated specifically with hunting breeds.Another example of an instinctively conditioned reflex - lowering the eyes, as a recognition of one's submission to another individual, is characteristic of primates, including humans. , for example) in the same situation, the tail is tucked in. This inherited behavior is commonly called instinctive, and its individual components - instincts. In relation to instinctive behavioral programs, the term "innate behavior model" is also used. Such an instinctive act, interesting for our topic, as a kiss is part of the innate mating ritual of primates, which originated from the ritual of feeding. To what extent does this apply to humans? After all, a person has a mind, some kind of laws, which, in principle, makes it optional to follow instincts. However, a person acquired a modern look and became truly intelligent only about 30-40 thousand years ago, and the historical era lasts only 5-7 thousand years. Meanwhile, the evolution of primates began somewhere in the Tertiary period, about 20-30 million years ago, and such important instincts as submission to the herd hierarchy generally exist almost as long as life exists.

Of course, instincts cannot disappear in such short evolutionary periods of time - they are formed by natural selection slowly and gradually, like morphological features, and disappear just as slowly. So the instincts do not ask if a person can do without them. They just turn on when they see fit. Illogical and inexplicable from a rational point of view, instinctive motivation is very logical and explicable in the primitive coordinate system, and was expedient in primitive times. However, in the modern situation, the behavior realized by instincts is far from always adequate, and we often wonder how evil and blind love can be ... Monkey instincts will live in us as long as we belong to the order of primates, because they are firmly recorded in the genetic memory. If humanity manages to get rid of some important monkey instincts and fix it in the genes, then the person will already belong to a different species, and perhaps even stand out from the order of primates. The development of mankind required forms of "marriage" other than the primitive herd, but the instincts do not disappear so easily from the subconscious, and continue to act, although their time may have long gone. The mind of the individual cannot somehow change his own instinctive programs; moreover, he does not even know about their existence! He can only disobey them in some cases, but next time the instinct will want to do the same. The lower level of the subconscious - instincts, the programs available to it executes directly and without options. Programs of the middle level of the subconscious (traditions, habits) can already be somehow modified over time. The mind also makes extensive use of well-functioning behavioral programs, but for the mind they are "information for thought"; the mind does not so much execute its programs as it improvises on their theme.

Instincts govern us through emotions without bothering to motivate. The instinct that prompts a woman to decorate herself, in particular with cosmetics, does not in any way tell her why this needs to be done - she wants that's all. The logical meaning in this is unequivocal - to attract the attention of men, but most women will categorically deny this, saying that they put on makeup "for themselves." But normal men "for themselves" do not wear makeup! There is no such behavioral program in their instincts. By the way, many modern men have a negative attitude towards cosmetics on women, but instinct does not want to know about it. It is also worth paying attention to the fact that the lower the level of culture of a woman, the brighter and rougher the "plaster" - instinctive motives in this case are not restrained and are not corrected by reason. Precisely for the reason that instincts control us through emotions, without bothering with motivation, we can effectively play on these instincts. Control a person using them as buttons on a remote control. The nervous structures realizing instincts arose in the deepest antiquity; reasoning, analyzing something, and even just extrapolating is an impossible task for them. They are triggered by the coincidence of a schematic and static template embedded in the instinct, with some external signal signs that may accidentally resemble those actually required. However, having free and direct access to the motivational centers of the brain, instincts can cause a feeling of being right in anything. This effect can even be likened to a drug. Drug illusions are also often perceived as some kind of higher wisdom. Therefore, there is no "wisdom" in love. There is only a sense of wisdom. In fact, love evaluates the object of choice very superficially, in accordance with a rigid (sometimes even stupid) genetic program that sets the strategy for choosing a marriage partner. In this case, the mind has no choice but to engage in fitting to the answer. In general, it is very common for a person to engage in adjustments to the answer when he tries to explain his instinctively motivated behavior.

The real picture of people's behavior is complicated and confused not only by the presence of two "Selves" in us, but also by the fact that the boundary between them is not absolutely clear, instinctive and rational motivation can be intricately intertwined. In addition, for each case, a person has several instinctive programs of behavior that arose at different evolutionary times, and sometimes they contradict each other. · A person is born with a large number of innate behavioral programs that arose at different evolutionary times, due to which they often contradict each other. · Mechanisms for the implementation of innate programs of behavior are only capable of signature analysis of the situation, which involves a formal-superficial comparison of the situation with the schematic signal features embedded in these programs. Sufficient coincidence of external conditions with these signal signs gives rise to one or another emotion that prompts a person to implement the corresponding instinctive program. At the same time, the true motivation of actions is not realized - for the rational explanation of instinctively motivated behavior, the most random arguments are used, which are in the nature of fitting to the answer.

About the mind

B. Ziganshin. instincts + mind

The human brain is a multidimensional structure, it was studied and the projection of this structure onto various "planes" was described. Here is another plane - the relationship between instincts and reason: a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of any kind of animal is compliance with the law of natural selection. Instincts are precisely the mechanism that implements this correspondence. instincts can be divided (remember Maslow's pyramid) into: self-preservation instincts (food, warmth, health), team support (need for communication, friendship, hierarchical relationships), reproductive instincts (courtship, love, family, children), improvement of the gene pool (need for novelty, male competition) - mortidoto. These groups of instincts ensure the preservation of the individual, the collective, the genus and the species, respectively. The first instincts work for a closer perspective of the existence of the species and therefore they are stronger, and the latter can only work when the first ones are more or less satisfied and do not “press” (pleasant and unpleasant sensations) very much on a person or animal. By the way, this is similar to the 3 laws of robotics (Isaac Asimov), only there this pyramid was on the tip. As soon as there were more than one instincts, the question arose about the priority of their execution and it was decided to create a mechanism that receives impulses (of various strengths) from all instincts, makes decisions and directs motor activity. Then this mechanism (in the process of natural selection) began to improve, such things as conditioned reflexes and foresight of the future appeared, which made it possible to postpone and redirect the energy of instincts, finally, this mechanism became so complex that it began to use the methods of abstract thinking - MIND appeared. he allowed humanity to win an unconditional victory in the competition of species. But the structure of instincts->pleasure->choice remained with him by inheritance from animals, although it became partially useless. So people in condoms fuck; thus, the mind is part of the mechanism for satisfying instincts, which has a very flexible and self-adjusting organization and transforms the initial energy of instincts into the hell. I remember how surprised old Freud was when he discovered that many simple human joys are just a redirected sexual instinct. Sometimes in order to change their perception of the world... people try to change the world itself

On the role of the mind

"Let's try to turn to another interesting topic that excites any inquisitive mind - the role of the human mind. To begin with, I would like to more accurately determine the context in which we will conduct our reasoning. Let's define that a person belongs to living nature, and that he was formed according to the same laws as all other earthly creatures. Let's leave the higher craft for now outside the brackets. So, the main thing that distinguishes a person in comparison with his smaller brothers is the mind. The question arises - what is it and why is it needed? Let's start with the second. As you know , all the properties that creatures on earth have acquired in the course of their evolution are aimed at only one thing - to ensure the survival of the species.Each of the creatures developed in its own way - insects towards miniaturization and fertility, crocodiles - towards toothiness, cats - towards speed and flexibility Thanks to all these features that have developed and evolved over millions of years, all these species, subspecies, families wa and so on, inhabit the planet to this day. But the most powerful tool that has ensured the dominance of one of the animal species over all the others is the mind. The Homo sapiens species has at its disposal the most powerful survival tool. That is why we are forced to admit that initially the only purpose of the mind is to ensure the survival of the human race. This property simply has no other purpose and cannot be. Based on this circumstance, we can consider the various properties of the mind, and very interesting things will open before us.

What is mind? How does it differ from the thinking of animals, say monkeys? Even more precisely - is the transition to the human mind a leap from animal thinking or a gradual one? What is the main distinguishing feature? To answer these questions, consider an ordinary person. What drives him on his life path? Yes, the same as the rest of the animal world - instincts aimed at survival and procreation. Let's take a closer look at them. In descending order of priority. - The instinct of self-preservation. In a person, it is expressed in the fact that he tries to minimize the risk of death or injury. He is trying to create a more comfortable and safe living environment for himself. In general, trying to live as long and healthy as possible. - The instinct of procreation. There is no need to spread here for a long time, everything is clear to everyone. It is important to note that this instinct in a person is very developed and extends not only to the fact that a person is looking for a partner, but also to the fact that there is a desire to create comfortable conditions for the normal development of offspring. Next comes the instinct of directions for the survival of an individual within a community of its own kind. - The instinct of dominance in society. This is a very powerful instinct that weighs on most of us in the process of life. We try to be stronger, more beautiful, smarter, more successful, better than others. We react painfully if someone is clearly superior to us in one or more ways. The desire for power is the driving force that drives many of the people. Of course, this instinct is expressed in different people in different ways, as well as others. The main task of this instinct from the very beginning is to single out the best copies of it in the community, which should leave as many offspring as possible. That is why leadership qualities are more important and inherent in the male part of society, because. the number of children from one female is extremely limited. Perhaps that is why we can assume that the development of mankind took place precisely through the male half of society, but one should be extremely careful with such remarks.

Are there other instincts that govern human life? Yes, no doubt, but they are more secondary, derivative and do not yet deserve our attention. Now it is important to understand that the listed instincts determine 95% of a person's life. This is the environment in which the subject of our today's research exists - the mind. Initially, the role of the mind was reduced to the perception of the surrounding world and the formation of a reaction to it in accordance with instincts. It's not even a mind yet. In this form, it remained with many representatives of the existing fauna. But in the process of evolution, the layer between the perception of the world and the formation of a reaction became more and more complex and flexible. The mechanism of this development is not completely clear, but I think that the instinct of dominance played a major role here. Another thing is important for us now - the mind in the process of its development began to acquire side, even sometimes harmful functions. One of the most amazing creations of the mind is the will. I'm not talking about the will to power or the will to achieve another goal, or rather, only in part. I'm talking about the will to overcome your instincts. The main purpose of the mind as a tool for survival began to deform. Each individual person could already set goals for himself! Of course, the basic instincts continue to put pressure on him, but the mind sometimes successfully fights them. For example, the instinct of self-preservation. Man is the only creature capable of committing suicide. True, they say that scorpions sting themselves when they are in a ring of fire, but this is of course nonsense - they sting themselves by accident. Further, the instinct of procreation - many people refuse children, guided by some of their own considerations. As a rule, these considerations are dictated by the first instinct. And, finally, the instinct of domination - many people consciously choose the life of hermits and complete indifference to their place in society. One can speak rather not about the struggle of reason with instincts, but about a monstrous and ugly bias towards one of them to the detriment of the others.

The question arises - why is this happening? How did the instrument of evolution turn against her? At present, we see how humanity as a species is heading towards its decline in terms of survival and development, the basic principles of evolution are beginning to rapidly recede. Evolution driven by the transfer of genes has gradually been replaced by social evolution based on the transfer of knowledge and technology. It is obvious that the group of people with the most advanced technologies is more adapted to survive in the modern world. But the paradox lies in the fact that this group, being dominant over the rest, can begin to collapse from within, because. social evolution does not lead to the development of man, but to the development of technology. Those. the quantity and quality of human material in a closed group begins to rapidly decrease. We come to the conclusion that the development of the mind has crossed the line when it helped a person to survive and multiply. The pendulum has swung in the opposite direction and now the mind is playing against us, although nothing has fundamentally changed in human behavior - just basic instincts, thanks to the developed mind, have led a person in the opposite direction. Is it bad or good? From what position to look. It is possible that evolution has disappeared as unnecessary crutches and now humanity is developing itself - with the help of technology, genetic engineering and the like. Those. the responsibility for the survival of man as a species fell entirely on the fragile shoulders of the mind that had taken on hypertrophied dimensions. We have to answer the last question. Is the transition from the thinking of animals to the human mind a leap or a gradual evolutionary development? You can answer it by remembering why the mind was needed initially. If an animal has traits that provide it with dominance in its environment, then they will develop in the first place.

Our comment: In the above very interesting and profound reasoning, the most important questions of human existence are touched upon, which led the author to the assumption that the task of survival fell on the "fragile shoulders" of the mind that had assumed hypertrophied dimensions. From the point of view of our human studies, this is not entirely true, primarily because the mind, when it is developed, does not have such fragile shoulders, if at least we take into account the scientific and technological achievements of people. What is most important, the mind is not, however, yet, an instrument of human evolution, because natural selection consists in what happens in a closed uncontrolled system without the participation of the mind. When a person begins to know his essence and try to behave in accordance with it, which is impossible without reason, he will be able to rise above natural selection and move on to a meaningful and increasingly rational evolution in the context of fulfilling the vital necessity for achieving the highest good. And this is the meaning of his existence on Earth and in the universe! What else is important: the mind is a potential phenomenon, it can be developed or not, to a greater or lesser extent, and the task of its general development is beyond the life values ​​of people. Why? Because for the most part, people are not intelligent enough, and not because the mind has "fragile shoulders", but because they do not develop and train it enough, like muscles. Nevertheless, regardless of the will of people, there is an objective process of increasing rationality - slow and gradual, which leads people to a better life, which is the life of better, more intelligent people! (20.10.09)

From Maurice Maeterlinck. Termite life. instinct and reason

J.-A. Fabre, who devoted his whole life to studying this issue, did not recognize the presence of intelligence in insects. He proved to us by experiments, outwardly unobjectionable, that if the habitual routine of the most resourceful, inventive and far-sighted insect is violated, then it continues to act mechanically and work in vain, stupidly and in vain. “Instinct,” he concludes, “knows all about the unchanging paths laid out for it, and knows nothing besides these paths. His destiny is the sublime insights of science or the amazing inconsistency of stupidity, depending on whether the animal operates in ordinary or unusual conditions for itself. The Languedoc Sphex, for example, is an excellent surgeon and possesses infallible anatomical science. With stylet blows to the pectorals and compression of the cervical ganglia, he completely paralyzes the grape Sephippigere, but never kills her. Then he lays an egg on the chest of his victim and plants it in a hole, which he diligently closes. So the larva, having hatched from the egg, from the very birth finds plentiful, motionless, harmless, lively and always fresh “game”. But if, at the moment when the insect begins to close up the hole, the Sephippigere is removed, then the sphex, which remains on the alert during the invasion of its dwelling, returns to the house as soon as the danger has passed; he examines it carefully, as always, and is apparently convinced that Sephippigere and the egg are no longer there, but resumes work from the very place where he interrupted it, and carefully closes up the hole in which there is no one else. Similar examples are the hairy sand wasp and the stonemason bee. The case of the mason bee is very colorful and fits our theme perfectly. She places the honey in the cell, lays an egg in it, and seals it. If you pierce the cell in her absence, but during the period devoted to construction work, then she will immediately fix it. But if you make a hole in the same cell after the construction is completed and the honey is collected, the bee will not pay attention to this and will continue to drain the honey into a leaky vessel, from where it will gradually flow out; then, if she thinks that she has poured enough honey into it to fill it, she lays an egg, flowing with everything else from the same hole, and with satisfaction, solemnity, and carefully seals the empty cell.

From these and many other experiments, listing which would take too much space, Fabre made a reasonable conclusion that "an insect can only cope with surprise if the new action does not go out of the category of things occupying it at the moment" . If an unforeseen situation of a different order arises, it does not perceive it at all, as if “losing its head” and, like a wound up mechanism, continues to act fatally, blindly, stupidly and absurdly, until it completes a series of prescribed movements, the course of which it is unable to turn. back. Let us agree with these facts, which, moreover, seem indisputable, and pay attention to the fact that they reproduce in a rather curious way the processes taking place in our own body, in our unconscious, or organic, life. We find within ourselves the same alternating instances of intelligence and stupidity. Modern medicine, with its study of endocrine, toxins, antibodies, anaphylaxis, etc., provides us with a whole list of them; but what our fathers, who were not very well versed in this, called simply fever, sums up most of these examples in one. Fever - and this is known even to children - is just a defensive reaction of our body, consisting of a thousand ingenious and complex types of help. Before we found a way to neutralize or regulate its excess, it usually claimed the life of a patient faster than the disease it was fighting. In addition, it is likely that the most cruel and incurable of our diseases - cancer with its reproduction of damaged cells - is another manifestation of the blind and misplaced zeal of the elements that are supposed to protect our lives.

But is it not possible, in anticipation of the best, to temporarily connect the instinct of insects, in particular ants, bees and termites, with a collective soul and, as a result, with a kind of immortality, or rather, an infinite collective duration, which they possess? The inhabitants of a hive, an anthill or a termite mound, as I said above, seem to be a single individual, one living being, whose organs, consisting of innumerable cells, are scattered only in appearance and are always subordinate to the same energy or vital personality. , the same basic law. Thanks to this collective immortality, the death of hundreds and even thousands of termites, immediately replaced by others, does not affect or destroy a single being, just as in our body the death of thousands of cells, instantly replaced by others, does not affect or destroy the life of my "I". This is the same termite, living for millions of years and looking like a man who never dies; therefore, no experience of this termite is lost, since there is no interruption in his life and there is never a splitting or disappearance of memories; there is a single memory that does not cease to function and accumulate all the acquisitions of the collective soul. This explains, along with other mysteries, the fact that queen bees, who for thousands of years have been exclusively engaged in laying eggs and never collected pollen and nectar from flowers, can produce worker bees, already knowing everything that they know when they leave the cell. since prehistoric times was unknown to their mothers, and from the very first flight, learning all the secrets of orientation, collecting honey, rearing nymphs and the complex chemistry of the hive. They know everything because the organism of which they are a part, or one cell, knows everything it needs to know in order to survive. They seem to disperse freely in space, but wherever they go, they still remain connected to the central unit to which they do not cease to belong. Like the cells of our being, they float in the same vital fluid, more extended, mobile and subtle, more psychic and ethereal than the fluid of our body. And this central unit is undoubtedly connected with the common soul of the bee, and probably with the universal soul itself.

It is quite possible that once upon a time we were much closer than now, connected with this universal soul, with which our subconscious mind still communicates. Our mind has separated us from her and continues to separate every day. So our progress leads to alienation? Isn't this our specific mistake? This, of course, contradicts what we have said about the desirable hypertrophy of our brain; but in such matters, where nothing can be certain, hypotheses inevitably collide; moreover, sometimes it happens that an unfortunate mistake, taken to an extreme, turns into a useful truth, and the truth, which has been recognized for a long time, becomes cloudy, throws off the mask and turns out to be a mistake or a lie. Do termites offer us a pattern of social organization, a picture of the future, or some kind of "prophecy"? Are we moving towards a similar goal? Let's not say that it's impossible, that we'll never get there. We are much easier and faster than it seems, we come to things that we did not even dare to imagine. Often a trifle is enough to change the whole morality and fate of a long chain of generations, because energy and life are probably only a form, a movement of matter; indeed, matter itself, as we see it in its densest mass, where it seems to us eternally dead, inert and motionless, is the highest contradiction! - animated by an incomparably more spiritual existence than our thinking, since it owes the most mysterious, indefinite and elusive of forces - liquid, electric or ethereal - the immortal life of its electrons, from the very beginning of things revolving like crazy planets around the central nucleus . Be that as it may, “let us not try to change the nature of things,” Epictetus tells us, “it is impossible and useless; but, accepting them as they are, let us learn to adapt our souls to them. In almost two thousand years since the death of the philosopher from Nikopol, we have not yet come to more rosy conclusions.

2.2. Mind and rationality

The concept of reason, like rationality, does not have an unambiguous interpretation, but be that as it may, thanks to reason, a person is able to know the world and himself, to recognize the objective meaning of what is happening around and his actions according to their necessity and benefit or conformity to their essence. With the help of the mind, a person is able to be aware of his actions in society and nature and rationalize them, operating with a very specific concept of meaning. However, just as not all people are equally reasonable and there are serious justifications for their unreasonableness, so there are huge unused potentialities of their brain - reason and hope for a bright future, which is possible as a result of the development and improvement of people and the rationalization of their lives. The thoughts that arose in ancient times and are cultivated until now about the unknowability of a person and the meaning of his life, the impossibility of connecting his body and spirit, as well as the variety of meanings, are nothing more than negative inertia and laziness of thought, coupled with the fear of taking the liberty to brush aside all this, as from annoying flies, and to move forward as far as natural science did in the knowledge of the world and the infinite universe!

instincts, pleasures, reason

In the living world, one of the fundamental properties of matter is conservation: matter itself in the process of development (development is the result of contradictions between movement and conservation), more and more advanced methods appeared that allowed both an individual and the species as a whole to survive. The final segment of this process can be approximately represented in the form of a diagram: ... instincts - craving for pleasures - Reason. This scheme is very approximate, for example, it does not take into account the fact that there are no sharp transitions from one method to another and in each case they are combined in one or another proportion, but for our purposes it is enough. Let's take a closer look at each element of the scheme: Instincts. "Instinct is a hereditary propensity for a certain behavior or course of action." Instincts are inherited, this is beneficial because. a newborn organism already "knows" how to survive, but instincts perform their function only if external conditions remain unchanged (because they are rigidly attached to them), which is impossible in reality, and when external conditions change, instincts must also be changed; the change in hereditary traits is a very long process, so instincts are not enough to survive in a constantly changing universe: conditions have changed and instincts no longer help, but rather interfere with survival, new instincts may not have time to appear. Seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Pleasure (pleasure, buzz) is an incentive that makes a living being achieve the goal - to survive as an individual and as a species (the processes of reproduction and nutrition give pleasure). Unlike instincts, which regulate behavior in a certain situation, in this case, only the goal to be strived for (preservation through nutrition and reproduction) is determined, and the course of action is not set. This method is more flexible than instincts: if conditions change, behavior will change and the goal will be achieved. Disadvantage: when the goal is achieved, the desire for pleasure remains, for example, medieval feudal lords at banquets artificially induce vomiting in order to continue eating and drinking, another example, in order to leave offspring, there is no need to have sex weekly - once a year, for a person, quite enough. Intelligence. The mind, which is able to control instincts and limit itself in pleasures, is devoid of all the above shortcomings, but the mind has another drawback: the consciousness of a newborn person is pure, and if in the process of education he does not understand that conservation is a fundamental property of matter, and therefore the life of society as a whole and he is personally more important, more valuable than death, he can succumb to some destructive ideas or cults, and become dangerous to life, his own and society.

The world of the future. About the mind and irrationality of people. BSN, 28.10.2008

The concept of reason in the existing generally accepted ideas is vague, often everyone defines it as he pleases, calling "reasonable" what he pleases. For some, "reasonable" may have a tinge of profit, for others - moralizing, for others - stuffing their brains with unnecessary knowledge, etc. Here I will try to explain what reason is and why modern humanity and its representatives cannot be called reasonable. In an extremely general sense, the concept of "mind" could be associated with the same anti-entropy factor acting in the Universe, in this sense, "mind" appears as a kind of synonym for the concepts of "consciousness", "spirit", etc. Acting reasonably, making internal work, directing efforts towards self-development, a person carries out creative activities, streamlines and complicates the surrounding reality, succumbing to external factors, showing frivolity, discarding constructive goals, he himself and his activity fall under the influence of the second law of thermodynamics, and the result is destruction, degradation, chaos his own personality and the surrounding reality on which he acts. However, we need a different, narrower and clearer definition of the mind, in a sense that is closer to ordinary reality. Let us consider two explanations, with an explanation and identification of the criteria of reason and proof of the unreasonableness of mankind in a more popular, worldly sense and in a more strict sense. In a simple, popular sense, the mind is the ability to meaningful behavior, that which makes it possible to think, to understand the essence of ongoing phenomena. Reason helps a person to ask himself questions and come to certain conclusions through reflection. The mind helps to distinguish the right decisions from the wrong ones. Thus, a person who makes decisions based on reflection and understanding of the state of affairs will be a reasonable person. However, do people think before making decisions whether their conclusions, assessments, actions are based on an understanding of things? Obviously not. They are guided by completely different factors. Stamps, labels, image considerations, imitation of authorities, herd instinct, etc. - this is not a complete list of what is replaced in the vast majority of cases with an attempt to think and make a meaningful decision.

However, even the absence of a method would not create a situation of hopeless unreason if people were at least striving to understand things and to look for the right answers and solutions. However, people have no such desire. In place of reasonable aspirations, people, as a rule, have other, more primitive aspirations. As a result, the situation that exists in society is a situation of conscious mass violation of reason and mockery of common sense. If a person, guided by a reasonable desire, seeks to understand what he does not understand, does not undertake to categorically affirm theses in which he is not sure, admits mistakes, etc., a person, not guided by a reasonable desire, does everything differently - he does not give a damn about everything that he does not understand, this does not prevent him from expressing his own categorical opinions on all issues, he does not admit mistakes and tries to pass off erroneous statements as correct, etc., etc. A person striving to think, striving to establish the truth, early or later he will be able to overcome both the fact that he does not understand the ways to achieve the truth, and his lack of understanding of certain issues. For a person who is not striving for this, who is trying to seek not the truth, but only solutions to some utilitarian issues, these tasks are unsolvable. Among other absurd notions characteristic of modern civilization, one of the most absurd and harmful is the stereotype about the instrumental role of the mind. According to this stereotype, the mind is some auxiliary means for the realization of needs, for solving problems set by a person, based on his desires. That is, this stereotype suggests that the mind, in general, by itself, is not particularly needed, it turns on only when a person sees a certain task (or problem) in front of him and wants to find a solution. Such a pernicious idea of ​​the role of the mind is indeed widespread in modern society, it is unanimously repeated by all pseudo-intellectuals, and there is no need to give numerous examples in favor of conforming to this stereotype of people's behavior. The falsity and perniciousness of this stereotype, however, is easily seen from the fact that in order to see an approaching problem, or, conversely, a certain opportunity, a person must understand reality to a sufficient extent. Moreover, not understanding reality to a sufficient extent and following only their unreasonable desires, a person himself can bring (and constantly does) a lot of harm to himself. Thus, the lack of striving for the search for truth and the idea of ​​the instrumental role of reason is the final and decisive proof of the unreasonableness of mankind.

Reason Criteria

The rise of man above the world around him gave him a reason to recognize himself as a "reasonable man." But does he have enough reason to call himself that? Yes, his thinking abilities are far superior to those of other living beings on earth. But such an assessment of intelligence is relative. Imagine that man has not yet appeared on earth. Then, based on the "intellectual" superiority over others, it would be possible to recognize a rational monkey. And at some time, dinosaurs, bacteria, and even pellets could be intelligent. That is why, for an impartial assessment of the mind, objective criteria are needed that would allow assessing the mind and determining the degree of its development. If a person is asked the question of whether an infusoria has a mind, then, almost without hesitation, he will answer in the negative. But if you immediately ask the question: why? - the person thinks. And really, why? The ability to think abstractly can be taken as the main criterion of reason. Then the question arises, what is meant by abstract thinking? After all, in essence, any thought that is divorced from reality at a given moment is abstract. In particular, any planning of actions for the future is abstract thinking, since in this case it is necessary to conjure up a situation that does not currently exist in reality. But many animals are capable of planning their actions, at least for a short period of time. What then is the fundamental difference between a rational person and an animal? We will find the answer to the question posed if we pay attention to the fact that all the activity of the animal is subordinated to instincts, and all its thinking is directed to their satisfaction. All animal instincts are related to self-preservation and the preservation of the species as a whole. Under natural conditions, the animal is not capable of any action that would be contrary to its instincts. It is for this reason that the actions of the animal in each specific situation are predictable, and this is what a person uses when training him.

So, we have found the main difference in the thinking of animals and humans. All animal thinking is aimed at satisfying their instincts, that is, their thinking is limited. Human thinking is more abstract and far from always connected with natural instincts. In this case, it would seem that the ability to suppress instincts can be taken as the main criterion of reason. That is, to evaluate the mind by the degree of its superiority over the instincts. In this regard, it would seem that well-founded arguments can be made. Let's take two extreme cases. In the first case, a person completely obeys his instincts, in the second - he completely controls them. It is quite obvious that in the first case, a person will not differ in any way from an animal - all his actions will be connected only with his instincts, laid down by nature. In the second case, his mind restrains natural instincts, making more rational decisions in each case. Thus, all his actions will be connected not with instincts, but with reason. However, it is not. First, animals are still able to suppress their instincts. This is achieved by training them by a human. Secondly, a person can suppress his instincts not under the influence of reason, but for a number of specific reasons. In particular, one of these reasons is the fear of punishment for violating the norms of the hostel, defined by laws. In this regard, the ability to suppress instincts can only characterize the relative mind of a person - how much more intelligent he is than animals. And yet, when assessing the mind, one cannot do without some parameter characterizing the degree of influence of the mind on instincts. In addition, it should be recognized as one of the main ones, but at the same time take into account a number of other parameters related to the rationality of thinking, the objectivity of perception of the surrounding world, as well as the ability of the mind to control emotions. Considering that the mind of an individual person differs from the mind of the general human being, it is necessary to separate them when evaluating. In order for the assessment of the mind of each particular person or society as a whole to be objective, it is necessary to create a certain scale. But for this, you first need to determine the maximum value of this scale, which must correspond to absolute reason. This meaning can be deduced through the signs of absolute reason. We single out five basic concepts that characterize the signs of reason in general:

1. Objectivity of perception of the surrounding world.

2. The degree of suppression of instincts.

3. Rationality of thinking.

5. Mind control over emotions.

And now, on the basis of these concepts, we define the signs of absolute reason. There is no need to prove that the more objectively the subject perceives the world around him, the higher his mind. It is quite obvious that an absolutely objective perception of the surrounding world must correspond to absolute reason. At the same time, two concepts should not be confused - perception and knowledge. A reasonable subject may not know some laws according to which the material world develops, but he must clearly distinguish between the known and the unknown. The judgments of a subject with absolute reason should be based only on reliable facts and rigorous evidence. According to the unknown laws and phenomena of the surrounding world, hypotheses can be put forward, but absolute reason will never transfer these hypotheses to the category of true theories without good reason. A subject with absolute intelligence is in complete control of his natural instincts. He cannot get rid of them (besides, it is not necessary), but he subordinates them to the mind. Instincts are laid down by nature based on the conditions for the survival of the organism. And therefore, with the isolation of the subjects, they were all useful and in demand. However, in conditions where subjects form communities, most of the instincts come into conflict with their new relations in society. And here the presence of rational thinking is crucial. To what extent the subject must suppress this or that instinct in himself in this or that situation. That is, the behavior of the subject must be adequate to the prevailing relations in the community to which he belongs. It also requires complete control of the mind over emotions. The totality of assessments made on the basis of the selected concepts makes it possible to determine the degree of development of the mind. To make it easier to create its scale in the future, let's call absolute reason wisdom. Accordingly, the subject possessing it will be called a wise subject (in particular, a person - a wise person). So, we have identified the characteristics of the highest mind and assigned it a value - wisdom. From the previous reasoning, we can conclude that the subject (the subject in the broadest sense), which has the smallest mind, has only instincts. Thus, we take instinctiveness as the starting point in the scale of reason.

Following the instincts, the ability for irrational thinking appears, that is, a thinking subject appears. Irrational thinking will be the second division on our scale of reason. The irrationality of thinking is characterized by its complete dependence on instincts. Gradually, the subject becomes more reasonable - he acquires the ability to rational thinking. Thus, the third division in the scale of reason will be called rational thinking. In chronological order, the scale of the mind will look like this:

1. Instinct

2. Irrational thinking

3. Rational thinking

4. Wisdom

Now let's try to answer the question, at what mark of this scale is the human mind? But, having asked such a question, we suddenly discover that it is impossible to answer it right away, because it is not clear what kind of person we should be talking about? The fact is that due to certain circumstances, the level of people's minds is different. In the community of earthlings there are people of all levels according to the scale of reason that we have deduced. At the instinctive level, there are people with abnormal development (the weak-minded, the mentally ill). This is a relatively small part of humanity, as a rule, deprived of the opportunity to actively influence society as a whole. At least 20% of the world's population is at the level of irrational thinking. Who belongs to the category of these people? As already noted, these include people whose thinking is almost completely subordinated to the satisfaction of instincts. Human instincts are no different from the instincts of any animal. Like animals, the basic instinct of man is the instinct of self-preservation. All others are subordinated to this instinct. Among them, it is necessary to single out the instinct that encourages a dominant position in social relations. To achieve this, people with irrational thinking use the whole arsenal of other instincts. Murder, violence, robbery, theft - all these actions are characteristic of all animals at the level of instincts. In the struggle for their existence, they use them without thinking - depending on this or that situation, this or that instinct simply works for them. At the same time, a thinking person does this consciously. Based on this idea, people with irrational thinking include both individual criminals (murderers, robbers, thieves, swindlers, corrupt officials, etc.) and criminal communities. In addition, this category includes the majority of potential criminals who have not yet committed a crime, but due to the level of their thinking, are ready to do it at an opportunity.

A remark needs to be made here. Reason should not be identified with intellect. Intelligence is given to man by nature, the mind is acquired in the process of his life. The level of intelligence of healthy people differs slightly, while the level of intelligence varies widely. Representatives of the criminal world, referred by me to irrationally thinking people, by nature have almost the same intelligence as wise people, but it is realized when their base instincts are satisfied. Thus, this category of people is at the lowest stage of the development of the mind. In fact, these are animals with high intelligence. At the same time, this is the most active part of people, because they always fight for their own well-being to the detriment of others and do this under the influence of unbridled instincts. Next, you should highlight people who are able to partially suppress their instincts. This category includes about 70% of the world's population. Basically, they are law-abiding people capable of committing minor offenses. At the same time, at least 80% of them suppress their baser instincts to a greater extent out of fear of punishment. This part is somewhat different in mind from irrationally thinking people, but not significantly. They cannot yet be attributed to rational thinking - they are at the stage of transition from irrational to rational thinking. The remaining 20% ​​(of the allocated 70%) are rationally thinking, capable of objective perception of the world around them and conscious suppression of part of their instincts. The remaining 10% of the world's population is basically in the transition from rational thinking to wisdom. And only a small part of them can be recognized as wise people. Here it is appropriate to ask the question: where do all these percentages come from? This is a legitimate question, because it is directly related to the topic. Without an answer to it, all previous reasoning is worthless. I want to note right away that all percentages were not obtained as a result of some kind of statistics or targeted surveys. They developed as a result of a wide range of personal communication of the author with people and an analysis of social relations that manifest themselves in everyday life (that is, one might say, speculatively). For this reason, the division of people inhabiting our planet, according to their mind in terms of quantitative ratio, can be considered subjective. However, the very division on the scale of reason (without quantitative assessment) is objective.

We noted earlier that the mind of an individual can differ significantly from the mind of a community. We have seen that the mind of modern man can fluctuate from the lowest level (instinctiveness) to the highest level (wisdom). The mind of the modern community of earthlings has a very specific level. In order to determine this level, let us return to the consideration of the basic concepts that characterize the signs of the mind. Let us find out to what extent the main features of the mind are characteristic of the modern community of earthlings. Let's start with the answer to the question: "How objectively does humanity perceive the world around it?". Every person in his life at least once asks questions: where did everything come from, how does the world work, what is the soul, what is the meaning of life? At the same time, he refers to the knowledge accumulated by mankind. And here he is faced with complete uncertainty, since there are many different answers to all these questions, often contradicting each other. As a result, a person chooses the answer that is more understandable to him. As a rule, people have great confidence in official science. But at the present level, it does not give unambiguous answers. In science, there are different hypotheses, which most people have no time to understand. In addition, such concepts as eternity and infinity are perceived as something incomprehensible. That is why the mythical assertion that the world was created by God is closer and more understandable to most people. Faith in God generally removes many questions. The idea that everything is from God suppresses the desire to know the world, since everything can be explained in one phrase: "So it was pleasing to God." Blind faith is the first sign of ignorance. Belief in the reality of myths created by ignoramuses is ignorance squared. Believers always perceive the world biased. At the same time, not only those who believe in God should be considered believers. People can believe in anything: in Einstein's principle of relativity, in the existence of flying saucers, fortune-tellers and soothsayers, psychics, ridiculous rumors, etc. The vast majority of people blindly believe (at least in something). Thus, modern humanity as a whole perceives the world biased.

As noted above, most people are guided by their instincts. In general, it is almost impossible to suppress instincts in a person from the outside. Each person can suppress them only consciously. This is an important remark as it can explain a lot. In particular, the founders of the idea of ​​building a communist society did not take this into account, and therefore its implementation in the USSR was obviously doomed to failure. No repressions of Stalin's times could suppress the instincts associated with the desire of everyone to satisfy their own needs first of all. The vast majority of people, in fact, did not understand the basic principle of communist society, which was: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." They did not understand that "from each according to his ability" meant that a person in his work must show all his abilities, that is, everyone had to work not to the extent of his desires, but to the best of his strength and capabilities. Each person had to consciously bring the maximum benefit to society. They also did not understand that "to each according to his needs" means a reasonable need that ensures a decent life for every member of society. In conditions of equality, which was envisaged in a communist society, there had to be a reassessment of values. A person should have lost the very desire to stand out among others at the expense of some material costs. The owner of luxury today receives moral self-satisfaction only because it (in their opinion) arouses the envy of others. The value of such luxury instantly falls if it is available to everyone without exception. Under these conditions, the main values ​​​​become the mental abilities of a person, his modesty and sociability. A communist society can only be organized in a wise community. At present humanity is not ready for it, as it is not yet capable of suppressing its instincts. The vast majority of people are generally unable to understand the very idea of ​​building a communist society.

Now let's ask ourselves the question: "How rational is modern humanity"? Rationality should basically be characterized by a minimum of costs with a maximum of the achieved effect. Rational or irrational can be relations between members of a particular society, actions aimed at creating material values, the very use of these values ​​and natural resources in general. Rationality in relations between people should be associated with complete equality and equal responsibility for observing the laws of the community. In any modern society, relationships between people are far from rational. In no modern country in the world (no matter how democratic it calls itself) there is actual equality before the laws, although it is declared in the vast majority of states. In addition, the measure of responsibility before the laws is, for the most part, inadequate. From the point of view of rationality, laws should ensure the equality of rights of every law-abiding person and his protection from people who violate the norms of the community. Laws should not provide for punishment for a crime, but a measure of protection, which should be determined based on the danger of the offender to society. For example, if someone committed a murder through negligence, then what is the point of restricting his freedom - he is not dangerous to society. The murder happened by a fatal accident, without any intent. In this case, as a measure of responsibility for his negligence, a person must compensate for the damage caused to the relatives of the deceased. However, contrary to common sense, he can be sent to prison. At the same time, a person who has committed several premeditated murders can be sentenced to 15 years in prison and will be released after 8 years for “exemplary behavior”. At the same time, it is interesting that everyone knows (and statistics confirm this): this person is extremely dangerous for society. The vast majority of such people continue their criminal activities, killing innocent citizens. Where is the logic and common sense here? Where is the human mind? When will society understand that punishment is, in essence, a manifestation of animal instinct? This approach is absolutely ineffective, since it has nothing to do with the protection of society. This is what pseudo-humanists use, who oppose the toughening of responsibility before the law for people who commit serious crimes. They say, not without reason, that tougher punishment does not lead to a decrease in the level of crime.

From the point of view of rationality, the court should apply not a measure of punishment, but a measure of the necessary protection of society. Then everything will fall into place. If a person repeatedly deliberately committed murders, then he is extremely dangerous for society. In order to protect itself, society has only one way out - to permanently isolate the killer from society. Whether he will be given life imprisonment or the death penalty, in any case, this will not be a punishment, but a measure of protection. The objections of the pseudo-humanists are dismissed very simply. This may not stop new criminals of this kind from committing atrocities, but the convicted will never commit crimes. And this will inevitably lead to a general reduction in crime. To see this, it is enough to give (maybe not quite correct, but very convincing) an example related to the protection of humans from dangerous animals. When killing a rabid dog, a person does not have the thought that he is punishing her. He knows that she is a danger to people, and therefore her murder is regarded as protection. And this measure helps to prevent the spread of the disease in humans. In the future, when the community of people becomes wise, modern laws will be studied along with Justinian's digests and compared with each other in terms of the number of absurdities that characterize the level of thinking of people of different eras. The concept of rational behavior is closely connected with the rationality of relations between people, because people's behavior is often regulated by traditions, customs, etiquette and many other conventions. Conventions are, to some extent, unwritten laws that determine human behavior in a given situation. For example, clothes originally served as a means of protecting against the cold. Primitive people dressed in skins only when it got colder. In warm weather, they remained naked. However, over time, a convention appeared that prescribes the wearing of clothes even when there is no need for it. Any person who deviates from this convention is doomed to public condemnation, while from the point of view of rationality, a person should dress or be naked only for hygienic reasons. On the beach, for example, clothes are not needed, but in public transport it is simply necessary.

Let's take another example. From the point of view of rationality, any spoken language is a means of communication. Each word in the language carries a certain semantic load. Initially, words were not divided into bad and good, since assigning a certain meaning to a combination of sounds is conditional. The same concept in different languages ​​is defined by different words, that is, different combinations of sounds. In addition, the same concept can be expressed in different ways and in the same language. We can say of a man that he is very cruel, but we can simply say that he is a despot. We can also say that a person wants to pee, or just say that he wants to shit. But according to the existing convention, the word "shit" is vulgar. This word is not even in the dictionary of Microsoft Word. From the point of view of rationality, such convention is simply absurd. No matter how sophisticated we are in allegory, the meaning of what has been said remains the same. The list of absurd conventions in people's lives is very long. Their multitude gave rise to a whole science related to etiquette. Etiquette in the smallest detail prescribes a person's behavior when eating, when meeting, when meeting acquaintances at home, on the street or in other public places, etc. Most rationally thinking people feel the absurdity of conventions. Those who think irrationally feel this intuitively. Only this can explain the tenderness that causes the immediacy of the behavior of children. Children are devoid of all prejudices. Oddly enough, but they are more rational than adults. In the future, a wise man will have the immediacy of a child. For the most part, conventions affect the adequacy of behavior. In particular, obeying the requirements of etiquette, a person does not act as it is convenient for him, but as etiquette prescribes. Humanity shows flagrant irrationality when using natural resources. Suffice it to say that about 30 percent of all consumed resources are spent on armaments. That is, not for creation, but for potential destruction and self-destruction. And this despite the fact that humanity knows that the natural resources it wastes are mostly irreplaceable. The use of resources for armaments is directly related to the outbreak of wars. Wars are unleashed by irrationally thinking people, but everyone from instinctive people to the wise suffers from them. It is only for wars that humanity should be denied reason... I do not put an end to it and do not fix the position of modern humanity on the scale of reason. Depending on the level of the reader's mind, he himself will determine the place of humanity on it.

2.3. Human paradoxes

Zimbuli A.E. Paradoxes, paradoxes...

Dialogue in the tram: "Are you getting off?
- No. - Then let's change.
- Let's. What do you have?"

"Lots of paradoxes. Few bucks"
(From personal observations of domestic reality)

"Where there is a dead end for a fool, for a smart one there is a fork" (Folk wisdom)

Since ancient times, paradoxes have excited people, attracted the attention of wise men, comedians, and rogues. Perhaps the most concise paradox is the paradox of the Liar. It is formulated with just two words: "I'm lying." This statement turns out to be self-contradictory. After all, confessing his falsity, a liar ceases to be a liar and speaks the truth. Tradition reports that the philosopher Diodorus Kronos died of grief that he could not resolve this paradox in any way. And a certain Filit Kossky committed suicide for this reason. I hope you and I will show more self-control and not rush to conclusions. Moreover, there are many more curious traps for thought. And most often quite harmless, sometimes - malicious. Like: "What you have not lost, you have. You have not lost the horns. So you have horns." Another, narrow-minded example: "Have you stopped beating your old grandmother?" (If you answer "yes" - it means you beat before; if you answer "no" - it means you continue to beat!). Even we, accustomed to all sorts of absurdities, metamorphoses, paradoxes cannot but impress. How many grains does the heap start with? After all, one grain is clearly not a heap. Let's add the second - there is no heap yet. Let's add the third - everything is not! So at what point, adding and adding one grain at a time, will it be possible to say: now we have a bunch of grains? Well, indeed. Suppose we, who live at the turn of the second and third millennia of a new era, can we clearly say: "now"?

The great master of paradoxes was Tertullian (circa 160-220). "Credo, quia absurdum est" ("I believe because it is absurd") - this formula conveys one of his most famous theses. Well, it's brilliant! If before Tertullian (and after!) well-wishers tried to substantiate faith, support it with knowledge, logical calculations, he did not just evade discussion. He desperately took the discussion to another level. Not "in spite of", but "because"! However, we will not deviate from the main line of our reasoning. We are interested in paradoxes not in connection with the relationship between knowledge and faith, and not from the point of view of formal logic, but insofar as they are found in moral relationships and assessments. "Pyrrhic victory" (high intentions, but disproportionate price and benefits received), "Death trampled down by death" (triumphant words from a Christian prayer), "Be right on the wrong path" (advice of Omar Khayyam), "We will destroy the whole world of violence" ( programmatic application of the communist "International"), "Blinding darkness" (Arthur Koestler, about the same communist world transformation, but a little bit in a different socio-historical perspective), "What we protect, we have" (M. Zhvanetsky - now about real ways of communist construction in our individual country) - that's really it: from the great to the ridiculous! ... Paradoxes, paradoxes. And, by the way, not exclusively traps for thought - well, very different paradoxes!

Paradoxes of moral perception

One and the same fact, an act by different people will most likely be perceived differently. What to one person will seem composure and accuracy, another will call tediousness and pedantry. Dreaminess can appear as laziness, frugality - stinginess. In A. Matyushkin-Gerke, I read the following humoresque: From the head office they demanded a characterization for the Donkey. The bear thought and wrote: "Slow-witted and stubborn." "Don't be stupid," Lisa said. "Don't you know he's getting promoted?" What should I write about him? - Bear was offended. - The same, but in other words. - Lisa explained and immediately wrote: "Does not make rash decisions. Persistent in achieving the goal." And after all try, hold on! On the other hand, there is an ancient Roman saying: "Si duo faciunt idem, non est idem" ("If two people do the same thing, it's not the same thing") (It was stated by Terentius, the great comedian - 190 - 159 BC . e.). Moreover, the same proverb says: "What is allowed to Jupiter, it is not allowed to the bull" ("Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi")7. Of course, this can be called the morality of double standards. But this is reality. Here it makes sense to argue about the admissibility of contrasts, about the need to search for common criteria, but there will be discrepancies. Even when we read the same books, our characters are different. Someone sees the gingerbread man as independent, someone - careless, someone - ungrateful. This is both the greatness of literature and the wisdom of life. Very often, the perception of one's own and another's differs in the most contrasting way. "In work, it seems more your share, and in food - someone else's." "Wolf, which I will not meet, let him live a thousand years." Many have noticed that irritation about a crowded street is of a different nature, or rather, it has a different addressee - depending on whether you are trying to cross the road (for example, for the sake of completeness, that with a baby carriage), or you are driving along the same road in a car, trolleybus, tram. And even when the indignation is focused in the same direction, everything is not so simple.

I once happened to sit in a room where an angry colleague ran in - with the news that in our city some school principal called boys into his office and made love to them. "Wow, director!" my neighbor was outraged. "Wow, boys!" exclaimed another. "Wow, in your office!!" the third responded. How right B. Shaw was when he remarked: "There are no people who would remember the same incident in the same way"! About the same - Russian proverb: "Every Paul has his own truth." It is no wonder that people who see the situation (or the world as a whole) differently perceive each other as something illogical, paradoxical, sometimes difficult to bear, and even in need of correction. At the same time, the situation should not be overdramatized. After all, what could see, for example, a hungry cow at a football match?! Of course, any of us initially have a much better position than this cow. We are able to listen and think about what others are doing. And even if the worlds of people are very different, the space of culture unites us all. First of all, the installation of dialogue is important here. For example, even such a neutral object of perception as the horizon is capable of pushing us into an argument. Someone will say: "the horizon is an illusion." And the other, foaming at the mouth, will prove that "the horizon is something concrete." But ask one and the other what they mean by the word "horizon"? And it turns out that the first one means the edge of the earth, to which you can move along the surface, but the Earth is round, and therefore we will never reach this “edge”. And his opponent means under the horizon a specific line where the earth and the sky meet, from this line it is quite possible to measure the angle at which the Sun rises. And both disputants will be right. The whole secret is whether they can take into account the additional version. It is not necessary to immediately take the point of view of the opponent. But from the standpoint of morality, it is still better to start a dialogue if each disputant at least recognizes the opponent's point of view as a fact. Thus, a foundation will be laid, a kind of bridge, for overcoming the abyss of misunderstanding. To resolve the paradox. Another thing is that sometimes in negotiations between representatives of different value worlds, representatives of the court and the prosecutor's office are forced to act as mediators. After all, one of the most dramatic moral paradoxes is the paradox of tolerance. An infinitely patient, tolerant person is often simply doomed - if he is surrounded by cruel, unprincipled people; and even more terrible is his fate if, in addition, they still skillfully manipulate judgments about liberal values.

Norway is reported to have the most stringent anti-nicotine legislation in the world. So what does it mean that the rights of smokers are violated there? Or: the radio broadcasted information that a demonstration in defense of the rights of sexual minorities had taken place in the American capital. Somewhere burglars and pickpockets will start defending their rights (in favor of such an absurd assumption, it would be quite possible to put forward the thesis about the existence of a psychophysiological predisposition to theft ...)! Therefore, it is quite natural that the paradox of legal responsibility is called upon to counter the paradox of tolerance in a legal society. In its most radical interpretation, it lies in the fact that in all societies, for example, murder, theft are unambiguously recognized as crimes. At the same time, in relation to those who have broken the law - to those, in particular, who have committed murder or theft - the state, as a rule, applies the same (prohibited!) means of influence. Only legalized murder is called execution (if not something like "the highest form of social justice"), and legalized confiscation of property from citizens (or, as it used to be in the country of the victorious proletariat, "expropriation of expropriators"). One way or another, freeing himself from the captivity of natural conditioning, a person, one might say, becomes dependent on culture. A law-abiding, honest, conscientious person does not behave with absolute independence. It is firmly tied to internal imperatives. In this sense, good impulses occur most often against the will, at least regardless of rational choice. It is this circumstance, as is well known, that greatly troubled Kant. In particular, he pointed to "the paradoxical requirement to consider oneself as a subject a free noumenon and at the same time - in one's own empirical consciousness - a phenomenon in relation to nature." Along with the paradoxes of moral perception (due, as we have seen, to the unequal perception of morally significant phenomena by different people - and a person himself, for the same reason, may be at odds), we can single out the paradoxes of moral relations.

Paradoxes of Moral Relations

These surprises are generated by the multidimensionality of intersubjective relations. In order to save time and space, we restrict ourselves to only some properties of relations - reflexivity, commutativity, associativity, transitivity. Reflexivity is usually understood as the identity of an object to itself, automorphism: A \u003d A. What kind of equality to oneself can one speak of in relation to moral subjects is a big question. For people - normal, conscientious, law-abiding people, fairly respected by others - are far from being self-identical throughout their life, and every now and then they fall into doubts, languor, engage in self-criticism, reconsider their views, overestimate significant values. L. Wittgenstein even wrote about inanimate objects: "By the way: to say about two objects that they are identical is nonsense, but to say about one object that it is identical to itself is to say nothing at all." The property of commutativity, symmetry, can be explained by the formula: A + B = B + A or A x B = B x A. At the same time, it is well known that even during the simplest chemical experiments it is far from indifferent which substance is added to which. So, for example, when concentrated sulfuric acid is added to water, a lot of heat is simply released, and a solution of sulfuric acid is obtained. If, on the contrary, water is poured into acid, then chemically educated people guarantee that it will splash, threatening to burn those who naively expect that the displacement law is ubiquitous. And is it really necessary to go to a chemical laboratory, if you can just remember the English, who are not at all indifferent to what to pour into: tea into milk or milk into tea, or the ancient Greeks, who loved diluted wine, but never diluted wine with water, but - added wine to water. If we talk about the moral sphere, then, obviously, the indicated property of symmetry is quite rare and, by and large, optional. For example, "A likes B". This does not mean at all that B will have the same feelings for A. Or, knowing that: "where A is, there is B," we have very little reason to say the opposite: "where B is, A is there." In addition, here it would be important to understand what is addition (subtraction) in morality? Everything is quite simple, as long as we are talking about addition-subtraction of simple mathematical or physical quantities - length, weight, duration of time, etc. But already during operations with temperature, the addition property does not work: two objects heated to 50 degrees will not give in total 100. Or - adding up the temperature of three patients, each of whom has a fever of 38.5 degrees, we will not boil water.

As soon as we get into the world of human relations, the operations of addition and subtraction are subject to especially high demands for meaningfulness. Here it turns out that the point is not only that one can operate only with quantities of the same modality. That, for example, there is no more sense in the average salary than in the average temperature of patients. Let's take the seemingly obvious: "The value of two people is greater than the value of one" - with the clarification that this compared one is at both poles of comparison (either he was alone, then someone was added to him). And here it is remembered that Ivan Susanin did not agree with such a formula! Putting together different actions or different people, we seem to fall into a zone of uncertainty. Here's someone who did us a favor. Thank him very much. And here he is again doing exactly the same thing. Can anyone guarantee that our reaction will be similar, equally grateful? By no means! Or: if we know that two people met - a scoundrel A and a high-ranking person B - what follows from this? Yes, whatever! A and B can get along well without conflict, while remaining in their former qualities. They can - enter into a confrontation with various outcomes, or they can disperse without causing any harm to each other. In physics, we do not hesitate to multiply quantities of different modalities by each other. For example, we multiply the speed by the time and get the path. What and by what can be multiplied in morality? The thought arises that a direct analogy of multiplication in the moral sphere are situations when, for example, a person is required to simultaneously possess more than one moral quality. Or when we evaluate some morally significant phenomenon according to more than one parameter at the same time. Perhaps, it is precisely "multiplication" that takes place when we say: "a thief stole a baton from a thief," or when we assume that evil must be opposed by force - in the hope that a minus by a minus gives a plus. Associativity - permutation - in literal terms can be represented as follows: A + B - C \u003d A - C + B, as well as A x B: C \u003d A: C x B. Obviously, in moral relations, if this property is manifested , then with much less straightforwardness and reliability than in the world of arithmetic values.

We, people - with our amorousness and jealousy, touchiness and easygoingness - do not necessarily make friends with friends of our friends and are at enmity with those whom friends consider enemies. The one who is looked at with sympathy by a person dear to me, it is likely that I will evoke ambivalent feelings: "They are nice to you - that's why they are pleasant to me." But here it is very close to jealousy - "Not only me, but They are nice to you." It is unlikely that, further, there will be an identical assessment of two situations: "A friend got into trouble and betrayed" and "A friend betrayed and got into trouble." Here, as nowhere else, the sequence of events is important, since the moral world is made up of processes and phenomena that are predominantly irreversible. It is also important to take into account the vector nature of relationships. If, for example, A has an enemy B, and that, in turn, has an enemy C, then it may well turn out that A does not make friends with C, but, together with B, takes up arms against the latter. And this case will undoubtedly present a paradox to anyone who perceives relations not as vectors, but as scalars. The property of transitivity - transference - occurs when, on the basis of the fact that A > B and B > C, we infer that A > C. In the world of moral relations, one can never be sure that, for example, respect is transferred in such a direct way. That I will definitely respect the one who appreciates the person who is significant to me. It's just very likely that we build our relationship on different grounds. "Who loves a priest, who loves a priest, who loves a priest's daughter." If A tells B confidentially that "C is inexpressive", can you be sure that he will not say the same about B in a conversation with D (or even with the same C)? The intersubjective relations A > B, B > C, A > C are most often simply atomic relations between A and B; between B and C; between A and C. So if A respects B, then as soon as C appears, it means almost absolutely nothing. Here one can see a manifestation of the paradoxical nature of human nature, one can exclaim: "All men are the same!" (or "Every beautiful woman is a potential bitch" - depending on gender and other characteristics). But behind all this, one can look for and find something more significant and interesting than banal egoism or libido. Perhaps it is possible to single out one more type of moral paradoxes, or, more precisely, one more angle that allows one to build a whole series of moral paradoxes. We are talking about structural paradoxes, or paradoxes of moral evaluation.

Paradoxes of moral evaluation

They are due, as we can easily understand, to the lack of information for each of the parameters of moral assessment. An unconditionally positive assessment will be awarded only to that moral phenomenon, which will be characterized by a complete set of positive characteristics that correspond to all parameters of the structure of the act. Now we will only briefly list the simplest possible absurdities. Motive: Most obvious is the paradox of good intentions that paved the road to hell. Additionally, one can imagine a situation where someone, on the contrary, acting out of bad motives, did good. Could Hitler have imagined that, as a response to all his villainous encroachments, the Jews of the whole world would be able to recreate their original state, Israel! Goal: Examples here are goals that are disproportionate to other parameters ("Swing for a ruble, hit for a penny") or incomprehensible to us, "absurd" goals. I recall an anecdote from the sunset of the Soviet seven decades: A ship with emigrants is sailing across the Atlantic from the USSR to America. And to meet him - a ship with those who have already been there and are returning. Seeing the oncoming ship, both those and other passengers, huddled on their decks, show those who are traveling in the opposite direction, a characteristic gesture - they twist their finger at the temple. And isn't it the noblest goals that have been set for the Soviet people for seven decades by their valiant Communist Party! However, the well-known observation that during the crossing you should rule, aiming not at the place where you want to moor, but a little upstream Context: There is such an instructive story. "A small newspaper organized a competition to find the most decent and benevolent citizen of their city. Among the letters received were: I don't smoke, I don't drink alcohol, I don't play cards, I don't chase women, I'm devoted to my wife, I get up at dawn. I have been leading this life for three years already... Will you wait until next spring, when they will release me from prison?" "Scoundrel, but - our scoundrel!" is another eloquent illustration of the paradox of context. Tool: As paradoxes related to the choice of tool, the usual from the newspapers: "Peacekeeping forces to maintain order" or - a replica of the hero of an American film: "I hated violence fiercely since childhood. And went to the police to fight it." No less paradoxical was the sermon read to the sharks in Melville's Moby Dick.

Now a few thoughts about the next parameter of moral evaluation. Efforts: "In the fact that you are exhausted, It will be of little use, If you did not bother your Head at first" - Kazakh folk wisdom says. Here we can also talk about all sorts of empty chores: "Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas" ("Vanity of vanities, and all kinds of vanity" (Eccl. 1:2)). But among other things, it is easy to understand that animals also make efforts, earning their own food, competing, and - even laying down for the night. So the main moral paradox in relation to efforts, apparently, will be efforts that are not inspired by a humanly worthy meaning, a waste of effort, time, and resources. Result: In general, the result may or may not meet expectations, and these expectations may have a positive or negative moral sign. A paradox will arise here, firstly, in case of inconsistency with expectations, goals - regardless of who is disappointed: a righteous man, a villain or an outside observer. Another version of the paradox: the discrepancy between the result and the efforts, merits of the subject. The following story is told about a Chinese emperor and a young physician: The emperor ordered physicians to hang a lantern at their door every time a patient died. Many doctors' doors were soon literally hung with lanterns. Once, when the emperor fell ill, the courtiers scattered around the capital in search of a better doctor. Finally, one was found and brought to the emperor. The emperor was surprised at how young this best doctor was. “Is there really only one lantern above your door?” - he asked. - Oh yes, your majesty. According to your instructions, I had the honor of hanging only one lantern at the door of my office. True, I just opened it yesterday. Attitude: Paradoxes here can be, for example, pride and another pole - self-abasement. Kant persistently looked for ways in which virtuous behavior could be dispensed with without emotional reinforcement. And therefore, even if he was ready to admit pleasure from the deed, he sharply condemned the anticipating pleasure from this deed. Perhaps this desire for emotionlessness, the prohibition to look into the future is also a kind of paradox, a paradox of Kant's moral philosophy. At the same time, the biblical "everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted" (Luke 14:11), which outwardly appears as a paradox, is in fact quite realistic, since it proceeds from the tacit idea of ​​the measure, the golden mean. Here we come across another possibility to designate a specific type of paradoxes - paradoxes of self-esteem.

Among the paradoxes of self-esteem are the self-deprecating characteristics given to themselves by those who can rightfully be considered saints. And vice versa - narcissism of nothingness. Albert Schweitzer famously wrote: "A clear conscience is an invention of the devil." In general, self-esteem is a very subtle concept. How do you order, for example, to treat the statement: "I am an intellectual"? Personally, such phrases always confuse me. They evoke concern. Reminds me of the Liar paradox. Or the witty statement of an acquaintance (twenty-five years ago this statement was not only witty, but also quite bold): "I am modest - like Lenin." Probably, for a normal person capable of moral reflection, to drive away complacency is quite a real thing. But, having driven away complacency, it is already more difficult not to rejoice on this occasion! That is why the thought beats so painfully during moral introspection: “For I don’t understand what I’m doing, because I don’t do what I want, but what I hate, I do.[...] I don’t do the good that I want, but the evil which I do not want, I do" (Rom. 7:15,19). In addition to the listed simplest paradoxes of moral assessments, one should cite paradoxes, so to speak, mixed, compound - in which a failure in one of the morally significant parameters is combined with failures in another / other parameters. But we will not enumerate these options, due to their large number and relatively low heuristics. Let us turn our attention to a more significant aspect of moral paradoxes. Paradoxes as an essential feature of culture There is every reason to talk about moral paradoxes in various spheres of life - politics, religion, art, law, science. Politics is literally all riddled with paradoxes. Glorious, Just, Great Revolutions - don't they grow into the deepest periods of Stagnation! Bold, principled innovators and radicals - don't they end up in the ranks of consistent conservatives! Those who are most worthy, honest, smart - do they aspire to professional politics! Galina Starovoitova once remarked: "Politicians should be changed as often as diapers. And most importantly - for the same reason." And here another paradox emerges. A question arises (although you drive him with all your might) a question: And Galina Vasilievna herself - how much she managed to maintain the original purity of a professional called into politics ... I would like to hope that she managed - that she resolved this paradox.

Further. Amazingly, but true - "It turns out that out of a hundred former royal favorites, at least ninety-five were hanged." Napoleon points to this. Centuries separate us from the era of Napoleon, but has anything fundamentally changed? So why don't we revere the courage, selflessness of those who, despite the huge risk, go into politics?... Paradox? Isn't it a paradox that the wider the democratic freedoms in a society and the more open it is towards its neighbors, the stronger (objectively) the threat of its destruction by enemies from outside and/or various separatists from within? A harmless illustration: the recently formed Humanist Society faced a problem - what to do with attempts to infiltrate it by various Trotskyists and other radical public? Well, and interethnic relations - aren't they tense with paradoxes! International tendencies that threaten to develop into a non-national policy, patriotism, now and then flowing into nationalism. The pulsation of meaning and absurdity, cordiality and irreconcilable enmity, unification and disengagement - there is no end to them! Personal rights are closely, not to say, intricately intertwined with duties. Where is the border between one and the other - the most enlightened human rights activist and the most meticulous jurist will find it difficult to point out. "Honorable duty", "high duty" - we are not surprised at such turns, although from the point of view of logic and linguistics these are the so-called oxymorons (from the Greek oxumwron - witty-stupid), like "a living corpse", "poor luxury" or " optimistic tragedy. At the same time, there is something for ethics, psychologists, and linguists to think about. Stylists, describing an oxymoron, note that as a result of such an unexpected combination, a new semantic unity, concept, representation is born. That is, such phrases, becoming terms, help to designate concrete phenomena of the multidimensional world of politics with words. It would be possible to enumerate and enumerate the paradoxes with which we, every day, meet either in religion, or in science, or in art, or in medicine, or in sports (and it would be worth devoting a rather large library to describing the paradoxes of the everyday sphere! ).

One could specifically dwell on how paradoxical the basic moral categories are: “good” and “evil” (if only because they lose all meaning without each other: “What would your good do if evil did not exist, and how would the earth look like if the shadows disappeared from it?" - Bulgakov's Woland asked sarcastically), and even earlier Mephistopheles certified himself in the same vein: "A particle of that power, That a century desiring evil, only creates good"; "sin" (a certain ancient king took his wife from his subject, sent the subject to war, making sure that he did not return from there - the 7th and 6th commandments of Moses were violated - but the name of the child born in this marriage, with respect people of different nations pronounce: Solomon... As we understood, the ancient king and daddy - David, mother - Bathsheba); “humanism” (say, a prison doctor should help even a person sentenced to death)”; “violence” (one sword kills, another saves); “responsibility” (initiative is often punishable, while negligent ones are often blow; worse, those unable to bear responsibility demand that others bear responsibility for them); "help" (what if, for example, a beggar is waiting for help from us? A drug addict, an intruder, a suicide?); dependence, we immediately fall - albeit voluntarily or unconsciously - into another dependence, for example, on conscience); "ours and others" (with her inherent brilliant humor, N. Teffi convincingly showed: "The more a person has his own, the more he knows bitter truths about himself and the harder it is for him to live in the world "); "justice" (the more closely people look at the problem of justice, the further they find themselves from resolving it); "happiness" (apparently, the experience of this state is not in the least does not depend on mastering those values ​​that we so passionately pursue; rather, it is like the Blue Bird running from the hunter, or the Firebird flying when it pleases); "tolerance" (is it permissible to show tolerance towards intolerance?); "respect" (do we have the right to respect someone who himself does not want to respect anyone?); "egoism" (according to one thoughtful definition, an egoist is a person who cares about himself more than about me).

However, let's seize the moment and try to bring our reasoning about paradoxes to the finish line. Generally speaking, one can notice that paradoxes have a number of properties that are difficult to combine. Some can puzzle and even stun, others can make you laugh or induce action. The paradox is able to tune in to communication, and may cause antipathy. Paradoxes can be life-affirming and sacrilegious, elevating and humiliating a person. They may occur involuntarily, but they can also be intentional. It can be said in a certain sense that there are paradoxes of strength and weakness. Revaluations and markdowns. Generosity and arrogance. Paradox-embarrassment and paradox-charade. Fun and mystery. Confusion and breakthrough into new meanings. I would like to think that it is in our will to make sure that one of the distinguishing features of a person - the ability to find and comprehend paradoxes - is used by us as constructively as possible, for an in-depth understanding of life, for building ever more perfect relationships with ourselves, with others, with the world as a whole.

Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko. Paradox

Jan Krysztof Załuski is the main character. A cripple who has no arms from birth; he has a large head, a pale face "with mobile, sharp features and large, penetrating, shifting eyes." “The torso was very small, the shoulders were narrow, the chest and abdomen were not visible from under the wide, with a strong gray beard.” The legs are “long and thin”, with their help the “phenomenon”, as the accompanying, “long-moustached” subject calls it, removes the cap from his head, combs his beard with a comb, crosses himself and, finally, writes on a white sheet “an even beautiful line”: “Man created for happiness, like a bird for flight. This phrase really became, as Załuski calls it, an aphorism, and it was especially popular in Soviet times. But this, Załuski emphasized, is not only an aphorism, but also a "paradox". “Man is created for happiness, only happiness is not always created for him,” he later says. Korolenko, who repeatedly showed diseases and human injuries (up to the story “Without a Language”, where the position of a person in a foreign country gives the concept of dumbness a philosophical sound), emphasizes Załuski’s paradox not only for a sharper depiction of relationships between people (Dr. Dudarov’s bewildered arrogance and dignity Załuski) and not for pedagogical purposes, but for the sake of affirming the central idea of ​​all his work: “Life ... seems to me a manifestation of a common great law, the main main features of which are goodness and happiness. The general law of life is the pursuit of happiness and its ever wider realization. It was Załuski's innate misfortune that helped him express this cherished thought of his with particular persuasiveness.

If you've made it to this place, we give you credit! And we add that this issue from the standpoint of human science is considered in our article "Paradoxes and relativity of human life" (see on the page "From the first works") and in an aphoristic form in the work: "Brief thoughts-paradoxes" (see the site page with name of the same name) /30.07.09/

Maxim Krongauz

public intimacy

I want to warn the reader right away that this article is not about erotica and not even about ethics, as a naive reader might think after reading the title. It's about communication. But let the naive reader not be afraid of this scientific word, because communication will be only at the very end, and at the beginning I will tell a number of entertaining (as I would like) and instructive (as it seems to me) stories. And they are all connected to the Internet.

Another scandal

In August, another scandal erupted on the Internet. Someone Mikhail Kovalev, a positive and creative person, rather creatively filed an application with the prosecutor's office with a request to ban swearing in blogs in general and Artemy Lebedev in particular. Very little is known about Mikhail Kovalev, and his positivity and creativity are easily deduced not only from the fact of the application to the prosecutor's office, but also from newspaper reports about this fact, in which he was called the organizer of the “Happiness Machine” action and the coordinator of the “Warriors of Creativity” movement. It makes no sense to find out what it is, the names themselves confirm the accuracy of the data above the characteristics. Artemy Lebedev is also undoubtedly a creative person and, importantly, much more famous both in Runet and, as they say now, in life. Since we are talking about the Internet, it is important to know that he is one of the most popular bloggers, and his blog has more than 10 thousand subscribers, that is, regular readers, and much more non-permanent ones. The power of his word is such that when he wrote a blog post on July 10, 2008 yyyyyyyyyy(11 times), it was commented over 680 times (exact numbers fluctuate depending on the date of viewing).

Since I, like most Russian citizens, have not seen the application to the prosecutor's office, I will quote its author:

“There is such an earthling Artemy Lebedev. Talented guy. Bright. Realized the dream of a career as a creative person. Thinks about the development of design in the country. But…

TODAY my statement appeared in the prosecutor's office of Moscow. I just ask you to limit the dissemination of information offensive to users on Lebedev's blog and impose an administrative fine. What for?!

Artemy Lebedev cannot overcome the demon in himself - he insults blog readers - he swears. Likes to shock. It seems that he considers this his main strategy. … But THIS is discussed by hundreds of people, and read by hundreds of thousands!

Lebedev knows that his blog is read daily by up to 150,000 users - and this is comparable and even surpasses the audience of the leading Russian media. Lebedev is almost an idol for tens of thousands of young people, which means he is an example to follow. His use of profanity PUBLICLY causes irreparable harm to the psycho-emotional state of a whole generation of creative young people who consider this the standard of behavior for a successful person ... ”(mashina_s blog entry dated August 17, 2009).

This entry was followed by about 2070 emotional comments, both supporting and condemning the author. I will quote only a fragment of the very first, made by a reader with the nickname tumbo4ka, which cannot but please lovers of the Russian language:

"Finally!!!

I have been reading Lebedev for only a month, somewhere, but I REALLY HAVE IT!
And finally - to everyone who dares to think that this is such a self-promotion move - to sue Lebedev - good health and happiness to everyone in their personal lives. BUT!
But even if so, they really read and read Him, Tyoma! And it’s really worth stopping this nonsense that sometimes pours out of it! For example, I myself believed that you can’t be a designer and not swear!”.

Artemy Lebedev himself did not enter into a discussion with his potential plaintiff in his blog, but unsubscribed in his own. Quoting this text, however, is not so easy, because either I have to censor the popular blogger, or my text (namely the quote itself) will already be censored. I'll do it differently. Since the text received about 1090 comments, it got into the so-called top of the most popular entries published on the LiveJournal website, where it looked like this (tema blog from 08/21/2009):

“F**k, how many m****** new things are in the world. Fuck your mother, how many n ****** in the world. Oh ****b, b***b, how many m****** are around. Here's another m*****l...” (only the beginning of the recording is published on the site, and in obscene words a certain censor, according to legend, an automatic machine, puts asterisks). All this is slightly reminiscent of the well-known story of Zhvanetsky, but this is so, by the way.

I am sure that my reader's eyes lit up at that moment, because he decided that the article is devoted to the eternal topic “Is it good to swear?”. I have been participating in discussions on this topic for ten years now and each time I note with satisfaction that she, like the mate itself, by the way, cannot die or even wither away. And the number of comments on the two mentioned entries only confirms this. But no, dear reader, this time I will avoid this most interesting topic, because I was just pretty tired of it (or, as the respected tumbo4ka writes, really got me).

Actually, in Artemy Lebedev’s note, I’m only interested in one phrase that I can easily quote: “ That is, the dude wants me to write in my personal private secluded diary not what I want to write. And this phrase enters into a fundamental contradiction with the phrase of Mikhail Kovalev: “Lebedev knows that up to 150,000 users read his blog daily, which is comparable and even surpasses the audience of the leading Russian media.” So, “private private secluded diary” or, to put it somewhat crudely, “leading Russian media”? That's the question.

Who are you talking to now?

This question can be answered by pursuing different goals and, so to speak, from different positions. Legally, ethically or otherwise. What lawyers are trying to do, I cannot discuss because of my incompetence. I will only note that, for example, in Kazakhstan, blogs (more precisely, all Internet resources in general) have been recognized by the mass media, period (which still seems absurd, even taking into account incompetence). Let us leave ethics to philosophers and moralists. I am interested in just “somehow else”, namely, how we ourselves feel the text of any blog. How public or how private?

In other words, it is about what type of communication we enter into and what communication strategies we use. To avoid scientific terms, I will explain with my own example. A university teacher (which I am) has to speak differently to an audience when giving a lecture or to acquaintances at dinner, even if they are discussing some scientific problem. If he fails to get rid of teaching habits in private conversation, then he runs the risk of alienating the interlocutor, and by no means explaining anything to him. And besides, hear the sobering phrase: “Who are you talking to now?”. Moreover, these types of communication differ literally in everything: the volume of the voice, intonation, the construction of phrases, and even the words that we choose. Moreover, a good lecturer changes the style of the lecture even in the classroom, depending on the number of listeners. It is important whether two people or a hundred are listening to you. Let's say a small work seminar where old acquaintances have gathered may turn out to be closer to a table conversation than to a public lecture. I recall, for example, home seminars that existed a long time ago, where reports were sometimes combined with tea drinking without any case switching.

Going back to the two blog entries, I have to admit that I can't believe the sincerity of both bloggers. The blogger mashina_s cannot but understand when he says the phrase “ Lebedev is almost an idol for tens of thousands of young people, which means he is an example to follow”, that blogger tema “is almost an idol” precisely because his speech (and the very way of communication, of course) is not similar to the texts of “leading Russian media”. Blogger tema cannot fail to understand that his blog is not a “private private secluded diary”, if these words are used in the literal sense and without any irony. By the way, there were attempts to translate the word “blog”1 as “diary”, but they generally did not take root, and now we mainly deal with “blogs” (although no, no, but the word “diary” is also in this value occurs). Indeed, a diary and a blog, despite certain similarities, are still different and even fundamentally different genres. So, in Ushakov's dictionary, a diary is defined as "notes of a personal nature, kept from day to day," or in another sense: "daily records of scientific observations made during expeditions and research." The first definition seems to apply to a blog, but a blog has its own characteristics. Therefore, in the online encyclopedia “Krugosvet” blogs are defined as “network diaries maintained on special sites that provide the ability to quickly add entries, comment, make a list of friends, etc.”2.

In short, what they have in common is that they are dated records of a personal nature, and the difference lies in what happens next with these records. In blogs, they can be read by anyone (or only “relatives”, if we are talking about the so-called sub-locked entries), commented on and discussed. Diaries, as a rule, are written exclusively for themselves and only in rare cases are shown to the closest ones (already without any quotes), and they certainly do not imply comments and discussions. In the history of mankind, there is no genre or, if you like, communicative analogue of a blog.

And if so, it is far from always clear how to respond to a blog, including outside the network space, so to speak, offline.

Some more stories

A similar case, as Schweik used to say, took place on the Internet, and more than once. This analogy, however, still needs to be seen. Unlike Schweik, I won’t name any more, because the personalities in the stories will not be mentioned publicly, and the case never went to court in them (or maybe it did, but I don’t know about it). Yes, and these are not stories, but so - plots, and all coincidences with real people, as you might guess, are absolutely random.

Story one

One girl, a student, kept a blog, her friends, about ten people, read it. And somehow, being dissatisfied with her institute and the dean, she expressed herself about the latter impartially, even somewhat obscenely. Well, what's wrong with that, because students in their narrow circle can say something unpleasant about their teachers and dean. However, somehow this record (of a personal nature) reached the dean, and the authorship was easily established (it, most likely, was not hidden). Actually, the mechanism for obtaining information is not important here: whether the dean was informed, or whether he himself once a week monitored blogs using a search engine, hammering his name there. In any case, he read her diary, which anyone with Internet access could do, and became convinced that he had been publicly insulted. After that, the student was expelled from the institute. Without discussing this decision either legally or ethically, I want to draw attention to only one thing that I myself, frankly, do not fully understand. Did the student insult the dean publicly or privately (that is, in her narrow student circle)? After all, the possibility or impossibility of an offline reaction depends on this, not necessarily deductions, but at least some kind of reaction. After all, if a person was insulted publicly, then he must somehow react. And if private, then at least it is not necessary, and sometimes even undesirable, since you can make yourself look like a fool.

Story two

One woman, a husband's wife, kept a blog, her friends read it, three in number, five at most. And since it was about records of a personal nature, she described her experiences and feelings, as well as the betrayals that accompanied them, short and long relationships. For some reason, women need to trust someone with their experiences from time to time, well, she trusted and shared. But her husband, for God's sake, somehow got wind of her magazine and read it cover to cover. And he really didn't like the magazine. And there was a terrible scandal. And they got divorced. Or vice versa: they lived happily ever after. It doesn't matter anymore, because the scandal was terrible anyway. And although I was not present at him, I suspect that he was double-edged. That is, he says: “How could you?!”. And she answered: “How dare you?!”. And this is where I want to focus again. Did her husband dare to read her blog? If a jealous man found under his pillow a real paper “private private secluded diary” of his wife and read it, we would, of course, understand him, but still he would be a beast. And so ... After all, anyone could read her blog, that is, she talked about her betrayals to the whole world - in a sense, publicly, and this is somehow unpleasant. And then the question is - who exactly is the cattle? So, again it is not clear who is right and who is wrong. Once again I remind you that this is not about the fact that cursing or cheating on your husband is not good. And about the fact that it is not clear whether we are in a public or private space.

The third story (which is not even a story)

One person, quite famous, kept a blog (under his own name), and different people read it, but still not thousands, but rather hundreds. And now, after visiting somehow, a famous person shared her impressions on the blog. In particular, which idiot had to sit next to and what they talked about. The idiot, unfortunately, was also a blogger (or was not, which is absolutely unimportant) and got into the blog of a famous person and read that he was an idiot, and, frankly, was upset. The story would be more interesting if he went and stuffed the face of a famous person, but I won’t lie even for the sake of beauty (especially since I immediately warned: this is not even a story). In general, he was just upset.

Story four

One person, completely unknown, kept a blog, and again two or three friends read it. And an unknown person expressed his opinion about another person, a little more famous. And she, in turn, tracked all the mentions of her last name and reacted sharply to them. And this time I came to the blog to the first person and reacted very sharply. But the first, due to her own uncertainty, was not even offended, but was touched by the attention.

And another called the other a crook, and the other demanded a public apology. And another called the other mediocrity and impotent. And then it all came to a scuffle. True, they previously aggravated the quarrel in the comments. And the schoolchildren called the teacher, and she unfairly put a deuce (or is it fair?). And another one called traffic cops, and he was sued. And also…

All. The stories are over. We need to move on to interpretation. And the interpretation, apparently, is that we do not know what to do and how to behave, or, scientifically speaking, how to communicate correctly in the new conditions. The blogosphere, originally conceived as an intimate space, has become a social space, in which, however, one can also remain lonely and non-public. But even if I have no friends at all (in this case, I mean regular readers), my blog is potentially open, that is, while remaining intimate, it also turns out to be a public space4. Of course, as readers increase, the degree of publicity seems to increase. But is there really a certain number of readers after which intimacy turns into publicity (remember the heap paradox)5. This gap between publicity and intimacy allows, in particular, the use of different communication strategies. For example, having a huge number of readers, speak as if you do not notice them. Or communicate with everyone, as with very close people whom you really trust. For example, asking for intimate advice and showing intimate photos. You can scold someone (or, conversely, praise), as if forgetting that he hears everything. I must say that many authors have perfectly adapted to this gap and skillfully use it (as a kind of artistic device).

Linguists once came up with the idea of ​​distinguishing between the addressee and the listener. The addressee is the one to whom I directly address, and the listener is the one who, not being the direct addressee, simply hears my speech. For example, when the family gathered at the table, the father of the family turns to his wife (addressee), while realizing that the children also hear him. So in blogs, there may be very few direct recipients (or not at all, just a diary entry for oneself), but everyone can become a reader (in linguistic terminology, a listener).

Faced with public intimacy, that is, with an essentially intimate statement that exists in a public (that is, public) space, we still do not know how to respond to it: as intimate or as public. In some situations, these reactions should not just be different, but actually be opposite. For example, sometimes a well-mannered person should not notice an intimate statement, but challenge him to a duel for a public one. Today, unfortunately, there is no and cannot be a common recommendation for all occasions. A new type of communication is new enough to create new problems. Or, as the poet wrote6, “life is given to us for that, in order to endure its tricks.” In general, summing up, I will say that really new communicative conditions have appeared in the history of mankind and, as a result, new communicative genres. On one of them, a sign should be hung: “Caution, public intimacy!”.

P.S. Having already written the article, I went into a search engine and typed in the words “public intimacy”. The search engine answered me: forty thousand. Even considering that two-thirds are probably pornographic sites, the rest is also enough. It seems that it came out according to a well-known academic anecdote: “There was a lot of new and interesting things in the article, but, unfortunately, everything new is not interesting, and what is interesting is not new.” The only consolation to my author's pride can only be that everything is in the search engine, and it is in our time that it has become clearly visible that nothing is new under the sun, including public intimacy. But now it is much more noticeable.

1 The English word “blog” arose by truncating the beginning of the weblog, and only the last letter remained from the first root web (meaning “network” or “web”). It is clear that this is a unique and playful (rather than regular) way of forming a word.

2 The continuation of the definition in Krugosvet takes us even further from the “diary”: “Blogs are used not only for self-expression, but also for business purposes. Many companies run corporate blogs, which are online bulletin boards.”

4 An analogy arises with windows that never curtain, as, say, in Holland. The house is an intimate space, but someone else can always look into it, and therefore you need to behave as if you were in a public place. Which, by the way, for many Russians, and for me personally, is absolutely unacceptable.

5 Just in case, let me remind you. If we put one grain of sand, it's not a pile. If we add another grain of sand, it's still not a pile. Adding one grain of sand to any number of grains of sand cannot make a non-heap a heap at all. How do we get the heap anyway? Paradox.

Over the past 10-12 years, the Internet has undergone major changes associated with the emergence of blogs and social networks. The rules of communication are changing before our eyes, both within the Internet and within society as a whole.

As usual, these changes only become noticeable when these worlds collide. And if ten years ago the world of the Internet was practically not connected with the outside world, now the situation has changed: they interact, and this often gives rise to conflicts.

Is an insult on a blog a public insult?

One student in the blog expressed herself impartially about her dean and used profanity in doing so. This became known, and the student was expelled. The society was divided into two groups: some supported the student, others supported the administration.

Suppose I, a person holding a certain position at a university, walk down the corridor and accidentally hear that one of the students calls me this word. I think we have developed some rules in the world, according to which it is clear what I should do in this case: it is stupid to get into the private conversation of students and try to influence the way they communicate with each other, it is more correct to pass by. If, during my lecture, a student enters the audience and calls me the same word, I must respond, otherwise I will look at least strange. Which of these two situations should be equated with a blog post? We do not know. If in the beginning communication in blogs was rather personal, then today blogs have turned into a completely open space. Without knowing what habitual communication situation blogging can be equated with, we cannot decide how to respond appropriately.

Blog - private diary or open space?

One woman maintains a blog in which she talks about her infidelities to her husband. Her subscribers include only her close friends, but one day her husband also reads it.

Blogs are often compared to diaries. But, having read his wife's diary, the husband himself would have violated a certain communicative norm - he would have climbed into someone else's space. Unlike the diary, this blog was available to everyone. Who - husband or wife - violated the laws of communication in this case?

Blog - "private secluded diary" or mass media?

One very popular blogger regularly uses obscene language on his blog. And one day, another, much less well-known person on his blog announced that he was suing the first blogger: he has more readers than the leading Russian newspapers, which means he swears in public. The first blogger replied that “in his personal private secluded diary” he has the right to express himself as he wants. So what is his blog really - a media outlet or a private diary? I guess neither one nor the other. On the one hand, the popularity of this blog is obviously related to the means of expression that its author uses, and which are impossible in any media. On the other hand, the author of the blog also distorts reality: the blog has ceased to be a private space, and the words about a “private secluded diary” are also a game.

What is "friend"?

Communication roles have also changed. Can we interpret the word "friend"? Yes, but only through a technical action: this is the person who pressed a certain button. But what is a "friend" from a communicative point of view? Today it is impossible to give this word a single good definition, because different people put different meanings into it: for someone it is a close friend, and for someone, for example, an admirer of talent.

New communication roles

Various communicative roles have emerged in LiveJournal. Some keep a journal under their own name (or it is easy to read in their nickname). Others write under a pseudonym - and this pseudonym may be more famous than the name or be compared with it. The third communicative role is anonymous. And the last role, also very important, is the role of the nameless, that is, the observer who reads the blog, but does not speak in any way. Some of these roles were in our familiar world, some were not.

Do we understand what role we want to play in the world of social media and blogging, and how it relates to our role in real life?

Intimate statement in public space

One writer from St. Petersburg came to visit a Moscow artist. During the night, he heard that a rape was taking place in the next room. He doubted for a long time what to do, but as a result he went to the police, and in the end the rape was stopped, and a criminal case was opened against the artist. This story became known thanks to two posts. The first was a post by a Petersburg writer who described his experiences in detail. In the comments, some bloggers thanked him for his courage, while others cursed him for cowardice. The artist responded to the writer on his own blog, and the content of his post could be a legal argument against him. It is impossible to explain the behavior of these two people from the point of view of the "old world". They both understood that this was a public space, but they came out with very intimate statements.

All of these stories differ in how the intimate becomes public. Someone writes for their friends and it enters the public space by accident. Someone deliberately makes an intimate statement public, playing on the thin border of these two spaces. Someone tries to break out into this communicative void, wanting to get some kind of return - and gets it, but often not at all the one he was counting on.

Laws for the Internet

One blogger who spoke badly about the police on his blog was tried in a regular court.

Can we formulate laws for the Internet until the usual reaction to the conflicts that arise in it has been developed? Should not legal laws be based on the laws of communication, which are only being formed today?

What will happen next?

Mark Zuckerberg said that "privacy" is no longer. Social networks are a godsend for tax inspectors and intelligence agencies, but this does not stop us from sharing our most intimate experiences on Facebook.

The answer to the question: "What will happen?" no, but the words of Mark Zuckerberg, who announced that the greatest conquest of Western civilization of the 20th century, have been canceled, we should at least heed.

Anyone who is more or less interested in the state of such a science as linguistics, and is not indifferent to the Russian language, is familiar with the name Maxim Krongauz. Many read his books or articles, watched lectures. So who is Maxim Krongauz anyway? The biography of the professor, his scientific works and the point of view on modern linguistics are described in detail in this article.

The formation of Krongauz as a linguist

Krongauz Maxim Anisimovich was born on March 11, 1958 in Moscow, in the family of the Soviet poet Anisim Krongauz. He graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University in 1980, and in 1984 he graduated from the postgraduate course of the university, graduating from the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics. Currently a doctor

After graduating from graduate school, Krongauz worked at the Soviet Encyclopedia publishing house, holding the position of scientific editor. During this time, he played an important role in the compilation and creation of the "Linguistic Encyclopedic Dictionary", the authors of which were able to systematize the entire terminology of Russian linguistics.

After leaving the publishing house, the linguist worked as a laboratory researcher at the Institute for Information Transmission Problems. In 1991, he went to the Prague Summer School to attend a course in computational linguistics, a field that was just beginning to gain popularity.

Krongauz and RSUH

In 1990, Krongauz took the place of the Department of Russian Language and Literature at the Moscow State Institute of History and Archives, which would later become the famous RSUH. In 1996, he took the position of head of the department, and in the same year Maxim Krongauz left for the city of Göttingen, where he studied at the Goethe Institute.

In 1999, Krongauz became a professor at the department, where he has been working for almost ten years. And by 2000, he was director of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian State Humanitarian University, in the creation of which he took an active part. Quite quickly, the institute becomes one of the largest centers for studying the problems of linguistics in all of Russia. From 2003 to 2005, Krongauz worked as an accredited professor at the University of Stendhal, located in the city of Grenoble.

In 2013, Maxim Anisimovich left his post of director, remaining only in a teaching position. As before, he reads such courses as "Introduction to Linguistics", "Lexicography", "Semantics".

Career Development

After stepping down as director in 2013, Krongauz took over as head of the Center for Sociolinguistics at the School of Contemporary Humanities Research, where he still works today. In 2015, he became head of the Linguistic Conflictology Laboratory at the Higher School of Economics.

He published many books in which he repeatedly raised the problem of the development of the modern Russian language, often appears on television screens, and is the author of a course of video lectures. He is a laureate of the Enlightener award, a columnist for several print and online publications.

Maxim Krongauz is married and has two daughters.

"Albanian Tutorial"

Maksim Anisimovich is the author of several textbooks on semantics and numerous publications in various publications. In addition, he wrote several books that became quite popular with the Russian reader. Albany's Tutorial covers a rather vital topic. With the development of the Internet, the literacy of the population began to decline sharply, because now, in order to express your emotions, it is enough to send a picture. This book is about how language exists and develops on the World Wide Web. Electronic speech has undergone significant changes over the past decade, and the author is trying to figure out where new words come from, what they mean and how this new form of speech can affect the language. The publication contains a detailed analysis of the emergence of a new language environment, its specific features. As the author himself says, this book is about language on the Internet. Well, the name "Albanian Tutorial" is just a reference to the jargon popular on the Web, which was common about 15 years ago.

"Russian language on the verge of a nervous breakdown"

The basis of this publication was the many articles and essays published by Krongauz. Collected and revised articles are included in the book, supplemented by selected comments by the author and readers. First of all, the book deals with the erasure of the norms of grammar, spelling, orthoepy and punctuation and their relationship with the development of society. Maxim Krongauz is optimistic about the future and does not believe that innovations spoil the language, kill it. Rather, on the contrary, excessive panic is not justified; only development lies ahead of native speech.

A special advantage of the book is that it is written in a very simple language, understandable to any person who is not a philologist or linguist. The publication was published in 2008, and in 2011 it was reissued with additions and already under a new name. The revised book was called "The Russian Language on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown 3D", and the publication included a CD with the author's lectures, which did not duplicate what was written in the book.

Popular linguist

Now you are familiar with both the biography and the author's books. Krongauz Maxim Anisimovich is one of the most prominent contemporary linguists. He played a significant role in the promotion of the modern Russian language. It is the popularizer of the Russian language that Maxim Krongauz calls himself. The author's books diverge in huge circulations, he is quite popular in the post-Soviet space, as he conveys information in an easy way. The main position of a philologist is that the development of the Russian language is inevitable, and sometimes it is much more important to be able to vividly and expressively put your thoughts into words than to have absolute literacy in writing.