How do you understand Berdyaev’s idea that “genius is incompatible with a bourgeois sex life”? Understanding How did you understand the idea that.
Marginalized
Marginals are a designation for individuals and groups located on the outskirts, on the margins, or simply outside the framework of the main structural divisions characteristic of a given society or the prevailing sociocultural norms and traditions...
A marginal situation...is a source of new perception and understanding of the Universe and society,...forms of intellectual, artistic and religious creativity. …Many renewing trends in the spiritual history of mankind (world religions, great philosophical systems and scientific concepts, new forms of artistic representation of the world) largely owe their emergence to marginal individuals and sociocultural environments.
Technological, social and cultural changes of recent decades have given the problem of marginality a qualitatively new contour. Urbanization, mass migrations, intensive interaction between bearers of heterogeneous ethnocultural and religious traditions, the erosion of age-old cultural barriers, the influence of mass media on the population - all this has led to the fact that marginal status has become modern world not so much an exception as the norm for the existence of millions and millions of people. At the turn of the 70-80s. ...the world has begun a rapid process of formation of so-called informal social movements- educational, environmental, human rights, cultural, religious, community, charitable, etc. - movements, the meaning of which is largely related to the inclusion of marginalized groups in modern and public life...
However, there is a problem that poses a difficulty for modern democratic consciousness: how to protect society from those marginal groups that adopt totalitarian and misanthropic ideologies? And at the same time, how not to make these groups the object of preventive, lawless violence... There is no clear answer to this question. The antidote here can only be the growth of humanistic culture and democratic legal consciousness, the development in society of the principles and concepts of human dignity, as well as a deep philosophical and scientific understanding of those social problems that give rise to anti-democratic forms of consciousness.
(E. Rashkovsky)
1. What two characteristics of marginalized groups does the author highlight?
Formulate your own definition of the concept of marginalized people.
Answer:
1) two features, for example marginals
Do not belong to a specific social group of a given society;
They found themselves outside the framework of prevailing sociocultural norms and traditions;
2) own definition, for example: marginalized - individuals (or social groups) occupying an intermediate position between stable communities (lost their previous social status, deprived of the opportunity to do their usual activities, forced to adapt to a new socio-cultural environment).
Another correct definition may be formulated.
Answer:
1) marginalized people are adjacent to, but do not belong to, a specific social group of a given society;
2) their behavior does not correspond to accepted norms in society;
3) they are delivered social development on the verge of two cultures differing in their traditions.
Answer:
1) five reasons (urbanization, mass migration, intensive interaction between bearers of heterogeneous ethnocultural and religious traditions, erosion of centuries-old cultural and religious traditions, erosion of age-old cultural barriers, influence of mass communications on the population);
one of the reasons is illustrated by an example. Let's say, in the 20-30s of the 20th century. During industrialization and urbanization in the USSR, new workers, yesterday’s peasants, came to work on construction sites, factories, factories, and transport. Many of them did not have industrial skills and did not understand the peculiarities of city life.
Industrial enterprises, urban culture and urban lifestyle remained alien, and sometimes even hostile, to yesterday's farmers.
4. The author writes about the danger to society of marginal groups that adopt totalitarian and misanthropic ideologies. Name two similar ideologies and explain what the social danger of each of them is.
Answer:
1) two ideologies are named, for example
2) an explanation of their social danger. For example, supporters of the racist theory believed that in nature there is an iron law of the harmfulness of mixing species.
Mixing (crossbreeding) leads to degradation and interferes with the formation of higher forms of life. In the course of natural selection, weaker, racially inferior creatures must die.
The Nazis transferred this primitive Darwinism to human society, considering races to be natural biological species. Hence the conclusion was drawn about the need for racial hygiene to cleanse and revive the German Aryan race with the help of a popular community of people of German blood and German spirit in a strong, free state. Inferior races were subject to subjugation or destruction.
The Nazis came to power in Germany in the 30s. xx century
Led to the so-called new order and extremely harsh means of its establishment (total, including ideological, mass terror; chauvinism; xenophobia turning into genocide in relation to alien national and social groups, to the values of civilization hostile to it), which ultimately led to outbreak of the Second World War.
5. Name any three characteristics of society as a dynamic system.
Answers:
1) integrity
2) consists of interconnected elements;
3) elements change over time;
4) changes the nature of the relationship between systems;
5) the system as a whole is changing
6.Give three examples illustrating the constitutional provision on secularism
the nature of the modern Russian state
Answer:
1) the relationship between school and church (prohibition of work in the state
School of clergy, religious propaganda in school is prohibited);
2) equality of all faiths in Russian Federation(equal access to receiving
Education, equal guarantees of rights)
7. A human child at the moment of birth, in the apt expression of A. Pieron, is not
Man, but only<кандидат в человека>.
Explain what A. Pieron meant when he named the child<кандидатом в человека>
(formulate three judgments).
Answer:
1) definition of a person as a cultural (public, social) being,
And not just biological;
2)explain the differences in concepts<индивид>, <индивидуальность>, <личность>;
3) an indication of the role of socialization (upbringing, training, communication with other people)
In personality development;
4) the judgment that speech (consciousness, thinking) a person can develop only in
Communication with other people (only in society).
8. You are instructed to prepare a detailed answer on the topic<Право в системе
Social norms>. Make a plan according to which you will
Cover this topic.
Answer:
1) system of social norms;
2) signs of legal norms;
3) differences between law and other types of social norms;
4) law and morality.
1) philosophy-<Человек имеет значение для общества лишь постольку, поскольку
He serves him>. (A. France)
2) Social psychology-<Вершина нас самих, венец нашей оригинальности –
Not our individuality, but our personality>. (P. Teilhard De Chardin)
3) economics-<Инфляция- золотое время для возврата долгов>. (K. Melikhan)
4) Sociology-<Кто умеет справиться с конфликтами путем их признания, берет
Take control of the rhythm of the story>. (R. Dahrendorf)
5) Political science-<Когда правит тиран, народ молчит, а законы не действуют>.
6) Jurisprudence-<Я вижу близкую гибель того государство, где закон не имеет силы
And is under someone's authority>. (Plato)
? Expand, by comparing them with each other, the following arguments - Schopenhauer and Kant - about genius:
“Since the quick perception of relationships according to the law of causality and motivation constitutes, in fact, the practical mind, and genius knowledge is not aimed at relationships, then a smart person, since and while he is smart, cannot be a genius, and a genius, since and as long as he is a genius, can't be smart." (A. Schopenhauer)
“Genius should be completely opposed to the spirit of imitation... Since teaching is nothing more than imitation, the greatest ability, receptivity as such cannot be considered genius.” (I. Kant)
? Why do you think, in Kant’s apt expression, “a genius himself cannot describe or scientifically substantiate how he creates his work - he gives rules like nature»?
¨ ? Genius creates tastes - “for beautiful art, i.e. to create beautiful objects, a genius is required" (I. Kant), but at the same time, "taste... is the discipline (education) of genius; she greatly clips his wings and makes him well-behaved and refined; at the same time, taste exercises guidance over genius, indicating to it what and to what extent it can spread, while remaining expedient.” (I. Kant) - How can you resolve this apparent contradiction?
W The fundamental characteristic of a genius is the ability to creativity. I ask you to get acquainted with the thoughts about the work of the philosopher of “creativity” - Berdyaev - and draw your own conclusions:
“My freedom and my creativity are obedience to the hidden will of God... human creativity, the continuation of peace-making is not self-will and rebellion, but is submission to God, bringing all the strength of one’s spirit to God...”
“True creativity presupposes asceticism, purification and sacrifice... But creativity itself is no longer humility and asceticism, but inspiration and ecstasy...”
“Creativity cannot be in one’s own name, in the name of man… creativity in one’s own name can never remain in the middle human sphere; it (then) inevitably turns into creativity in the name of another, false god...”
“Creativity is also a manifestation of love, eros that connects and enlightens... Love is creativity. This is how Christ’s commandment about Love for God and man is fulfilled..."
“Creativity is transcendence, a way out of human isolation and limitations... Poetic creativity is already transcendence...”
“Inside, in the depths, creativity always occurs from freedom; the same thing that seems to us to be development occurs only outside, in a horizontal line, projected onto a plane. Development is an exoteric category..."
“Consciousness of oneself is creativity of oneself... Knowledge is not only remembering, knowledge is also creativity...”
“Personality presupposes creativity and struggle for oneself... the realization of personality presupposes self-restraint, free submission to the superpersonal, creativity of superpersonal values, losing oneself to another...”
“The meaning of human existence is the realization of personality, qualitative elevation and ascent, the achievement of truth, truth, beauty, i.e. creation…"
“Creativity is inspiration from God, communication with God... creativity is the pinnacle of divine creation... True creativity is a religious activity... the creativity of a genius is a feat, it has its own asceticism, its own holiness...”
“True creativity cannot be the triumph of the individual, creativity always goes beyond the boundaries of individuality, it is ecclesiastical in essence, it is communication with the soul of the world...”
“Philosophy is creativity, not adaptation and obedience...”
“Creativity is the transition of non-existence into being through an act of freedom...”
“Creativity is religion itself. Creative experience is a special religious experience and path, creative ecstasy is a shock to a person’s entire being, an exit into another world. Creative experience is as religious as prayer..."
? Why do you think that in Russia genuine creativity always has a “conservative” basis?
? Intuitive insight, illumination (insight) is one of the striking properties of a genius; How do you understand the following, “creative” definition of intuition: “Intuition is the creativity of meaning, the light flashing in the darkness.” (N.A. Berdyaev)
? Think about Girenko’s reasoning about creativity: “At the moment of creation, it is impossible to distinguish the voice of the Holy Spirit from other spirits. Creativity only begins at the moment when this difference is lost, i.e. the artist is in a state where he does not see the difference between God and the Devil.”
? Explain Spengler’s reasoning: “The domestic cult (in antiquity) was dedicated to the “genius,” i.e. productive power of the head of the family."
¨ Dictionary
Monad(from the Greek monaV - “unit”) - in the philosophy of Leibniz (and before him, in antiquity - in Pythagoras): substance as a singularity, transcendental (and transcendental) inflection (inflection) of the surface of being.
Singularity(from Latin singularis - “lonely”, “separate”) - in physics: a point in space-time in which space-time is curved to infinity; in philosophy - strangeness, “monad”, singularity, bending cultural space and time around itself in its own image and likeness, peculiarity.
Intensity point- a kind of analogue of the concept of “singularity”, with the slight difference that it denotes, rather, certain internal “sinularities” of a person, i.e. that to which a person’s existence is especially directed, in relation to which it is especially tense, the internal meanings of his existence, values.
Transcending(from Latin transcendo - “to cross”) - an exit to something different from your usual horizon, an opportunity to think differently.
¨ Literature
1. Berdyaev N.A. Philosophy of freedom. The meaning of creativity. – M., 1989.
2. Weininger O. Gender and character. – M., 1994.
3. Kant I. Critique of the ability to judge. – M., 1994.
4. Lombroso Ch. Genius and insanity. – M., 1990.
5. Rozanov V.V. Beauty in nature and its meaning // Rozanov V.V. Nature and history. – M., 2008.
6. Genius syndrome. Collection. – M., 2009.
Topic 7. Some original philosophical concepts culture
7.1. Culture as a game. Huizinga concept
Eon plays like a child; the child has royal power. (Heraclitus)
Why are you wicked ones surprised? Isn't it better to play with these children than to conduct government affairs with you?
(Heraclitus - to the ruling people)
D Dutch cultural philosopher Johan Huizinga views culture as a game. Game is the ur-phenomenon of culture. Culture, according to Huizinga, is a game, realized as a game. Huizinga's main work is “Homo ludens” (“Man at Play”). Those. The distinctive property, and even, rather, here, the essence, of a person is play. Huizinga himself writes that any human activity ultimately turns out to be a game. What we call “game” in animals, by analogy with humans, is not a game in the full sense of the word, but only an appearance of the latter.
Human play is a consequence of man's ontological excess, his creative essence and freedom. A person creates while playing. A child, building a symbolic, “miniature” world of adults in play, creates it himself, anew, according to his own plan, imagination, play of imagination. The game of imagination is exclusively human. And it, this imagination, creates the symbolic universe, culture, myth, art, etiquette, ritual, etc.
Huizinga defines play as a free, spontaneous activity carried out in a certain place and time, without material benefit, according to certain rules, for a specific purpose; and it is the game that gives rise to what are called human communities, social groups that live in accordance with their own rules and thereby differ from other groups and communities.
The game, in principle, is impossible without rules. And breaking the rules leads to the destruction of the game. The opposite of play is violence. Violence destroys rules, it is the destruction of rules; destroying freedom, its possibility, it kills the imagination and the imaginary, plunges us onto an “inhuman” surface, overthrows us from the heights of freedom.
Indeed, the game can develop as freedom and in freedom only under certain rules. Every cultural phenomenon, be it a ritual, rite, sports competition, etc., is essentially a game. And insofar as he is a game, insofar as he exists as such, insofar as he has value. The game is like a glimpse of eternity in a person.
To the extent that a person fell into seriousness - to become especially seriously concerned about some vital thing - to the extent that he hid from himself the very dimension of the “human”, creative, one might even say “divine” - he reduced himself to the surface of the object that he directly put as “serious” and thereby began to worship him as an idol, lost his freedom, became a slave of necessity.
Therefore, the game, initially, in cultures has a sacred, sacred meaning - it transfers a person, reduced by necessity to ordinary things, to their “seriousness” and surface, into the sphere of the sublime, sacred, introducing him to the fact that what is considered serious, momentary and vain, is by no means worthy of "seriousness". Game is a human educator.
The game educates a person not only in the sense as we said; The game educates in a simpler form. A child, through play, still having in his soul that necessary excess of energy, creativity, growth, not only adapts, imitating (through play mimesis) to the world of adults, their mythology, but also actively builds his symbolic world in that world.
In antiquity, the word “culture”, like education, paideia, and play - paidia - “paidia”, have the same basis - paiV - “child”. And in this sense, Nietzsche writes very well about the “three transformations” of the human spirit, where the highest, last, third “transformation” is the “child” - the personification of formation, purity, creativity, and Play. And indeed, the first “transformation” is defined by Nietzsche through the image of the “camel”, i.e. a creature on which everyone loads and carries anything - a creature that personifies routine, slave labor, an essentially “inhuman” existence, devoid of any spiritual, creative dimension; “camel” is a creature pressed into “seriousness”, everyday life, without any possibility of escape into freedom; the second “transformation” - “lion” - a predator, a “master”, who, of course, towers over the “camel”, but is somehow “attached” to it, like a master to his slave, like a predator to his prey, and nothing more. perhaps slightly, slightly touches freedom, and if capable of any kind of play, then only playing with the “victim”, around the “victim”; but “child” is, indeed, freedom. And culture, like paideia, is therefore paidia - educational play, education for play, sacred play, education through play. For, as we have already said, every etiquette, ritual, morality, initiation is a game. And this game’s “sacred seriousness” is an order of magnitude higher than any “seriousness of the serious.” The sphere of play, sacred play, is the sphere of the specifically human.
Another thing is that a game, having created some cultural phenomenon, a social institution, often leaves behind only an empty and frozen form of this creativity - for example, empty formal “rules” - and turns not only into its atavism - “serious”, but even into its opposite: into violence.
A child is a possibility, an excess possibility of reality; an adult is already, in many ways, the absence of this “opportunity”; he has already frozen, “has become”, and is not capable of spontaneous play, where pure play prevails over the rules, but only of such a game, at least where the primacy of the rules reigns.
At the same time, Huizinga clearly distinguishes between “game” and “playfulness”: a game is something that is more serious than serious, it is a sacred rite, it is something that is imbued with the utmost creative tone, filled with values; playfulness, on the contrary, is something extremely frivolous and superficial; and in this sense, there is a problem of confusion of concepts and understanding under “game” of what, in essence, it is more correct to call “fun”, “playfulness”; and this is fundamentally wrong.
Every human activity has dialectical components “ process" And " result" So, in a game, the process, as far as the game is a game, somehow dominates the result. Play is, first of all, an enjoyment of the process itself (as, for example, the romantics wrote about art). To the extent that in any activity the result prevails over the process, the less play there is as such. The result, of course, is also important. But the process - in the game - is more important, more primary. And if there is pleasure, spiritual and physical, from the process itself, there will be a corresponding result; in the broadest sense, culture itself. The absolute dominance of the result is the reduction of the game, again, to the surface of “seriousness”, necessity, and the surface of pure violence, i.e. overthrow of culture. In a completely pragmatic world there is not and cannot be a game, i.e. there is not and cannot be culture. Game is a dimension of freedom, the sphere of its possibility.
That is why Huizinga writes that in his contemporary culture (the first half of the twentieth century) there is less and less play, and therefore there is less and less culture, culture is degenerating, turning into its own simulation (“fake game”, according to Huizinge).
? Huizinga defines culture from three perspectives: a) as a balance of spiritual material values, b) as containing a certain aspiration (“culture is an orientation and it is always directed towards some ideal ... the ideal of community”) and c) as power over nature, - and when this “power” is turned by a person onto himself, it is acquired as a duty - so: try to reunite this stepwise depiction of culture with its positing, the same by Huizinga, as a game.
? How do you understand the famous aphorism: “What is our life? - a game"?
? Why should a cultured person (in Japanese culture), as Huizinga notes, say not “I heard you were in love?”, but “I heard you played love?”, as you suppose?
What significance do you think the following thesis has in Japanese samurai culture: “what is serious for an ordinary person is only a game for a Noble Man”?
? Thematic issues:
1) How do you understand Schiller’s thesis that a person, when playing, reveals his essence?
2) Expand Huizinga’s thesis that play shapes human culture to a greater extent than work.
3) How do you understand Huizinga’s idea that every “forced game” is only an imitation of a game?
4) How do you understand the idea of the German philosopher Gadamer that the subject of the game is the game itself?
5) Comment on Benveniste’s definition of play: “A game is any ordered activity that contains its goal in itself and does not strive for a useful change in reality.”
6) Comment on Girenko’s thesis that “I call a world in which the authentic is prohibited and the new is permitted, a game.”
D The French philosopher Caillois distinguishes 4 types in the Game:
1. “Game-vertigo” is a “pure” game, creating, along the way, its own rules and removing them in the next moment, “pure becoming”; The ideal type of this game is the “buffoon of God,” a person “in the spirit,” a singular body, pure spontaneous movement.
2. Imitation game - a game in a mimetic space, within a certain, improvised or given scene; game as the reproduction of signs of the Other - in accordance with a certain mimetic model, center, this Other; The ideal type of this game is the actor playing the role.
3. Game-competition - a game in agonal space; a game that involves overcoming the Other, or oneself as this Other - if the player plays with himself, his present state; The ideal type of this game is a sports game.
4. “Game of chance” - this type of game takes place in various “games of chance”, where a certain number of “chips” or “field”, a ball on a roulette wheel, appears, and this type of game includes what is called “chance” , “accident” or, conversely, “luck”; The ideal type of this game is “His Majesty Chance”.
P.S. Often the types of play described above occur in life in a rather mixed form and are found in a “pure” form, if at all, extremely rarely.
? What type of game do you think can, to one degree or another, contribute to your studies at university? Give reasons for your answer.
? Why do you think modern sports “games” are becoming less and less And game, but something else?
? Consider Plato's thoughts on play and education:
“The games of our children should be in accordance with the laws as much as possible, because if they become disorderly and the children do not follow the rules, it is impossible to raise them into serious, law-abiding citizens... If children play properly from the very beginning, then thanks to the art of music they will get used to to the rule of law, and in complete contrast to other children, this habit will constantly strengthen in them and will be reflected in everything, even contribute to the correction of the state, if anything was wrong in it.”
“A free-born person should not study any science slavishly... knowledge forcibly implanted in the soul is fragile... Therefore, my friend, feed your children with sciences not by force, but playfully, so that you can better observe the natural inclinations of everyone.”
? How do you understand the following thoughts of Baudrillard about the game:
“The game, the gaming sphere in general, reveals to us the passion of the rule, the mind-blowingness of the rule, the power that comes not from desire, but from ceremonial... The only principle of the game is that the choice of the rule frees us from the law in the game.”
“The immorality of the game: we act without believing in what we are doing, without mediating with our beliefs the bewitching brilliance of purely conventional signs and a rule devoid of any foundation... the player... wants to seduce the Law itself.”
“The game is not based on the principle of reality. But it is no more based on the pleasure principle. Its only driving force is the charm of the rule and the sphere it describes.”
“The fundamental hypothesis of the game is: there is no such thing as chance... the game turns out to be an enterprise to seduce chance.”
“The game is not becoming, it does not belong to the order of desire and has nothing to do with nomadism... Cyclical and renewable - this is its inherent form... eternal return is its rule... The ecstasy of a cyclical case, a captive of the same finally decided series - this is the ideal phantasm games: to see how, under the attacks of a challenge, the same thing appears again and again, repeating itself over and over again and abolishing both chance and law at once.”
“A game is a system without contradictions, without internal negativity. That's why it's hard to make fun of her. The game cannot be parodied because its entire organization is parody. The rule plays the role of a parodic simulacrum.”
“Electronic games are a mild drug, they are consumed in the same way, accompanied by the same somnambulistic absence and the same tactile euphoria.”
¨ Dictionary
Agon(Greek agwn) – competition, struggle, competition.
Spontaneity(French spontane - spontaneous, Lat. sponte - by itself) - self-movement, creativity “out of nothing”, free activity.
Romanticism– ideological paradigm in the art of the late 18th century – early XIX centuries, characterized by a special, open and sublime attitude towards beauty, free creativity, myth; in late romanticism a peculiar ironic attitude towards reality appears; the main representatives of romanticism - Schiller, Goethe, Novalis, A. and F. Schlegel, Hölderlin, Byron, Zhukovsky, partly Lermontov, etc.; in the ordinary understanding, a romantic is an enthusiastic, in love, partly naive, but bright, person who looks at life, who believes in beauty.
Existential vacuum- the inner mental and spiritual emptiness of a person, acutely experienced or tormenting.
Eon(Greek aiwn) is a very polysemic word, depending on the context and discourse it can mean “time-event”, “eternity”, “age”, “spiritual level”, “life” etc.
¨ Bibliography
1. Gadamer H. G. Truth and Method. – M., 1992.
2. Caillois R. Myth and man. Man and the sacred. – M., 2003.
3. Nietzsche, F. Thus spoke Zarathustra // Nietzsche F. Op. in 2 vols., vol.2. – M., 1990.
5. Huizinga, J. Homo ludens. – M., 1992.
6. Schiller, F. Letters on the aesthetic education of man // Schiller, F. Sob. op. in 6 vols., vol.6. – M.: 1957.
7.2. Concepts of Freud (psychoanalytic) and Jung
He who goes to himself risks meeting himself... (C.G. Jung)
D Viennese psychologist Sigmund (Sigismund Shlomo) Freud approached culture as a kind of mental patient - and as not just a psychologist, but the creator of his own psychoanalytic method of research and treatment of patients and, first of all, patients with hysteria. And the fact that culture is not just sick, but itself represents a certain disease, was an undoubted thing for Freud. Culture, like religion, like, of course, art and morality, according to Freud, is a consequence of psychological trauma and human complexes.
Freud postulates two axiomatic theses: a) man is a being, first of all and to the greatest extent, unconscious: consciousness (“I”) is only a thin film on the surface of the chaotic pool of the unconscious, which determines the actions and speech of a person, and consists of a set of repressed drives and instincts - and all this repression is carried out by what is called “culture”, and itself constitutes the essence of this “culture”; b) this unconscious is present through and through sexy unconscious and all human culture Therefore, there is, in essence, a machine of repression, the suppression of sexuality (this thesis includes what is called “pansexualism” and the “repressive hypothesis”).
The fundamental structure of the psyche that shapes a person as a “cultural” person, i.e. carrying out such repression constitutes Metaphor of the Father (“Oedipus Complex”), based on the infant’s catastrophic primary experience of a break with his mother, more precisely with his mother’s breast, with which he, the child, as a “good object,” is, in fact, a single whole, and this separation from the source of life and pleasure, practically, from a part of oneself, and creates that, on the one hand, ontological, and on the other, psychological, crack, a trace of the experience of which subsequently forms the Oedipus complex as the basis of culture.
The child’s primary experience of such a rupture can, from the point of view of psychoanalysis, be called the schizoid-paranoid stage - the child falls into a state of hopeless isolation, total Fear, which in the language of an “adult” can be expressed in the following words: “this is inevitable death, mother (“good object” ) will never come again,” this is absolute loneliness and a kind of complete “abandonment by God.”
The next stage of this experience can be characterized as the manic-depressive stage: “the mother left, but she came back, therefore, she should come back again, but what if she doesn’t come back?...” That is. the child already “knows”, has developed a “conditioned reflex”, a primitive “idea” about the “cyclical nature of the universe”, that the mother will return, that he will again find unity with her, his hunger will be satisfied, his loneliness is not absolute, but suddenly not... This is a stage of endless anxiety, fear and, yet, still uncertain uncertainty.
These two stages, however, to some extent, taking place in the life of a person, a child, with appropriate changes, are comparable to the stages of development of human society - these are the stages of the triumph of fetishism and matricentrism in the worldview.
The next stage is the Oedipal stage, as psychoanalysts call it. This is the period in which the experience of this abandonment is a) removed by the child’s primary awareness of himself as a separate whole - separate from the mother, and b) the inescapable experience of separation from the mother is focused on the figure of the “Father” (his “metaphor”) as that which unceremoniously tears apart him, the child, with his mother.
The Oedipus stage - in terms of the cultural development of society, is the era of turning to patriarchy: the emergence of the individual - one, and power as such, possible only over the individual, but erased anew by it - two.
This primordial experience of primary separation from “Mother Nature” inevitably forms a common complex, – i.e. a series of ideas connected by one strong affect, according to Freud, - and this complex is decisive for the formation of both a person and the entire culture, a complex expressed in the desire to rule over the mother and eliminate the power of the father; the role of the Father figure, for example, can be “god”, “leader” or something like that; and at the same time, an even stronger opposite tendency: the eternal human desire to submit, to erase oneself anew, having roots in the same “complex,” elevates this projected figure, “god,” into an object of worship, including in the form of “ deification" of power, ruler.
Freud and his followers call the described affect associated with the Oedipus complex “love,” but it would probably be more accurate to call it “power,” “the desire for power,” because what kind of love is this: it is already a desire for power and nothing more. And there is, one might say, an Oedipus complex inferiority complex; more precisely, only a special case of an inferiority complex - the main source of the desire for power.
But let's return to Freud. At the oedipal stage of development of the child (and humanity), the child (person) begins to try to master his “other half,” his mother, “nature,” which undeservedly abandons him every now and then, and which he therefore wants to tame, master, in order to be completely and always merged with it, to be happy and so on, to overcome this primary crack of his existence, disturbing and troubling him, to gain integrity and, most importantly, to eliminate his “rival” - anyone who falls within the scope of the definition of the “metaphor of the Father”. And the process of this “mastery,” in all its very ambivalent spectrum, is, according to Freud, culture, expressed in magical, symbolic scenes and acts.
Freud well describes such activity, primary cultural, by describing the child’s play “fort\da” - when he, Freud, observed a child first throwing a certain toy on a string away from himself, and then attracting it back to himself, making sounds , similar to the words fort (“forward”) and “da” (“here,” “here”): forward/backward. That is, as Freud interprets this game, the child, who does not want his mother to leave him, but is by no means capable of preventing her from leaving, through this game symbolically takes possession of the mother, her departure and return; when he wants, he, symbolically, returns her, and at the same time he can let her go himself - in order to again experience the pleasure of power over her, her return: to pull the toy to himself.
And this is the primary meaning of culture: mastery, symbolic, magical, of nature, “Mother Nature,” from the bosom of which man was initially thrown out, unlike all other living beings, severed from her, and therefore forced to compensate with culture, symbolism, this ontological gap , total fear and uncertainty.
The primary desire to exercise one's power, according to Freud, is to pour out libido, is frustrated by a) the principle of reality - natural and social external conditions, and b) cultural reality, internalized in the individual, in the gap of his break with “mother”, “nature”, like Oedipus’s own complex - in this sense, culture is a tool , the technique and trace of the suppression of human desires for pleasure, i.e. a kind of power; at the same time, the individual drive, which also represents the desire for power, comes across this power structure, both external and internal, called culture - and as a derivative of this structure, “ sublimation“human erotic desires, in line with the same culture, its creation, its values: a person, sort of like a slave, works for his master, culture, for its domination. Vicious circle of power.
However, Freud called what we call here “the desire for power” – “sexual attraction”, however, if we try to understand at least a little the essence of the phenomena described by Freud, for example the same “Oedipus complex”, then we will soon understand that all Freud’s “ “sexuality” is nothing more than the desire for power and pleasure from the embodiment of this power, a by-product of which, however, not always, is “sexual release.” Pure sexual desire (let's call it "eros") always appears in Freud's distorted and alienated form - as a desire for possession, a desire for power, and by no means pure eros.
The way of obtaining pleasure from this “powerful” process in the first place can be either sadistic or masochistic; however, and various cultures can be interpreted based on the key strategies of their existence and obtaining “pleasure”: “Faustian” culture, for example, is a more “sadistic” culture, Russian is more “masochistic”, etc. In the first case: pleasure from power over another, in the second - greater ecstasy from the experience of power and violence of another over you.
The subject of the psychoanalyst's research is the patient's speech; and this speech, first of all, is a speech - “free association” - about dreams; dreams, according to Freud, are “the heavenly gates to the unconscious.” Where this speech gets confused, wanders and deceives, tries to get around some of its own “pitfalls” - there, then, a certain complex “lies”, the key to the disease. Dream images are the basis of mythological images; the principles by which these images are formed - condensation (metaphor, similarity) and displacement (metonymy, contiguity); and one of the most important problems of a psychoanalyst is to understand by what principle, here and now, the thread of both the dream and the speech about this and the same dream of the patient (or the entire culture) weaves: metaphorical or metonymic. This also includes Freud’s well-known studies of various kinds of “slips of the tongue,” “wrongs,” and “slips of the tongue.”
? Thematic issues:
1) Read the myth and tragedy about Oedipus. How do you understand this myth?
2) Read and interpret the myth and tragedy of Electra (e.g. Aeschylus's "Choephora", Sophocles' "Electra", Sartre's "The Flies"). Interpret it.
3) Read and interpret the myth of Narcissus (see “narcissism”); How can you interpret it in the light of Freud's concept?
4) In light of the above, comment on the definition of culture by the neo-Freudian (follower of Freud’s teachings) Marcuse: “Culture is the methodical sacrifice of libido, its forced switching to socially useful forms of activity and self-expression.”
5) How do you understand Berdyaev’s thought regarding the “Oedipus complex”: “The incest of Oedipus, the union with his mother was the limit of horror. In it, a person seems to return to where he came from, i.e. denies the fact of birth, rebels against the law of tribal life”?
6) Consider Baudrillard’s refutation of psychoanalysis: “Psychoanalysis, imagining itself to be dealing with the diseases of desire and sex, is in reality dealing with the diseases of temptation... To be deprived of temptation is the only possible castration.”
D Unlike Freud, the Swiss psychologist and philosopher Carl Gustav Jung a) asserts that human mental energy is not exclusively “sexual” energy, but is energy of a deeper order, which can only be expressed as sexual, and as the will to power, and as artistic creativity, etc., and b) postulates the unconscious “collective”, i.e. representing not only the repressed “deposits” of the urges of the mental life of an individual person, but, in addition, the entire totality of the previous experience of mankind in the form of the so-called archetypes, i.e. paradigms (models) for creating symbols and images - artistic, mythological, religious, dreamlike, etc. Culture, in this sense, is defined as a unique expression, actualization, objectification of archetypes.
Jung believes that there are several archetypes in the human psyche, in particular – Anima, Animus, Self, Shadow, Persona.
Anima(Latin Anima – soul) – the paradigm of “woman” in the human soul; she can be expressed as the Muse, the Eternal Feminine, the Eternal Feminine, determine the “choice of an object” (object of love) by a person; since everything repressed by culture is deposited into the a priori (i.e., original) form of Anima, in a man - first of all, everything “feminine”, then the unconscious of a man, to a greater extent, turns out to be feminine, under the “power” of Anima, and in women, on the contrary – male (under the “power” of the Animus);
Jung himself writes the following about Anima:
“Anima has a predilection for everything that is unconscious, dark, ambiguous and uncertain in a woman, for her vanity, coldness, helplessness, inconsistency...”
“Anima represents the archetype of vitality. Life itself reveals itself to a man as Anima... And the secret of a woman is that the source of life for her is the Animus, which she takes for Eros..."
“Anima is always a priori of moods, reactions, impulses, everything that is mentally spontaneous. She lives from herself and makes us living..."
“That which does not belong to the male “I” is, apparently, female... Everything related to Anima is numinous, i.e. absolutely significant, dangerous, taboo, magical... Anima is conservative.”
“Anima appeared to ancient man either as a goddess or as a witch; medieval man replaced the goddess with a heavenly lady or church; the desymbolized world led first to unhealthy sentimentality, and then to an exacerbation of moral conflicts... Anima is found mainly in projections onto the opposite sex, relationships with which become magically complicated..."
“With anima possession, for example, the patient tries to castrate himself in order to turn into a woman or, on the contrary, is afraid that something similar will be done to him.”
Animus(Latin Animus - spirit, rational soul) - prototype, form of a male model in the human soul; can be expressed as the personification of the masculine principle, “knight”, “hero”.
Here is what Jung writes about the Animus:
“The natural function of the Animus (as well as the Anima) is to reside between the individual consciousness and the collective unconscious... The Animus and Anima should function as a bridge or door that leads to the images of the collective unconscious...”
“The animus prefers to project itself onto certain “spiritual” authorities and all kinds of “heroes” (including singers, artists and athletes). Anima has a predilection for everything that is unconscious, dark, ambiguous and indefinite in a woman, for her ambiguity, for her vanity, coldness, helplessness, inconsistency ... In the process of individuation in relation to the Ego-consciousness, they can act as a kind of feminine manifestation in a man and the masculine is in the woman. The anima seeks connection, the animus desires to be different, to stand out and to know...”
“It (the Animus) is the archetype of meaning, just as the Anima represents the archetype of life.”
A person- an archetype, the personification of a person’s “mask”, the form of his “social face”, as if torn away from the “master”, or replacing him completely with himself, and now turning to him with his “face”.
“The persona is a kind of intermediate state between Ego-consciousness and objects outside world... a person should be a kind of bridge to this world..."
“A persona is something that a person in reality is not, but at the same time what he, as well as others, considers himself to be.”
Self– the key archetype of the human psyche, his true Personality, the personification of his Unity with himself, self-identity; The Self is much deeper than the superficial human “I”, which a person may often not be aware of, but which, unconsciously, holds him and reminds him of self-identity; The self can be expressed, in dreams, for example, in the images of an old man, God.
Mandala(Quadtern) is an archetype that is largely correlated with the Self, representing an personification, a symbol of the unity of the universe, its perception in the form of a quaternary (four cardinal directions, four dimensions, four Gospels, the image of the cross, swastikas, etc.), as something holistic, systemic.
Shadow- an archetype that personifies the underside of a person, his “dark” side, what a person, consciously or unconsciously, tries to repress, hide from himself, a certain “terrible truth” about himself, a kind of compensation for a person’s “day life”, its looking glass.
“The shadow personifies everything that a person refuses to recognize in himself.”
“Meeting yourself means first of all meeting your own Shadow; it is a gorge, a narrow entrance, and one who plunges into a deep source cannot remain in this painful narrowness.”
? Thematic issues:
1) Give examples from literature in which the Shadow or Persona archetypes are personified in one way or another.
2) Reveal, in connection with the above, the ancient myth of Eros and Psyche.
3) Expand, in this aspect, Yesenin’s poem “The Black Man”.
4) Which archetype do you think is personified to a greater extent in Dostoevsky’s story “The Double”: Persons or Shadows?
5) From the point of view of the archetype of the Self, reveal the essence of Chekhov’s story “The Black Monk”.
6) Give examples of the representation of Anima in Russian poetry.
7) How do you understand the following remarks by Jung:
“The main danger lies in the temptation to succumb to the enchanting influence of archetypes”;
“I say “unconscious”, but I can just as easily say “God”, “demon”, something mythological””;
“Incest is loaded with religious content... sexuality had a meaning for me as the expression of a certain chthonic spirit - the evil guise of God”;
“Everything that irritates us in others allows us to understand ourselves”;
“Primitive darkness is involved in the deep maternal secret... the desire to see the light is the desire to gain consciousness.”
8) Try to compare and contrast the concepts of “primary symbol” in Spengler and “archetype” in Jung.
W Reasonings of Jung and other philosophers about archetype; try to understand them in the light of what you have learned:
"An archetype is an explanatory description of Plato's eidoV." (K.G. Jung)
“Archetypes are determined not by content, but by form, and even then very conditionally... this form can be likened to the axial system of a crystal... the archetype itself is empty and purely formal, nothing more than a facultas praeformandi (the ability to form), a kind of a priori possibility of shaping.” (K.G. Jung)
“The true nature of the archetype cannot be realized, it is transcendental.” (K.G. Jung)
“An archetype... is an image whose roots are in the deepest unconscious... an image living a life that is not our personal one and which can only be studied in accordance with a kind of psychological archeology... Archetypes are moving symbols." (G. Bachelard)
“Archetypes... are a series of images that summarize the experience of previous generations in relation to typical situations, i.e. in circumstances that do not apply to one single individual, but are capable of imposing themselves on any person.” (R. Desouilles)
¨ Dictionary
Ambivalence(from Latin ambo - “both” and valentia - “strength”) - multidirectionality of feelings, aspirations: “both you want and it hurts” (fear mixed with desire, for example).
Unconscious– in Freud’s psychoanalysis: a reservoir, a sump of unfulfilled desires, unfulfilled hopes and other repressed “sexuality”, “stirring chaos”, striving to spill out in one way or another, to break the thin film of “consciousness”, to “incarnate”. The first scheme of the psyche, according to Freud, included “the unconscious – the preconscious – consciousness”; later it looked like this: “It (the unconscious) – I (Consciousness) – the Superego (trace, sediment of the Oedipus complex).”
Castration complex– in Freud’s psychoanalysis: the child’s initial encounter with what adults call the difference between the sexes: the child, faced with the presence/absence of a penis, is forced in order to solve a terrible “riddle” and thereby overcome the phobias that have arisen in connection with this (for example, “losing penis") or envy, builds, in fantasy, some myth - an explanation of the unknown; the phantasm caused by this complex is a vivid example of the production of any mythology; castration complex is a variation of the inferiority complex.
Electra complex– in Freud’s psychoanalysis: a girl’s unconscious attraction to her father as the owner of the phallus, that is, power, compensating for her own inferiority, the desire to “possess the owner,” and therefore her negative attitude towards her mother as a “rival”; the Electra complex is a more superficial and less universal complex than the Oedipus complex, more, if you like, “cultural”, not so primary.
Libido(Latin libido - “desire”, “sexual desire”) - mental energy of sexual desire; “Libido... we call by this term the energy of such drives that deal with everything that can be covered by the word “love”.” (S. Freud)
Mandala– in Jung’s analytical psychology: the key symbol, the matrix of the integrity of the universe – a circle with an inscribed cross (in a dynamic image – a swastika); the fundamental model of the Mandala is 3+1, consisting of three “ordinary” parts and one “strange”; another version of the Mandala expression is Quaternity (Quadternity); however, the internal structure of the mandala may be different, more geometrically multiple; “The mandala is a symbol of individuation...” (C. G. Jung)
Narcissism– in Freud’s psychoanalysis: fixation of a person’s libido on himself; in a broad sense - “love for oneself,” a passion for narcissism; there is primary narcissism, - and the stage of development of the child, subsequent to the anal and oral and preceding the genius (in accordance with the zone of fixation of pleasure at a particular stage of development), - and the mental trauma that occurred during a given period of development, “programming” the person for the rest of his life “admiring yourself” - turning into secondary narcissism; narcissism must be clearly distinguished from egoism. Culture, in this sense, can probably even be imagined as a mirror in which a person admires himself.
Sublimation(from Latin sublimes - high, sublime, towering) - the process of transferring the energy of a person’s impersonal “sexual” desires into the energy of personal creativity.
Frustration(Latin frustratio - “deception”, “vain expectation”) - limitation, delay in the implementation of any drive, desire, due to some objective circumstances, a certain here and now impossibility
Eros– in Freud’s psychoanalysis: attraction to life; the opposite of Eros Thanatos(Greek qanatoV - death) - unconscious attraction to death; on the other hand, Eros, in Freud, often turns out to be ambivalent (dual, oppositely directed) and manifests itself as destruction, self-destruction, death drive - to a large extent this comes from the confusion in the understanding of Love and Power, as is the case in Freud's attitude; and the desire for power, of course, to a large extent, is the effect of the death drive.
¨ French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan proposed his own, quite original and bringing to mind Freud’s concept, a “philological” interpretation of the above diagram of the psyche, where “It - I - Superego” are defined as “real - imaginary - symbolic”; " real“- the unconscious, fundamentally inexpressible in language, repressed, but always already “structured as linguistic activity”; " imaginary» – individual form of representation of the “real” in the Self; " symbolic“- an internalized system of cultural symbols and signs that determine human behavior and actions.
? « Mirror stage“, according to Lacan, there is a period in the life of a child when he realizes himself as “I”, i.e. a being that has an integral unity, mental and physical: others, turning to him as an individual being, at the same time, posit him in him as an individuality, and alienate him from himself as another, i.e. created by others, imposing on him his cultural pattern (“symbolic”). Compare the “mirror stage” and the myth of Narcissus - as a symbol and process of human cultivation.
¨ Bibliography
Bernard Werber
How often can you hear people say that they understand or even realize something, while all their subsequent actions and reasoning clearly show that they actually do not have this understanding. But it’s one thing not to understand something and know about it, and quite another thing to mistakenly think that you understand it. In the latter case, a person deceives himself and does not even realize it. And in the end, this leads to the fact that he closes himself off from information that is useful to him, simply ceasing to pay his attention to it and analyze it. So that this does not happen, so that each of us really understands what he wants to understand and what he needs to understand, I decided to write this article in which I will explain to you, dear readers, what a true understanding of something should be, no matter what, and how you can get there.
What is understanding confused with?
First, friends, let’s find out what understanding is not, but what it is often confused with. And many people with a good memory confuse understanding with what is commonly called obvious things, truisms, in general, with what everyone knows perfectly well. But understanding has practically nothing to do with memory. Of course, you need to remember something from what you understand, but memorizing some information in itself does not lead to understanding. The same can be said about the so-called obvious things, which sometimes only seem obvious, but few people properly understand them, and about common truths that can be heard and spoken by everyone, and everyone can throw out abstruse phrases or words, while not being able to properly explain them. In other words, everything that is in your memory and that you have heard many times, you cannot necessarily understand well. Although you will think that you understand it, since this information is familiar to you.
It is clear that when a thought is often expressed to you, you remember it so well that you begin to consider it your own. In such cases, people usually say that they have heard about it many times, so they do not consider the idea repeated for the hundred and first time to be important. But if you ask them to explain this idea, ask them to tell them how you can come to it, what consequences follow from it, what conclusions can be drawn on its basis - then not every person can say something intelligible. That is, if you understand the idea, develop it. And if you just memorized it, this is not understanding, friends. The situation with behavior is similar. If you understand something, you will definitely adjust your behavior according to your understanding. And if a person says that he understands something, but acts contrary to this understanding, thereby stepping on the same rake and thus harming himself, then what kind of understanding is this? My favorite example here is responsibility. We have all heard many times that in order to solve almost all life’s problems, a person must first of all take responsibility for his life. A hackneyed idea, isn't it? This is the so-called truism, which many people know about. They know something, but how many people understand it? How many people take responsibility for their lives in order to gain a sense of freedom and, with its help, begin to solve their problems and achieve any goals in life? Not many, do you agree? Well, at the same time they say that they understand this idea.
So friends, please remember - just because you have heard something many times or remembered something very well does not mean that you understand it. Below we will find out what it means to really understand something.
What is understanding?
Now let's answer the question - what is understanding? If you look into Dictionary Ozhegov, it will be said there that understanding is a person’s ability to comprehend, comprehend the content, meaning and meaning of something. Sounds good. But what does it mean to comprehend? How to comprehend the content, meaning, meaning of something? What should you do for this? Let's figure it out.
If we talk about comprehending the content of something, then here we are talking about analyzing this something, that is, about decomposing it into its component parts in order to study its design. You can learn a lot this way. Even one thought, if you think about it, has a connection with other thoughts from which it is formed. Some element of its design is basic, other elements are secondary, but they are all connected to each other. Therefore, in order to comprehend the content of something, you need to understand what it consists of and what it depends on. No thought is born out of the blue; it is always a response to some stimulus that determines its meaning. By understanding what caused the appearance of this or that thought, if we are talking about a thought, and also knowing what components it consists of, you will be able to comprehend its content.
When we talk about the meaning of something, it is important to understand what functions the thing whose meaning we want to understand has. It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about some device, a natural phenomenon or the same human thought - we must find out what it is intended for, what work it performs, what goals it pursues, what functions it has. For example, a pencil is not just a lead in a wooden frame, from the point of view of its design you can say so about it, this is also what it is intended for. What is the main function of a pencil? What is it for? To write, to draw, right? It is from this point of view, from the point of view of its functionality, that we are thinking about it in this case in order to understand what it is. Human thought also has different functions and a specific purpose. Some thoughts make people feel good, others make them feel bad, some encourage them to act, others, on the contrary, force them to give up. When you see, know, or at least guess for what purpose a person shares his thoughts with other people, in particular with you, you can understand these thoughts and understand the person himself. Why and why did he write, say, show something? – You need to ask yourself this question every time you want to understand another person - his words, actions, thoughts, dreams, desires. Look for the cause of something and look for the purpose that something or someone serves to understand where something comes from and where it goes.
As for comprehending the meaning of something, here I think it is important to understand what role the thing we want to understand plays in the system in which it exists. Well, by system we can understand both some limited environment in which someone or something exists and whom or what we want to understand, as well as our entire world in general. Well, for example, we want to understand why earthquakes occur, and for this we need to find out not only what causes them, the same tectonic processes, but also what they are needed for, that is, what role they play in the life of the planet earthquakes playing? After all, nothing happens for nothing, everything has its own purpose, its own task, its own goal, its own role. When we understand what exactly this role is, and why the system needs it, we understand the meaning of this something. Well, when we talk about comprehending something, we bring all these things together. That is, we study something, be it a material object or some kind of thought, from the point of view of how it is structured and how all the elements of its structure depend on each other, then what functions it, as a whole, has, and what functions the parts of which it consists have. And we also need to find out what role this something plays, within the framework of both the whole system, by which we can understand our entire world, and within the framework of that subsystem, that is, some limited environment in which this something exists. Then we will be able to say that we really understand this something, be it a material object or some phenomenon, or a thought or idea expressed or written by someone.
Everything in this world also has its own life cycle, which fits the above model of understanding something. Therefore, to fully understand what we want to understand, we definitely need to look at it in the context of time, and not just as something that happens or exists solely here and now. Let's take human thought for example - how do you know that you understand it? You can decompose it into its component parts, you can define the words that make it up, you can associate these words with some objects and processes that they mean. All this will allow you to understand what is being said, but will not give you an understanding of the thought itself, as one of the elements of a huge matrix of thoughts, which, probably, has no end. And without this, a more holistic and broader understanding of someone's thoughts, you cannot understand its nature, because for this you must study the cause-and-effect relationship of which it is a part, in order to find out from what other thoughts it was formed, or it’s better to say when and thanks to what she was born. And, what is also very important, you need to develop this thought - to continue, so to speak, its life, in order to fit it into the system of other thoughts and into the general picture of the world, and thus bring it to the moment when it becomes irrelevant, unnecessary, that is, until her death. Thoughts are born, live and die, leaving behind the results of the things that people did, guided by these thoughts. Some thoughts, as we know, live for a very long time, one might even say forever. And this is also no coincidence, you will agree. Thus, having studied someone else’s thought, you can easily create on its basis your own, unique thought, which will have the same meaning, but a different form. By this you will prove to yourself, and if necessary, to other people, that you understood someone else’s thought, someone else’s idea, because you were able to use it to create something of your own.
Therefore, if you want to understand something very well, try to describe, explain, retell it in your own words, so you can find, see, study everything that is written about above. After all, the design of something can be described in your own words, right? It is not for nothing that various words and concepts have many definitions, and all of them can be correct in their own way, depending on what properties of these concepts they reflect. And the functions of something - some thought, material object, phenomenon - can also be represented differently, in your own way, by drawing analogies with other thoughts, objects or phenomena, depending on what exactly you were trying to understand. And you can even find new meaning in something already known, if you try, because the world is so mysterious that we will always learn something new about what we already know well. This ability to explain something in your own words is what I call understanding. In general, when we convey something in our own words, or we try to convey it, naturally, without distorting the meaning of the information, we better see all those components and connections between them that make up our message, or the thought that we convey to other people. Understanding, as I have already said, is very well facilitated by the ability to draw analogies between what you want to understand with something similar in meaning. Moreover, the more detailed this analogy is, the better you will be able to understand something. After all, the more similarities and differences we see in different things, the deeper our understanding of them becomes.
What hinders understanding
A person's understanding of something is usually hampered by his strong attitudes regarding it. People do not like to change their established opinion about something that they already think they know and understand, for various reasons, including laziness. It’s so easy to stick to one single point of view regarding something or someone, without bothering to think about it. In general, I’ll tell you, ingrained attitudes are a trap for a person. The rationality of a person, I believe, is determined precisely by his ability to change his opinion regarding something as he receives new information. Conversely, if a person is unwilling to change his beliefs, regardless of evidence provided to him that his beliefs are wrong, this is a sign of unreasonableness. Bone thinking, habits, adherence to one’s attitudes, beliefs, fanaticism, blind faith in something - all this is evidence of unreasonableness. People have always suffered because of this and will continue to suffer until they change. In this case, the problem is not the inability, but the unwillingness of the person to understand something. And this, mind you, causes great harm, first of all, to himself, and often to the people who depend on him.
Haste and vanity also greatly interfere with understanding! This is generally one of the most serious problems of our time. People no longer have time not only to understand something, but also to live in general. This is especially noticeable in big cities. This is real madness - everyone is in a hurry somewhere, everyone is doing something constantly, everyone, or almost everyone, talks a lot and listens little - the brain does not work at all in such cases - it simply reflects everything that it receives from the outside world . As a result, people listen but do not hear, look but do not see, know but do not understand. And all because they simply have no time to hear something, no time to see something, no time to understand something. They need to hurry, they have things to do, a lot of things that they think are important to them. People today are forced to compete with each other - they are forced to do this so that they can survive, so that they can provide themselves with a good life, so they need to work a lot, a lot. But why and for whom they work - they do not understand. They also do not understand that for a good life it is not at all necessary to compete with someone, there are other ways to better life– these are, first of all, their own paths. After all, competing with someone means playing someone else’s game, on someone else’s field and by someone else’s rules, while you can play your own game, by your own rules and on your own territory. Only for this you need to come up with this game. But how to do this, or rather, when to do it? - No time. People are so busy, they are playing someone else's game. And those people who once came up with their own game and played it well, who became the first in something, managed to achieve great success in life. The rest are forced to compete because they imitate and do not create. And they have no way to escape from this trap, because they do not have time to understand how life works, what rules exist in it, how to play by these rules and whether it is necessary to do it at all. Haste and vanity are their way of life, and this is a real punishment for them.
Perception also determines how well a person can understand something. Different people they perceive the same information differently, they perceive reality differently, they perceive themselves and other people differently, and therefore they understand all these things differently. The perception itself depends on many factors - starting from the quality of the information received and ending with what kind of education each individual person has. But I want to say the main thing - a person’s incorrect, inadequate perception of reality is a serious problem that must be solved with the help of specialists. After all, wrong perception leads to wrong understanding, and wrong understanding leads to wrong decisions and wrong actions. Well, accordingly, a person makes mistakes, because of which he has problems, both small and very serious.
In general, it should be noted that many people today don’t even know what they want, because they simply don’t think about it. After all, they are not used to this - to think about the meaning of their life and about the correctness or incorrectness of what they are doing. And they are not used to this because most of them are simply not taught to think about something too much - they are taught to respond, react, perform, imitate, but not to think. For good performance, for good service, people are rewarded, and for bad service, they are punished accordingly. So a person learns mainly how to behave in such a way that he is rewarded more often and punished less often. And thinking about your life, about what you need in it and what you don’t, means taking responsibility for it yourself and rewarding and punishing yourself. People would happily do this if they were taught to do it. But our society lives by different rules, so this approach to teaching and educating a person is not very popular in it. But, you see, friends, if most of us, within the framework of the standard education system, are not taught to think, and to think correctly, efficiently, effectively, and about the things we need, this does not mean that we cannot teach ourselves this. We can teach ourselves anything we want.
So understanding is not only the desire and ability to understand something, for which a person needs to learn to think very well, it is also an opportunity to think about the need for understanding. And this possibility largely depends on the social environment in which a person lives. After all, the fact is that a person may not understand something and may not even realize it, or think that he does not need to understand anything. But, you see, in order to decide what we need and what we don’t, we must learn about what is there, what exists in this world, from what we can choose. Therefore, it is extremely important that in the life of each of us a kind of guide, teacher, mentor appears, either in the form of some source of useful information, or, more preferably, in the person of an intelligent person who will lead us out of the darkness and help us find the need for understanding. I think that we all, to one degree or another, are such guides, teachers, mentors for each other, since we can all teach each other something.