This article will be the first in a series in which I will try to present the concept of the transition to a sane society in a more understandable language and in a more holistic manner. So let it be, say, like this:
The concept of the transition to a sane society is popular about unreasonableness and intrinsic values
If you try to briefly formulate the essence of this concept and the ideas associated with it, then this can be done approximately as follows:
1. Humanity is unreasonable.
2. This unreasonableness is the cause of all the main problems that beset society, and directs the development of civilization to a dead end, to an inevitable crisis.
3. To get rid of these problems, overcome the crisis and continue to move further in its development, humanity must move to a reasonable worldview and a new system of values.
In understanding the essence of these theses, people have two main problems:
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1) they do not understand the thesis of unreasonableness, since the existing stereotypes are such that humanity is quite reasonable, and the existing generally accepted ideas about the world, human behavior, the functioning of society seem to the majority, in general, quite logical, rational, motivated, although not devoid of, perhaps, certain shortcomings;
2) most people are generally not inclined to be too obsessed with what is reasonable and what is not, and is indifferent to the search, adoption and implementation of reasonable, correct decisions.
Failure to understand that humanity is unreasonable is a serious problem, and we will certainly talk about the unreasonableness of humanity later. However, the second problem associated with people's disregard for reason is an even more significant problem. A person who just does not understand that humanity is unreasonable, and generally accepted ideas and stereotypes are largely erroneous, you can point out his mistakes, his lack of understanding of some things, you can dissuade him in his ideas. But if a person does not care about what is reasonable and what is not, it is much worse. If a person does not understand something, but thinks that he understands, even if this is the result of the manifestation of frivolity, laziness, stereotypes taken on faith, etc., this is one thing, but if he consciously rejects the need for such an understanding, it is not the strength of the difficulty, and due to the neglect of it,if he deliberately puts reasonable decisions, a reasonable approach is generally lower than decisions taken without thinking, based on habits, dogmas, momentary impulses, etc., etc., then this is completely different. In other words, the problem is not that a person does not see, does not seek, etc., but that he does not value reasonable and correct decisions, does not see a personal meaning for himself in adherence to them. Moreover, this problem of an inadequate attitude to reason is very widespread, and it embraces not only the circles of the inhabitants, but also the circles of those who imagine themselves to be intellectuals. Most of these pseudo-intellectuals, for example, tend to immediately disappear from the discussion as soon as a vague lack of confidence in their rightness creeps up on them (see, for example, Fear of Thinking and Reasonable Perception as Reality).because behind their pseudo-intellectual reasoning there is no real interest in the truth, but only the desire to maintain the image. Thus, before moving on to talking about unreasonableness, it is advisable to argue in favor of abandoning such a pernicious attitude towards reason.
Let's talk about internal values.
The thesis that in order for humanity to become reasonable, a change in internal values is required, turns out to be poorly understood by the majority. Unfortunately, this is not surprising, since in modern society it is somehow not accepted to think about your inner values, it is not customary to ask a question about the purpose of being, to think about the correctness of life decisions, etc. On the contrary, for the majority this is all bullshit, distracting from the most effective achievement of seemingly almost self-evident external goals, from actions in accordance with the generally accepted priorities - to get a prestigious specialty, find a high-paying job, make a career, make a lot of money, buy a house on a ruble, etc., etc. external priorities are the main criteria for existence.
Here we see a manifestation of what could be called the materialistic mentality of the participants in society. Originally inherent in Western civilization, along with Western models, cultural and technological influences, etc., this materialistic mentality is widespread throughout the world. What is its essence? As you know, in materialism it is assumed that everything that happens in the world is determined exclusively by some objective, material factors. The materialistic mentality, spreading in society, including among people who are poorly familiar with philosophy, is manifested, accordingly, in attaching importance only to external, "objective", material factors. Paying all their attention to external realities and external tasks, people with a materialistic mentality begin to perceive internal values,personal criteria and priorities as something non-existent, ephemeral. Being steadily focused on external values, on achieving material benefits and focusing their efforts on obtaining them, they form an opinion about self-development, self-improvement, about the search for some value guidelines as sheer stupidity and absurdity.
Ideas about personality development, if any in the West, are present only in a distorted form, representing variations of trainings, technologies, algorithms aimed at training and coaching in order to achieve the same standardized external goals - "to become rich and successful."
In general, in materialistic views there is a stereotype that a person has not evolved, in fact, from the moment of his appearance, that people have exactly the same basic habits and aspirations, qualities and abilities. That the progress of mankind is, in fact, only the progress of technology, and people remain (and will remain) exactly the same. If the materialists are talking about changing a person, then this means, again, only a physical change, for example, to make it so that a person can breathe under water without scuba gear, see at night without night vision devices, etc. However, and the peculiarities of human behavior, according to materialists, are also determined by objective, material reasons - certain genes, hormones produced in the body, etc., and, accordingly,can be changed by affecting these material components. However, in the main, in the ideas of materialists, the qualities, abilities, aspirations of a person appear not as something that changes, but as some given parameters that need to be fixed and taken into account, like some physical constants.
The key question is whether materialistic views are correct. Of course, the adherents of materialism consider materialism to be some kind of synonym for science, rationality, an objective, rational view of things, etc. But is this really so? Not at all. There is no reason to believe that materialism is the result of a scientific, rational view of the world. The opposite is true. The theses of materialism are unsupported dogmas. Moreover, in modern science materialistic ideas lead to all sorts of global contradictions, forcing their adherents to try to obscure them or come up with some artificial implausible hypotheses to explain them. Moreover, materialism simply contradicts empirical facts. Let's consider this issue in more detail.
It is easy to refute basic materialistic dogmas in different ways, but I will consider an example that has an important connection with the topic of the article (that is, with the topic of rationality and intrinsic values).
The second law of thermodynamics occupies an essential place in modern physics. This law was formulated as early as the middle of the 19th century. based on empirical observations by Clausius, and Boltzmann showed that this law can be formulated as the law of increasing entropy in a closed system and, in principle, deduced using the theory of probability and mathematical statistics. What does the second law of thermodynamics say? He says that processes occurring in nature tend to bring systems that were in a nonequilibrium state into a state of thermodynamic equilibrium corresponding to a maximum of entropy, i.e., to a maximum of chaos and disorder. The second law of thermodynamics is manifested in the fact that if you pour hot and cold water into one pot, they will mix, and you get one water - warm, if you mix the red and blue paint,then you get purple, etc., and in the direction of increasing chaos, everything happens easily and spontaneously, but dividing water back into hot and cold or paint into blue and red will be much more difficult. On the basis of the second law of thermodynamics, Clausius formulated a hypothesis about the thermal death of the Universe - ultimately, after some time, due to the second law of thermodynamics, the entire Universe will come to a state of thermodynamic equilibrium and all macroscopic processes in it will stop.after some time, due to the second law of thermodynamics, the entire Universe will come to a state of thermodynamic equilibrium and all macroscopic processes in it will stop.after some time, due to the second law of thermodynamics, the entire Universe will come to a state of thermodynamic equilibrium and all macroscopic processes in it will stop.
There was always a lot of controversy around the second law of thermodynamics (according to one version, as a result of such disputes, Boltzmann fell into a depression and shot himself). However, we can unambiguously state the following: if processes of two types take place in the system, which are taken into account in modern physics, namely, processes are clearly determined and processes are random (in classical mechanics, processes are considered deterministic, processes occurring at the microlevel where they enter into the action of the equations of quantum mechanics, they constantly lead to small random changes in the motion of particles), then the second law of thermodynamics is valid.
However, despite the fact that the second law is well supported by empirical facts and, of course, works great in inanimate nature, it is in no way consistent with the fact that processes of complication and ordering take place in the Universe, one of which is the evolution of life on Earth. Moreover, since the more correct formulation of the second law of thermodynamics is not such that the system tends to the maximum entropy, but is such that the most probable state of the system is a state near the maximum entropy, then in order for the system to proceed with processes leading to an increase in entropy, the initial state of the system must be far from the state of thermodynamic equilibrium, i.e., sufficiently ordered. In particular, since we do not observe that the modern Universe is in a state of thermodynamic equilibrium,then the initial state of the Universe, provided that the second law of thermodynamics is valid, should have been highly ordered and nonequilibrium.
Where did the initial nonequilibrium and orderliness in the Universe come from? This is a big problem for modern science, if you stick to materialistic ideas. Some scientists are trying to cram this order into the Big Bang, during which this order was allegedly generated by some kind of supermegafluctuation, others give rise to even more delusional hypotheses such as the so-called. anthropic principle. One thing is clear - if we assume that the existing state of the Universe, in which complex, ordered phenomena are present, is the result of chance, that such an accident should have been so unlikely that the assumption of such a chance would be an extremely artificial and implausible assumption. What is the only plausible solution? The only plausible solution is to assume the existence in the Universe of some additional factor unknown to modern science, which manifests itself in the fact that it counteracts random chaotic processes leading to an increase in entropy and leads to processes of ordering and decreasing entropy, and this factor acts constantly and manifests itself in different places in the universe. In particular, one should assume the manifestation of this factor in the processes taking place in living nature and human activity.moreover, this factor acts constantly and manifests itself in different places in the Universe. In particular, one should assume the manifestation of this factor in the processes taking place in living nature and human activity.moreover, this factor acts constantly and manifests itself in different places in the Universe. In particular, one should assume the manifestation of this factor in the processes taking place in living nature and human activity.
However, the fact that human behavior is not described exclusively by any deterministic material reasons or random factors, and that a person has free will, is a well-known empirical fact.
Thus, modern science in combination with materialistic ideas cannot explain the existing reality.
Now let's turn in search of explanations to religious beliefs. What do all religions (regardless of additional differences) claim? One of the main theses of religious teachings is the thesis about the duality of human nature, namely about the presence, in addition to the material component (body), of some additional spiritual component - the so-called. souls. The introduction of ideas about the soul, which is responsible for free will and the basic manifestations of personality, indeed, well resolves existing contradictions.
However, in order to reflect on the correctness of such ideas, there are other arguments. There are many studies that support them, and many books on this topic have been published in the West. In particular, books by authors such as Moody or Stevenson are well known. Their books describe the results of research related to the study and generalization of the memories of people who have experienced a state of clinical death, as well as people who have retained memories of their previous lives. Although, with some caution, the authors do not directly claim that the research results prove one hundred percent of life after death and reincarnation, they point out that, however, it is the acceptance of these versions that would be the best explanation of the observed phenomena.
Acceptance of such ideas about the soul existing in religions completely undermines the materialistic mentality and the stereotype that has developed in it about the placement of accents in life aspirations (this undermining will be especially strong if we also accept the concept of karma). Indeed, the materialistic mentality is largely based on getting as many benefits as possible in the material world while you are given a time limit, and not being responsible for anything after death. The acceptance of ideas about the soul completely changes the emphasis, because, unlike materialism, where the material world is the only reality, the soul does not exist, and the personality, consciousness, etc. are functions of the body, in this case you will have to accept that, on the contrary, the material world and material acquisitions are a less important reality than one's own personality, one's own,transferred constantly from one reality to another spiritual essence, and, accordingly, it is on it that attention should be focused. In addition, according to the concept of karma, those actions and manifestations that a person performed in life, and, accordingly, in performing them, manifested, increased certain features of his essence, chose and established certain guidelines for himself in the value plan, will surely affect on his future fate. Behaving frivolously, degrading, cultivating not the best features of his essence, a person will certainly reap not the best fruits of his reckless deeds later, respectively, developing a personality and constantly thinking about what actions would be more correct, constantly striving to form a more perfect, more ideal idea about what to do and how to relate to certain things,man will reap the best fruits of his actions in the future. It is interesting, by the way, that while Eastern religious teachings (which Moody notes in particular) give a more correct view of things, Western religions are obviously better suited to the materialist mentality. If Eastern religions (for example, Buddhism) try to explain to a person the connection between his actions and consequences, leaving him to make his own decisions, then Western religions, for example, Christianity, and, especially, Islam, directly demand to follow the ideals given in a ready-made form and threaten with dire consequences in case of non-compliance. If Eastern religions (for example, Buddhism) try to explain to a person the connection between his actions and consequences, leaving him to make his own decisions, then Western religions, for example, Christianity, and, especially, Islam, directly demand to follow the ideals given in a ready-made form and threaten with dire consequences in case of non-compliance. If Eastern religions (for example, Buddhism) try to explain to a person the connection between his actions and consequences, leaving him to make his own decisions, then Western religions, for example, Christianity, and, especially, Islam, directly demand to follow the ideals given in a ready-made form and threaten with dire consequences in case of non-compliance.
I am not campaigning in favor of religion, and in no way am I trying to push you to the idea that turning to certain religious teachings is the right decision. On the contrary, I am sure that religious teachings, like materialistic ones, push a person to false stereotypes, a false strategy of behavior in life. Although, obviously, a separate article will be devoted to the criticism of religion, here I want to note the most significant negative point in those attitudes that the religious approach contains. By instilling in people the need to take care of the individual salvation and development of the soul, religious teachings push people to deny the value of the material world, deny the need to improve society, etc., leaving the concern for this to God or the karmic law. T. about. and in the face of the materialistic,and in the face of religious teachings we get an equally one-sided, non-constructive approach.
I want to direct you to a slightly different conclusion.
First, let us return to the fact that the decisive role in the activities of people is played by the internal factor, and not external influences, as the materialists claim (this, in relation to the development of civilization, was discussed in the 4-level concept). Therefore, it is precisely this internal factor, as the most important component, that needs to be paid attention when considering the processes taking place in society, when analyzing the strategy of people's behavior, etc. Secondly, artificial "objectification" should be removed from external, material factors, remove the attribution of subjective categories to external objects, that is, to assume, for example, that some things in themselves are "objectively" pleasant and attractive, others are "objectively" unpleasant and repulsive, etc., it is unambiguous that the attitude towards one or another things, internal negative or positive background, that is, then,how a person feels in a particular situation, etc., there are properties of his inner essence, and different people, due to the difference in their internal attitudes, values, etc., can perceive the same external phenomena in a completely differently.
The dogmas of materialism suggest that a person should strive for “objectively” attractive or “objectively” necessary external things and consider their achievement as a success, get satisfaction from this, and the probability of success is determined only by external circumstances or, again, “objectively” given characteristics of himself human. In contrast to these dogmas, we come to different conclusions - the degree of success in a particular case depends on internal qualities, internal attitudes and goals, and the degree of satisfaction with existence is determined not by objective factors, but by their compliance with internal values, therefore, it is internal values and qualities that are what should be developed, improved, and there is what should be guided in this case in your life and work. That is, you need to have internal values, seek and rely on them,being guided by them in their daily activities, if you choose a strategy that corresponds to the materialistic mentality, this will not lead to anything good.
Let's consider these findings in more detail.
The fact that internal factors play a decisive role and have the character of a root cause in the development of nature and society is obvious and is confirmed by numerous examples. One of the rather interesting considerations of this phenomenon is, in particular, the theory of Gumilev, in which he introduces the concept of passionarity as the main decisive factor in the development of civilization. Although Gumilev's theory in its holistic form is incorrect, and the conclusions drawn in it cannot be generalized to the development of all civilizations (as I already noted in the article Scenario of the Near Future of Civilization), it does contain many interesting and valuable ideas and observations. What does passionarity mean? Passionarity is the level of manifestation of vital energy, activity, associated with the ability and desire to generate new ideas, overcome difficulties,transformation of the surrounding reality. Passionarity can be both a characteristic of an individual person (that is, there are people with high passion and low passion), and society as a whole. Passionarity, according to Gumilev's theory, acts as the main driving force of the historical process, its influence determines the processes of birth, development and death of ethnic groups, peoples, civilizations.
According to this theory, the main reason leading to the emergence and rapid development of a certain local civilization or ethnos is the so-called. passionary push. A passionary impulse means a striving for changes, great accomplishments that suddenly arises in the minds of a certain group of people, a desire to immediately begin to implement some ideals, correct existing shortcomings and transform the surrounding reality. Guided by a passionate impulse, people create a new young ethnos, a young civilization that begins rapid development and demonstrates impressive achievements. However, over time, the passionary spirit dries up, the level of passionarity decreases, people become more passive and more inclined to use the fruits of past achievements than to strive for new ones, and leaders are at the helm,extraordinary and great-achievement-oriented personalities are replaced by cautious, conservative rulers who are more focused on holding their positions than on development. In the end, the passionary spirit falls so much that civilization falls into decay and collapses from the inside, eventually ceasing to exist with complete indifference, passivity and inability to act for the people and the authorities. The factor of passionarity leads to the fact that poor, weak, small and backward tribes, surrounded by powerful neighbors, easily crush their opponents and create great empires, and huge, technologically advanced and armed to the teeth states collapse from the wind. There are a lot of examples confirming this scheme - the Romans, Turks, Mongols, etc., etc. All of them confirm the most important thesis - spirit, inner aspirations,the presence of internal support in the form of internal values are much more important things than favorable external, material factors.
Similar schemes can be applied to individual periods in the development of our country - compare the time of the great accomplishments of Peter and the hopelessly crumbling Russian Empire of Nicholas 2, the first years of Soviet power, when the country, despite the devastation, illiteracy and a hostile environment, persistently carried out grandiose plans that led to it the status of a superpower, and the last years of the existence of the USSR, when both the top leadership and the party and the people of a huge country indifferently watched the growing tendencies of disintegration, passively waiting for the collapse of the state, the collapse of the economy and the coming to power of crowds of traitors and criminals.
Now the reanimation of the internal value basis, the awakening of the passionate potential of our great people, the victory over passivity, indifference, moral and value relativism and the desire for dull consumption of entertainment and material goods is the most important task for our country.
Consider now 2 strategies of existence. The first strategy is that a person is looking for inner values for himself, chooses goals for himself based on them and achieving them, thus reaching ever greater levels of inner harmony and inner potential. Following a similar path, a person solves the tasks of self-development, improving his personality, acquiring and strengthening the best qualities and eliminating shortcomings. Following a similar path, a person will never say that he has lived an unhappy and useless life. However, the first strategy is more difficult and labor-intensive than the second. What is the essence of the second strategy? It is that a person deliberately refuses to implement some personal goals, perhaps, considering them difficult,either under pressure from the environment or for some other reason and instead goes to those sources of satisfaction that can give him a simple, momentary effect. A person understands perfectly well that this is largely just an empty pastime and burning through life, but the memories of pleasant emotions and the desire to get them again, combined with the unwillingness to overcome difficulties and wage an internal struggle, pushes him in this direction again and again. Some people who prefer the second strategy can engage in self-deception and promise themselves to take on something worthwhile and achieve something, constantly postponing everything for later, some can deliberately reject the path of self-development and personal achievements and throw all their strength into search and exploitation. external sources of satisfaction. T. n. consumer society,whose standards are imposed both in the West and in our country, is pushing an increasing number of people to just such a dead-end choice.
The second strategy cannot lead to anything good. It leads to the degradation of the personality, the accumulation of internal contradictions in it, the growth of dissatisfaction and opportunities for the manifestation of uncontrollable negative emotions and impulses. As a rule, this path leads to the formation of addictions weighing on a person, making a person a slave to external sources of satisfaction.
There is one more point to which I would like to draw your attention. We are talking about some relativity of human perception of intangible values and the choice of a particular strategy of behavior. On the one hand, if the gap between value priorities and the surrounding reality is too large, if there are too many difficulties on the way of following these value priorities, then following these value priorities that are too high for the surrounding reality may be problematic (although not impossible). In this regard, a person who finds himself in this situation will most likely be forced to turn to some lower, intermediate, value priorities in order to successfully counteract external factors. On the other hand, if the level of development of personality, internal values of a person is low enough in comparison with those possibilities,which is given to him by the surrounding reality, and, being devoid of at least some worthwhile difficulties, a person has ample opportunities to achieve his low goals, exists in hothouse conditions, this pushes him to a strategy of thoughtless consumerism, leads to value relativism, promotes the search for empty, perverted sources of satisfaction, instead of following the path of personal development.
Thus, if we talk about a strategy for the optimal development of a person and society, then we must bear in mind not only the desire for certain value priorities, not only declare the highest values themselves, but must bear in mind, first of all, the importance of maintaining a constant source, a constant vector on development. There is an obvious fact noted by many people - for the normal development of a person, team, society, it is necessary to set new and new goals all the time after achieving goals, without which the positive background of existence is lost. T. about. there is a need for a constant search and setting of new relevant goals, not those that are so far and divorced from reality that even the correctness of their setting is doubtful, but not such,which require almost no effort and do not use the inner potential of the individual / society.
These features lead to the cyclical development of peoples and civilizations. In the beginning, when a drive of passion arises and people are driven by great goals, civilization develops quickly and efficiently. Then, when many goals have already been achieved, people get bogged down in reaping strategies, and development gives way to degradation and decline. In the resulting crisis, civilization has a chance to redefine goals, put forward new grandiose plans and a new passionary impetus. Some civilizations can use this chance, others cannot, while, depending on the type of civilization, the chances may differ significantly (see Scenario of the near future of a civilization).
Let us now return to the problem of unreasonableness.
What is Mind? As I already noted in the article "What is reason", the concept of reason in the existing generally accepted concepts is vague, often everyone defines it as he pleases, calling "reasonable" what he wants. For some, "reasonable" can have a shade of benefit, 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 plan, the concept of "mind" could be associated with the same anti-entropic factor acting in the Universe; in this sense, "mind" appears as a kind of synonym for the concepts of "consciousness", "spirit", etc. Acting rationally, performing internal work, directing efforts to self-development, a person carries out creative activity, streamlines and complicates the surrounding reality, succumbing to external factors, showing frivolity, discarding constructive goals, he himself and his activities fall under the influence of the second law of thermodynamics, and the result is destruction, degradation, chaos his own personality and the surrounding reality, which he influences.
However, we need another, narrower and clearer definition of the mind, in a meaning closer to ordinary reality. Consider two explanations, with an explanation and identification of the criteria of reason and proof of the unreasonableness of humanity in a more popular, everyday sense and in a more strict sense.
In a simple, popular sense, the mind is the ability for meaningful behavior, that which makes it possible to think, to understand the essence of the phenomena taking place. The mind helps a person to ask himself questions and come to certain conclusions through reflection. Reason helps to distinguish right decisions from wrong ones. Thus, a person who makes decisions based on thinking and understanding the state of affairs will be a reasonable person.
However, do people think before making decisions, are their conclusions, assessments, actions based on understanding things? Obviously not. They are guided by completely different factors. Stamps, labels, image considerations, imitation of authority, herd instinct, etc. - this is not a complete list of what replaces in the overwhelming majority of cases an attempt to think and make a meaningful decision.
We see at every step how absurd things are happening around, dictated by a lack of reason in our society. E-mail boxes designed to facilitate useful communications are packed with tons of spam every day, and every day people are foolishly spending a lot of effort - some to send out spam, others to fight it. Every year in schools, millions of teachers give students a lot of information that they themselves do not understand very well, and millions of students, spending a lot of time memorizing it, leave school, also understanding little and forgetting most of it. Constantly, tirelessly, copyright holders, program owners, film studios and music producers try to protect the inherently absurd ownership of information, introducing various restrictions and obstacles to its use,and constantly pirates and hackers spend efforts in order to steal, hack and replicate its illegal copies. Millions of people, who make up the majority of the population of Russia, voted for Yeltsin, electing him president in 1991, although it was clear in advance, as day, what his activities could lead to, and the same millions of people in the late 90s already vehemently hated Yeltsin and the oligarchs and liberals brought to power by him and regretted the collapse of the USSR.
We now turn to a more rigorous examination of the criteria of reason and arguments about the unreasonableness of humanity.
If you choose the most important of the brief characteristics of the mind, such as those in the article "What is the mind", then I would say that the mind is systemic thinking. What is a system? The system consists of interconnected elements, but not just connected at random, but such that they form a kind of complete ordered structure that makes sense as a whole. A reasonable person thinks systemically, that is, he tries to bring all his ideas into a system in which they will not contradict each other and will make sense as a whole. Understanding things, which is the most important criterion of reason, means that a person clearly imagines the whole and sees the place of each element in his representation.
Let's look at an example. Let's say we have a mosaic with the image of some animal, consisting of a large number of separate pieces. Looking at one or the other piece separately, we cannot understand what is depicted there. If we try to put the mosaic together, until a certain moment we will still not understand what is in the picture, but at a certain moment a part of the assembled mosaic will give us the opportunity to understand what is depicted there, and we can easily determine the place of all the other pieces. … In the same way, a qualitative transition in our understanding of different things manifests itself - we can long and persistently reflect on some issue, not understanding its solution, over a phenomenon, not understanding what its logic, causes and internal mechanism are, sorting out certain sides and details, until suddenly, at one moment, we do not understand its essence as a whole, and that's it,what we have been thinking about for so long will fall into place and become extremely clear.
However, is people's perception of the world holistic? Are they exhibiting systems thinking? Do they have a clear understanding of things? Of course not. The thinking of people is unsystematic, and the representation is piecewise, being composed of many unrelated and contradicting elements - theories, dogmas, stereotypes, opinions. Instead of striving for a holistic view of the world in order to strive to penetrate into the essence, people create a superficial view composed of many separate pieces, strive to immediately judge each individual phenomenon without understanding the existing relationships. Even Socrates, who lived several centuries before our era, noticed that all generally accepted ideas are completely contradictory, but at the same time people do not even know about it, being sure that, in general, they know and understand everything well. As a proof of this, Socrates could take any thesis, in the correctness of which a person was absolutely sure, and by leading questions lead him to the opposite thesis. Until our time, nothing has essentially changed since then. All generally accepted ideas are still completely contradictory, and people are still sure that they, in general, understand everything well, however, trying to understand a little better and dig a little deeper into these generally accepted stereotypes, a person will immediately get confused and immediately go into dead end. Scientific ideas are also no exception - the whole so-called. science consists of a huge number of independent disciplines, each of which has its own separate subject of study, and in each separate science there is a huge number of schools, directions, theories and hypotheses, representatives and supporters of which, demonstrating a narrow,one-sided view, fiercely arguing and accusing each other of being wrong, not being able to come to a consensus and combine their theories into a single whole. A good illustration of this situation, in fact, is the well-known fable about the sages and the elephant (see, for example, the version in Marshak's translation).
If a reasonable person, showing systemic thinking and coming to an understanding of the phenomenon as a whole, sees the interrelationships of its various sides and parts, he can model and predict its change and evolution, then a person with a haphazard and piecewise approach does not understand this, he fixes separate parts, sides, tendencies in their unchanging form and tries to pass them off as unchanging truth. This leads to the emergence of dogmas (see. The Problem of Dogmatism), which simply flood people's ideas. At the same time, defending certain dogmas, and building their ideas on their basis, people are not able to understand the relativity of those things that these dogmas speak about, they are not able to see the existence of the limits of their applicability, beyond which these dogmas cease to correspond to the truth.
Thus, the lack of a holistic view of the world, the composition of people's ideas from many separate pieces, their contradictory and dogmatic nature are the first proof of unreasonableness.
Farther. Even if a person does not have an understanding of the relative of any phenomenon, it would not in itself be a very big trouble if he had a method with which he could understand this phenomenon and come to the truth. However, does modern people have such a method, a method of seeking truth? Of course not. This is undoubtedly evidenced by the huge number of questions for which no clear answers have been found for the entire time of discussions around them, and a huge number of problems for which no solutions have been found, although it is known for sure that such solutions exist. It is interesting, at the same time, that in a significant number of cases people are not even able to give themselves a correct account of the difficulties and prospects of solving such problems, in their ability to solve them. So, for example, shortly after the advent of computers in the mid-20th century. scientists began to predictthat, at least in 20 years, the problem of machine translation from one language to another will be solved. However, when the deadline for the solution came and the problem was not solved, they again began to predict its solution in 20 years. The problem has not yet been solved, and yet again we read the same persistently made predictions.
There is no need to go far for examples to show how weak the human mind is, how difficult it is for a modern person to think effectively. If students from a regular high school are given, for example, even a not too difficult problem in physics, it is likely that several people will solve it in a couple of minutes, but most will never solve it. Precisely never, despite the fact that they can try for a long time and think hard. But in the same way, there is a huge number of tasks and questions in human ideas that no one can clarify, in which all "intellectuals", scientists and philosophers inevitably come to a dead end, walking around and shoving water in a mortar and for a huge time not for a millimeter is not close to the truth. As a rule, all, at least somewhat complex and general questions of different types, for example, "What is primary - matter or consciousness?"How to defeat corruption?", "What is the main criterion for the quality of life?" and so on, and even questions related to the problem of defining fairly abstract concepts, for example, "What is love?" or "What is truth?" fall into this category. In modern science, such stubbornly unresolved problems are also simply dark darkness.
Thus, the absence of a method for seeking truth and understanding things is the second proof of unreasonableness.
However, even the absence of a method would not create a situation of hopeless unreasonableness if people, at least, strived to understand things and to look for the right answers and solutions. However, people do not have such an aspiration either. 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 aspiration, seeks to understand what he does not understand, does not undertake to categorically assert the theses in which he is not sure, admits mistakes, etc., a person, not guided by a reasonable aspiration, 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 who strives to think, strives to establish the truth, sooner or later will be able to overcome both the fact that he does not understand the ways to achieve truth, and his own lack of understanding certain questions. 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 insoluble.
Among other absurd notions characteristic of modern civilization, one of the most absurd and harmful is the stereotype of the instrumental role of reason. According to this stereotype, the mind is a kind of auxiliary means for realizing needs, for solving tasks set by a person, based on his desires. That is, this stereotype assumes that the mind, in general, in itself, is not really 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 reason is really 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 human behavior.
The falsity and perniciousness of this stereotype, however, is easily seen from the fact that in order to see the approaching problem, or, conversely, a certain opportunity, a person must understand reality sufficiently. Moreover, not understanding reality sufficiently and following only his unreasonable desires, a person himself can bring (and constantly does) a lot of harm to himself.
Thus, the absence 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 humanity.
