LOSS OF HARMONY AS A CONSEQUENCE OF DEVELOPMENT
In this article I will share my reasoning about the periods of personality development and draw parallels with the development of society as a whole. Man and society are inextricably linked, not doing one without another concept. Society develops due to the fact that it accumulates the results of the activities of individuals. Therefore, we can say that our society is the result of the combined creativity and work of many, many people at different times. Society is derived from a person. But also the individual is a product of society. Each of us has an individual mind insofar as we are born and raised in an intelligent society, among intelligent people. This means that a person and society are, to some extent, a single whole, since when talking about a person, we inevitably have to rely on society - and vice versa …that the development of an individual human personality cannot greatly exceed the development of society as a whole. Had Mozart been born in the Upper Paleolithic, for example, he would not have shown his musical genius, because in those days there were no musical instruments (except, probably, a tambourine and a pipe), and even more so, orchestral music and musical notation. However, even in his time, Mozart would not have had a chance if he was born not in a wealthy family of a court violinist, but in the family of an Austrian (or any other) peasant. Therefore, it would be more correct to call the article a little differently - not “development of the individual and society”, but “development of society and the individual”, i.e. put society first in the name. But I am not a historian or sociologist, I am a psychologist and for professional reasons it is easier for me to talk about personality.
I conventionally divide personal development into three periods: unproductive harmony (childhood), disharmony - a transitional stage of different duration (immaturity) and productive harmony (psychological maturity).
The first period - the period of unproductive harmony - conventionally goes from birth to adolescence. It ends when a person develops abstract thinking and self-consciousness, sufficiently developed to feel his alienation from the outside world and from other people. For people with disabilities, with certain organic lesions, which do not give the opportunity to develop, this blissful period lasts all life. Such a person is very vividly described in the story of V. M. Shukshin "Borya". “Borya turned to me, and I began to look closely into his eyes. I looked for a long time … I wanted to understand: is there even a spark of reason, or has it died out long ago, completely? Borya also looked at me. And I did not stumble - as happens with healthy people - any thought that I would read in his eyes, not any silent question, not any bewilderment of what we,looking sane in the eyes, we immediately also silently answer - bewilderment, contempt, defiant: "Well?" In Bori's eyes there is an all-embracing, calm benevolence, which is the case with wise old people. I felt uneasy. " I call this period "unproductive harmony" because harmony as the absence of deep inner contradictions is the usual state of a person during this period. At the dawn of its development, a person is unfamiliar with mental anguish, fear of death, self-doubt, torment of self-dissatisfaction. And the personality at this stage of its development is capable of unity with others, and therefore does not suffer from loneliness. The existential press does not press, because for a personality at this stage of development there are no and cannot be problems of an alienated, separate personality - loneliness, freedom, meaninglessness and death. These realities can exist only for a separate I, and a personality at the stage of unproductive harmony is no longer operating with I, but with WE, since the child does not think of himself outside his family and the most important nightmare for a child is to be left without his relatives, among strangers. I still remember my childhood horror and anguish of being in the hospital - I was four then. A small child cannot feel complete outside his family. The last time of my stay in the hospital ward, I no, no, but I caught myself thinking - well, at least I will rest and sleep well. What was a nightmare for me when I was little became almost a joy for me now.in the midst of strangers. I still remember my childhood horror and anguish of being in the hospital - I was four then. A small child cannot feel complete outside his family. The last time of my stay in the hospital ward, I no, no, but I caught myself thinking - well, at least I will rest and sleep well. What was a nightmare for me when I was little became almost a joy for me now.in the midst of strangers. I still remember my childhood horror and anguish of being in the hospital - I was four then. A small child cannot feel complete outside his family. The last time of my stay in the hospital ward, I no, no, but I caught myself thinking - well, at least I will rest and sleep well. What was a nightmare for me when I was little became almost a joy for me now.
Memories of childhood for most people are memories of the golden age, of the happiest time in life. The time was long, because it was not yet segmented by consciousness. Children know for sure - or rather, they don't know, but they feel! - that it is impossible to be happy alone. Childhood happiness is when you feel safe (under the supervision of your parents), it is an opportunity to play, it is to feel in unity with others - even without direct contact, to feel WE, not I. At the first stage of its development, a person is not fully aware of himself and it is precisely because of this that she is so harmonious - she lives here and now, is not preoccupied with eternal questions, is capable of completely, without a trace surrender to contemplation or activity. Again we turn to Shukshin: “Borya knows how to sit motionless for a long time on a bench … Sits, looking thoughtfully in front of him. At such moments I look at him from the sidelines and stubbornly think: can he really be angry?.. " With fools, I noticed, it is much easier, more interesting than with some clever girl who does not get out of his head that he - clever. And one more thing: fools, as I've seen them, are almost always kind people, and I feel sorry for them, and inevitably pulls to philosophize. " The world in childhood was unknown, huge, interesting and primordial; consciousness had not yet pasted labels on its objects and phenomena and had not begun to diligently classify them into groups and categories, i.e. the world was also integral, which made its colors brighter and richer. At the same time, a person is not capable of strategic planning, complex activities and does not have sufficient independence and strong-willed qualities, i.e. she's not productive. If you do not take individual geeks like the aforementioned Mozart or Pascal, then children do not make discoveries.
On the scale of all mankind, there was a gigantic period of the Paleolithic in time, which, if we count the Lower and Middle Paleolithic, takes 99% of the time of human existence. Even if we take only the Upper Paleolithic - the time when man was already completely analogous to the modern one in its anatomical structure - even this period is several times longer than the entire subsequent history of mankind. This is the time of hunter-gatherers, the time of disparate tribes. Each tribe was connected primarily by blood ties, therefore, to some extent, the tribe is a prototype of the family. In the primitive society of that time, there was no division of society into the elite and the masses, people lived in harmony with nature and with themselves. I am in no way idealizing the time, the time when, on average, a person lived for thirty years and the main goal of each was to get food. An individual member of a primitive tribe could hardly be a person in our understanding - the language was too primitive and poor, the way of life was too simple, the struggle for life, for existence was too all-consuming for every person. Since there was no written language, all the accumulated experience of previous generations could be transmitted only by personal example and oral retelling. People lived outside of time, since the border of the past went into the darkness of obscurity, ideas about the future were no less vague. Already having our brain, people did not have a material basis for the development of their personality, and therefore people have lived for centuries and millennia, practically without changing their usual way of life, extremely rarely adding anything new to their usual (and therefore reliable, proven in practice and giving the opportunity physically survive!) labor algorithms, hunting techniques, etc. At the same time, the primitive society of the Upper Paleolithic was integral and fair. The well-being of an individual was in many ways identical to the well-being of the entire tribe - and therefore people were fellow tribesmen in the truest sense of the word (co-tribesmen belonging to the same tribe, to the same clan). People lived primarily by hunting and the leaders ate the same food as all the other members of the tribe, and in the period of lack of food they suffered the same pangs of hunger. People hunted animals that were nobody's (or, more correctly, they were common), walked on land that did not belong to anyone, and everyone was equal to each other in their capabilities. Primitive people were deprived of spiritual, moral suffering for the same reason why a person does not suffer at the stage of unproductive harmony. Lack of ownership of the means of production (territory,water and wild animals could not have an owner) and the absence of contradictions in society gave reason to speak of the late Paleolithic as primitive communism. I compare this period of development of society with the first period of development of personality … The childhood of mankind and the childhood of an individual are equally unproductive and harmonious.
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Once again, I am not idealizing that time. The fairness of the distribution of meager material wealth is inextricably linked with the primitiveness of society, just as the harmony and serenity of the child's perception of the world is inextricably linked with the underdevelopment of thinking and one's own I. To any inhabitant of the Stone Age, our modern life will seem like a paradise, like us, modern people, the living conditions of primitive people will seem hellish. The problems of those old days are the problem of physical survival. Speaking about the absence of suffering, I mean only spiritual suffering associated with eternal philosophical questions like the question of the meaning of life, human loneliness, etc., physically, people suffered very much and lived for a very short time. With the development of civilization, people increasingly solved the problem of physical suffering, but at the same time a number of problems began,similar in nature to the problems that begin in every person in the course of growing up.
The second period in the development of the personality begins when the personality leaves the level of development sufficient for deep self-awareness. The acquisition of critical thinking, abstract thinking and the ability to reflect, introduces an imbalance in the world of childhood and leads to its end. I want to note right away that the first stage of personal development does not end simply because the time comes. It ends in a healthy person only in the conditions of society, in conditions where he can study, communicate, look at others, master new types of activity. If these conditions do not exist, then self-consciousness will not be formed in a person and he will continue to live an unconscious, harmonious and completely childish life. The harmony of childhood ends at the moment when a person sufficiently forms his I. It's just that we are so used to growing up children,that we involuntarily take this process for granted - we do not have before our eyes people who grew up in isolation from society and therefore devoid of self-awareness.
The disharmony of the second stage is manifested in the fact that, while retaining a number of childish traits and having experience with regard to a carefree childhood life, new requirements are presented to a person, new desires and needs arise, while the person loses the unconditional authority of the surrounding adults, thus losing the fulcrum in choosing priorities. The world of childhood was simple and understandable, and immediately it becomes multivariate, demanding and complex. The period of disharmony begins around adolescence. One of the main defining features of adolescence is the need for separation from parental care, the need for self-affirmation. We are being replaced by I, and I need to gain weight in order to assert myself, so that others recognize the authority and significance of I. This desire for self-affirmation is perfectly illustrated by the phrase,which a high school student from the movie "We'll Live Until Monday" said: "happiness is when you are understood." The teenager is not concerned with the problem of understanding OTHERS, he is concerned with the problem of understanding SELF. He wants to be understood HIM, i.e. he wants attention to himself and recognition of himself. The human I, from the moment of realizing itself, is concerned with the question - who am I? And also derivatives from it - why am I, why am I, why am I, how to relate to yourself and by what criteria to evaluate yourself?Why should I, how should I treat myself and by what criteria should I evaluate myself?Why should I, how should I treat myself and by what criteria should I evaluate myself?
If a child operates more than WE and therefore does not think of himself without his family, then a teenager, realizing himself and preoccupied with establishing his I, is busy separating from his parents, from the family. Usually the needs of self-affirmation and separation are met through rebellion. Rebellion can take many forms - but in general, this is a common behavior for a teenager. Wanting to preserve all the advantages of childhood (namely, irresponsibility and all kinds of help in solving problems), a teenager wants to have all the advantages of adulthood - freedom, respect, the right to have sex, which inevitably leads to a conflict with social reality, and sometimes with himself. Many people want exactly this - a minimum of responsibilities and a maximum of rights. This desire persists not only throughout adolescence, but throughout the entire stage of personal immaturity,which lasts for many, many people throughout their entire life. An immature person, feeling his own imbalance, is focused on himself and seeks to restore the lost harmony through the satisfaction of desires - an endless path, impracticable in practice and leading, as Pushkin wrote, to a broken trough. Fromm called this algorithm the way of possession and consumption, a manifestation of egoism, which he understood as a surrogate, as a substitute for love in general and love for oneself in particular. This is the path of a lonely, eternally unsatisfied egocentric who unconsciously seeks a way to the forever lost paradise of harmony. In general, I regard the Old Testament myth of the Fall and expulsion from paradise as a parable about the end of childhood. This myth has everything that happens to every person - the absolute authority of the parents,unity with family and the world before the rebellion (Adam and Eve were locked before the violation of God), rebellion as a necessary condition for gaining independence (eating the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil), changing priorities from parents to peers (Adam prefers to obey Eve rather than God), the inability to return again to the childish, inalienable state (expulsion from paradise forever).
The difference between personally immature adults and adolescents is only that the adolescent is more straightforward in the manifestation of his egocentrism. Moreover, if children show unconscious egocentrism, then the rebellious teenager consciously raises the banner of self-assertion, i.e. his egocentrism is conscious. An adult, but mentally immature person drapes his egocentrism by observing social norms, mastering the skills of community. A teenage conflict with social reality can move to an internal level and become an internal conflict of motives, a struggle between desire and conscience, but in general, a person remains egocentric. Therefore, the adolescent algorithm "minimum responsibilities and maximum rights" remains the leading leitmotif throughout the life of most people.
I would like to say the same word in defense of adolescents and immature people in general. Sometimes their rebellion can (and should!) Be viewed as a struggle for their rights, for the rights of an individual to assert and develop through this. The chrysalis strives to become a butterfly, the egg strives to turn into a chick, the seed wants to grow, and the human personality wants to establish itself and become fully itself. And for the opportunity to become fully himself, a person is ready to sacrifice childish privileges, ready to face fear and suffering, ready to take risks and choose, ready to enter into struggle. And a teenager who fights for the right to become himself, for the right to develop as a person, I urge respect. But I distinguish between the concepts of rebellion and struggle. I don't really respect rebels. Rebellion - it is always AGAINST - usually against responsibilities, restrictions and control. The rebellious teenager is the onewho rebel against responsibility, but not against rights. He understands freedom as his right to permissiveness, but as soon as difficulties and problems begin, he immediately runs for mom's skirt / dad's jacket. I am not calling for respect for such people. But a teenager who is outraged by the falsity and injustice of the surrounding reality, who longs to find something real, in whom the spirit of justice and thirst for knowledge is strong, who has found his true interest and is ready to study and work in the sphere of his interest, who wants not only freedom from parental supervision but also adult responsibility - such guys and girls should be respected, as well as encouraged to fight for themselves. Struggle is always FOR something; in struggle, unlike rebellion, there is a meaningful goal, although not always fully realized. A fighter, as opposed to a rebel,ready to pay for their new rights, ready to take responsibility for themselves and their choices. By struggle, I mean in this case a wide range of overcoming difficulties: from the struggle against parental over-care to banal preparation for exams or the search for income to gain financial independence. To summarize, it can be summarized as follows: a rebellious teenager seeks those who owe him, and a struggling teenager seeks to do what he himself owes. The first seeks to realize his desires at the expense of others, and the desires of the second can be realized only by his own efforts. The first seeks to possess, and the second seeks to become. The first makes a revolution in his relations with others, and the second makes a revolution in them. But back to the disharmony of an immature personality. By struggle, I mean in this case a wide range of overcoming difficulties: from the struggle against parental over-care to banal preparation for exams or the search for income to gain financial independence. To summarize, it can be summarized as follows: a rebellious teenager seeks those who owe him, and a struggling teenager seeks to do what he himself owes. The first seeks to realize his desires at the expense of others, and the desires of the second can be realized only by his own efforts. The first seeks to possess, and the second seeks to become. The first makes a revolution in his relations with others, and the second makes a revolution in them. But back to the disharmony of an immature personality. By struggle, I mean in this case a wide range of overcoming difficulties: from the struggle against parental over-care to banal preparation for exams or the search for income to gain financial independence. To summarize, it can be summarized as follows: a rebellious teenager seeks those who owe him, and a struggling teenager seeks to do what he himself owes. The first seeks to realize his desires at the expense of others, and the desires of the second can be realized only by his own efforts. The first seeks to possess, and the second seeks to become. The first makes a revolution in his relations with others, and the second makes a revolution in them. But back to the disharmony of an immature personality. To summarize, it can be summarized as follows: a rebellious teenager seeks those who owe him, and a struggling teenager seeks to do what he himself owes. The first seeks to realize his desires at the expense of others, and the desires of the second can be realized only by his own efforts. The first seeks to possess, and the second seeks to become. The first makes a revolution in his relations with others, and the second makes a revolution in them. But back to the disharmony of an immature personality. To summarize, it can be summarized as follows: a rebellious teenager seeks those who owe him, and a struggling teenager seeks to do what he himself owes. The first seeks to realize his desires at the expense of others, and the desires of the second can be realized only by his own efforts. The first seeks to possess, and the second seeks to become. The first makes a revolution in his relations with others, and the second makes a revolution in them. But back to the disharmony of an immature personality.and the second makes a revolution in them. But back to the disharmony of an immature personality.and the second makes a revolution in them. But back to the disharmony of an immature personality.
An immature personality is in disharmony because he does not know what to do with his new formation - his I. More precisely, what to do with the side effects from his I. The human self can be considered as a complex tool for adaptation to the world around him, which allows planning and foreseeing the future, build abstract models, go beyond the usual algorithms, i.e. the advantages of the developed self are enormous. At the same time, there is a reverse side of the coin, there are side effects from a developed I. First of all, this is the problem of self-determination (finding your place in the world, i.e. in society), the problem of loneliness (searching for unity with another person, overcoming alienation), the problem of meaning (the search for meaning and faith as a counterbalance to the knowledge of death) and the related problem of suffering (refusal to accept suffering as inevitable). In other words,personality is faced with four existential questions about freedom, meaninglessness, loneliness and death. And this problem is not only and NOT SO MUCH an individual, it is a problem of society as a whole. What can a personality society give to overcome the challenges of a new level of development? It cannot oppose anything to them, except for the old mechanism of religion, which in the new realities of a seething and rapidly changing modernity works very badly. A modern, immature but educated person cannot believe the way the illiterate (or semi-literate) person of the Middle Ages believed - calmly and confidently. The confidence of the faith of the illiterate peasant of the Middle Ages was largely determined by his low level of personal development, his existence in conditions in which there is no place for personal development, there is no opportunity,and therefore throughout his life he was one foot at the first level of development, at the stage of unproductive harmony. The peasants, like the children, also thought to a greater extent in the category of "We" and not "I", and therefore the problem of alienation from others and the problem of the meaning of life did not exist for them. In no way do I want to offend or humiliate believers in general. A deeply religious person really suffers less, filling the emptiness of modern life with its own ideology of consumption and senseless hedonism with their own meaning. But I think that for a personally immature person, religion can only be a support, support, but not his defining ideology. For an immature person in religion, rituals and customs are decisive, and not the internal philosophical content of the doctrine. In modern conditions, where the main determinants are the ability to compete,profit and the ability to adjust to the market, outwardly religious people do (and cannot but do!) a number of actions that are inconceivable from the point of view of the philosophy of teaching. For example, people of any capitalist country strive for wealth, while Christ directly and unequivocally said that it is more convenient for a camel to go through coal ears than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. Therefore, in the course of personal maturation, a believer cannot but doubt the dogmas, not face contradictions between the teaching and the policy of the church. No wonder many religious philosophers: Berdyaev, Kierkegaard, Bruno, Unamuno, Tolstoy, partly Pascal, etc. - they were all heretics in the eyes of their churches.people of any capitalist country strive for wealth, while Christ directly and unequivocally said that it is more convenient for a camel to pass through the ears of a coal than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. Therefore, in the course of personal maturation, a believer cannot but doubt the dogmas, not face contradictions between the teaching and the policy of the church. No wonder many religious philosophers: Berdyaev, Kierkegaard, Bruno, Unamuno, Tolstoy, partly Pascal, etc. - they were all heretics in the eyes of their churches.people of any capitalist country strive for wealth, while Christ directly and unequivocally said that it is more convenient for a camel to pass through the ears of a coal than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. Therefore, in the course of personal maturation, a believer cannot but doubt the dogmas, not face contradictions between the teaching and the policy of the church. No wonder many religious philosophers: Berdyaev, Kierkegaard, Bruno, Unamuno, Tolstoy, partly Pascal, etc. - they were all heretics in the eyes of their churches. No wonder many religious philosophers: Berdyaev, Kierkegaard, Bruno, Unamuno, Tolstoy, partly Pascal, etc. - they were all heretics in the eyes of their churches. No wonder many religious philosophers: Berdyaev, Kierkegaard, Bruno, Unamuno, Tolstoy, partly Pascal, etc. - they were all heretics in the eyes of their churches.
Once again, I will express a thought that, in my opinion, is extremely important: an individual person cannot greatly surpass in his level of awareness the society in which he exists and in which he was formed. A parallel can be drawn here: any scientific discoveries are based on previous scientific discoveries, and therefore each invention can be imagined as at the moment the last link in the chain of discoveries. And therefore, even an absolute genius, had he been born in ancient Greece or Persia, could not have invented a firearm, a telescope, or an incandescent light bulb. In part, this also applies to the psychological maturity of each person: a person in his personal development relies on other people - on his teachers, on the authors of books that impressed him, on works of art, each of which was also created by some person. Therefore, we can safely saythat the level of my specific development depends not only on myself, my qualities and volitional efforts. It will also depend on what kind of society surrounds me, what values the people around me adhere to, what is the ideology of the surrounding society and what social relations are in it. I am not a malleable clay, I have free will, freedom of choice, but I can only take options of choice from the world around me, or rather, from the world of people around me and their relationships with each other. That is why an individual cannot greatly surpass the society in which it was formed. That is why the overwhelming majority of people are at the second stage of their development - at the stage of disharmony. We are all stuck halfway to real maturity, but not because of our own sinfulness, weakness, stupidity, no!The world of human relationships around us does not give us such a choice. How to learn brotherly love in a competitive environment, where man is a wolf to man? How to think about the common good in conditions where everyone thinks first of all about themselves? How to choose a profession if the main thing at work is not interesting, meaningful work, but wages and, accordingly, prestige? How and, most importantly, why develop personally, if the measure of a person is not his personal development, but his success - primarily financial? Any sane person will say that there is no way, and he will be right.if the main thing at work is not interesting meaningful work, but wages and, accordingly, prestige? How and, most importantly, why develop personally, if the measure of a person is not his personal development, but his success - primarily financial? Any sane person will say that there is no way, and he will be right.if the main thing at work is not interesting meaningful work, but wages and, accordingly, prestige? How and, most importantly, why develop personally, if the measure of a person is not his personal development, but his success - primarily financial? Any sane person will say that there is no way, and he will be right.
But I do not want to exaggerate too much, because human history itself shows that despite all of the above, society is still developing. Our time, with all its shortcomings, will seem like paradise to a resident of the Middle Ages, and to a resident of the enlightened modern era too. If we consider justice as the possibility of equal access to material goods for all people, then modern society is not just, but it has become fairer in comparison with society a hundred years ago. Yes, justice was absolute in the Upper Paleolithic era, which I wrote about above, but it was in conditions of survival, in conditions in which a person in his personal development could not reach the second stage and fully realize himself. Under those conditions, human consciousness was like a tiny coal and the justice of that time is the justice of almost an animal pack, where justice does not in any way contradict cruelty. Justice began to end when a person healed much more humanly, namely, after the Neolithic revolution, with which the second stage of the development of society begins. And just as the second stage of personality development is a stage of disharmony, so the second stage of development of society is a stage of injustice, a time of exploitation of some by others.and the second stage in the development of society is a stage of injustice, a time of exploitation of some by others.and the second stage in the development of society is a stage of injustice, a time of exploitation of some by others.
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B. Medinsky
