Chapter IV Social level. Social hierarchy and its levels

Few would deny that one of the best ways to make friends is to find someone with similar interests. Usually relationships begin due to common interests related to the outside world. When I use the terms “outside world” or “context,” I think of a show featuring Dr. Ruth, one of the most popular psychologists on television. People write her letters and call her on the phone with questions: “How can I meet the right person? I waste a lot of time meeting a lot of uninteresting people." Her advice is surprisingly accurate. She asks the question: “What do you like to do? Which of your hobbies truly makes you happy? Usually people respond by mentioning something like tennis, theater or dancing. Then Dr. Ruth tells them: “Then you need to go to the theater, to dances, to the tennis court - there are men and women suitable for you, and among them you can meet your future partner. If you don't like drinking, smoking and dirty jokes, don't go to bars, because there you will most likely meet people whose interests are completely different from yours. You need to go where people who like the same things gather and you".

The first level of relationship usually begins with the general environment, or the context in which you live, work and play. What do you like to do? What don't you like to do? What are your main interests in life? Do you like rock and roll or ballet, cinema or theater? Do you like to play golf or tennis - or do you prefer to curl up on the sofa with a book? Do you like cycling or hiking? All these are your interests related to society. Each of these ways of spending time is associated with certain places where you can meet people with similar interests. This seems completely clear and logical.

But on the other hand, there are many levels of awareness. We have all been convinced more than once that you can go to a tennis club or a ballroom dance evening and meet a person who seems very interesting. But why do we play a wonderful game of tennis with him, and then when we sit next to each other, we have nothing to say to each other? This happens because, despite the common environment, we do not encounter a response at other levels. This is an extremely important discovery, since we are usually not aware of all levels of relationships. I have repeatedly been convinced of this both from the experiences of my friends and from my own experience. And so you can communicate with someone on a social level, but on a psychological or emotional level you remain strangers.

So, the first level of relationships is the actions that we perform in the outside world. Let's call it active part of the relationship.

Expanded society

People usually attach special importance to everything related to social activities. It is very important for society what you do, what your hobbies are and how you organize your time. One of my seminars was attended by a friend of mine who had been happily married for twenty-five years. A group of people were talking about how to achieve happiness in a relationship, what they want and what they don't want. My friend said, “The point is, can you live together?” This is really the most important question: can you live together and do common activities?

Here we can consider activity as one of the components of the social level. This level includes your favorite activities: hiking, tennis, studying, etc. At the activity level, the question is: are you able to live and act together? Interestingly, the idea of ​​love marriage is a relatively recent discovery. For thousands of years, most people did not marry for love. Even in Western culture, until 150 years ago, marriages were largely "arranged" by relatives, and in India this is still the case: most marriages are arranged by parents, guided by social considerations.

For example, in India, belonging to one caste or another is decisive. Other important factors are material wealth, education, background and occupation of the parents. The combination of these factors plays a major role in matters of matchmaking. I recently worked with a client who was born into a very wealthy family and had a PhD in economics. She had been married for eight years to a man who was born into a poor family and had little education. The marriage failed due to disharmony at the social level. My client wanted to continue her education, study a variety of subjects, expand her horizons, and travel more. Her husband never went to college and had no interest in science. He didn't need a big house because his wants and needs were completely different from hers. They were no better or worse - they were just different. She wanted to grow and develop, and he wanted to leave everything as it was. Because of these differences, they were constantly in conflict. If you try to communicate on one level - for example, love (essential) or sex (biological) in order to fill the void on other levels - you will do what in relationship psychology is called confusion of levels. When you confuse the levels, you create future problems.

THE SHOCK OF AWARENESS OF LONELINESS GIVES UP THE DESIRE TO RECOVER LOST INCLUSION. A CHILD RARELY, IF NEVER, CONSIDERS ALL LEVELS OF THE RELATIONSHIP AS IMPORTANT TO ACHIEVE THIS CLOSE. SO HE SELECTS THE APPROPRIATE ONE AND DIScards THOSE THAT HE DOESN'T CONSIDER IMPORTANT.

YEARS LATER THIS STRATEGY BECOME AUTOMATIC, AND THEN A PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY ARISES TO JUSTIFY THE REPLACEMENT OF ONE LEVEL WITH ANOTHER.

Stephen H. Wolinsky

The social level includes not only your hobbies, but also your background and background. I remember my uncle. After twenty-five years of marriage, his wife died of cancer. A few years later he married a woman very similar to my aunt. They had similar backgrounds, similar homes, and even children around the same age. A few years later she died of cancer, and soon he met another woman who looked like both of his wives. Age, social and economic status, children, home - everything was about the same. I realized that even in my parents’ generation people did not always marry for love. Their choice was significantly influenced by other factors. Of course, love played a huge role here, but social compatibility was most important. What is it? To understand this, you need to ask questions: What do you do? What I do? What do our backgrounds and personal histories have in common? Can we act together in the outside world? If he likes to live in the countryside, and she likes to live in the city, then they are not socially compatible. If he likes to travel and she likes to stay at home, they are also not very compatible.

The social level includes not only your love of tennis, but also your background, religion, upbringing, cultural tradition, goals, ambitions, finances, family traditions, lifestyle, and whether you want to have children and if so, how many . The answers to these questions will determine whether we can interact easily and fruitfully, or whether our relationships will be strained, painful and confusing, and our goals and plans will collapse. When people don't pay attention to compatibility on a social level, they often end up in unsuccessful relationships.

(Answer the questions together with your current or future partner)

Lifestyle

A. What are your common interests?

B. How much time do you spend at work?

A. less than 20 hours per week

b. 20–40 hours per week

V. more than 40 hours a week

d. career and profession do not matter to me

Q. How much time do you need to spend alone?

A. Almost no need

b. Needed, but not very much

V. I need solitude, it gives me strength and strengthens me.

D. What do you like to do in your free time?

D. What type of people are you: a homebody or a “party animal”?

E. What kind of diet do you follow?

A. plentiful and satisfying food

b. healthy food

V. gourmet cuisine

g. any homemade food

d. I don’t attach any importance to it

G. How neat or careless are you?

A. I can't feel normal in a mess

b. I love cleanliness, but I only clean it when necessary

V. I only do the most necessary cleaning

g. I can easily live in chaos

Z. How do you feel about cigarettes, alcohol, drugs?

Money

A. What is your regular income?

B. How did you reach your current economic position?

Q. What do you invest in your relationship: some amount of money or debts and financial obligations?

D. How do you manage your financial relationship with your partner?

A. all the money is shared

b. everyone manages their own money

V. one of the partners controls more money than the other

d. one of the partners has complete control over the money

d. responsibility for money is divided equally

e. other options

Children/family

This is a very important topic and you should be honest with each other about how you feel about it, especially at the beginning of your relationship. Often people hide their thoughts and feelings out of a desire to please their partner. Sometimes we engage in self-deception when we assure ourselves: “I will somehow adjust” or “Later he will change his mind.” Attitudes towards family life and children are the main cause of discord and incompatibility in relationships. It is very important for everyone involved, and especially for children, that partners honestly express their true feelings regarding this important topic - whether we are talking about your future children or children from previous marriages.

A. Do you have natural or adopted children? If so, how good of a parent are you to them?

B. What are your assumptions, expectations, and feelings about your partner's children? What about your partner in relation to your children?

Q. Do you want to have children together? If so, how much?

A look into the future

A. Together with your partner or separately, think about how you would like to see:

A. your financial situation

b. your professional qualities

V. your family

d. your spiritual path

e. city or country where you live

and. Your social status

Time

Draw a circle and divide it into segments. The size of each segment corresponds to the time you spend on:

A. work

V. relationships with the people who matter most to you

d. social life.

e. exercise

and. spiritual growth

h. time you spend alone

Compare your circle with your partner's circle

I hope these questions will help you understand how compatible you are with your partner on a social level. The purpose of these questions is to understand in what ways you are similar and in what ways you are different. Some differences are fairly easily tolerated, while others can cause serious problems. It is your attitude towards these differences that determines how easily you get along with your partner on social and other levels.

I hope this discussion will help you meet and evaluate a partner who is right for you on a social level. When different levels are not in harmony with each other, it is not easy to create strong relationships. If you do not attach importance to social compatibility, ability to engage in common activities, differences in cultural and religious traditions and lack of common interests, your relationship is unlikely to be successful.

We continue to talk about harmonious self-development and today it is the turn of the social sphere of life, which plays a very important role in the life of modern society. If a person is unsuccessful in this area, then he will be unhappy and dissatisfied with life.

Today, success is judged by the social standard of living: where and with whom a person works, how much he earns, what kind of person he creates a family with, how respected he is in society, and more. When others see that a person is unsuccessful in these matters, they immediately form an appropriate opinion, which is usually justified.

Therefore, in order for you to sincerely respect yourself and others to also treat you with respect, you need to pay attention to the areas of development that will be discussed below.

Directions of self-development at the social level

Be sure to develop the following:

• Purpose in activity

It is important for a person to engage in activities that correspond to his inclinations and talents, otherwise it will be much more difficult and often impossible for him to become successful and happy. Absolutely each of us is born with our own talents, and some sources say that a person usually has about five talents.

Today, not all people know and use their talents; accordingly, they do not achieve success and increase internal dissatisfaction. You need to find your talents and try to engage yourself in activities in accordance with them - this is a direct path to success, but more importantly, such a person will receive satisfaction from his work.

Success and recognition of your destiny usually does not come immediately; it requires patience and perseverance. But then comes stable and long-term success. Article on purpose:

• Developing your masculine or feminine nature

We must not forget about our true nature and try to become the opposite sex. Yes, today there are women with a masculine character and vice versa, but this is the exception rather than the rule.

It is no coincidence that we are born in a male or female body: each body has its own tasks. Men should develop responsibility, determination, courage, generosity, asceticism, self-control, confidence and other qualities. Women should pay attention to caring, kindness, patience, loyalty, wisdom and other qualities.

You also need to know that it is important for a man to achieve success in society and be fulfilled in his activities, and for a woman it is important to build harmonious relationships, raise intelligent children and develop creatively. This, of course, is not a verdict, but it is better for each gender to place the main emphasis on these.

• Family relationships

Family plays a huge role in a person's life. If there is discord in the family, then the person will not feel happiness and satisfaction in life, even if he is very successful at work. And vice versa, harmonious relationships in a family, in which everyone supports and understands each other, become a kind of stronghold and protection from various adversities in life.

This issue requires study and application in practice. True love and harmony in the family can only be created through working on oneself and relationships, and if this is not done, then it is almost impossible to save the family and not get divorced.

• Improving Rod's fate

The topic of Rod is becoming more and more popular today and this is a very good trend. Our Family has a strong influence on ourselves and on future generations. There are various negative generic programs that need to be worked with and which can be determined using numerology, for example. We receive energy and support from our ancestors, and this can be both positive and negative energy.

The task of every person is to improve the fate of the Family to one degree or another. Some people are born with precisely this task: to improve the fate of their Family. In short, a man can improve this indicator by achieving success in his activities, earning money, having children, moving to better living conditions; a woman improves the fate of the Family through education and transmission of knowledge and traditions to her children, obtaining various knowledge (educational programs, trainings, seminars), prayers for relatives.

In self-development, this direction occupies an important place, since it affects not only us, but also our children and many generations in the future, therefore this is a mandatory direction for every reasonable and adequate person.

• Making money

Finance is important for living in this world. It is difficult to live comfortably and harmoniously if there is no money. To simply eat healthy food, wear comfortable clothes, live in a clean and pleasant environment, give children a decent education, have the opportunity to educate yourself and much more - all this requires money. Therefore, it is stupid to deny this and create the appearance of a renounced person who does not need anything and therefore the whole family should experience inconvenience.

It is especially important for a man to earn money, then he feels satisfied with himself and becomes more confident, he can provide for his family. If he cannot earn or earns too little, then, with a high degree of probability, he will not have the best relationship with his wife, and his personal self-esteem will decrease.

For women, when it comes to money, it is important to overcome greed or greed. This is one of the main shortcomings of women, and if she overcomes it, then there will be much fewer problems with finances in the family.

The best way to make money is through activities that have a purpose. It is important to be able to properly manage finances and be able to plan them. It is very favorable to engage in charity and give part of the income to exalted individuals or to spiritual and moral projects.

• Relationships with others

The level of our success and happiness directly depends on how well we are able to build relationships with people. If we build relationships incorrectly, then the opportunities become much smaller. And in general, the quality of relationships with others is an indicator of a person’s development.

You need to learn to build harmonious relationships with people, as well as maintain them, otherwise they will fade and collapse. This does not mean that we should interact with everyone in an attempt to please or be convenient. This means that we choose who to communicate with and who not to, who we can trust and who we shouldn’t, and so on.

• Living for the good of the world, society, loved ones

Now about one of the most important. Life for ourselves and our family is no different from the life of animals, and such life ends when we stop thinking only about ourselves and our family and begin to think about other living beings. Real meaning and depth in life appears only when a person strives to bring benefit to the world around him with his life.

If a person does not benefit and does nothing for the world, or does it only for the sake of money, then he is like a cancerous tumor that must be isolated before it leads to the death of the entire organism. This is why many people get sick, suffer, and have many difficulties in life - all because they want to live only for themselves, and they don’t care about others. As a result of such a philosophy of life, the universe begins to deprive a person of energy, like a doctor removing a malignant tumor from the body.

But if we begin to give even a small part of our time and energy for good deeds for the benefit of others and the world, then our lives will begin to change. Energy, opportunities and a feeling of happiness will appear. You can check this only by starting to do something with a selfless attitude.

Summary

So, here's another level of life behind. Don’t forget about the 72-hour rule and always try to implement something in your life immediately after acquiring knowledge. Here is a self-development plan in this area for the first time:

1. Be sure to understand your talents, your purpose in your activity;
2. Start spending time doing things you enjoy doing (something positive and not harmful);
3. Sit down and honestly analyze what qualities that correspond to your nature you lack - start developing them;
4. Look at your relationships with your parents, spouse, children - understand what you would like to improve and correct in them;
5. Start studying the laws of happy family relationships and follow them in your life;
6. Clearly state how much money you need each month to meet all your needs;
7. Think about how you relate to the people around you and how they treat you - find out what the problems are in your relationships with others (do you have complexes, a negative social circle, etc.);
http://site/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/logotip-bloga-sergeya-yurev-2.jpg Sergey Yuryev 2018-06-03 05:00:45 2018-10-27 13:24:20 Human development at the social level of life

The functionality of any country in the world can be divided into three components, three subsystems: political, ideological and economic.

The political subsystem is formed by people who govern the country by force (or rather by the threat of force). In whose joint ownership (most often de facto, not de jure) is the coercive apparatus of this country (we will talk more about the nuances of this unusual form of ownership of this unusual means of production at the second Step of the seventh Stage).

The ideological subsystem has Knowledge and controls the masses of people, providing them with the meaning of their existence.

The economic subsystem unites people who own material production, and therefore control the citizens of the country through economic incentives - through restricting access to material resources. For a reader familiar with Marxism, even to the smallest extent, everything should be clear here.

As noted earlier, Politics, Ideology, Economics form a triad. In the stable phase of its existence (and the stable existence of a social triad essentially means the stable existence of the corresponding society), well-defined paired relationships must develop between its elements. In reality, the internal triad of the vast majority of existing countries has degenerated into the Power-People dyad and, in order to preserve itself, is complemented by a triad, involving into interaction a third force located outside the state (more on this in the third Step of the next Step).

So, the three human instincts give us three levels of human existence at the genetic, individual and social levels, with each of the listed levels providing the next, higher level with a base, a foundation that supports and promotes the development of the capabilities and properties inherent in each of them.

Thus, we can say that a person is a vector that exists in three-dimensional space, in a coordinate system, along the abscissa of which the quality of a person is plotted: Elusive-Businessman-Economist, along the ordinate - Indomitable-Warrior-Politician, and finally, along the applicate - Invincible-Priest -Ideologist.

Note in the margins.

Those who have studied psychology know that social psychology is based on the work of the English psychologist W. MacDougall (1871).–1938) theory of instincts of social behavior. According to McDougall, the repertoire of instincts inherent in a person is a manifestation of his psychophysical predisposition, the presence in him of hereditarily fixed channels for the discharge of nervous energy; in particular, the cause of human social behavior is innate instincts.

Concluding the description of the three types of people that form the social triad, I will make an important remark.

Each of the three world religions (meaning Buddhism, Christianity and Islam) owes its success and breadth of spread to that new understanding, that new paradigm that it brought to people at its core (it was the presence of this paradigm, the new Truth, the New Testament that allowed the named religious systems to become the core of that phenomenon of social nature, which is now commonly called the Global Project). In all three cases, the new paradigm was the Truth about the equality of people before God (or, as an option, before the Law of the Wheel of Samsara, Tao, and other higher entities of the Far Eastern religious systems that replace it). We have just completed an introduction to trialectics of social systems, where we say exactly the opposite - people are not the same, each of us is a vector in a coordinate system, along the axes of which the three main motives driving a person are laid out: self-preservation, preservation of the race and preservation of the species.

Am I not contradicting my conviction that, with all the diversity of interests and moral principles, what leads to the unification of people should be recognized as absolute Good, and what separates us should be considered absolute Evil?

We resolve the contradiction dialectically. Why do we remember the words of the popular in the past “ politician L., who, after completing a brilliant career, is still exhibited in an elegant pavilion on Red Square, not far from the entrance to the Kremlin’s Spassky Gate”: “Before we unite and in order to unite, we must first resolutely and definitely disengage.”

As you know, our body consists of approximately 350 types of different cells, and all of them are vital for its existence. The same is true in a social organism: the more complex a society is structured, the deeper the specialization of the people composing it, the higher the degree of division of labor between its cells (labor in this case is maintaining the organism in a living state), the more the people composing it differ from each other . At the same time, they specialize to a greater extent within the framework of performing their function. The division of people into three categories is arbitrary - we have already talked about this and will not tire of repeating it: people are not numbers that can be compared by placing them on a number axis. People are fundamentally non-comparable vectors; they can only be compared modulo - according to the degree of expression of the set of traits they bear. Or better yet, in terms of the amount of benefit that each of them brings to society (it is quite possible to give a numerical assessment of the benefit that each of its citizens brings to the country - we will talk about this at the upcoming Steps).

Even on the same tree you will not find two identical leaves. Just as great is the diversity of our cell types, just as great (if not greater) must be the diversity of the people who make up our society. And the fact that we periodically reduce this diversity to three types is just a didactic device, a way of describing our model.

The non-identity of people is the key to social peace. People cannot be the same, but all of them, so different, are necessary for society for its harmonious existence (you just need to arrange them correctly).

Note in the margins.

The internal diversity of society contributes to its survival in times of dramatic changes that may occur in the external environment. On the other hand, with the existing variety of functionality, limiting the diversity within each group that has this or that functionality is a price to pay for the efficiency of the implementation of this functionality.

At the same time, there is a connection between the depth of specialization of system elements and the variety of functionality of this system - this connection is describedlaw of hierarchical compensation , discovered by our compatriot, Russian cyberneticist and philosopher E. A. Sedov: the growth of diversity at the top level of a complex hierarchically organized system is ensured by limiting diversity at previous levels; conversely, an increase in diversity at the lower level of the system destroys the upper level of the organization (i.e., leads to the death of the system as such).

Sedov's Law, applied to humanity as a whole, gives a disappointing result:« Even in Plato’s dialogues it was noted that the invention of writing weakens memory. And here is what is written in Alexander Markov’s book “Monkeys, Neurons and the Soul”: “Record brain volumes were achieved by sapiens at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic... According to S.V. Drobyshevsky, about 25–27 thousand years ago the average volume of the human brain began to decrease... partly this may be due to climate change... But another interpretation is also possible... The cultural environment became so saturated with useful memes that in the future people no longer needed such a high intelligence as before to survive and successfully reproduce. If you don’t need to figure out everything with your mind and a huge amount of ready-made useful knowledge is spoon-fed to you by adults in childhood, then you can get by with a smaller brain...” So it’s not about computers.

To this we must add the data from an American study of several universities cited in Markov’s book (in another chapter and, it would seem, in a completely different connection), according to which the ability to collectively solve creative and intellectual problems depends to a very small extent on the average level of intelligence of the individuals composing the team, and also on the level of the smartest of them. The most important factors that determine the intelligence of a group are the ability to communicate and understand each other.

That is, for a team to be smart, people must be ideal “neurons” in a group computer network, but they themselves may not be very smart.

It is important to be sociable, not smart, and then humanity will be smart ».

The law of hierarchical compensation (Sedov’s law), covering living and inanimate nature, language, culture, all spheres of social management, significantly complements the classical law of necessary diversity William Ross Ashby: for system control to be possible, the variety of control actions must be no less than the variety of disturbances at the input to the system.

There is an alternative formulation given by Stafford Beer: adequate management can be ensured only if the diversity of the manager's means (in this case, the entire management system) is at least no less than the diversity of the situation he controls.

The control system must not only provide control of the managed object, but also take care of managing itself - which is absolutely impossible for any bureaucratic “vertical”. A problem reminiscent of the one that was brilliantly solved by Baron Munchausen, who pulled himself out of the swamp by his hair.

As usual, looking ahead, the triadic mechanism of self-government of society that we propose solves this problem, perhaps in a not so exotic, but absolutely reliable way. Taking advantage of the intransitivity according to the criterion of subordination, immanently inherent in the three functions of man - the functions of self-preservation, preservation of the genus and preservation of the species (man gives rise to the genus, the genus gives rise to the species, the species gives rise to the next evolutionary form of man), we propose to form a system of managing society from three functionally separated hierarchies (let's call them “A”, “B” and “C”). In this case, “B” is subordinate to “A”, “B” is subordinate to “B”, “A” is subordinate to “C”.

It is clear that in this case, each of the three hierarchies is simultaneously an object for one of the remaining ones, and a subject of control for the other. This means that the complexity and diversity of all three hierarchies must coincide. This is no longer a modern situation with a hierarchically developed Authority raping a primitively organized People devoid of hierarchy.

So, our proposal to identify three components in a person, three motives for his behavior is based on the assumption that a person has three instincts of preservation - himself, his kind and his species.

And if there is no doubt about the existence of the first two instincts in humans - self-preservation and sexual instinct - then the presence in people of the instinct to preserve society and altruism requires a separate justification.

In the article by the previously mentioned Vladimir Koshkin “Information, democracy, terrorism" we read: " Self-sacrifice is already inherent in the psyche of higher animals at the level of instincts. Up to the point of being willing to die for the sake of a chosen marriage partner, to save the lives of children, or to preserve one’s own clan.”

The outstanding Russian geneticist Vladimir Pavlovich Efroimson, author of the work “Pedigree of Altruism,” discovered that in addition to the instinct of self-preservation (the instinct of selfishness) and the sexual instinct (the instinct of preserving the race - an instinct that helps each of us extend ourselves in time, into the future) there is a third instinct - the instinct of altruism, the instinct of preserving the species - an instinct that allows each of us to extend ourselves in space.

« As V.P. Efroimson showed, manifestations of altruistic behavior are numerous in animals and people, although they are not predetermined for sure (a soldier covering an embrasure, a pilot leading a flaming plane away from the city, a driver turning into a wall in front of a passerby). This type of behavior, inherent in genes by evolution, under certain circumstances manifests itself as an instinct and constitutes the “genetic basis of religions.”

Note in the margins.

Writer Alexander Nikonov: “I just spoke on the phone with Yuri Gorny, who was friends with Efroimson. And Gorny told me two interesting points from the latter’s biography.

Efroimson sat under Stalin twice. When he was imprisoned for the first time (even before the war), the Lubyanka investigator asked during one of the interrogations:

- Well, how do you like it here, Vladimir Palych?

“Like at home,” Efroimson answered. – This building belonged to my father before the revolution. And the room where we are sitting used to be a nursery.”

Why exactly was Efroimson imprisoned for the first time?

In 1929, workers' faculty students at Moscow State University were dissatisfied with the lectures of some professors, which seemed difficult to them. And since they were poorly prepared, they could not understand these lectures, and from this they drew the normal conclusion for those years: these are pests who deliberately lecture them so that they do not understand them. Among those whom they attacked was a remarkable man, Sergei Sergeevich Chetverikov, a professor, and in the future an outstanding Soviet geneticist. The only one who spoke in Chetverikov’s defense at the meeting where the professor was criticized and condemned was student Volodya Efroimson.

“In 1929, the “putting in order” of the natural sciences began. Try to imagine the scene - a heated meeting, everyone is passionately “branding” Professor Chetverikov. Student Efroimson, one against everyone, makes a sharp speech in his defense. The rector of the university at that time was the sinister A.Ya. Vyshinsky, who remains in our history as a state prosecutor in the mock trials of the 30s.”

The very next day, Volodya Efroimson was expelled from the university, and some time later he was convicted under a “political” article. He was exiled to Altai to build the Chuysky highway, and on the way to exile he found himself in the same carriage with Eli Gershevich Shnol, whose son, MSU professor, biophysicist Simon Elievich Shnol, spoke about this meeting in the autobiographical serial film “From 0 to 80” (series first, “Physics of the shot”).

In an article published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, researchers Masahiko Haruno and Christopher Frith showed that “people’s ability to act honestly, unselfishly and noblely is determined by the “automatic” functioning of one of the parts of the brain, and not by the ability to suppress their own selfish impulses,” that is, the actions of an altruist are not is the result of a conscious choice, but the action of unconscious, instinctive impulses.

“As Japanese scientists have shown, nobility and generosity, defined as the desire for honesty, manifests itself automatically in people’s actions and arises as a result of activation of the area of ​​the brain associated with intuition and emotions.

In their work, scientists led by Masahiko Haruno from Tamagawa University in Tokyo worked with two groups of people, divided as a result of a psychological test into individualists, striving to obtain the maximum benefit, and “prosocial” individuals, focused on fair sharing of benefits and loving when with them do the same.

By working with these volunteers, the scientists were able to disprove the prevailing theory that, at their best, noble and generous people have the ability to resist selfish impulses thanks to the work of the prefrontal region of the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for thought processes. Instead, scientists have found that noble people have an innate sense of disgust towards injustice.

Scientists scanned the brains of two groups of volunteers while they played a game in which they had to split the money between themselves and a fictitious person. Scientists found that “prosocial” people, as expected, were more likely than selfish people to choose to share money equally, and to do this they did not have to strain the prefrontal region of the cerebral cortex to suppress selfish impulses. Instead, the scientists observed a difference between the two groups of people in the activation of something called the amygdala.

Activation of the same area was observed when “prosocial” people were confronted with the fact of an unequal division of money not in their favor.

“The more people in this group of volunteers disliked the option of splitting the money, the more active their amygdala was,” says co-author Christopher Frith of University College London.

According to modern scientific ideas, activation of the amygdala in the brain occurs automatically, unconsciously. This fact, coupled with the fact that both groups of volunteers did not show any difference in the activation of the prefrontal region of the cerebral cortex, suggests that the suppression of greedy desires is not the driving force behind noble and honest actions. In a repeat test, to further verify the correctness of their conclusions, the scientists asked the volunteers to participate in the game again, but this time, in the process of dividing the money, the researchers had to perform a mental task that required the use of memory. This mental effort was supposed to occupy the prefrontal cortex of the brain and thereby distract the volunteers from potentially arising thoughts about how fair a particular division of money is. In this case, the brains of the “prosocial” group of people responded to the unfair division of money in a similar way to the first experience, which suggests that the thought process is not decisive in making selfish or, on the contrary, fair decisions.

Now scientists have to figure out how different people develop different activity of the cerebellar amygdala. The authors of the article believe that some of these differences between generous and selfish people can be explained by genes, but they believe that social interaction with peers in childhood, when the formation of the brain, has an important influence on the functioning of the adult brain. “This raises the interesting idea that there may be methods to promote some kind of amygdala development that could be used to create a more socially just society,” concluded Haruno.”

In an article published on the website of the journal Nature, Michael Hopkin reports that the group of Professor Richard Ebstein (in the fifth Step of the first Stage we already referred to the results obtained by this scientific group) discovered a gene in humans that determines altruistic behavior. The AVPR1a gene, found on chromosome 11, forms receptors in the brain for recognizing vasopressin, a hormone responsible for altruism and “prosocial” behavior. Previous studies of prairie voles have shown that this hormone plays an important role in the formation of close social groups in these rodents.

According to Professor Ebstein, in the study, “we did not find that the gene for altruism is more common in women than in men,” despite the fact that women are more likely to have roles and professions that involve caring for others.

Ebstein argues that higher animals can exhibit altruistic behavior, but it is always limited to family members, identified by smell and other signals.

From our point of view, this kind of altruism is a manifestation of the Warrior archetype, which is functionally a superposition of the Businessman and the Priest - it manifests itself as a Priest in relation to its loved ones and is a Businessman in relation to everyone else.

Note in the margins.

Here's a quote from the translation of Michael Hopkin's article:

“Ebstein's group was interested in how differences in the expression of this receptor in the brain affected people's behavior, making them more or less generous.

According to a report by Ebstein and his colleagues in the journal Genes, Brain and Behavior, about 18% of dictators kept the entire amount, about a third split the money equally, and about 6% gave it all away.

Long and short.

There is no relationship between the gender of the participants and their behavior, scientists say. But there is a dependence on the length of the AVPR1a gene: the shorter the gene, the more prone people are to selfishness.

It is unclear how the length of the AVPR1a gene affects vasopressin receptors: it is assumed that the gene controls not the number of receptors, but their distribution in the brain. Ebstein suggests that vasopressin receptors in the brains of people with short AVPR1a may be positioned in such a way that the person is less likely to feel satisfaction from the act of giving.

Although the mechanism is unclear, Ebstein says he is absolutely confident that the behavior of selfish and greedy "dictators" has a genetic component. This theory would be easier to confirm if famous "dictators" had twins and we could understand whether they were equally cruel or not, says Ebstein.

Clever players.

Still, researchers making inferences about human generosity should be wary of referring to the rather primitive “Dictator Game,” says Nicholas Bardsley, who has studied such games at the University of Southampton in the UK.

His research suggests that players who typically give away money as “dictators” are happy to steal from other players in games based on appropriation rather than gifting. This suggests that perhaps the players who showed the most altruism in Ebstein's game were actually motivated by a simple desire to fit into the game, having felt that such behavior was expected of them.

If this is true, then perhaps the behavior of cruel “dictators” is not due to insatiable greed, but to a simple lack of social skills that does not allow them to feel what is expected of them. This fits into the image of a naive but cruel dictator, unable to give an adequate assessment of his actions and views. Such figures have appeared with surprising regularity over the centuries, from Roman emperors to Napoleon Bonaparte, Benito Mussolini, Saddam Hussein and Robert Mugabe, who now clings tenaciously to power amid uncertain election results.”

In a paper published in Nature on February 25, 2010, researchers Elizabeth Tricomi, Antonio Rangel, Colin F. Camerer and John P. O'Doherty reported the discovery of brain centers responsible for people's sense of justice.

“Scientists have shown that humans have brain centers responsible for a sense of fairness, which allows them to experience pleasure from receiving benefits from strangers, which explains some of the basics of human social behavior,” the researchers report in a paper published Thursday in the journal Nature. Although aversion to inequality is a fairly common trait among all people, especially when it comes to money, until now scientists did not know how this feeling is connected to the functioning of the brain. “In our work, we tried to identify the neural basis that determines people’s aversion to inequality. It turns out that this feeling is not just the implementation of a social contract or rule, it arises as a result of the work of basic brain structures, pleasure centers,” Professor John O’Doherty commented on the work, as quoted by the press service of the California Institute of Technology. Scientists call pleasure centers areas of the brain that are activated by any pleasant external stimuli: tasty food, money, theater, music and others - in the so-called ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the lower part of the striatum.

To study the connection of these centers with a sense of justice, scientists resorted to the help of 40 volunteers, the activity of the corresponding lobes of the brain was scanned using the method of functional magnetic resonance imaging as the participants in the experiment were involved in economic relationships by scientists.

So, for example, a participant in an experiment located inside a tomograph was told that he would receive 50 US dollars, and his teammate - 20. In another case, this proportion could be different: 5 and 50 dollars, respectively, and so on.

At the same time, the participants in the experiment were initially placed in different conditions: some volunteers entered the game with 50 dollars received from scientists before the experiment began, while others began the experiment without any amount of money.

As would be expected, the “poor” participants in the experiment showed very strong activation of the brain’s pleasure centers when they received more money from the game than their opponents. At the same time, receiving benefits from strangers left them indifferent.

In the case of the “rich” volunteers, the situation looked completely unexpected: their brain pleasure centers were more activated if someone else received a greater benefit than themselves. If, as a result of the game, they received an amount greater than that of their opponent, then the activation of their pleasure centers was weak.

“In other words, their brains were much more excited about someone else’s gain than their own. This means that the basic structures of the brain responsible for pleasure are sensitive to even small differences in the social context of receiving certain pleasant emotions. That is, these same pleasure centers are focused not only on obtaining pleasure from a person’s own gain,” O’Doherty said.

“We economists firmly believe that most rational people are oriented towards their own gain and will not help others in this, but if this were so, we would not see such a reaction of the pleasure centers in response to the profit of strangers.” – added Colin Camerer, co-author of the publication.

Camerer believes that part of this response of brain centers may be determined by self-interest, for example, reducing one's own discomfort with the feeling of inequality, in which people occupy a higher position than others. In the future, scientists intend to study the mechanisms of influence of such work of the brain’s pleasure centers on people’s behavior.”

Evolutionary biologists from the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) have proven that in living beings altruism arose as a result of natural selection (the so-called kin selection), that is, it is an innate quality necessary for the survival of a society consisting of related individuals. Which is any community of people - since from the results of a study of the mitochondrial DNA of a human cell it follows that we all descended from one common foremother - from the so-called African Eve, who lived in East Africa 140 thousand years ago.

An abundant source of the latest information on scientific research into the instinct for preserving the species - the prosocial instinct - is also a selection of publications on the Elements website.

Altruism, a person’s tendency to sacrifice his own interests for the sake of the interests of society, from the point of view of individual survival is not an advantage - for the sake of the survival of others, an altruist takes risks associated with danger to his own life. From the point of view of the Businessman, an altruist is a clinical idiot, but from the point of view of preserving society, the presence of altruism in some of its constituent individuals is a necessary condition for its, society’s, survival.

Note in the margins.

“As part of the “artificial life” direction, our specialists built a mathematical model of relationships within a primitive tribe, where real relationships between people were simulated,” Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor told RBC magazine (No. 6, 2009, p. 106) Georgy Gennadievich Malinetsky. – Initially, all relationships were defined as selfish: each unit was guided solely by its own interests. However, in the process of interaction it turned out that this situation impedes collective work and makes the tribe unviable. It turns out that altruism arose spontaneously at a certain stage in the formation of Homo sapiens.”

Unfortunately, modern Western economics with enviable tenacity rejects altruism as a necessary condition for the existence of a social organism. Here is the opinion of one of the pillars of “economics”:

« Friedrich von Hayek: We will help people most of all if we rely only on their desire to earn money and benefit. To do this, we must return to a self-organizing, automatic system of society, which is the only one capable of guaranteeing freedom and prosperity. This is my main concept.

Interviewer: But tell me, isn’t your concept based on egoism? What about altruism? When should he appear?

Friedrich von Hayek: But he shouldn’t appear.”

Friedrich von Hayek is both right and wrong. He is right that the system should be automatic and self-organizing. He is wrong in that a society can be viable and stable without having a social stratum of altruists.

In the work of Konstantin Pavlovich Maksimov, “The Conspiracy of the End of the World,” published on the Internet, we again encounter a triad of instincts, the interaction of which ensures the stability of society. These are the basic human instincts - the instinct of self-preservation, the instinct of altruism (the third in our classification, the instinct of preserving society) and the instinct of reproduction.

Before turning to this work, let us make two remarks that in no way detract from its value.

1. According to K. Maksimov, based on the previously mentioned article by Vladimir Koshkin “The Instinct of Faith, or What the Gods Crave,” the sexual instinct is secondary to the instinct of self-preservation and the altruistic instinct - it is transitional between them.

We believe that the sexual instinct, which arose earlier than breeding individuals began to gather in flocks, that is, before the prerequisites for the emergence of the instinct for preserving the species arose (true for those species that lead a gregarious, group lifestyle), is completely self-sufficient, and it must be considered as an independent force. The sexual instinct can be considered as a superposition (not a sum!) of the first and third instincts only mathematically - in essence, it is an independent, independent variable in the space of a person’s driving motives. Moreover, the sequence of genesis, the emergence of conservation instincts in humans - self-preservation, preservation of the race, preservation of the species, shows how nature develops, rises from the pure egoism of a primitive living being to human altruism, how the sprout of altruism appears from the instinct of self-preservation. “You cannot serve God and mammon” - you cannot be both an altruist and an egoist at the same time, but from the instinct of self-preservation, an instinct first appears that forces a living being to care not only about self-preservation, but also about the preservation of its offspring, after which people appear who care about the preservation society, the species as a whole.

2. The author’s second inaccuracy stems from the first - this is his attempt to explain the stability of society as a result of the interaction of two, and not three forces (we think, even without mathematical calculations it is clear that a system of two antagonistic forces cannot in principle be stable).

Konstantin Maksimov writes:

“...This is already inherent at the level of the most basic instincts that regulate the behavior of any living creature. “The goal pursued is innate. The classification of instincts is a classification of the genetically determined goals of each individual in the population” (quote from the article by the above-mentioned Vladimir Koshkin “The Instinct of Faith, or What the Gods Crave”). (...)

The goal of evolution is one - survival. As N.V. Timofeev-Resovsky showed, the unit of natural selection is not the individual, but the population as a whole. But the survival of a population is possible only through the survival of its representatives. Therefore, in each of them two opposing behavioral programs coexist: the instinct of self-preservation of the individual (selfish behavior, or E-behavior) and the instinct of preserving one’s own population (altruistic behavior, or A-behavior). The combination of E- and A-behavior gives the instinct of sexual love and, as its direct continuation, the maternal (parental) instinct (preservation of one’s own offspring). (...)

It is no less important that the RESPONSE instinct is genetically fixed - in the hope of the altruistic instinct of the population - the generalized instinct of the child. Religion (faith in the Savior) appeared at the earliest stages of human history largely thanks to this instinct, already as an adult repetition of childhood experience. Its mythologized symbol is the idea of ​​God. " By calling on God, we are actually calling on society. (emphasis mine. – M.G.), to the social fund of A-behavior inherent in Nature’s genes” (Vladimir Koshkin, “The Instinct of Faith, or What the Gods Crave”).”

A positive assessment of the rare as such,

theoretical and practical reasons for it.

The widespread is the lower: it is the more ancient

and comes down to inheritance from more primitive eras.

This determines the level of the broad masses.

The relationship between the spiritual content of the group

and the spiritual content of an individual.

Various connections between this relationship

and absolute height of content.

Strengthening group unity and level.

Preponderance of sensory processes in consciousness.

The originality of the collectivist mode of action.

The double meaning of the social level: in the sense of the individual,

but a homogeneous property, and in the sense of a collective property;

the ratio of both levels. Alignment of the individual level;

psychological source of socialist demands

Everywhere one can observe that the assessment of the rare, individual, deviating from the norm is related to its form as such and largely does not depend on its specific content. Already in language, “rarity” simultaneously means an advantage, and something “very special” as such has the meaning of something especially good, while ordinary (das Gemeine) 16, i.e. characteristic of the widest circle, non-individual, means at the same time something low and without value. The easiest way to explain this way of thinking is to point out that everything good, everything that causes a conscious feeling of happiness, is rare; because pleasure dulls unusually quickly, and as it is repeated, a habit of it appears; it, in turn, forms the level that a new pleasant excitement must exceed in order for it to be recognized as such. If, therefore, we understand goodness as the cause of the perceived pleasant excitations of life, then no special pessimism is needed to recognize its rarity as a necessary predicate. But if you understand this, then the opposite judgment is psychologically natural: also everything rare is good; no matter how fallacious this is from a logical point of view (if all “a”s are “b”, then all “b” must be “a”), but in fact both thought and feeling are done countless times

This is a wrong conclusion: a certain style in objects of art or reality is liked by all of us, and before we realize it, it becomes for us the measure of everything that we generally like. The proposition: “the “M” style is good” turns for us in practice into something else: everything good should be in the “M” style; a well-known party program seems correct to us, and very soon we consider only what is contained in it to be correct, etc. The preference that is everywhere enjoyed by the rarer results, perhaps, from such a reversal of the judgment that everything good is rare.

Added to this is a practical point. Although identity with others, as a fact and as a tendency, is no less important than difference from others, although both are, in the most diverse forms, the great principles of all external and internal development, so that the history of human culture can be considered entirely as the history of the struggle between them and attempts to reconcile them, however, for the activity of an individual within the limits of his relationships, difference from others is still of much more interest than equality with them. It is differentiation relative to other beings that in most cases motivates us to activity and determines it; we have to observe their differences if we want to use them and take a right position among them. The subject of practical interest is what brings us benefit or loss in comparison with them, and not what we have in common with them; rather, the latter forms the self-evident basis of progressive behavior. Darwin says that, having talked a lot with livestock breeders, he did not find one who believed in the common origin of species; interest in those distinctive features that characterize the breed he is breeding and give it practical value in the eyes of the livestock breeder fills his consciousness so much that there is no longer any room left in him to recognize that this breed shows in all essential similarities with other breeds or species. This interest in the differentiation of what we own extends, of course, to all other relationships. I. In general, we can say that with the same objective importance, on the one hand, of identity with a certain community, on the other hand, of individualization in relation to it, for the subjective spirit the first will exist more in the form of the unconscious, and the latter in the form of the conscious. Organic expediency saves awareness in the first case, because it is more needed in the second.

rom case for practical life purposes. But to what extent the idea of ​​difference can obscure the idea of ​​identity - no example shows this, perhaps more instructively than the disputes about religion between Lutherans and Reformed people, namely in the 17th century. As soon as the great apostasy from Catholicism has taken place, all those who have fallen away split into parties on the most insignificant pretexts, which are often expressed in the sense that it would be more likely to have fellowship with the papists than with those who belong to another confession 17! This is how much the main thing can be forgotten due to differentiation; because of what separates, what connects! It is easy to understand that this interest in differentiation, which thus forms the basis of consciousness of one’s own value and practical activity, psychologically develops into a high appreciation of differentiation itself, and also that this interest turns out to be practical enough to produce differentiation even where , strictly speaking, there is no real basis for this. Thus, it has been noticed that associations - from legislative assemblies to entertainment committees - whose members have completely common points of view and goals, after some time are divided into parties, related to each other in much the same way as the entire association generally refers to an association driven by radically different aspirations. It turns out as if each individual person so strongly feels his significance only in contrast to others, and, moreover, this opposition is artificially created where there was none at first (there was none, and even where the entire community within which the opposition is sought is based on unity as opposed to other opposites.

If the first reason we gave for why differentiation is valued was individual psychological, and the second was a mixture of individual and sociological motives, then we can now establish a third reason of a purely evolutionary nature. Namely, if the world of organisms in gradual development through lower forms ascends to higher ones, then the lower and primitive properties are, in any case, the oldest; but if they are the oldest, then they are also more widespread, because the ancestral heritage is more reliably transmitted to each individual, the longer it was preserved and strengthened in the past. Newly acquired organs - and to a certain extent they are -

there are always higher and more complex ones - they constantly turn out to be more changeable, and it cannot be said definitely that each instance of a given species will be endowed with them. Thus, it is precisely due to the long history of inheritance of a certain property that a real and synthetic connection is established between the low level and prevalence of this property. Therefore, if it seems to us that an individual and rarer property deserves greater preference, then this, of course, turns out to be an inductive inference from this point of view, often erroneous, but often correct. Differentiation can, of course, go towards the ugly and bad. But a deeper analysis often shows here that if what is morally or aesthetically bad has a highly differentiated character, then the differentiation concerns more the means and methods of expression, and therefore something that is good and expedient in itself, and only because of the bad final goal , for which it was used and which in itself does not reveal differentiation, a negative evaluative judgment about it is justified; This is the case with all the refinements of sybaritism and immorality. On the other hand, we see precisely that we are chained to ourselves by phenomena that are completely ugly, therefore returning to a primitive stage of development, and they achieve this by mixing in very individual traits; the so-called * is a frequent example of this.

We will encounter even more value judgments of this kind if we turn to a positive assessment not of the rare, but of the new. Everything new is at the same time rare, if not always in relation to the actual content of consciousness, then still in relation to the totality of experience in general, not always in relation to what is nearby, but in any case in relation to to what came before it and what must still be present in one psychological form or another so that the new can be distinguished from it. The new is that which, through differentiation, has stood out from the mass of the familiar; it is, in the form of time, that which is rare in content. It is enough just to mention how much the new is valued purely as such, regardless of its specific content. The new, in essence, owes this to our ability to sense differences, which associates some excitement only with what rises above the previous level of sensations. However, its

a role here, undoubtedly, is played by the fact, known to us from experience, that the old (widespread in the time series, just as what we talked about above is widespread in the spatial series) is a primitive formation, in contrast to the later, which exists over a more limited period of time. Thus, we see that in India the distribution of occupations among social levels depends on their antiquity: as a rule, those that arose later are more respected - and this, it seems to me, is because they should be distinguished by greater complexity, subtlety and difficulty. And if, in contrast to this, we often encounter a positive assessment of the old, fixed, long-tested, then this, in turn, rests on very real and clear grounds, which, of course, limit for individual phenomena the significance of the grounds for a positive assessment of the new and rare, but cannot completely destroy them. In these matters, what is most easily misleading is the fact that such general tendencies as the positive assessment of the new and rare or the old and common begin to be seen as causes individual phenomena, such as forces or psychological natural laws, and then, of course, fall into a contradiction, consisting in the fact that one law of nature affirms, apparently, the complete opposite of another. Rather, universal principles of this kind are consequence the coincidence of initial forces is nothing more than the combined expression of phenomena, each of which is determined by reasons that require independent research. The immeasurable multitude of possible combinations of these primary causes explains the difference in universal tendencies, but it becomes a contradiction only when tendencies begin to be considered as general causes, as generally valid laws and therefore require their simultaneous and uniform application to each phenomenon. There is no doubt that they, having been for quite a long time only consequences for consciousness, then during the course of mental life also become the causes of subsequent psychological phenomena. But the proof that such a tendency takes place can in no way be refuted by the fact that the opposite tendency is also at work. The indication that the new and rare is valued does not suffer in the least from the fact that the old and original are also valued.

In the evolutionary relation considered here with low

The level of the old, in contrast to the younger and individual, correlates with a more reliable transmission by inheritance, a more confident message transmitted to each individual. It is clear, therefore, that only the lower constituent elements of the achieved culture will be accessible to the broad masses as a whole.

This allows us, for example, to understand the astonishing discrepancy that exists between the theoretical convictions and the ethical conduct of so many people, and, moreover, for the most part in the sense that the latter lags behind the former. Indeed, it has been rightly observed that the influence of knowledge on the formation of character can only take place insofar as this influence comes from the content of the knowledge of the social group: for by the time an individual person has been able to acquire truly individual knowledge, differentiated from the knowledge of his environment qualities - by this time the character and moral orientation of this person will have long been established. During the period of their formation, he is subject exclusively to the influence of the spirit, objectified in a social group, to the influence of that knowledge that is generally widespread in it; these influences lead, of course, to very different results, depending on the innate characteristics of the individual - just think how different, for example, the ethical influence on different people should be of the belief in otherworldly retribution, which is communicated to them by the social environment, depending on the natural inclination , i.e. strong or weak, hypocritical or sincere, frivolous or fearful nature. If the level of knowledge of the group as such is low, then by its influence on ethical formation we can explain the fact that it often corresponds so little to theoretical education, which we then see in a mature spirit filled with individual content. Let us be convinced that selfless actions have an incomparably higher value than selfish ones, but we act selfishly; we are imbued with the conviction that spiritual joys are much longer lasting, cause less remorse, are deeper than sensual ones - and like blind madmen we rush in pursuit of the latter; we repeat to ourselves a thousand times that the approval of the crowd is worth nothing compared to the approval of two or three reasonable people - and how many people who not only say this, but sincerely believe in it, and yet hundreds of times forget the latter for the sake of the former! This, of course, can only happen because such higher and nobler convictions are formed in us only when our moral

The natural being has already been formed, and at the time when it is being formed, only more general ones are spread around us, i.e. lower theoretical views.

But if, further, each individual person from the mass has higher and more subtle properties, then these properties are more individual, i.e. it differs in kind and direction from any other, which has properties that are at the same height in quality. The general basis, from which a branch is required in order to rise higher, is formed only from those lower qualities, the inheritance of which is absolutely necessary. From this point of view, Schiller’s epigram becomes clear to us: “Everyone, taken individually, is quite smart and understanding, but if taken in corpore, he immediately becomes a fool.” And also Heine’s verse: “You rarely understood me, and I rarely understood you; When they met each other in the mud, they understood immediately.” This explains the fact that food and drink, i.e. the most ancient functions are a means of connecting people, often very heterogeneous and belonging to the most diverse circles, for communication; hence the peculiar tendency, which even educated people discover in male society, to spend time telling obscene jokes; the lower a certain area, the more confidently one can count on universal understanding; but this becomes more doubtful the higher we rise, for this area thereby becomes more differentiated and individual. This characterizes the actions of the masses accordingly. Cardinal Retz notes in his memoirs, where he describes the behavior of the Parisian parliament during the Fronde, that numerous corporations, even if they include people of the highest rank and education, always act in joint meetings and speeches in the same way as the mob, i.e. they are governed by the same ideas and passions as the common people - only these latter constitute the common property, while the highest properties are differentiated, i.e. are different for different people. If the mass acts uniformly, then this always happens on the basis of the simplest ideas; the probability is too small that each member of a large mass carries in his consciousness and convictions a more or less varied complex of thoughts. But since, due to the complexity of our relations, every simple idea must be radical, negative

which makes many other diverse claims, then it becomes clear to us the power of radical parties in those eras when the broad masses are swept by the movement, and the powerlessness of parties acting as a mediator demanding rights for both warring parties; we also understand why precisely those religions achieved the greatest spiritual dominance over the masses, who most decisively and unilaterally rejected any mediation, any admission of foreign constituent elements.

It may seem that this is contradicted by the statement (which one sometimes hears) that religious communities are smaller, the more insignificant the totality of their dogmas, and that the volume of faith is directly proportional to the number of followers. Since it takes a more differentiated spirit to accommodate a large number of ideas than to accommodate a small number of them, it follows that it would be the larger group that would be more spiritually differentiated if it had as such a more varied body of faith. But even if we recognize this fact, it will only confirm the rule and not constitute an exception. It is in the religious field that unity and simplicity require a much greater depth of thought and feeling than variegated diversity, just as the apparent differentiation of polytheism is the initial stage in relation to monotheism.

So, if any member of the group is very low, then the area common to him and his group is relatively large. But this same generality in an absolute sense must be lower and cruder the more such individual members there are, because a higher generality is possible, of course, only where the individual constituent parts of the group possess it. If group members are found to be on relatively, those. compared with the wealth of the entire group, a low level of development, this means that its wealth is at absolutely low level - and vice versa. A very tempting, but nevertheless superficial, conclusion would be that with high mutual differentiation of individual individuals, the area of ​​​​what is common to all of them should decrease and, finally, be limited to the most necessary and, therefore, the lowest properties and functions. True, the previous chapter of our work is based on the idea that the wider the social circle, the smaller should be the area of ​​commonality only for it, and that its expansion is possible only within

ste with increasing differentiation, so that this latter is inversely proportional to the value of the total content. To resolve this apparent contradiction with the above statement, we can imagine schematically this relationship in such a way that the initial state was characterized by a very low social level, and individual differentiation was at the same time very insignificant. Development increased both, but in such a way that the increase in general content did not occur as much as differentiation increased. The consequence of this will be that the distance between differentiation and general content will increase all the time, that the social level, in comparison with the differentiation that exceeds it, will become lower and poorer, although in itself it is in a state of continuous growth. So, all these three definitions: the significant absolute height of the common wealth of the group, the significant absolute height of individualization and the poverty of the first in comparison with the latter - must certainly be combined. Many different similar development processes take place according to this scheme. The proletarian now has access to many of the comforts and cultural benefits of life which he was deprived of in previous centuries, and yet the gulf between his way of life and that of the upper classes has increased enormously. At a high level of culture, children are much smarter than in more ignorant eras, and yet there is no doubt that the path they need to travel to the highest stages of development is longer than in general in those eras when humanity was “closer to childhood.” . In the same way, in an individual during adolescence, for example, sensory and intellectual functions are developed almost equally; and although as they grow, the former develop, becoming richer and stronger, but, at least in many natures, not nearly as much as the latter, so that the significant absolute height of both of them coexists very well with the relative poverty of the former in comparison with the latter . Thus, we see in our case: the spiritual difference between the educated and the uneducated reaches greater proportions at a time when the latter, in terms of their education, are already at a higher level than when there is more common similarity between them in spiritual content. And in the moral field the situation is at least similar; of course, social morality, in the form in which it, on the one hand, is objectified in the legal system, forms of communication

etc., and on the other hand, it is revealed in the average level of conscious beliefs that such social morality has increased. However, it is also certain that the range of fluctuations between virtuous and vicious actions has increased; Consequently, the absolute height of differentiation can rise as high as desired above the absolute height of the social level, at least the former does not depend on the latter. But in most cases, as we have already seen, a known absolute height of the general content is even a condition that its level in comparison with the height of differentiation is relatively low. And with this correlates the above-established position that at an undeveloped social level, insufficient individual differentiation should prevail.

This attitude is very important because it shows us how little is needed to become a leader and master in an ignorant horde at a low level of development. This is typical even for animals living in herds and packs, in which the leader does not always have such outstanding qualities that could justify his special position; in the same way, one can often observe among schoolchildren that a child achieves a kind of dominant position among his comrades, without at all differing in any special physical or spiritual forces that would predetermine him to this. A very slight or very one-sided elevation above the average level already provides an advantage over very many, if deviations from it in one direction or another are extremely insignificant; It is all the more difficult to rise above a highly differentiated society because even if someone surpasses the average level in some respect, there will always be others who have developed other aspects and who stand out precisely in the aspect of their greatest development. Therefore, reports about blacks living on the coast are very typical: among them the most capable person in the village usually combines one the face of a blacksmith, carpenter, architect and weaver; It is characteristic that among lower tribes smart people are always at the same time priests, doctors,

sorcerers, teachers of youth, etc. It is hardly possible to assume a combination of actual specific talents for all these heterogeneous functions; rather, here there is superiority in only one respect, which, however, with the general low level of the environment transforms

rises to a prominent position in general. This same characteristic point underlies the psychological fact that uneducated people immediately expect and demand something extraordinary in all other respects from someone who has done something extraordinary in some area and inspires their respect. If an individual is chained to a general and therefore lower level, then a slight differentiating elevation above this level is enough for him to comprehensively master the situation. Some would like to consider as an expedient moment in the social revolution the fact that precisely at those stages where domination and subordination must lay the first and most important foundation of culture, a general lack of differentiation facilitates the ascension of dominant individuals. The situation is similar with the ideas of the individual. The less differentiated, the less developed the entire mass of ideas, the easier it is for a deviating idea to take a dominant position, the sooner it is seized upon passionately, regardless of whether it deserves it in essence or not; The impulsiveness and stubborn passion of rude and narrow-minded people is a frequently observed phenomenon of this kind. Thus we see everywhere that a value is attached to the differentiated and particular which reveals only a very inconsistent relation to its actual significance; the lower the group stands, the more noticeable any differentiation is, because a low level means a continuous similarity of individuals and every feature therefore immediately imparts an exclusive position to many others.

So, if in an already more differentiated mass the leveling assumed by the uniformity of its actions is to be achieved, then this cannot happen in such a way that the lower rises to the higher, and the one who stopped at a more primitive stage of development rises to the one who is more differentiated; it is only possible that the highest will descend to the level that he has already overcome; only that can be common to all that constitutes the property of the poorest. Where a government is erected over two classes, one of which has hitherto been dominant and the other subordinate, it is usually based on the latter. After all, in order to be able to rise equally above all layers, it must level them. Leveling is possible only in such a way that the higher ones will be crushed more than the lower ones.

nyaty. Therefore, the usurper finds in the latter people more inclined to support him. Connected with this is the fact that whoever wants to influence the masses will not turn to theoretical convictions for this, but will, in essence, only appeal to their feelings. For feeling, from a phylogenetic point of view, undoubtedly represents a lower level in relation to thinking; pleasure and pain, and likewise certain instinctive feelings that encourage the preservation of one’s self and one’s kind, developed, in any case, before any kind of operating with concepts, judgments and conclusions appeared; and therefore the crowd is much more likely to converge on the basis and through primitive feelings than through abstract rational functions. Let us have a certain individual before our eyes. We can assume a sufficient differentiation of his mental powers, which would justify an attempt to influence his feelings by awakening theoretical convictions in him. Both mental energies must first achieve a certain independence in order to exert an influence on each other, which would be determined by their objective content. Where differentiation has not yet reached this level, there the influence will take place only in the direction in which natural psychological development goes; but since the mass as such is not differentiated, the path to its beliefs lies, in general, through its feelings; therefore it will have to be dealt with in exactly the opposite way than with the individual: feelings must be influenced in order to form beliefs.

This must be facilitated by another phenomenon, which can be especially clearly observed in the behavior of the assembled crowd: the impression or impulse is strengthened by the fact that it simultaneously affects a large number of individuals. The same impression that would leave us rather cold if it affected us alone can cause a very strong reaction when we are in a larger crowd, although each individual member of it falls into exactly the same trap; how often we respond in the theater or in meetings with laughter to jokes that in the room we would only react to with a shrug of the shoulders; Some impulse, which is unlikely to be followed by each individual, leads him, as soon as he is in a large crowd, to commit, together with others, actions associated with a burst of strong enthusiasm and deserving of praise or blame. If the crowd, in expressing its feelings, carries with it

individual person, this does not mean at all that the latter in himself is completely passive and that only others, differently minded, encourage him to act as he does; it may seem so to him from his subjective point of view; but in fact, the crowd consists entirely of individual people to whom the same thing happens. This is where the purest interaction takes place; Each individual person contributes to the general mood, the impact of which on a person, of course, is quantitatively so great that the individual’s own contribution seems to him vanishingly small. Although it is impossible to establish the law of a constant functional connection between a certain excitation and the number of people simultaneously captured by it, nevertheless, in general, there is no doubt that the former increases simultaneously with the latter. Hence the often absolutely incredible impact of fleeting excitement communicated to the masses, and the avalanche-like intensification of the weakest impulses of love and hate. The same applies to animals living in herds and flocks: the quietest blow of a wing, the smallest jump of one of them often causes panic horror that engulfs the entire flock. One of the most unique and illustrative cases of increased feelings as a result of being together in society is demonstrated by the Quakers. Although the intimacy and subjectivity of their religious principle contradict, strictly speaking, any joint worship, nevertheless it takes place and, moreover, often in such a way that they sit together silently for whole hours; and so, they justify this togetherness by the fact that it can help us get closer to the spirit of God; but since for them this comes down only to inspiration and nervous exaltation, it is clear that just silent being together should be conducive to this. One English Quaker of the late 17th century. describes the phenomena of ecstasy occurring with one of the members of the congregation, and continues as follows: “Because all the members of the community are connected in one body, such a state of one of them is very often communicated to everyone, and as a result this causes an exciting fruitful phenomenon, which, acting with irresistible force, it has already attracted many to the community.” One can speak directly about the nervousness of large masses; they are often characterized by such sensitivity, such passion and eccentricity, which could not be ascertained in any of their members, or at least in very few, taken individually.

All these phenomena point to that psychological stage at which mental life is still primarily determined by

is provided by the association. Higher spiritual development breaks the associative connections that connect the elements of mental life so mechanically that the excitement of one point often entails the most extensive upheavals that occur. With such force and in such areas that essentially have nothing to do with this starting point; increasing differentiation gives the individual elements of consciousness such independence that they increasingly begin to enter into only logically justified connections and are freed from those family ties that originate in vague ambiguity and the absence of strict limitations in primitive ideas. But as long as the latter dominate, one can observe a predominance of feelings over the functions of reason. For no matter how true or false the doctrine may be, according to which feelings are only unclear thoughts, however, in any case, the vagueness, obscurity and confusion of the content of ideas cause a relatively lively stimulation of the faculty of feeling. So, the lower the intellectual level, the less reliably limited the contents of ideas (namely, due to restrictions they were interfaced with each other), the more excitable the feelings and the more difficult it is for manifestations of the will to be caused by such series of ideas that are clearly limited and logically divided ; the more easily this can be achieved, on the contrary, through that general mental excitement that is created by the transmission of a communicated impulse and is as much a cause as a consequence of fluctuations of feeling. So, while the perception of some idea or impulses by a large crowd deprives them of that strict certainty that is characteristic of concepts - if only because their assimilation by each individual person is influenced by the assimilation of his comrades - nevertheless, a psychological basis for to communicate mood and direction to the crowd 18 by appealing to their feelings; where the vagueness of concepts leaves a lot of scope for the life of feeling, then feeling in the process of interaction will have a greater influence on other and higher functions, and decisions, in other cases the result of a clearly dissected teleological process in consciousness, will be composed of those much more unclear thoughts and impulses that follow the excitement of the senses. Also significant is the inability to resist, which is a consequence of such mental

this organization and helps explain the enthusiasm for the general flow that we described above; The more primitive and undifferentiated the state of consciousness, the more difficult it is to immediately find the necessary counterbalance for the emerging impulse. The limited spiritual level can accommodate only one single group of ideas, which continues to exist unhindered due to the fact that the boundaries of its elements are vague. This also explains the rapid changes in the moods and decisions of the popular crowd, in which at the moment there remains as little room for the old content as there was previously for the new; it is clear that the speed and sharpness in the sequential change of ideas and decisions correlates with their lack of such in simultaneous coexistence.

Other psychological foundations of what I have called collective nervousness relate, perhaps, mainly to the vast field of "sympathy" phenomena. Let's start with the fact that in the close proximity of many people, a large number of vague sensations of a sympathetic and antipathetic nature arise, that many different excitements, aspirations and associations are intertwined with the various impressions that we experience, being present, for example, in a people's meeting, in an audience, etc. .d.; and even if none of these impressions is clearly recognized by us, then all of them together have an exciting effect and produce an internal nervous movement, passionately grasping at any content presented to it, and strengthening it, far exceeding the measure within which it would remain , without this subjective state of excitement. This allows us to understand in general terms the intensification of nervous life that socialization brings with it, 19 and also that the first should be greater, the more varied the impressions and excitement emanating from the second, in other words, the wider and more differentiated our cultural circle. Meanwhile, another form of sympathy is even more important here. We involuntarily imitate the movements that we see around us; just as, when listening to some piece of music, we often accompany it quite unconsciously or semi-consciously by singing, or, having seen some animated action, we often accompany it with a very peculiar movement of our body, in the same way we repeat purely physically those movements, changes in facial features, etc., in which the mental movements of the people around us are revealed.

However, through the association formed in us by the feeling and its expression and also acting in the opposite direction, this purely external reproduction causes, at least in part, an internal event corresponding to it. All higher acting is based on this psychological process. Reproducing at first only externally the position and movements that need to be depicted, the actor finally gets used to their inner existence and, going beyond external imitation, is completely imbued with it, so that he plays based solely on the psychological properties of the given person. It has long been established that purely mechanical imitation of the gestures of an angry person evokes echoes of angry affect in the soul itself. Consequently, a certain excitement, located within our horizon, draws us more or less into its sphere, and its instruments are the links of sensual expression of affect and sympathetic-reflex imitation of it. This phenomenon will, of course, be all the more constant the more often the same affect is expressed around us. And if this occurs even when we enter the crowd impartially, then in those cases when our own mood coincides with the mood of the crowd, it intensifies most of all, reaching the mutual infatuation we described, to the suppression of all rational and individual moments by that feeling , which we have in common with this number of people; the interaction of individuals among themselves tends to bring every feeling, no matter how powerful it may be, to an even higher degree 20.

But in this way we seem to contradict the result of the previous reasoning, according to which the unification of the crowd at the same level implies that the latter is relatively low, and individuals lower their level. But although the individual is, in comparison with the social level, at a certain relative height, the latter must still always have a certain absolute height, which is precisely achieved by the mutual intensification of sensations and energies. Moreover, only the fully formed individual must descend to reach the social level; until then and insofar as his inclinations are still in a potential state, he may very well need to rise to it 21 . Also, imitation, which establishes the same level, is one of the lower functions, although this function in social terms has enormous significance, which has not yet been fully appreciated. In that

aspect, I will only point out that imitation is one of the main means for mutual understanding; Thanks to the above-mentioned association between an external action and the underlying process of consciousness, the imitation of another's action often gives us for the first time the key to its internal understanding, since the feelings that previously aroused this action in us are for the first time reproduced by such psychological support. There is a deep psychological truth behind the popular expression that in order to understand the way another acts, we must first walk in his shoes, and imitation of another gives us the opportunity to walk in his shoes, at least as much as it means partial identity with him; as for how much mutual understanding destroys boundaries between people and how much it contributes to the creation of a common spiritual heritage, this does not need explanation. There is also no doubt that in the vast majority of cases we are doomed in our activities to imitate forms already found in advance; This is just not realized by us, because it is not this that interests both us and others, but what is unique and original in us. It is equally certain that the spirit, whose movements are constrained by forms of imitation, stands on low level, because with a universal tendency to imitation, the norm of behavior is formed by what is most often encountered, what most often requires imitation and what, therefore, will be filled with the most trivial content. If, therefore, this type of spiritual life should, by its very concept, significantly predominate, then the ever-increasing desire for differentiation has nevertheless created a form that combines all the benefits of imitation and social affiliation and at the same time all the attractiveness of a changeable differentiation - mode 22. In the imitation of fashion in all fields the individual is a social being*. He is freed from the torment of choice 23 and responsibility for it before others; practical convenience is combined with confidence in universal approval. But since fashion in its content is in a state of constant change, it thereby satisfies the need for diversity and represents differentiation in order of consistency; the difference between today's fashion and yesterday's and the day before yesterday, the concentration of consciousness directed at it in one point, which

often differs most sharply from the previous and subsequent ones, changes and transitions in it, which remind of relationships, disagreements and compromises between individuals - all this replaces for many the attractiveness of individually differentiated behavior and hides from their eyes the low level with which they themselves tie up.

This method of organizing the mass, since the latter appears as a unity, easily explains one phenomenon that has given rise to the most risky sociological ideas. The actions of society are distinguished, in contrast to the actions of the individual, by their unshakable, constant reliability and expediency. Conflicting sensations, impulses and thoughts pull the individual in different directions, and every moment his spirit is presented with many possibilities of action, among which he is not always able to choose one with objective correctness or at least with subjective confidence; on the contrary, a social group is always aware of whom it considers its friend and who its enemy, and not so much in a theoretical sense, but when it comes to action. Between will and action, aspiration and achievement, means and goals of the community, the gap is smaller than between the same moments in the area of ​​the individual. They tried to explain this by saying that the movements of the mass, as opposed to the free individual, are determined natural laws and follow exclusively the attraction of its interests, due to which choice and fluctuations are possible here no more than the choice and fluctuations of masses of matter due to the action of gravity. A whole series of fundamental epistemological ambiguities are hidden behind this method of explanation. Even if we agree that the actions of the masses as such, in comparison with the actions of individuals, are especially subordinate to the laws of nature, it will still remain a miracle that the law of nature and expediency always coincide here. Nature knows expediency only in that form that it mechanically generates a large number of products, of which then by chance one can adapt better than others to circumstances and thereby reveals its expediency. But in nature there is no such area in which every generation would satisfy from the very beginning and unconditionally known teleological requirements. The old statement, according to which nature always chooses the shortest path to its goals, we can no longer accept in any case;

since nature has no goals at all, then its paths in relation to these goals cannot be characterized as long or short; therefore, it would be wrong to transfer this principle to the relationship between social goals and means. But even within the framework of such an approach it is impossible to seriously assert that the choices and errors of individual people represent an exception to universal natural causation; and if this were so, and the action of the mass in contrast to the individual were strictly determined by nature, then two questions would still remain to be resolved: firstly, whether choice and oscillation could not take place within the limits of pure natural causation, and secondly, thanks to what pre-established harmony in social aspirations the result always coincides with the intention. Although both moments - volition and action - are determined by the laws of nature, and even precisely because this is so, it would still remain a miracle that the result of action fits precisely into the contours that volition outlines only ideally.

Meanwhile, these phenomena, insofar as they can be stated at all, are easily explained if we assume that the goals pursued by the public spirit are much more primitive and simple than the goals of the individual; what a large number of people agree on must, in general, be adequate, as we indicated above, to the level of those of them who are at the lowest level. It can only cover the initial foundations of individual existences, above which what is more developed and more subtly differentiated in them must then rise. This allows us to understand the reliability of both volition and the achievement of social goals. To the same extent that an individual person is unshakable and unerring in his most primitive goals, so is the social group in general unshakable and unerring in its goals. Securing existence, acquiring new possessions, protecting what has been acquired, striving to establish and expand the sphere of one’s power - these are the fundamental drives of an individual, for the satisfaction of which he can expediently enter into an alliance with any number of other people. Since an individual person does not choose and does not hesitate in these fundamental aspirations, the social aspiration that unites them is alien to choice and hesitation. Added to this is the fact that the mass in its goal-setting decides just as definitely and behaves as confidently as an individual in his purely egoistic actions; the masses do not know that dualism of drives

selfishness and selflessness, forcing the individual to helplessly hesitate, so often choose the middle between them and, as a result, grasp at emptiness. As for the fact that the achievement of goals can be more accurate and successful than that of an individual, this follows from the fact - at the moment it lies aside from our research - that inside of the whole, friction and interference are formed between its parts, from which the whole as such is free, and further from the fact that the primitive nature of social goals is expressed not only in the simpler quality of their content, but also in the fact that they are more obvious; this means that the community does not need to achieve its goals in those roundabout and hidden paths that an individual is so often forced to take. The point here is not the mystical character of some special naturalness, but only the fact that only with a higher differentiation of goals and means does it become necessary to insert more and more intermediate links into the teleological chain. That in which many differentiated beings are united cannot be itself equally differentiated; and just as an individual person usually does not make mistakes in those combinations of goals where the starting point and the goal are close to each other, and just as he achieves most accurately those goals for which the first initiative in all its immediacy is sufficient, - in the same way and the social circle, of course, will be less susceptible to errors and failures, since, due to the simpler content of its goals, they have the formal character we have just indicated 24.

In larger groups, which control the course of their development not on the basis of momentary impulses, but with the help of vast and durable institutions, gradually developed, the latter must have a certain breadth and objective character in order to provide the same place, the same protection and patronage to the whole multitude of heterogeneous activities. These institutions should not only be more error-free, since any mistake, given the enormous number of relationships that depend on it, would have to be paid most heavily, and therefore should be avoided with the greatest caution, but, in addition, regardless of this expediency, they will already be found from the very beginning especially correct, free from hesitation and one-sidedness, simply because they were generally formed from a clash of opposites, a struggle of interests, a mutual grinding of contents.

differences existing in this group. For the individual, truth and reliability, both in the field of theory and in the field of practice, arise from the fact that the subjective maxim, at first one-sided, is coupled with a multiplicity of relations; the correctness of any more general idea generally consists only in the fact that it can be carried out in many and, moreover, the most diverse cases; any objectivity arises only from the crossing and mutual limitation of individual ideas, of which it is impossible to say about any one in itself whether it is not just something subjective; both in real and in theoretical-cognitive terms, exaggeration, false subjectivity and one-sidedness are corrected not thanks to the sudden intervention of some completely alien objective, but only through the fusion of many subjective ideas that mutually correct and paralyze each other’s one-sidedness and thus form the objective as a kind of concentration of the subjective. It is obvious that the public spirit is formed from the very beginning along the path that relatively late leads the individual spirit to the correctness and reliability of its contents. Precisely because such completely heterogeneous interests participate in the same degree in public institutions and activities, the latter must be, so to speak, at the point of indifference of all these opposites; they must have the character of objectivity, because the subjectivity of each individual person will already take care that the subjectivity of the other will not have too much influence on it. But as a general basis (which is especially important for the present study) and as a general result of the testing of all possible tendencies and predispositions, the activity of the group should reveal a comprehensive objectivity and form an average that is itself free from the eccentricity of factors. This reliability and this possibility correspond, of course, to a certain formalism and lack of concrete content in large spheres of public life. The larger the social circle, the more interests intersect within it and the more colorless should be those definitions that apply to it as a whole and which should receive their special and concrete content from narrower circles and from individuals. So, if genetically the highest and latest is only that level at which the level of generality can appear as something objectively reliable and purposefully determined, then

nevertheless, in this respect we see that these advantages are due to the low level of its content.

The apparent infallibility of a community, as opposed to individual people, may also be due to the fact that its ideas and actions form a norm, which is a measure of the correctness or error of an individual’s ideas and actions. After all, we have no other criterion of truth than the ability to convince every sufficiently developed spirit of it. The forms in which this is possible have, of course, gradually acquired such strength and independence that they, as logical and theoretical-cognitive laws, lead to subjective conviction of truth even where in individual cases the community adheres to other beliefs; but even in these cases there should always be a belief that one day she too will be imbued with this conviction; a judgment regarding which it was established that the community would never recognize it would not have the character of truth for an individual. This also applies to correct behavior; If we are convinced, in spite of all the world, that we are acting correctly and morally, then this must be based on the belief that a more advanced society, one that will better understand what is truly useful to it, will approve of our course of action. In this, albeit unconscious, reference to a certain ideal totality, at the level of which it is only relatively by chance that our contemporary society does not yet stand, we draw strength and confidence that our theoretical and practical convictions, which at the moment are still completely individual, will prevail. The individual who is confident in them anticipates precisely that level of community at which what is now differentiated will become common property.

The justification for these assumptions lies essentially in the practical sphere. An individual can achieve his goals only by joining a community and with its assistance, and this is so necessary for him that isolation from it would simultaneously deprive him in all other respects of everything that he recognizes as the norm, as a matter of course, and that where he nevertheless opposes himself to it, this happens only thanks to an individual combination of norms, still emanating from the totality - a combination that has not yet been realized in the totality itself, but which without the possibility of such realization would have no value at all. Whatever the generic psychological motives, it seems to me beyond doubt that in

theoretically and morally, a subjective sense of reliability coincides with a more or less clear consciousness of agreement with a certain totality; with the continuous interaction of these relationships, calm satisfaction, peace of mind, the source of which is the unshakability of beliefs, finds its explanation precisely in the fact that beliefs are only an expression of agreement with the totality, that it is our carrier. This allows us to understand the peculiar charm of the dogmatic as such; that which is given to us as definite, undoubted and at the same time universally significant, gives us in itself such satisfaction and such internal support, in comparison with which the content of dogma is relatively indifferent. In this form of absolute reliability, which is only the correlate of agreement with the totality, lies one of the main attractions of the Catholic Church; offering to the individual a teaching that has meaning * and from which, strictly speaking, no evasion is possible - in any case, the latter is completely heretical - Pius IX spoke out directly when he said that every person in some sense belongs to the Catholic Church - she appeals to the strongest degree to the social element in man and allows the individual, together with the objective certainty of faith, to simultaneously acquire all the reliability that agreement with the totality gives; and conversely, since objectivity and truth coincide with the recognition of such on the part of the totality, the doctrine of which this recognition takes place provides all the support and all the satisfaction imparted by the former. One very trustworthy person told me of a conversation with one of the highest dignitaries of the Catholic Church, during which the latter said: “The most sincere and useful adherents of the Catholic Church have always been those people who have previously committed a serious sin or fallen into error.” This is quite understandable psychologically. Anyone who has been greatly mistaken, in the moral or theoretical realm, rushes into the arms of everything that seems to him to be the infallible truth; this means that the subjective individualistic principle turned out to be so unsatisfactory in his eyes that he is now looking for that level

the line on which agreement with the totality will give him security and peace.

Meanwhile, the disadvantageous side of such an advantage is not only that the sociological level, as shown above, in order to be accessible to everyone, must be so low that the higher are forced to descend much more in comparison with how much it raises the lower; In addition, liberation from individual responsibility and initiative leads to the fact that the forces necessary for this are wasted, and it imparts to the individual a carefree confidence 25 that delays the sharpening and formation of his inclinations. In the kingdom of birds we find wonderful examples of this; They say about Australian lorikeets, toucans and American pigeons that they behave very stupidly and carelessly when they fly in large flocks, and, on the contrary, they show timidity and intelligence when they stay alone. Each individual bird, by relying on its comrades, relieves itself of some higher individual functions, but in the end the level of the aggregate suffers from this.

However, in general, a social level has a greater chance of increasing the more members it has. First, the struggle for existence and for a privileged position is more acute when it is carried on by many than when it is carried on by a few, and selection occurs in the first case with greater severity. At the high level of culture accessible to the top ten thousand, whose position is sufficiently secure for them to be able to win for themselves the possibility of existence at the cost of much less struggle - at this level at which the individual specializes early enough to be able to occupy the position around which the struggle goes relatively less fiercely, every now and then the disadvantages of a less severe selection are revealed. Already in external terms, it seems to me that the ever-increasing physical weakness of our upper classes stems to a large extent from the fact that they nevertheless raise weak and barely viable children thanks to excellent care and hygiene, and, of course, cannot make them normal and normal for a long time. strong people. In rougher eras, and also among the lower classes, where hygienic means accessible only to a few have not yet penetrated, natural selection carries away weaker creatures and allows only stronger ones to grow. But, in addition, with

From the very beginning there is a possibility that among the large number of participants there are more outstanding natures, so that this struggle finds favorable material, and through the energetic displacement of the weaker, the middle level becomes increasingly favorable to the aggregate. This benefit of large numbers is found throughout nature. One expert says of the sheep in one part of Yorkshire, that the breed cannot be improved because they usually belong to poor people, who always have few of them; on the other hand, as Darwin notes, gardeners who work for sale and breed the same plants in large quantities achieve better results in the formation of new and valuable varieties than simple amateurs; Darwin adds that widespread and common species have a greater chance of producing positive changes in a given period of time than rarer species. It seems to me that this circumstance significantly clarifies organic development in general. After a known species has spread and become dominant, a subspecies is distinguished from it, thanks to special conditions, which, existing in a few copies, exhibits a certain stability. If after this new living conditions arise that require different adaptations, then the species that remains at the original stage and is more numerous will, based on the above advantages of large numbers, have a greater chance of at least partially changing in relation to the new requirements than the subspecies that has already emerged and, perhaps, was better adapted before. This is why aristocracies, which, thanks to differentiation, have risen above the general level and formed for some time a higher independent level, then so often lose their viability in contrast to the lower level. Because the latter, due to the numerical superiority of its participants, is primarily more likely to produce, under changed conditions, outstanding individuals who are especially well adapted to them; Moreover, a low stage of development, in which a sharper differentiation exists even in the embryo, is for many a more favorable condition, because it represents soft, easily moldable material, while sharply defined individualized forms, although more consistent with their original living conditions, but the changed and opposite conditions correspond, often, less. This and

it explains why classes with one-sidedly expressed social wealth have fewer advantages in changing eras, in eras of busy movement, than those classes that have very little in common; Thus, in the movements of modern cultural society, the chances of the peasant class and the aristocracy are inferior to the chances of the middle industrial and trading class, which does not have such strong and definitely differentiated social shrines.

When speaking about the social level and its relationship to individuality, we must keep in mind its two meanings, which in previous discussions we could not always separate from each other. By the common spiritual property of a certain number of people we can understand that part of the individual property that is equally present in each of them; but in addition, it can also designate that collective property that none of them possesses on its own. From the point of view of the theory of knowledge, community in the latter sense could be called real, and in the first - ideal, since it can be known as such only through mutual comparison, through correlative knowledge; that such and such a number of others have the same properties as a given individual - this in itself might not concern him in the sense that it would mean real unity with them. There are a wide variety of relationships between the heights of these two social levels. On the one hand, upward development can be expressed by the formula that the volume of the social level in the sense of identity is reduced in favor of the social level in the sense of collective wealth; The limit to such development is set by the fact that individuals must maintain a certain degree of sameness so that they can still receive certain benefits from a single common property. Of course, with the expansion of the latter, its uniformity in the strict sense of the word must suffer and disintegrate into multidivided parts, the unity of which from the substantial gradually turns into a purely dynamic one; in other words, it is revealed only in the functional interconnection of individual components, very different in content, which, accordingly, enable heterogeneous individuals to participate in the common public domain. Thus, for example, a pervasive and multi-member legal system will arise where there is strong differentiation between individuals in position, profession and property, and where possible

The combinations between them form many questions that cannot be satisfactorily resolved by the definitions of primitive law; Despite this, a certain uniformity will still have to be preserved between all these individuals in order for this right to truly be fully satisfactory and consistent with the moral consciousness of individual people. The expansion of the social level in the sense of sameness and in the sense of the common property cannot, therefore, do without compromise, even where increasing differentiation creates or finds such forms of public spirit that open up for the most diverse aspirations and ways of life the possibility of coexistence on the basis of law and morality. On the contrary, the expansion of collective wealth caused in one way or another must also lead to an expansion of individual similarity. This is most obvious when a nation tries to annex conquered provinces also internally, by forcibly introducing its language, its law and its religion; in the course of a few generations the sharp differences between the old and new provinces will be smoothed out, and the identity of the objective spirit will lead to greater identity also between individual instances of the subjective spirit. I will refer to an example, which in essence is very far from here: this remarkable mutual similarity in the whole being, in character, and finally, in facial features, which can sometimes be observed between elderly spouses. Fate, vital interests and concerns created for them a very broad common level, common not at all in the sense that each of them from the very beginning had the same personal properties; but it arises and exists 26 between them to a certain extent as a collective property, from which the share of an individual spouse cannot be isolated, because it does not exist as such at all. Just as in the case of attraction between two material objects, gravity cannot be attributed to either of them as its individual property, because each of them has gravity only in relation to the other, in the same way in experiences and internal acquisitions, in the constitution of the objective spirit V within the framework of married life, it is impossible to always attribute to each of the spouses some, even equal, share in it, because it is created only in jointness and thanks to it. But this compatibility, in turn, influences

what each individual is, and creates that identity in personal thinking, feeling and volition, which, as we have already said, manifests itself, in the end, outside. The prerequisite for this is, of course, that individual differences are not excessively great from the very beginning, because otherwise the formation of such an objective general level would encounter difficulties. At the same time, the absolute value of the latter has a certain limit if it should lead to the consequences in question; namely, with a certain degree of expansion, the possibility again opens up that, in accordance with individual inclinations, someone is more influenced by a certain part, under the influence of one of the relations of the collective property, another - under the influence of others; the commons may still exist; but whereas, relative to the individual wealth of the participants, its magnitude is directly proportional to its likening effect, then in absolute terms, growing itself, it creates more and more opportunities for unequal influences. Therefore, gradual mutual identification is observed especially among those spouses whose relations are calm and simple, and if someone wanted to say this specifically about childless spouses, then it would have just such a meaning; for although the general level greatly increases due to the appearance of children, it becomes more varied and differentiated from this, and this makes its uniform impact on individuals doubtful.

In the economic field, another combination is found between the social level in both its meanings and differentiation. An abundant supply of identical services with limited demand creates competition, which, to a much greater extent than is commonly believed, is already directly differentiation. After all, although exactly the same product is offered, everyone must still try to distinguish himself from others, at least by the method of offer, because otherwise the consumer would find himself in the position of Buridan’s donkey. Everyone should try to distinguish himself from all others by the design of the product, or at least its placement, by the way he praises his services, or at least by the demeanor with which he does it. The more homogeneous the proposals are in their content, the more significant the differences that are given to this proposal by the individual; This is also facilitated by the fact that direct competition causes mutual antagonism.

a psychological disposition that alienates individuals from each other also in relation to thinking and feelings. That's the general thing. in personalities and what consists in the sameness of occupations and sales to the same circle causes the greater differentiation of other aspects of personalities. But this sameness again leads to the creation of a social level in another sense, since the profession or sphere of business activity as a whole has certain interests, for the observance of which all participants must unite - either in cartels, which temporarily limit or eliminate competition, or in unions, which pursue goals that lie outside of competition, such as: representation, protection of rights, resolution of issues of honor, relationship with other closed circles, etc. - and which often lead to the formation of a real class consciousness. A significant height of the social level in the sense of equality makes possible the same height of the social level in the latter sense, a clear example of which is the workshop. In contrast, the differentiation created by competition and more complex relationships is a higher level, and the same differentiation in turn creates - from a new point of view - the commons. For, on the one hand, an individual who has specialized to a high degree needs others much more in order to achieve the above goals than one who is more representative of the entire industry; on the other hand, it is only thanks to a more subtle differentiation that precisely those needs arise and precisely those aspects of the human being are sharply outlined that create the basis for collective formations. So, if competitors seeking to satisfy the same need by different means (for example, linen, cotton and wool compete in the production of underwear) unite to announce a competition for a prize for the best way to satisfy this need, then each of them, , hopes that the decision will be favorable for him; nevertheless, here a joint act took place, in which the parties proceeded from a common starting point and which would not have had a reason without previous differentiation, and this act can now become the starting point for further socialization. I will also mention in another connection that it was precisely the diversity and differentiation of spheres of employment that created the concept of the worker in general and the working class as a self-conscious whole. The identity of the functions is revealed with particular clarity when

when they are filled with the most heterogeneous content; only then is the function freed from that psychological association with its content, which is established with greater monotony in it, and only then can it manifest socializing power.

If the differentiation of individuals here leads to an increase in the social level, then, thanks to one of the points mentioned above, the opposite effect will also take place. The more products of spiritual activity are accumulated and available to everyone, the sooner weaker talents, in need of encouragement and example, will begin to actively manifest themselves. Countless abilities that can achieve a more individual development and state remain hidden if there is not a sufficiently wide social level accessible to everyone, the varied contents of which extract from everyone everything that is in them, even if it is not strong enough to develop quite original and without such motivation. Therefore, we see everywhere how the era of geniuses is followed by the era of talents: in Greco-Roman philosophy, in the art of the Renaissance, in the second heyday of German poetry, in the history of music of our century. Many times it has been told how people who occupied a secondary, undifferentiated position, while contemplating some work of art or technology, suddenly had their eyes opened to their abilities and their true calling, and how from then on they were irresistibly drawn towards the path of individual development. The more examples there are, the more likely it is that each at least somewhat outstanding ability will develop and, therefore, take a differentiated position in life. From this point of view, the social level in the sense of collective wealth reduces the social level in the sense of equality of wealth among individuals.

Such unevenness in the relations between these social levels (in the first and second sense) can apparently prevail only until each of them has reached the highest degree possible for it and until the individual and the community, in addition to increasing these levels, there are also other goals that modify their development, and, of course, both of them are not always equally affected by such modifications. Meanwhile, the absolute maximum of one level coincides with the absolute maximum of another. Firstly, the surest means to create, and most importantly, support

to maintain within a given group a maximum of individual equality is the greatest possible increase in its collective wealth; if each individual gives to the totality, as much as possible, the same part of his internal and external wealth, and the wealth of the totality is large enough to provide it with a maximum of forms and contents, then this in any case is the best guarantee that everyone will essentially have the same and will be the same as everyone else. On the contrary, if there is maximum equality between individuals and socialization generally takes place, then the social wealth will reach its maximum in relation to the individual, because the principle of economy of force forces us to act as much as possible for the community (we will consider exceptions to this rule in the last chapter) and receive from it as much support as possible, while the differences between individuals that usually limit this tendency are supposed to no longer exist. Socialism therefore aims to maximize both levels equally; equality between individuals can be created only in the absence of competition, and this, in turn, is possible only with state centralization of the entire economy.

Meanwhile, it seems psychologically doubtful to me that the requirement to equalize levels is really as absolutely contrary to the desire for differentiation as it seems. In nature we see everywhere the desire of living beings to rise higher, to occupy a position more advantageous than the one they occupy at the moment; in people this comes to a strong conscious desire to have more and enjoy more than is possible at any given moment, and differentiation is nothing more than a means to achieve this goal or a consequence of this phenomenon. No one is satisfied with the position that he occupies among those like him, but everyone wants to win for himself another, more favorable in some respect, and since strength and luck are different, then someone manages to rise above most others more or less highly . And so, if the oppressed majority continues to feel a desire for a higher way of life, then this can best be expressed by saying that they want to have the same thing, to be the same as those ten thousand who belong to the upper class. Equality with those who stand above - this is the content that suggests itself first of all and how the desire for self-aggrandizement is filled.

sheenia. This is found in any closer circle, be it the student class, the merchant class or the bureaucratic hierarchy. This explains the fact that the wrath of the proletarian falls mostly not on the upper classes, but on the bourgeoisie; for he sees that she stands directly above him, she means for him that step on the ladder of happiness on which he has to step first and on which, therefore, his consciousness and his desire for elevation are concentrated at the moment. The inferior desires first of all to be equal to the superior; but if he is equal to him, then - experience shows this a thousand times - the state that previously exhausted all his aspirations is only the starting point for what follows, only the first stage on the endless path to the most favorable position. Wherever they tried to bring about equalization, the desire of the individual to outdo others in all possible respects was revealed on this new soil; for example, it often happens that the basis of tyranny is formed by social leveling. In France, where since the time of the Great Revolution the influence of the idea of ​​equality was very strong and where the July Revolution again refreshed these traditions, soon after it there appeared, along with the shameless excesses of individuals, a general passion for orders, an irresistible desire to distinguish oneself from the broad masses with a bow in one’s buttonhole. . Perhaps there is no better proof for our assumption about the psychological origin of the idea of ​​equality than the statement of one coal miner in 1848 addressed to a noble lady: “Yes, madam, now everyone will be equal: I will wear silk, and you will wear coal". The historical reliability of this statement is indifferent to its internal psychological correctness.

If this is the origin of socialism, then this would, of course, mean the sharpest contrast to most of its theoretical justifications. For the latter, the equality of people is a self-sufficient ideal, which is itself justified and satisfies in itself, an ethical causa sui *, a state whose value is immediately clear. But if this state is only a transitional moment, only the immediate goal - the opportunity to achieve abundance for the masses - then it loses its categorical and ideal character, which it assumed only because the majority of people consider that point on their path that they must achieve

first of all, and until he reaches his final goal. The inferior is driven to strive for the realization of equality by the same interest that prompts the superior to maintain inequality; but if this demand for equality, due to its long existence, has lost the character of relativity and has become independent, then it can also become the ideal of those individuals for whom it did not subjectively arise in this way. The assertion of logical law behind the requirement of equality - as if from the essential equality of people it could be analytically deduced that they should be equal in relation to their rights, duties and benefits of all kinds - has only the most superficial, illusory validity. Firstly, with the help of logic alone it is never possible to derive a pure ought from actual relations or an ideal from reality, because for this we always need more will, which never follows from purely logical theoretical thinking. Secondly, there is in particular no logical rule according to which their functional equality would follow from the substantial equality of several beings. Thirdly, the very sameness of people as such is very conditional. And this is complete arbitrariness - because of the fact in which they are the same, to forget their numerous differences or to strive to associate them with the simple concept of man, in which we unite such heterogeneous phenomena, this kind of real consequences is a relic of that realism of concepts in the understanding of nature, which believed the essence of an individual phenomenon not in its specific content, but only in the general concept to which it belonged. All ideas about the self-evident validity that is inherent in the demand for equality are only an example of the fact that the human spirit is inclined to consider the results of historical processes, if only they have existed long enough, as something logically necessary. But if we look for the psychic drive that corresponds to the demand for equality emanating from the lower classes, we will find it only in that which is the source of all inequality, namely, in the drive for ever greater happiness. And since it goes to infinity, there are no guarantees that the creation of the highest social level in the sense of equality will not become only a transitional moment of further developing differentiation. Therefore, socialism must simultaneously strive to create the highest social level in the sense of collective wealth, because thanks to this, the individual

species, more and more the reason and subject for individual difference and differentiation disappears.

Meanwhile, the question still remains whether minor differences between people in what they are and what they possess 27 (these differences cannot be eliminated even by the highest socialization) will not cause the same psychological, and therefore external consequences, that cause nowadays the differences are much greater. In fact, since it is not the absolute magnitude of an impression or object that makes us react to it, but its difference from other impressions, an increased capacity for perceiving differences can associate with decreased differences undiminished consequences. This process happens everywhere. The eye adapts so much to a small amount of light that it finally perceives differences in colors in the same way as before it felt them only under much stronger illumination; slight differences in position and enjoyment of life, occurring within the same social circle, give rise, on the one hand, to envy and rivalry, and on the other, to arrogance, in a word, create all the consequences of differentiation to the same extent as differences between two very layers distant from each other, etc. It can even often be observed that our difference from other people is felt the more strongly the more we have in common with them in other respects. Therefore, on the one hand, those consequences of differentiation that socialism considers harmful and must be eliminated are not eliminated by it at all; on the other hand, socialism is by no means as dangerous to the cultural values ​​of differentiation as its enemies would like; the adaptation of our discriminating power can give precisely the smaller personal differences under a socialized system the same power, both for good and for bad, that the differences of our time have.

Personal level

The next 6th level of manifestation of planetary principles is called personal. This level determines the personal characteristics of a given person’s perception of various stimuli (any external circumstances or internal sensations). This level characterizes the ability to evaluate certain circumstances and develop one or another personal response to strengthen or weaken them. Moreover, the reactions of different people to the same influence may differ depending on the level of organization and the degree of development of consciousness.

The planets Venus, Mercury and Mars are most strongly associated with the functions of perception, evaluation and response, the influence of which is most evolutionary on the subtle (astral) cosmic Plane. The human kingdom shares this level of manifestation with animals and plants. The sensitivity and flexibility of plant reactions is now beyond doubt even among scientists.

Venus (the beginning of Nav) is associated with our feelings, attractions, desires, with internal acceptance (like) or rejection (dislike) of this or that situation, this or that person. Our sensory selectivity is determined by our past experience, what we have already experienced, what we have become acquainted with.

IN present, in everyday events we navigate with the help of Mercury (the beginning of the Rule), it helps us to best respond to the constantly changing pattern of external influences, allows us to be synchronous with our environment, to be here and now, to make the most of every opportunity provided by life.

Mars is associated with our desire, the desire to achieve something, to achieve. Mars (the beginning of Reality) is connected with ours future which we passionately want to bring closer, with the goals that we set for ourselves, or with troubles, difficulties that we want to avoid. Mars is associated with action, the fruits of which may fully manifest themselves in the future.

The fifth level of manifestation is concerned with how an individual interacts with other people. In human evolution, this level is still not fully developed. The interests of the individual are not very harmoniously combined with the interests of society. So far, you and I are making every effort to ignore the interests of society; we are very reluctant to carry out public programs, since this is often associated with some restrictions - we have to sacrifice some personal programs, do not only what we want or enjoy, but also , What necessary to maintain the health of the social organism. In turn, society does not fully satisfy our personal needs, does not “notice” us, which we perceive as an imperfection of the state structure, personal lack of freedom.

Astrologically, this manifests itself in the fact that the connection between Jupiter and Saturn is broken, there is no planet that could act as an intermediary (Phaethon may have previously performed this function). Currently, the role of this connecting link, but still far from being fully fulfilled, is played by Chiron. In the meantime, humanity, in a painful, bloody quest, is looking for a fair world order, that social order that would best combine the interests of the individual and society as a whole.

The social level of manifestation of planetary principles is most closely related to the theme of the world of Thought (Mental). We share this level of manifestation with the animal kingdom.

Saturn (the beginning of Nav) is associated with our beliefs, with our point of view on life, on relationships with people, society, this is the life experience that we acquired as a result of interaction with other people. Saturn is the foundation of our social life, based on our past savings, this is something that we do not want to change, because we trust it. Saturn is a system of our values ​​and priorities in life, which we can rely on, because we have repeatedly tested their reliability and benefits on ourselves.

Chiron (the beginning of Rule) helps us navigate the cultural, political, economic and religious life of society, helps us fit in most harmoniously to the present existing at the moment, the structure of relationships between man and society and take advantage of all the best that this moment carries.

Jupiter (the beginning of Reality) is associated with our aspirations to achieve a certain position in the social structure of society, with our claims to people, society, ruling structures, the state, with our desire for a more fulfilling, rich, worthy life. Jupiter is connected to our future, with the direction of our efforts, with the application of our abilities in the social sphere.