Balashov L. Philosophy

CHAPTER 13. Life, death, immortality

Life, death, immortality - magic words, which mean infinitely much to each of us. People have wondered about their meaning since they became human. Philosophers especially try to understand them. And this is natural. Philosophers are specialists in general problems of existence. For them, life, death, immortality have not only personal, but universal meaning.

13.1. Life . The meaning and purpose of life

Life is a way of existence of living things (organisms, animals, humans), expressed at least in the exchange of matter-energy with environment and reproduction (reproduction of one’s own kind).
For living organisms and creatures, life is a biological form of activity, for humans it is a biosocial form.
For a person, life is activity in general, integral activity, vital activity in itself. in a deep sense this word. Against the background of life, a person carries out special or specialized forms of activity, such as communication, cognition, practical activity, work, rest, etc. These forms of activity exist and develop only in the general context of life, the life activity of the subject.
There are three levels human life or three human lives:
1. Plant life is nutrition, excretion, growth, reproduction, adaptation.
2. Animal life is gathering, hunting, protection, sexual and other communication, caring and raising children, orientation activities, play activities.
3. Cultural life or life in culture is knowledge, management, invention, craft, sports, art (art), philosophy.
These three lives are relatively independent, equally important for a person, interact, influence and mediate each other. As a result, we have one very diverse, rich, contradictory, human life.
The presence of a third level of life in a person makes his life fundamentally different from the life of a plant or animal, and this difference increases with every step along the path of cultural progress.
Based on the above, we can give the following definition: a person’s life is his life as a living being and life in culture.

Meaning of life

Fill every moment with meaning
Hours and days are an inexorable rush

R. Kipling. Commandment

The question of the meaning of life is, first of all, the question of whether human life is meaningful, that is, is it illuminated by the light of reason, thinking, or is it devoid of meaning, senseless, and in no way controlled by the human mind.
The question of the meaning of life is also a question of its value and significance for the person himself. Does life have meaning, is it worth living?
There is another nuance to this question: we talk about the meaning of life when life is comprehended generally when questions are clarified " what is life?», « why, why does a person live», « why, why do I live», « what am I doing in this world?", when our life is comprehended in the context of the life of all people, life on Earth in general, the existence of the world in general.
It is necessary to clearly distinguish between the concepts of “meaning of life” and “purpose of life”. When a person has the goal of becoming, for example, a doctor, scientist, engineer, then this still does not answer the question that worries him about the meaning of life (in any case, the answer is felt by him only intuitively, in a purely emotional way). A person goes further in his thoughts: why do you need to become a doctor, engineer, scientist? Thus, if the goal indicates what a person strives for, then the meaning of life speaks of the purpose for which he does this.
Some people, including some philosophers, believe that the meaning of life is to seek this meaning. ON THE. Berdyaev, for example, wrote: “I may not know the meaning of life, but the search for meaning already gives meaning to life, and I will devote my life to this search for meaning” (“Self-Knowledge”, Chapter III). This view of the meaning of life is in form nothing more than a play on words, cleverness... Searching all the time, all your life for the meaning of life is some kind of infantilism. An adult, mature person somehow finds the meaning of life and realizes it, lives a meaningful life. Human, meaning seeker life, just trying to find it, is an undecided, unformed person who has not yet emerged as a solver of life’s problems. The meaning of life is similar to a goal. Before achieving a goal, moving from goal to result, a person must determine a goal for himself and set it. But goal setting is only the first stage. A person performs actions not only to set and define a goal, but in order to achieve it. So is the meaning of life. Finding the meaning of life is the first part of the problem. The second part is the realization of the meaning of life, a meaningful, meaningful life.
Further, it is very important, on the one hand, to seek and find the meaning of life, and, on the other, not to overestimate the importance of this issue, not to get hung up on the search for the meaning of life. Life is partly meaningful and partly meaningless.
Life has meaning to the extent that it is meaningful, intelligently organized, and humanly significant.
Life has no meaning, that is, the question of its meaning is irrelevant to the extent that it is automatic and vegetative, to the extent that it is controlled by instincts, regulated by organic needs. The French “selyavi” (“such is life”) perfectly conveys its automatism and vegetation. The presence of this second side of life allows a person not to strain too much in search of the meaning of life, not to rush with vital answers and decisions, that is, to relax to some extent, surrender to the flow of life, go with its flow.
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What exactly is the meaning of life? It is clear that everyone answers this question in their own way. On the other hand, it has some common points. This is love and creativity. In the overwhelming majority of cases, people comprehend and evaluate their lives precisely in line with these two categories. The meaning of life is love and creativity. Love supports, multiplies life, makes it harmonious, harmonizes. Creativity ensures the progress of life.

The purpose of life

A person lives most at the time when he is looking for something
F.M. Dostoevsky

Life is a process of constant choice. At every moment a person has a choice: either retreat or advance towards the goal. Either a movement towards even greater fear, fears, protection, or a choice of goal and growth of spiritual forces. Choosing development over fear ten times a day means moving toward self-realization ten times.
A.Maslow

The goal “sets” the integrity of the activity. If this is the purpose of life, then it determines the integrity of life. For a person who does not have a goal in life, life is not realized as an organic whole in the biosocial, i.e., human sense. “A life without a goal is a man without a head,” says popular wisdom.
Not every person sets a goal in life, but if he does, then the person considers it as targeted activity.
Generally in real life there is a whole goal tree. The purpose of life is the main or general purpose of life. In addition to it, there are either subordinate, intermediate, or secondary goals. Subordinate and intermediate goals are goals, the implementation of which opens the way to main goal life, brings us closer to it. Side or parallel goals are goals that form the entire “cuisine” of life and determine the full harmonious development of a person. In their totality, they are no less important than the main goal of life (for example, the goal of improving health by means physical culture, build a house, various hobbies, hobbies). In some situations, a conflict arises between the main goal of life and secondary goals. This conflict can end either in the victory of the main goal of life or in the victory of secondary goals.
The main goal of life is a goal, the implementation of which justifies the life of a person as a whole, as an individual, a subject standing somewhere on an equal footing with society, aware of his goals as the goals of a person in general or the goals of a particular community of people. In the main goal of life, according to the logic of things, the aspirations of man as an individual and the goals of society merge together.
The problem of determining the purpose of life is akin to the problem of choosing a profession. Moreover, the first is, as a rule, a continuation of the second. Chance, necessity, external circumstances, incentives, and internal motivations “participate” in the formation of the purpose of life.
In some cases, it also happens that a person does not stop at choosing one goal in life (a striking example: the two lives of A.P. Borodin as a composer and a chemist).
If a goal is set, then it becomes a law of activity, a categorical imperative, a necessity to which a person submits his will.
Thus, one can see two sides of conscious life activity: goal setting(search for a goal, choosing a goal) and focus(purposefulness, movement towards a goal, or rather, from a goal to a result). Both sides are equally important for a person.
While being aware of the importance of the goal and the goal-setting and determination associated with it, one should not, however, make it absolute. Live in in a sense there is a unity of purpose and aimlessness, i.e. the unity of organization and disorganization, work and rest, tension and relaxation. Aimlessness is realized primarily in the fact that, along with the main goal of life, there are many secondary goals. The search and implementation of a secondary goal (and at the same time a distraction from the main goal) can be interpreted as aimlessness. They say that you can’t work all the time, think about one thing, that you need to be distracted, have fun, relax, relieve tension, and switch to another type of activity. Not by chance modern man pays more and more attention to side activities and hobbies, intuitively realizing that the stress of work, the main goal, the main business of life can simply destroy him.
It must also be borne in mind that a person’s life does not always proceed at the level of goal setting and goal implementation. A person can perform expedient actions, bypassing the stage of goal setting, purely instinctively, unconsciously. For example, the need for rest and sleep can be “realized” in the form of a goal (searching for a place to sleep, etc.) or directly - a person unnoticed fell asleep in the subway. Or this example: when a person accidentally touches a hot object with his hand, he pulls it away - this is a completely purposeful action, but there is no goal-setting or conscious desire for a goal.
When does the need for goal setting arise? Probably when there is some kind of obstacle between the need and its satisfaction (not very large, but not very small either) or in order to satisfy the need it is necessary to perform complex indicative actions.

“Meaning” is very close in meaning to the concept of thought; “meaning” and “thought” literally merge in the words “comprehension”, “comprehend”.

Both meanings of the expression “meaning of life” follow from the meaning of the word “meaning”. In the Dictionary of the Russian Language S.I. Ozhegova (1991) this word is interpreted as follows: “Meaning, 1. Content, the meaning of something., comprehended by reason”

13.2. Death and Immortality

In living nature and human society, the connection between the finite and the infinite takes on the character mutual mediation. This is clearly seen in the relationship between mortality and immortality.
Initially, the living was more of an intermediate, transitional form of the finite and the infinite, rather than their mutual mediation. IN division In the simplest unicellular organisms we see a certain inseparability, a direct transition from the finite to the infinite (the finite has not yet been differentiated clearly enough from the infinite, and the infinite from the finite; the individual and the genus have not yet separated from each other. The division of a unicellular organism is simply its replication, copying, repeating). Nevertheless, already in the division the main features appear reproduction- the greatest achievement of life. Let us take for comparison a crystalline body and a living unicellular organism. The first preserves itself only due to the stability of the chemical bonds between its “parts” and the stability of the “parts” themselves - the atoms. Disturbing effects of the environment immediately or gradually destroy the crystalline body, cease its existence, and end it. The finitude of the crystalline body is thus not controlled by itself, but is external to it. If there are no disturbing effects of the environment, then such a body can exist indefinitely, almost forever. On the other hand, it is completely defenseless against the external environment and its existence can cease at any moment. In the crystalline body itself there is no program for its termination, self-destruction, or transition to another body. The chemical bond thanks to which it exists is “aimed” only at preservation, at “chemical immortality.” The finite and the infinite turn out to be opposites for the existence of a crystalline body, although interdependent, but still quite indifferent to each other.
We see something completely different in living organisms. The ending program is embedded within them. If chemical bond inside the crystalline body is “aimed” only at preservation, then the biochemical processes occurring in a living organism are aimed not only at its preservation, but also at transformation, at transition to another organism and even at death, i.e. destruction, disintegration - into case multicellular organisms. The finite life span of a living organism is programmed within itself: the finite, thus, is present in the infinite itself, mediating it. This is one side of the relationship between the finite and the infinite in relation to the existence of living things. The other side is that although a living organism ends itself, it still preserves, immortalizes itself, makes itself immortal - thanks to the reproduction of their own kind. By its reproduction, the organism, as it were, prevents the destructive effect of time and makes a breakthrough into immortality. The crystalline body is a toy in the “hands” of the natural elements; its “lifetime” depends entirely on the whims of the environment. A living organism, having included finitude and variability, was able to adapt to changing environmental conditions or adapt them to itself, and thereby to some extent protected itself from them. He set a limit for his existence, but in such a way that its end coincides with the beginning of the existence of an organism similar to him, which is his daughter. The latter continues the “business” of maintaining balance with changing environmental conditions and so on ad infinitum. A living organism, therefore, has plasticity, which is completely uncharacteristic of a crystalline body.
The crystalline body does not know the reproduction of its own kind and therefore in relation to it it is meaningless to talk about the immortality of the race. His “life” is entirely limited to the framework of “individual” existence. The life of an organism is inseparable from the life of the species. Its frailty is, as it were, neutralized, removed in the immortality of the race. On the other hand, the latter is possible only if there are finite existences of individual organisms.
Further, if you look closely at the differences within living things, you can see that for unicellular organisms that reproduce by mitotic division, the opposition between finitude and infinity of existence is not as pronounced as for multicellular organisms that reproduce sexually. (Above I already said that the originally living thing was rather an intermediate form of the finite and the infinite, rather than their mutual mediation, which presupposed the vivid expression of both as opposites). The finiteness of the existence of single-celled organisms cannot be spoken of as their mortality. Accordingly, it is impossible to talk about their immortality in the strict sense. After all, immortality is the opposite of mortality. One does not exist without the other. If there is no mortality, then there is no immortality. We are not talking about the destruction of a crystalline body as its death and about the indefinitely long existence of the body as its immortality. Of course, single-celled organisms also die if environmental conditions are extremely unfavorable for them. But their death is not their death in the strict sense of the word. They themselves do not have a “mechanism”, a program for dying, death, as we see in multicellular organisms. Latest at any environmental conditions are programmed for death. Single-celled organisms are programmed only to divide, reproduce, and if they die, it is only due to unfavorable changes in the environment. Scientists speak of the experimentally tested division of Paramecium over 8,400 generations as proof of the possibility of an unlimited process of successive divisions. But life itself demonstrates this to us at every step. Currently, numerous single-celled organisms that began dividing and reproducing billions of years ago exist and flourish on earth. They actually don't know death! They divide and divide almost an infinite number of times as long as favorable environmental conditions exist.
In light of the above, I would like to draw special attention to the need for a clear distinction between the concepts of “death” and “death”. Not everything that is destruction deserves the name of death and, conversely, not everything that dies is destroyed. Strictly speaking, death is the cessation of vital activity of a multicellular organism as a result joint actions of internal and external factors life (natural development of the body and unfavorable environmental conditions). Single-celled organisms that divide mitotically do not die because their natural development results in division rather than death. If their vital activity ceases, it is not as a result of natural development, but as a result of unfavorable external influences. Therefore, the cessation of their vital activity should be called not death, but destruction. Death is the cessation of the existence of something living (or associated with it) due to external adverse influences. Not only individual living organisms perish, but also their communities (superorganismal formations - populations, human civilizations, peoples, states), cultural objects also perish, etc.
So, the phenomenon of mortality arises only at the stage of multicellular organisms that reproduce sexually. These organisms do not just perish, but die. Their death is caused by both external random causes and internal conditions of existence, which gives reason to consider it as a necessary moment of the end of the life of multicellular organisms.

Death as a programmed end is an evolutionary acquisition of life and it is possible that a person, by appropriately changing his genetic program, can end death. Life as such does not carry within itself the germ of death. She, undoubtedly, carries within herself the germ of change, transformation, but not death, and especially not destruction.
The emergence of death as a phenomenon of the end of life led to greater differentiation (greater opposition) of the finite and the infinite. The mortality of an individual biological individual and the immortality of the race are, in a certain sense, screaming opposites. On the other hand, the greater differentiation of finitude and infinity of existence was accompanied by a deepening of their mutual mediation, the mediating connections between them. Sexual reproduction plays the role of such a mediator. It, on the one hand, contrasts the organism and the genus (finite and infinite), and, on the other, is the connecting link between them.
The opposing role of sexual reproduction is that, firstly, it makes the individual “immortality” of the organism unnecessary and, secondly, during sexual reproduction the organism does not repeat itself completely in its offspring, is not replicated one to one and, therefore, does not preserve yourself in your own way. The finitude, the peculiarity, the individuality of a separate organism appears in this case brighter, sharper, more naked.
The role of sexual reproduction as a connecting link is that it “introduces” the organism to immortality and to a much greater extent than was the case with fissile organisms. Continuation sort of- real biological immortality of higher organisms. In it we see a constant transition of the finite into the infinite, and the infinite into the finite, and in such a way that neither the finite nor the infinite disappear, but are preserved as moments of this transition. In a purely finite existence there is no procreation, just as there is none in a purely infinite existence.
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In human society, there is a further deepening of the mutual mediation of the finite and the infinite. The problem of mortality and immortality is recognized and solved as one of the most important problems of human existence.
Many philosophers associate this problem with the problem of the meaning of life. And this is fair, since this problem forces a person, whether he wants it or not, to comprehend life as a whole.
Life, death, immortality are phenomena of the same order. And if life is the opposite of death, and death is the opposite of immortality, then, consequently, life and immortality are one. From this conclusion we can see that immortality is not an otherworldly category for life, but is internal to it. On the other hand, death (as we found out earlier) is not entirely external to life, although it is opposed to it. It is therefore correct to say this: life creates and resolves contradictions between mortality and immortality. This formula contains a general solution to the problem of mortality and immortality.
A point of view that contrasts mortality and immortality, considers them incompatible, incompatible, ultimately paralyzes the will and mind of people or leads them into a dead end. In fact, the one who denies mortality and believes in personal immortality (immortality of the soul) thereby devalues real life, how to say, the joint life of soul and body. And the one who believes that man is only mortal strives to live one day at a time, not caring about the future, not caring about improving life in general, since for him there is only the concept of his specific, given life.
I took extreme cases, but they clearly show what the opposition of mortality and immortality, the absolutization of one of the sides of this contradiction of life, can lead to.

13.3. Living connection between mortality and immortality

It was said above that life creates and resolves the contradiction between finitude and infinity of existence. This is a general solution to the problem. How exactly does this contradiction “work”? In my opinion, there are three “mechanisms” of connection (forms of mutual mediation) between the finite and the infinite in relation to man: Love, creation, desire for active longevity (life extension). As already noted, in living nature the mutual mediation of finitude and infinity of existence is carried out thanks to the reproduction of organisms and, in particular, sexual reproduction. It is clear that in human society, in a removed form (at a higher level of development), this biological intermediation is preserved. Family and marital relations and the love that underlies them are a natural continuation of sexual reproduction. Reproduction of our own kind continues to be the primary responsibility of humans as living beings. Meanwhile, the contradiction between finitude and infinity of existence takes on new, specifically human features. The boundaries of the mutual mediation of these opposites are expanding due to the emergence and development of creative people's activity. Creativity, like love, serves as a real “representative” of immortality (infinite existence) in the finite life of people. Children and creations are real mediators of the finite by the infinite. They in a unique way end (communicate completeness) the seemingly endless (endless) life of an individual.
The third form of connection between finitude and infinity of existence is the desire for active longevity, life extension, and a consistent solution to the problem of endless existence.
So, on the one hand, a person is destined to learn, to realize that he is mortal, impermanent. On the other hand, a person longs for immortality, strives for it, achieves it. And this is understandable. The meaning of life largely lies in do her immortal. I do not claim, of course, that a person can achieve complete immortality (personal, individual immortality, as they also say). But pursuit to immortality he Maybe And must. Such a position, in order not to confuse it with the concept of immortalism, can be called - by analogy with philosophy - phyloimmortalism. Just as there is no absolute wisdom and philosophers modestly call themselves only lovers of wisdom (literally lovers of wisdom), so there is no absolute immortality and people can only call themselves philoimmortalists, i.e., striving for immortality, hunting for immortality, loving immortality, making it.
The desire for immortality is not just a desire, like an eternal hunt for a fleeing ghost (as sometimes happens in a bad dream: we are achieving something or trying to avoid it and we cannot succeed; as a result, a feeling of painful dissatisfaction and powerlessness arises). The desire for immortality is carried out in the form of it doing. Making immortality precisely expresses the process of movement, of approaching it. This movement, this approach, is carried out thanks to our conscious efforts, actions - love, caring for offspring, creativity, the struggle to prolong life.
The dialectic of mortality and immortality is akin to the dialectic of relative and absolute truths. Absolute truth is complete, exhaustive knowledge about an object, in other words, the complete coincidence of our ideas with the subject of knowledge. We will never achieve absolute truth (the object is infinite and its knowledge is endless), but we must strive for it, otherwise there will be no progress in knowledge. We will never achieve complete immortality, but it is our duty to strive for it. otherwise there will be no progress in life.(The comparison of the desire for immortality with the desire for absolute truth is all the more justified since cognition is a type of creativity and as such contributes to the “making” of immortality.)
There is one more point in the relationship between relative and absolute truths that helps to understand the relationship between mortality and immortality. Absolute truth is not only the goal of knowledge, the ideal to which the knowing subject strives, but also something present in our knowledge. Philosophers say that in relatively true, limited, approximate knowledge there are grains absolute truth. Absolute truth is not fenced off by a Chinese wall from relative truth. And our knowledge truly represents the unity of relative and absolute truths. So is human life. Yes, it is finite, limited in space and time. But, on the other hand, in individual human life there are grains of infinity, eternity, immortality. I call these grains relevant immortality. The doing of immortality is, therefore, not only the doing of the posthumous, potential immortality, but also the creation of today's, lifetime, actual immortality. This will be discussed in more detail below.

13.4. How do we “do” immortality?

Continuation of the human race, love

Since personal immortality is impossible, people have always faced and will continue to face the problem of procreation, the reproduction of their own kind. As Plato said, the mortal, unlike the divine, does not always remain the same, but, becoming obsolete and passing away, leaves a new likeness.
Until people have invented another way to reproduce their own kind, they must give birth and raise children and solve the related problems of love, marriage and family.
First of all, about the problem of fertility. Sociologists and demographers have long been sounding the alarm: the birth rate is falling, the factors leading to depopulation, i.e., population extinction. Demographers call a threshold - 2.15 children per woman - below which reduced human reproduction occurs. There are already entire countries in which the birth rate is significantly below this threshold. So, in Germany it is equal to 1.4 children per woman. The situation in Russia is no better, especially in last years.
The scourge of modern cultural society is a small family (one-child and two-child families). Demographers have calculated that if all families had two children, the country's population would be halved in 350 years. And if all families had one child, it would have halved in just 53 years. Things are heading to the point where the one-child family is becoming the predominant form of family. Moreover, the family itself as a social institution is falling apart. And this is understandable. A vicious circle situation has arisen. Having few children leads to the fact that subsequent generations of people who grew up in small families lose the necessary qualities for living together in a family, as a result of which marriages become less and less strong.
The facts are that modern civilized society faces a slow death unless serious measures are taken to increase the birth rate, strengthen the family, or transform it into another social institution favorable to human reproduction.
As we see, the problem of “making” immortality is most closely connected with the problem of fertility and, accordingly, with the problems of love, marriage and family. All our successes in the field of science and technology, all our cultural achievements are not worth a penny if the problem of human reproduction is not solved. As a result of depopulation and extinction, there will simply be no one to enjoy the fruits of science, technology, and culture. Modern society is developing one-sidedly and risks turning out to be an involuntary suicide. A balanced approach is needed. The logic of “doing” immortality requires that the problems of human reproduction be given at least as much attention as the development of the economy, science, technology, and culture. Not yet. Take love, for example. It is, as it were, the focus of human reproduction problems. And what? Can society “boast” of sufficient attention to the needs and demands of love? Of course not. When loving young people decide to start a family, they do not always have the opportunity to “build their own nest,” that is, live together in normal living conditions. Further, the obvious fact is that the well-being of the family deteriorates as a result of the birth of a child. Those who have children clearly lose out economically those who do not have children. The work of parents is not truly appreciated by society. We can directly say that modern society is pursuing an anti-child policy. Such a policy is shortsighted and fraught with the slow death of society. We must finally realize the importance of protecting man himself as a living being, just as we have already realized the importance of protecting the environment. Finally, we need to realize the need for urgent measures to establish sustainable human reproduction (not at the expense of the “fertility” of rural residents, of whom there are fewer and fewer, but through reasonably organized, balanced work, rest and life of urban residents).
Now about love . They may ask: why do I associate the continuation of the human race with love? The first is something vital, necessary, the second seems to be just a feeling, something ephemeral, not very obligatory. Indeed, if love is only a feeling, then it is probably wrong to associate it exclusively with sexual love, from which children are born. The fact of the matter is that love is not only and not even so much a feeling. In its main meaning it is activity - activities of mind, soul and body special activity it occurs only in sexual intercourse between a man and a woman. Sexual communication is necessary not only and not so much for the sake of communication itself, but for procreation. This means that love in its main meaning is what underlies the continuation of the human race.
Love-activity is not just emotional experience striving for harmony, unity, beauty, and this very doing is the reproduction of harmony, unity, beauty. This is exactly the relationship between a man and a woman.
Why do I emphasize the difference between love as a feeling and love as an activity? Such a distinction is necessary to understand the essence of love as one of the most important means, factors of “making” immortality. As a feeling, love is only a certain psychological state and its connection with the continuation of the human race, that is, with the real “making” of immortality seems problematic or very distant. As a special activity, it directly “participates” in the “making” of immortality.
Further, it should be said that love includes not only feelings, not only sexual behavior. As an activity, it covers sexual intercourse between a man and a woman, and their relationships in general, and their relationships to parents, children, others, and the world around them. In other words, the love of a man and a woman is not limited to the framework of their sexual intercourse, but, as it were, diverges in circles, embracing their other relationships, relationships with parents, children, relatives, friends, etc. V.G. once said beautifully. Belinsky: “ Love is poetry and the sun of life" Yes, love is the sun of life. Its rays diverge in all directions of life, illuminating everything, even the most remote corners of human life. And this applies primarily to relationships with parents and children. Love for parents prepares sexual love, and love for children completes and crowns it.
Love as a great factor in the continuation of the human race is realized in its full sense only in this trinity: as love for parents, as a love affair and as love for children. Of course, love for parents and love for children are not of the nature of a special activity. However, these are not just feelings of sympathy, affection, the opposite of hatred. Together with a love affair, they are on the same line of procreation; they are expressions of a powerful instinct for procreation. Let us remember what Plato wrote about this: animals “are in the heat of love, first during mating, and then when they feed their young, for the sake of which they are ready to fight with the strongest, no matter how weak they themselves are, and to die, and to starve, just to feed them, and generally demolish anything.” This is, of course, true of human love. Both childbearing and raising children are impossible without love. A full-fledged person can be born and grow only in conditions of love, in its rays.
Speaking about love as a factor in procreation, one must keep in mind that in human in society it also has another meaning - simply as a factor of communication, as a connection that binds and cements the relationship between a man and a woman, as a primary social connection. Sometimes this second meaning of love turns out to be the only one (for men and women who do not have children).
In both its meanings, love expands the boundaries of finite life person. As a factor of procreation, it expands the boundaries of an individual human life in the temporal aspect, means going beyond the limits of finite existence in a temporary sense. And as a factor of communication (as a purely love affair), it expands the boundaries of an individual human life in the spatial aspect, means going beyond the limits of limited spatial existence. In fact, when engaging in sexual intercourse, a person literally goes beyond himself, “invades” someone else’s space. In general, when a person loves and is loved, his “ego” turns into an “alter” and vice versa; he seems to dissolve in another, gives himself to another and at the same time finds himself in another, asserts himself.
In addition, the hours of love really expand the time frame of life, if we mean not “going beyond”, but the depth and intensity of the present moment. Griboyedov’s “happy people don’t watch the clock” is very precise in meaning. Time doesn't seem to exist for love...
It is noteworthy that at all times writers, poets, and artists have considered love as a beginning that expands the limits of life and overcomes death.
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Love is not the only form of “doing” immortality. Another form of immortalization of life, as Plato established, is creation. There is a close connection between love and creativity. Moreover, they mediate each other. We can say this: love is the creativity of the living, life-creation, and creativity is the love of truth, goodness, beauty. Love and creativity do one thing, a common cause, but only in different ways. They complement each other. Love without creativity leads to stagnation of life, to the eternal repetition of the same thing. Creativity without love is meaningless and simply impossible.
The love of a man and a woman nourishes and supports the love of truth, goodness, and beauty. There is a lot of evidence on this matter.
It happens, of course, when love and creativity interfere with each other. But this is not the rule, but an exception to the rule and is most often caused by incidental circumstances, abnormal conditions of love and/or creativity.

Creative immortality

Creativity is a specifically human form of “doing” immortality. When they talk about social immortality, they most often mean creative activity and its fruits, which immortalize a person.
Creativity connects a person with invisible threads to other people, society, and expands the boundaries of his individual life to the scale of social life. That’s why they say that a person’s real immortality is inextricably linked with his life in society, with the extent to which his life transitions or merges with the life of society as a whole.
A person's connection with society is the key to his immortality. But this is not just a connection, not just life in society, together with other people. It is expressed in affairs man and, above all, in his creative activities. It is creative activity that expresses the free human connection of a person with society. Forced, uncreative labor does not immortalize a person, but, on the contrary, shortens his life, kills him during his lifetime, alienating his human essence from him.
Ever since people realized the important role of creativity in their human existence, they have spoken and written about creativity as real“doing” immortality. Pushkin’s “no, all of me will not die - the soul in the treasured lyre will survive my ashes and escape decay” has become for many an indisputable expression of real human immortality. No religion and no mysticism is required here. Be a creative person and you will be immortal. This thought in different options expressed many times.

Immortality is different from immortality. The immortality of a genius is one thing. The immortality of talent is another thing. The immortality of a person simply capable of something is the third. Man strives not just for immortality, but for greater immortality. This is similar to how a person strives not just for knowledge, but for more knowledge. It is creativity in its diverse forms (cognition, invention, art) that opens up limitless prospects for a person to “do” ever greater immortality, ever greater exploration and conquest of time and space.

13.5. Potential immortality

So far I have spoken about real immortality in terms of various forms activity (love and creativity). Now let’s “turn around” 90° and consider the problem of “doing” immortality in terms of distinguishing between the activity itself and its fruits. Real immortality in this case appears in two forms: as current And potential.
Although there is only one source of immortality - human activity in in a broad sense, - it itself (immortality) splits into two types, as it were, according to how activity “bifurcates” into process activities and fruit activities. The latter, although they are results, consequences of the process of activity, then live his independent life, regardless of the subject of activity that gave birth to them. This is the dialectic of activity and it serves as the basis for distinguishing between two forms of immortality - actual and potential.

Speaking about potential immortality as an object of a person’s conscious aspirations, one cannot fail to mention two extremes in the approach and attitude towards immortality. One extreme is when they strive to immortalize their name any at a price, they resort to any tricks and even crimes in order to become famous. A well-known example in history: the burning of Herostratus in 356 BC. e. the magnificent Temple of Artemis of Ephesus - one of the seven wonders of the world. Herostratus burned it for the sole purpose of becoming famous. Hence the expression - Herostratus' glory. In essence, such figures as Hitler have Herostratus fame. The desire for fame for its own sake is a common vice among people. This desire is based on an exaggerated idea of ​​the value, importance, and significance of potential immortality.
The other extreme is ignoring the possibility of potential immortality or, simply put, not giving a damn about what happens after death. This attitude is most clearly expressed in the famous statement of Louis XV - “After us, even a flood.” In fact, some are not attracted by the prospect of life after death. The desire for immortality seems to them a manifestation of empty vanity or even an expression of a mystical state of mind. What these people miss is that potential immortality is not just life after death. It is more correct to understand it in a broader sense - as relay of life. We were given life, we were raised, educated, we enjoy the fruits of the cultural activities of previous generations. Therefore, we must give life to others, make our contribution to the treasury of human culture. Life is not limited to us; she is only a link in the chain of human life.
In the relay race of tribal life, a person must strive to ensure that the torch of his life does not go out before he passes the fire on to other people, other generations.
Life is a self-sustaining process and, as we see, not only in the sense of self-preservation, but also in the sense of procreation, preservation and development-progress of culture. “True life,” wrote L.N. Tolstoy, “there is only one that continues the past, contributes to the good of modern life and the good of future life.” How simply and yet powerfully said!
Potential immortality “looks” equally into the future and the past. To the future - from the point of view of what a person leaves behind. This is a trail problem. To the past - from the point of view of how the life and work of others continues in oneself. This is the problem of procreation, mastering culture, “implanting” the younger generation into culture.
In the first case, potential immortality is the work of the subject of immortality himself. In the second case, it is experienced and mastered by those who have taken up the baton of life from the departed, passing generations.
A person striving for immortality must consider himself not just in terms of life for the future, for other, next generations, but as link in the chain of immortality, that is, and in the sense that life continues in it previous generations. To have the right to his own immortality, a person must experience in himself the immortality of other people who lived before him. If this is not the case, then we can say in advance that he is doomed to sterility and oblivion.
Just as the life of ancestors continues in the lives of their descendants, so the life of the geniuses of the past continues in ourselves, in the lives of today's geniuses. Newton once said to Hooke: “What Descartes did was a step forward. You have added new possibilities to this... If I have seen further, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” You see, as Newton believes: he became a giant of thought because stood on my shoulders giants. What a good expression! Clearly, standing on the shoulders of giants is not such a simple task. After all, you need to “climb” them, correspond, be congenial. In another era and in another connection, R. Schumann said that only a genius can understand a genius. And in fact, if you understood, comprehended, experienced the work and creativity of another, then you have earned the right to carry the torch of immortality. Yes, the point is not only that you “deserve”, but that you caught fire and, willy-nilly, you carry the relay torch within yourself.
Above were different examples potential immortality. They indicate that potential immortality is diverse in its content and is expressed in various types and forms. Here it is time to talk about ordering, classifying the types and forms of this phenomenon of life.
We see at least two parameter potential immortality: completeness and depth (degree).
Completeness potential immortality is immortality conditioned by the fullness of life, the presence in it of the main points: love that brings children, and creativity. If one of these moments is missing, then life seems incomplete and even flawed. In this case, potential immortality does not have the necessary completeness.
Depth(the degree of) potential immortality is how far into the past a person’s gaze penetrates and how long the trace he leaves remains.
Probably the shortest immortality is the immortality of love, the continuation of life in children. After all, it is limited to the life of children after the death of their parents. Grandchildren only partially continue the life of their grandfathers, and descendants born after the death of their ancestors have an even more distant connection with them. However, this short potential immortality has different depths and is determined by how a person relates to it. If he not only gave life to children, but also raised them in such a way that they, in turn, continue their family life, raising their children in the same spirit, then his potential immortality is deeper, more significant than the continuation of life in children, which does not go beyond childbearing. A person must be far-sighted in his own way in love and in family life in general. He needs to think not just about children, but about instilling in them respect for their ancestors and a conscious desire for further procreation. It’s no secret that parents often don’t think about this side of raising children. They either strive to educate simply good people(and this is a utopia: there are simply no good people), or they only think about the professional or creative fate of children. Children, among other things, must continue the family line. Raising them in the spirit of respect for childbearing and life-creation is by no means an easy task. Life takes revenge on those who forget about it. How many births and genealogies have already sunk into oblivion due to a disdainful attitude towards life-creation! Degeneration and extinction threaten those human communities that take the values ​​of procreation lightly.
The immortality of work and creativity can also have different depths. I talked about this above, in the previous section. The immortality of creativity can be not only more durable than the continuation of life in children, but also, as the poet said, “cast bronze is stronger.” It all depends on the person. It is absolutely clear, for example, that the immortality of genius is immeasurably broader and more durable than the immortality of talent.
Of course, not everyone can become a genius. But it is everyone’s duty to strive for ever greater achievements in creativity. creative person. In a moral sense, increasingly significant achievements are nothing more than increasingly significant services to humanity. Yes and myself people get the most satisfaction from most high results of their activities. A person must care about welfare and happiness not only within his personal self, but on the scale of the entire society. Only then will he be truly happy, and his name and work will survive centuries.

13.6. Actual immortality(live in the present, in the present)

There is a lot of evidence from philosophers, scientists, and cultural figures that love and creativity push the limits of life into depth, opening up a real abyss in it - what I call actual immortality.
Meanwhile, the phenomenon of actual immortality is still little studied and understood. If many people spoke and wrote about potential immortality, then about the existence relevant Only a few guessed immortality. What's the matter? Three reasons can be given here.
Firstly, as I already said, people noticed and realized, first of all, potential immortality. This is due to the fact that a person pays more attention to the final results, the fruits of activity, but he does not think about the activity itself, how it proceeds, and if he does, it is in the second place. Potential immortality, embodied in the traces left behind, seems more visible and real than the actual immortality experienced in the process of the activity itself.
Secondly, the religious concept of immortality oriented people's consciousness only in the direction of the otherworldly, posthumous, afterlife, that is, what I call illusory potential immortality. Religion usually viewed earthly life as something very fragile, fleeting, temporary, only in the aspect of its finitude (smallness, insignificance).
Thirdly, the lack of clarification of the problems of actual infinity in mathematics and the disputes among mathematicians over the existence/non-existence of actual infinity had a negative impact on the development of problems of actual immortality.
Understanding immortality only as potential is flawed. After all, what happens? My mortal life is here, in the present, and my immortal life is there, in the future, after my death. This is the division real life and posthumous immortality is not much different from the Christian division of earthly life and the immortal life of the soul beyond the grave. D. Diderot, having in mind precisely this understanding of immortality, wrote: “posterity for philosophers is the other world for the believer.” In the magazine “Crocodile” there is a bitter joke about this understanding of immortality: “immortality is bad because it comes posthumously.” Immortality is not enough for a person later. Give it to him now, in this life, or don’t talk about him at all, be silent.

* * *
Actual immortality is nothing more than the mediation of the finite by the infinite, the transitory by the eternal. It can be greater or less depending on the depth of mediation. And it depends on the person. V.G. Belinsky said it well: “To live means to feel and think, to suffer and to be blissful; every other life is death. And the more content our feeling and thought embrace, the stronger and deeper our ability to suffer and bliss, the more we live: a moment of such life is more significant than a hundred years spent in apathetic slumber, in petty actions and insignificant goals.”
Time has different values ​​for a person, different degrees of depth. The more a person does and the more important events happen in his life, so sharper, deeper their feeling of every moment of life, the more intense his life goes by. That time is something rubber, stretching or contracting, people knew and guessed for a long time. Seneca wrote: “Life is a duty, if it is full... Let us measure it by actions, not by time.” A German proverb says: “hard work makes one day two.”
The phenomenon of rubber time is known. V. Demidov writes:

Yes, novelty is the factor through which human life intensifies. It is the measure of actual immortality. The more novelty there is in a person’s life, the longer it lasts. Particularly valuable is the novelty that is born in acts of love and creativity. It is valuable because it is not novelty for the sake of novelty. Novelty in love and creativity is creative, leads to new novelty, expands the boundaries of life not only actually, but also potentially (it gives rise to both actual and potential immortality).

You need to live so that a day feels like a year, and a year feels like a life..

13.7. Active longevity

Above, the relationship between mortality and immortality was considered in general terms, regardless of the specific periods of individual human existence. There is, however, another question here that is usually overlooked by philosophers and has only recently attracted their attention. We are talking about the problem of active longevity. Realizing that the finitude of existence is something inevitable, people began to think about whether it was possible to expand the boundaries of their finite existence, whether it was possible to prolong youth, life, etc. Let us remember Goethe’s: “Stop, moment, you are beautiful!” This is, of course, a dream. But why can’t a dream be brought down to earth, formulated in the form of a specific goal, so that at least to some extent it brings us closer to the dream?! Some people think like this: if we are mortal, sooner or later we will die, then why should we still care about prolonging life, about some extra years of life, and in general, what a waste of time it is to count years, to strive to live as long as possible despite decrepitude, infirmity, etc. d. Such people don’t care how long they live: forty or eighty years. Indeed, there is such a type of people. These are usually short-lived. They are not psychologically tuned to a long life, to take special care of its prolongation. Most people strive not just to live, but to live as long as possible. And that's okay.
In general, among the real contradictions of life there is this: the antithesis of short life and long life. The dispute between two outstanding writers - 32-year-old Karel Capek and 65-year-old Bernard Shaw - is very noteworthy. The latter wrote the philosophical drama “Back to Methuselah,” which glorified longevity. Karel Capek countered with the comedy “The Makropoulos Remedy.” Bernard Shaw lived to be 94 years old. Karel Capek - only up to 48. These writers demonstrated with their lives the antithesis of short life and long life.
The problem of longevity cannot be reduced to either the problem of procreation or the problem of creative immortality. It is no coincidence that those who write on the topic of mortality and immortality, as a rule, ignore this problem and even present it in a one-sided negative light. And there are reasons for this. In its pure form, the desire for longevity, for the longest possible life span, turns into an empty desire to add years to life, and not life to years.
Just as there are short-lived people who don’t care how long they live, there are also long-lived fans who have turned the desire to live as long as possible into an end in itself. Examples speak of this extreme in human behavior long-term vegetation, “trembling”, such as the 100-year life of the wise minnow described in world literature from the fairy tale by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin or the equally long life of Timothy Forsythe from “The Forsyte Saga” by D. Galsworthy.
The antithesis of short life and long life is most often expressed in this contrast between quality and quantity of life . Some are ready to sacrifice or are sacrificing the quantity of life in the name of its quality, while others, on the contrary, are ready to sacrifice or are sacrificing the quality of life in the name of its quantity. Indeed, sometimes “either-or” situations arise. In the name of High Quality life, a person can doom himself to a short, lightning-like life. Such a person is a hero. He takes risks or is forced to take risks in exceptional circumstances. There are entire professions - military, rescuers, testers, etc. - in which the quantity of life is sacrificed for its quality. On the other hand, fearing risk, people sacrifice quality of life in the name of quantity. Their life, although long, is insipid and boring.
The desire for longevity, if it is not accompanied by the desire for a decent life, is meaningless. Longevity for the sake of longevity is the same as a passion for hoarding, for making money for the sake of money. Not existence for the sake of existence, but active, that is, longevity rich in feelings, thoughts, actions - this is the task for a real person!
Truly happy are those people who know how to combine the quality and quantity of life, for whom there is no “either-or” situation: adding life to years or years to life.

Why do people strive to live as long as possible and why should we live as long as possible?

You need to live as long as possible, firstly, because a person only accumulates experience, knowledge, and skills over the years, and the longer he lives, the richer and more productive his experience, the broader and deeper his knowledge and the more perfect his skills. Wisdom comes with age and the more years, the wiser a person.
Secondly, you need to live as long as possible in order to decide big tasks - those that go beyond several years or several decades of life, which require going beyond the normal life span. For a creative person there is no limit to daring and, of course, he is constrained by the framework of finite life.
Thirdly, you need to live as long as possible in order to live pass on their experience to younger generations so that ancestors and descendants (great-great-grandfathers and great-great-grandchildren) have the opportunity alive communication, so that there is a situation not of generational change, but multiplication generations.

* * *
The contradiction between mortality and immortality finds, so to speak, its immediate resolution in the struggle for life extension, for active longevity. The problem of longevity is a special problem that has relatively independent significance for humans and humanity. It reveals mobility, the conventionality of the boundaries between finitude and infinity of existence. Thanks to her, people realized that the finite and the infinite are not frozen, motionless opposites, that there are transitions and intermediate links between them. The desire for longevity means a transition (even a small, partial one) from limbs To the infinity of existence, from mortality to immortality, going beyond the framework of purely finite existence, movement towards infinite existence. This desire is realized in different forms and at different levels.
At the level of an individual person, the task is solved to improve life in such a way, that is, to establish a healthy lifestyle in such a way as to extend it to the maximum limit of the species life expectancy of a person as a representative of the genus.” homo sapiens" This limit on different estimates scientists is 120-150 years. At the level of humanity, the scientific and practical task of expanding the boundaries of human species duration is being solved, changing the genetic program for the end of an individual life towards its maximum possible extension. Scientists are already working to unravel the genetic mechanism that limits the species' lifespan. Of course, they will unravel this mechanism and find ways to influence it in the direction of significantly increasing the species' life expectancy.
Why don’t people put up with the life span that nature has given them? It is permissible to answer the question with a question: why, in fact, should people put up with this lifespan? Is this finite number of years set by nature for all times? No. The first living organisms on Earth existed from division to division for only a few hours. Over the course of more than three billion years of the formation of life, this lifespan of an individual organism has increased from several hours to several tens of years in higher animals and humans, i.e., approximately 200,000 times. It is quite natural to assume that nature has not stopped at the achieved lifespan and will go further in prolonging life. There is no reason to believe that 100 years of life are reserved for a person for all time. If man, the pinnacle of the evolution of living nature on Earth, lives 200,000 times more than the simplest living organisms, then it means that a situation is possible where nature, in the person of man, becoming further, becoming more complex And improving, will reach new milestones in life expectancy - 200,000 times compared to today's 100 years.

How to improve and strengthen your health?

A wise person prevents diseases, not cures them.
Chinese wisdom

By the age of forty, a person is either his own doctor or a fool.
Motto of natural hygiene

There is no need to prove that human health is an extremely complex, individually varying, developing category associated with its essence. And at the same time this is the most norm. Health is the norm, the normal state of the human body. Disease is a deviation from the norm, pathology. Death is the cessation, destruction of the norm.
On average, a person’s health depends 70-90 percent on lifestyle and only 30-10 percent on other factors (heredity, medicine, pure chance).
Healthy image life, as a rule, depends on conscious efforts of a systemic nature. A person must, in his youth, develop for himself a program of harmonious development and active longevity and follow it throughout his life. Take care of your dress again, and take care of your honor from a young age. The same goes for health.

What should you do in order to live happily ever after?

We humans are living beings, part of living nature. On the other hand, we are not just continuing living nature, but have created our own special human peace and live according to his laws, sometimes contrary to living nature, contrary to it. Nature has laid in us a certain development cycle - birth, growth, maturity, aging, death. We, of course, cannot yet change this cycle, eliminate two stages from it - aging and death. But we have the power to delay the onset of senile infirmity and the death that follows. That's how it was before. For the most part, man lived like an animal and took old age for granted. I thought that the infirmity of old age cannot be abolished, that if it is written in the family to grow old over the years, become decrepit, acquire illnesses, become heavier, lose strength, etc., so be it. You say to another elderly person: you are overweight, and he responds: that’s how it’s supposed to be, it’s due to age. Yes, indeed, if you live according to an animal (as given by nature), then during the transition from maturity to old age, a well-fed life inevitably leads to overweight and obesity. Now, however, many people think differently. They reason something like this: we are rational beings, we already know and understand a lot, and therefore we must guide, correct the natural course of life, resist in in some cases given by nature. If nature has laid in us a gradual decline motor activity after the reproductive period (20-30 years), a gradual increase in appetite beyond measure (due to decreased sensitivity to food), then we must prevent this: do not weaken physical activity, maintain it at an optimal level, eat not in accordance with your appetite, but with taking into account calorie consumption. In fact, each of us, of those who live 35 years or more, have experienced an almost fatal decrease in physical activity and, as a consequence, a decrease in dexterity, flexibility, weight gain, the appearance of fat deposits, an increase in the frequency and intensification of various types of diseases. Everyone involuntarily noticed that they began to be more lazy, strive more for peace, for passive rest, get tired faster, etc., etc. With a decrease in physical activity, people become weaker, and as they become weaker, they get tired faster. Fatigue leads to a desire to rest, i.e. to an even greater decrease in physical activity. A vicious circle arises: decreased physical activity - fatigue - rest - an even greater decrease in physical activity, and so on until death.
It seems to me that every person, if he does not want to go with the flow of life and be a slave of nature, must, at a certain stage of life, develop for himself a program for a full, active, long life. This really should be program, because a person’s life depends on so many “things”. If anyone thinks that they can ensure active longevity with the help of some pills or some diet or even some physical exercise, he is deeply mistaken. Needed complex measures, actions, living conditions. These are not necessarily just special measures and actions to ensure longevity, not necessarily any special living conditions. If life is full, then it is, with others normal conditions will have a long and happy life.
I have developed for myself the following program for harmonious development and active longevity:

1. Constant focus on a fulfilling life, active longevity, good spirits, optimism, cheerfulness and love of life.
2. Favorite work, creative work.
3. Love, family, children.
4. Spiritual improvement, constant contact with the spiritual culture of humanity.
5. Physical improvement, regular physical activity, comprehensive body training, active lifestyle.
6. Rational, complete, balanced, environmentally friendly nutrition.
7. Physical and psychological hardening, increasing the body's resistance to various disturbing factors.
8. Contact with people, maintaining a balance between communication and privacy. Living in accordance with the golden rule of behavior: “don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want them to do to you” and “do unto others as you would like them to do to you.”
9. Maintaining a balance between work and rest, between active and passive rest, tension and relaxation.
10. Communication with nature; stay in a favorable environment whenever possible.

The program takes into account almost all factors and living conditions. However, other program options are possible. People are very different in their genetics, their upbringing, and their living conditions. There can be no template here.
The ten points of the program are a concentrated expression of a huge number of life rules and actions. They are just a blueprint for life.

13.8. Finitude and infinity of existence in the perspective of life

There is such evidence of the attitude of L.N. Tolstoy to death. “The highly esteemed Count Lev Nikolaevich,” wrote I.N. Yanzhul, - in recent years I have had the weakness of willingly talking about death... I remarked to him, as if for consolation (in the early 90s, at a meeting at Moscow University - L.B.), why on earth is he so busy this question about death, when for his great works he has already immortal during life and will be the same after death. To which he answered me: “Yes, I won’t feel or be aware of anything.” This testimony records the opinion of a creative person who cannot come to terms with the inevitability of death. The struggle for active longevity solves only the problem of prolonging life to some extent. Let it be 120, 1000, 200,000 years, but sooner or later a person faces a situation of death when his body turns into dead body, i.e. into nothing.
Neither “doing” immortality in the above sense nor active longevity truly solves the problem of mortality and/or immortality.
The question is whether it is possible to eliminate death from a person’s life altogether. ? I have already said that death as an evolutionary acquisition of life arose at the stage of sexual reproduction of multicellular organisms. The transformation of a living person into a corpse is by no means an absolute inevitability for every living thing.
Life as such does not carry within itself the germ of death. It undoubtedly carries within itself the germ of change, transformation, but not death, much less death. Death cannot be ascribed the absolute meaning of ending. It is impossible to identify mortality that has private meaning, and finitude having universal-universal meaning. Yes, everything that really exists contains within itself the moment of finitude - such is the dialectic of finitude and infinity. But it does not follow from this that alive ends only through death. The latter is just one of the “ways” of ending a living thing. Single-celled organisms, dividing for billions of years, live a finite period (from one division to the next). But they do not know death. Death as the complete destruction of a multicellular organism - down to primary organic and inorganic molecules - arose at a certain stage in the formation of living nature. It is quite possible that a person will eventually find another way to end his life, not as destructive as death. It is possible that by changing his genetic program accordingly, he can end his life.
Further development of living nature (already at the stage of human society) Maybe lead to the elimination of death in the sense of turning the living into a corpse, to replace complete destruction transformation one living thing into another, similar to the division of single-celled organisms, in the sense that an individual person, having lived a certain period of life, seems to pass into another person, while retaining the basic content of his “I”. The finitude of existence remains as a moment of life, but it will not have the character of death in the sense of complete destruction.
Death (as the transformation of a living thing into a corpse) was a necessary moment at the stage of development of multicellular organisms and, to some extent, justified at the stage of human development up to a certain time. This is primarily due to limited living space and resources.
Indeed, every this moment and living space and resources are limited. But who said that along with solving the problem of increasing life expectancy, humanity will not also solve the problem of increasing living space and resources?! Of course, if we start from the assumption that humanity will live only on Earth, it is not difficult to foresee the coming of a moment when, as a result of reproduction and increasing life expectancy, people will become cramped and resources will be depleted. The fact of the matter is that this assumption is based on past experience of the evolution of living things and does not take into account the possibility of human development outer space. Most often, they try to prove the naturalness and necessity of death by reference to living nature, in which the death of organisms and the change of generations are caused by the struggle for existence and the limited resources of the earth. But what is true for living nature cannot be mechanically transferred to human society. People, unlike animals, find more and more new sources of resources and there is no end to this process. The time comes when the death of a person ceases to be justified from an evolutionary point of view, as a limiter to the increase in the mass of living things. With the creation of a controlled thermonuclear reaction and the exploration (inhabitation) of outer space, people will practically provide themselves with unlimited resources and can increase their life expectancy and multiply to any limits.
Humanity must now set itself the task of eliminating death, that is, replacing it with some kind of transformative a mechanism that would make it possible to more gently transfer one “I” into another “I” without the first “I” experiencing the horror of complete annihilation-disintegration. Following the first “I”, the second “I” must inherit not only the genetic program of the first, but also his mind, self-awareness, and personality. This inheritance should be similar to how our “I” in maturity or old age inherits our “I” that was in childhood or youth. It's no secret that we different on different stages of life's journey. We, of course, regret that childhood has passed, youth has passed, that we other. But nevertheless, the bitterness about the past years, about the fact that we are different, is not comparable to the experience that we will one day not exist, that our “I” will disappear.

Yes, absolute individual immortality is impossible, but it is possible and feasible endless approach to the ideal of absolute immortality.
The idea of ​​individual immortality is akin to the idea of ​​a perpetual motion machine. In essence, these are twin ideas. They are false in their absolute, limiting expression, but true in the sense of an asymptotic approach to a certain limit. This can be seen in the example of the idea of ​​a perpetual motion machine. This idea is based on the idea that energy can be created from nothing. If instead of the word “nothing” we put the expression “increasingly energy-intensive sources”, then this idea will be fair. In fact, the history of energy development is such that humanity has consistently solved and continues to solve the problem of obtaining energy from increasingly energy-intensive sources. First it was firewood, then coal, then oil and gas. Nuclear decay energy is currently being developed. Next in line is the mastery of thermonuclear fusion energy, which will give humanity an almost inexhaustible source of energy. People will almost literally get energy out of nothing. Isn't this the fulfillment of a fabulous dream about perpetual motion machine!
So is the idea of ​​individual immortality. As a religious fairy tale, it is absurd and absurd. And as a scientific and practical task of “making immortality,” it is not only absurd, but necessary and solvable.

13.9. Human happiness

The relationship between the meaning of life and happiness

The relationship between the meaning of life and happiness is found in the fact that the presence of a certain meaning in life is a condition for happiness, and on the other hand, the desire for happiness gives life a certain meaning. The meaninglessness of existence is the greatest misfortune for a person and, on the contrary, a person experiences happiness when his life becomes deeply meaningful.

What is happiness?

1. The word “happiness” is one, but there are a great many opinions about happiness. Even C. Fourier wrote: “In Rome during the time of Varro, there were 278 conflicting opinions about true happiness; there were many more of them in Paris.” Why are there so many opinions about happiness? There are two reasons here:
2. 1. On the surface of phenomena, the happiness of an individual person appears as something subjective and random, which causes an abundance of conflicting opinions about it.
3. 2. Happiness, even in its essence, is something very complex and multifaceted. People often took one side, a facet of happiness, and exalted it at the expense of others. From here such definitions arose, for example: happiness - in love; happiness is in work; happiness lies in doing good to people, etc.
4. On the basis that there are many conflicting opinions about happiness, some conclude that there cannot be a single, common idea of ​​happiness for everyone. What can you say to this? Like any other phenomenon of life, the happiness of each person is a unity of the general and the special. Undoubtedly, each person is happy in his own way, but this does not exclude the general aspects inherent in the happiness of people in general.

Generally speaking, happiness lies in the fullness of life, in the fact that all its aspects - physical, moral, spiritual, aesthetic - are developed and in harmony with each other. The active expression of happiness is love and creativity.
Below is a happiness diagram (Fig. 22).

As we see, happiness is multifaceted. Its necessary conditions and prerequisites are:
spiritual : 1) spiritual wealth (knowledge, culture);
2) spiritual health, perfection, in particular, moral purity;
material : 1) material well-being, well-being;
2) physical health, perfection.
All these edge elements are held together Love And creation. Without love and creativity, happiness is only a possibility. They make it valid.

Happiness: both the result of luck and the result of struggle and work

Act as if you are already happy and you will actually feel happy.
Dale Carnegie

1. There are two extreme positions in understanding happiness. Some believe that happiness is entirely a gift of fate, the result of luck, a random gift. Others argue that happiness depends entirely on a person, on his will and desire.
2. In reality, it is both the result of luck and the result of struggle and work. “Fortune, like a timid lover, although she loves to bestow her favor, nevertheless makes us fight for it,” said Bovey . Or: “A person’s happiness and misfortune depend as much on his character as on his fate” - J. La Bruyère.
3. Usually they emphasize the point of dependence of happiness on the person himself, namely, that a person is the architect of his own happiness. There are a lot of wonderful statements on this subject - from the most cautious to the most powerful:

1. And rightly so. Although we understand intellectually that not everything depends on us, we nevertheless set ourselves up to the fact that we must go our part of the path to happiness Despite everything. With our activities we can compensate for bad luck and even argue with an unlucky lot.

Happiness is the unity of satisfaction and dissatisfaction

1. Happiness cannot be understood as complete, absolute satisfaction with life. “Our happiness,” G. Leibniz wrote in his time, “does not and should not consist at all in complete satisfaction, in which there would be nothing left to desire, which would only contribute to the dullness of our mind. The eternal desire for new pleasures and new perfections is happiness.”
2. Some people, having achieved some success in life, believe that they are already happy enough and they do not need to strive for more. Such people are like ants who, if they were endowed with reason, would think that they are happy if their anthill is in perfect order. Man differs from animals in that he does not stop there.
3. True human happiness is contradictory in nature. It harmoniously combines satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Being a process, happiness can only be felt through a constant change of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. If life were a continuous chain of pleasures, an absolute absence of pain, then pleasure itself would not be felt as pleasure.
4. It should be noted, however, that not every dissatisfaction is a moment of happiness and is in harmony with satisfaction. A moment of happiness can only be creative dissatisfaction, dissatisfaction with what has been achieved, which does not cause mental suffering and is not felt as misfortune; Such dissatisfaction contains the impulse for further movement forward. If dissatisfaction is the result of unfulfilled hopes, then this causes suffering and is felt as unhappiness.

They sometimes say: misfortune is a good school of life. Yes, this may happen in individual cases. But: happiness - best school. And actually, the Russian proverb is right: happiness adds to the mind, unhappiness takes away from the mind.

The basis of happiness is the unity of the personal and the general

The basis of happiness is the unity of the personal and the general. This follows from the essence of man. It is difficult or impossible to be happy when you see unhappy people around you.

Is it possible to make people happy, let alone force them to be happy?

There is a side to the problem of human happiness related to interpersonal relationships. It’s one thing when a person wants to be happy, strives for happiness, creates conditions for this, etc., etc. It’s another thing when a person, without thinking about his personal happiness, strives to make others happy, to make others happy, and even everything humanity. D. Diderot wrote: “The happiest person is the one who gives happiness the largest number of people".
How justified is the desire to bring happiness to the greatest number of people? Here another question arises: do people want to be made happy? Isn’t there an imposition here of one’s will and one’s understanding (in particular, one’s idea of ​​happiness) on other people, on all of humanity? Isn't there the effect of an uninvited benefactor, protector, savior? In fact, who asked these “selfless” people to make others happy, to bring happiness to others? If they reject themselves (they are selfless after all!), in particular, they are ready to sacrifice their personal happiness, then how can they understand What other people need which Do people really need happiness? A person who has not experienced happiness himself only imagines happiness theoretically. And theoretical happiness can be very different from actual happiness, from what people actually need.

The desire to make other people happy is a dangerous utopia. No one can make anyone happy, much less bring happiness to many people. Happiness is a purely individual category. This means that only a person himself can make himself happy. He is the subject of happiness or unhappiness. You can make a person rich (for example, by leaving him an inheritance), give him food, shelter, etc., but you cannot make him happy! When parents think that they can make their children happy, they are deeply mistaken. Husbands and wives are mistaken when they think that they make each other happy. Politicians and other figures who think that they can bring happiness to many people are mistaken.

13.10. Love

“Don’t talk about love - everything has been said about it” - these words are from an old song. Some people actually think so: there is no need to talk about love, but simply to love (that is, do not reason, do not theorize about it). The following lines are not for these people. They are for those who want to know as much as possible about love, for those who are used to not only feeling and experiencing love, but also thinking about love so that it becomes better, richer, stronger.

LOVE IS A FEELING AND LOVE IS AN ACTIVITY. Love is not only and not even so much a feeling. In its main meaning it is activity - mind, soul and body. Love should be treated as a special form of human activity. As a feeling opposite to hatred, it manifests itself in all types of human activity and communication, but how special activity it occurs only in sexual intercourse between a man and a woman.
Unfortunately, there is still no holistic philosophical or scientific theory love. As an object of research, it is left to doctors, psychologists, and ethicists. And they each view love “from their own bell tower.” Doctors - in the aspect of deviations from normal sexual behavior, sexopathology, psychologists - as an emotional and psychological attitude, ethicists - as a moral category. Recently a new one appeared scientific discipline- sexology. But she also views love primarily from the physical side, like sex. There are also a lot of statements by writers, cultural figures, philosophers, scientists, and religious preachers, which, due to their fragmentation, do not at all contribute to a holistic understanding of love. The lack of a full-fledged theory of love leads to the formation of one-sided, distorted ideas about it. Among these ideas, the most common is the idea of ​​love as a feeling, desire, attraction, i.e., as an emotional and psychological relationship of the subject to the object of love. Probably almost all writers of the past wrote about love as a feeling-passion. And modern writers are not far from them. This idea is so ingrained in the consciousness of philosophers and scientists that they pay tribute to it in special books about love, in dictionary and terminological definitions designed to be standards for the scientific understanding of love.
There is great confusion from the fact that the same word denotes the human feeling that is the opposite of hatred and the human activity that underlies the relationship between a man and a woman. This confusion, however, is historically explainable: previously, people’s concepts were insufficiently differentiated from each other, insufficiently defined in their content, and vague. This is what they called love, and continue to call it, everything similar to the strongest feeling born in the relationship between a man and a woman. This is to some extent justified. After all, the basis of love-feelings and love-activities is the same desire - for harmony, unity, beauty (beautiful). Love is a concrete (emotional and/or activity) expression harmonic contradictions. (In fact, in love, a man and a woman act as harmonious opposites: only thanks to their opposite sexual qualities they love each other. Their love relationships, spiritual and physical, are very complex. If they end, it is not with the victory or defeat of one of the parties, and the common cause of their love is the birth and raising of children. They might say, what about homosexual relationships? Firstly, homosexual relationships are not that common; in homosexual relationships, one way or another, peculiar, quasi-opposites are formed, called “active” and “passive.”)
Love-activity is not just an emotional experience of the desire for harmony, unity, beauty, but this itself making-reproducing harmony, unity, beauty. This is exactly the relationship between a man and a woman.
When distinguishing love as a feeling and love as an activity, it should also be noted that the latter is not always associated with a high intensity of feelings, love experiences, i.e., with what poets and romantic writers usually call love. Love-activity is not something exceptional, occurring only occasionally. The range of forms of love-activity is very wide: from direct sexual impulse and contact to the highest forms of love, in which sexual desire and communication are “dressed” in the most elegant, aestheticized, spiritually meaningful “clothes” of the feelings and behavior of lovers.
According to romantically minded people, not all sexual intercourse is love. I maintain that if sexual intercourse occurs between normal people, then it deserves to be called love - after all, among the common people, sexual intercourse is called “love affair”, “love life”; they also say: “make love,” that is, engage in sexual intercourse. Of course there is love and love. There is primitive, flawed, incomplete love, and there is high, complete, real love. In general, love is what a person is. And if we call every person, no matter what he is, a person, then we must call his sexual relations, no matter what they are, love.
LOVE-SEX. The problem of love and sexual relations has recently acquired a sharpened form: as a problem of love and sex. Love and sex are sometimes sharply divided and even opposed. Of course, if by love we mean only a feeling, then, of course, love and sex are different things. If love is understood as an activity (in the aspect of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman), then it becomes obvious that such love necessarily presupposes sex. After all, what is sex, if not behavior associated with satisfying sexual needs. Is sexual love possible without sexual desire and actions aimed at satisfying it? Of course not.
(Note. Sexual need is a very complex category. At its core, it is organic, similar to the need for food. It is in this capacity that it causes wet dreams in people who abstain from sexual activity. And it is precisely this quality that makes many people, in the absence of a sexual partner, engage in [consciously or unconsciously] masturbation, i.e. self-satisfaction. In addition to this organic basis, a person’s sexual need has many other components. It is spiritually meaningful, emotionally rich, aestheticized, built into the culture of communication, into physical culture, etc. Accordingly, the satisfaction of sexual need is a very complex process, far from simple organics, with varying degrees of sophistication.)
Some also argue that sex is possible without love, that satisfying sexual needs cannot always be called love. Yes, indeed, it happens that those who engage in sexual intercourse do not call their relationship love and are even ashamed to call it love. But that doesn’t make love stop being love. Millions of people love and never use the word “love”. (This is approximately the same as everyone speaks in prose, but only a few know about it.) If sexual behavior comes from a person and is directed towards a person (the opposite sex), then it is always not just sex, not just physical actions, manipulation, but love, humanly meaningful, to one degree or another spiritualized, sexuality colored by human feelings. A purely animal person cannot love, no matter how much he wants it; he cannot reject his human nature. All sex is human and therefore deserves the name human love.
Those who understand sex as the pure physics of sexual relations are wrong. A person is integral in his life manifestations and always acts not only as an animal, biological being, but also as a spiritual, moral, social being. Yes, sex is physics, but not as something self-sufficient, but as part of a loving, humanly loving relationship between a man and a woman, as physical side their love. There are, of course, cases when love and sex are considered in the aspect of a well-known opposition between real, full, spiritually rich love and flawed, spiritually poor love, approaching purely animal relationships. The world of love is as large and diverse as the human world, and there are as many types of love as there are people.
Sex has its own poetry, its own aesthetics and even its own spirituality! Sex itself is not to blame for the fact that it can be rude, primitive, unaesthetic, and unspiritual. Its quality depends on the people. Rough, primitive natures and sex make this so. On the contrary, smart, spiritually developed people who value the physics of relationships make sex intellectually rich, emotionally rich, sophisticated, a real holiday-feast of life.
THE VALUE OF LOVE FOR LIFE. There are two extremes in assessing love as a factor in life.
There are people who disdain it or consider it unnecessary for life. One can only feel sorry for them. They deprive themselves of a significant part of their lives. Most of these people somehow fall in love, get involved and have sex. But still, they do not value love and succumb to its charms, as if reluctantly, satisfying their love desires in the simplest, most primitive form. Meanwhile, love is the most powerful driving factor of life, thanks to which its other aspects and itself as a whole acquire meaning, are enriched, and colored with thousands of colors. Under the rays of love, everything appears in its truest form. better light, life itself not only acquires meaning, but also becomes constant source joy-pleasure. loving person predisposed to goodness, to harmonious relationships with other people, in general with the whole world. A loving person certainly loves nature, animals, plants. A loving person loves himself, his body and soul, his love, wants to match it, its enchanting beauty-harmony, wants to be better, learn, improve, create, build, dare, be worthy of the object of love (beloved or loved one).
Love has the greatest value due to the fact that it is one of the most powerful sources of positive emotions, pleasure and joy. And the importance of positive emotions is difficult to overestimate. They encourage, mobilize and, on the other hand, mitigate the effects of various stressors. If there are few positive emotions, then life gradually turns first into vegetation, an empty existence, and then into real hell.
Without love, without love pleasures, a person is deprived of a significant part of positive emotions. Because of this, he can become a misanthrope, a psychopath, quickly fade, become decrepit, grow old...
If love serves evil, then this is for her incidental circumstance. Love in itself is neither a vamp nor a killer... It cannot be demonized or presented as some kind of sweet poison. Most of the time love normal, i.e. the way she is must be or occurs in men and women.
Love itself within itself is a whole world, delightful and beautiful!
The other extreme in the assessment of love: its absolutization. This absolutization can be different character. For young people, love can be equal to life, and they sometimes put the question bluntly: if there is no love, then it is not worth living (without love there is no life). There are so many dramas and tragedies because of this! How many crippled lives, suicides! Fiction is replete with similar stories. Let us recall, for example, Shakespeare’s tragedy “Romeo and Juliet”. Love is worth living for, but it is not worth dying for.
Another absolutization of love: when for the sake of love a person sacrifices not his life, but other significant aspects of it, for example, his favorite activity, creativity... Immersion in love sometimes overshadows everything else. A person becomes a slave of love, turns into a sexual machine, into a rag, wastes his life on love affairs or becomes a scoundrel, a moral monster, a criminal, a murderer.
A kind of absolutization of love is also the preaching of universal love, when it is placed at the center of individual and public life. Above I criticized such an absolutization of love in Tolstoy’s works.
So, whoever pays too much attention to love usually becomes its victim. Immersion in love is as dangerous as running away from love. In general, it is very important, on the one hand, to recognize the vital importance of love, and on the other, not to overestimate its importance.
The intrinsic value of love. It must be borne in mind that love is relatively independent of both the lover and the beloved, that is, from the subject and object of love. Its relative independence from the lover is manifested in the fact that it can take him by surprise or arise even against his will and reason. Its independence from the object of love is manifested in the fact that a specific object may not be the best option and, moreover, as in the saying “love is evil, you will love a goat,” the object may simply be insignificant or dangerous for the lover. So that love does not take a person by surprise and does not dictate its terms to him, he must prepare for it, gain experience, learn to recognize a possible love fever and those “loved ones” from whom he needs to stay away.
LOVE: NORMAL, DEVIATIONS, PATHOLOGY. Love as a type of activity is fundamentally normal and at the same time allows for various deviations from the norm, even pathology. There is a certain difficulty in assessing what is normal in love and what is abnormal.
Apparently, normal love is sexual love (between a man and a woman), which supports, harmonizes, improves their present life and reproduces a new one. In short: normal love is mutual, shared love between a man and a woman.
One should not think that normal love is the same for everyone, that it is an example of ideal love, which real love must correspond to.
Normal love is united and diverse, typical and individual, serial and unique. She is normal, like a healthy person is normal. If health is an indisputable value for us, then normal love is the same value.
The norm in love is the measure, the mean between extremes, the unity and dynamic balance of opposites. Yes - in general. Specifically, the norm fluctuates in one direction or another. It is inherently statistical. Since there is no ideal middle, ideal balance, there is no ideal love. Real love is always a little different from what we imagine as ideal. And it is different for different people.
Normal is not only gender equality, but also some dominance of one of the parties. Normal is not only a balance of spiritual and physical, but also a certain predominance of one or the other. For some, the aesthetic (distant) beginning of love may be more pronounced, for others - the sensory-tactile (contact) one.
The difference between calm and passionate love is normal. The difference between love with an egocentric bias (when a person loves himself more than another) and love with an altruistic bias (when a person loves another more than himself) is quite acceptable and tolerable. Etc.
Abnormal love- this is any other kind of love.
Unrequited, unrequited love is abnormal, because in it the thirst for harmony and happiness is not realized. Love in private is not normal. This is what is called self-satisfaction. The latter can occur in two forms: in the form of spontaneous satisfaction of sexual desire, emission, or in the form of masturbation, conscious actions for self-satisfaction.
Rape is not normal. Same-sex love (homosexuality) is abnormal. Satisfaction of sexual desire with the help of animals, dead people, etc. is abnormal. Virtual love (on the Internet) is abnormal.
Let me remind you that the essence of sexual love is that it represents harmonic contradiction and as such is based on opposites floors Without this opposition there is no real, normal love. Self-satisfaction, same-sex “love” (homosexuality), rape, satisfaction of sexual desire with the help of animals, virtual love, etc. are just shadows, pale copies, surrogates of love. They are abnormal precisely because they represent a deformation of love as a harmonious contradiction. For example, no matter how much homosexuals cherish and praise their “love,” it will always remain artificial, artificial, based only on some semblance of sexual opposites. As a result, she will always be the “love” of sexual minorities, i.e., the exception to the rule. Exaggerated attention to this love in modern society is a temporary phenomenon, a kind of cost of the sexual revolution.
Or virtual love (on the Internet). It can be good if it is a prelude or addition to live love. And it is certainly abnormal if it replaces the latter.
Purely spiritual love for the opposite sex (unrequited or virtual) is certainly better than a loveless state (emptiness of feelings). Moreover, it can be useful in the general context of life, as a kind of love training and as an incentive for creativity and self-improvement. However, a person must be aware of the insufficiency of such love, not get hung up on it, and strive for a full-fledged love relationship.
The same can be said about self-satisfaction. It is better than nothing, but worse than normal sexual relations.
Abnormal love is not necessarily a pathology. It becomes such only under certain conditions, namely: either as a result of mental illness or as a consequence of criminal acts.
Love and marriage. Sexual love is the basis of marriage. Nevertheless, it cannot be categorically stated that a marriage for love is in all cases better than a marriage of convenience. Love is a necessary condition for marriage, but not the only one. Marriage also requires other conditions: housing, financial, a unified approach to children, human mutual understanding... Therefore, there should be no opposition between a marriage of love and a marriage of convenience. It should be both out of love and out of convenience!
There are cases when a girl-woman marries not out of love, but involuntarily (by calculation or coercion). There are two possible scenarios for the development of events:
1) the best - when spouses can gradually come to mutual love, and
2) the worst is when marriage turns into torture. In this case, you should not tempt fate, but you should separate without delay.
It should be borne in mind that modern marriage is fundamentally different from what it was a hundred years ago. This is especially true for married life in big cities.
Firstly, the so-called trial marriage(when young people live as husband and wife for quite a long time without formalizing the marriage relationship).
Secondly, the so-called civil marriage(when a man and woman live together as cohabitants, again without legal registration marital relations).
Thirdly, the nature of marital (intramarital) relationships is changing. Strict monogamy (with isolated, more or less random adultery) is being replaced by a semi-legal form of marriage “with a trailer” (marriage + extramarital love relationships). More and more, a wife ceases to be the only woman for her husband, that is, she becomes the main, but not the only, woman. Gradually, the husband ceases to be the only man for his wife, but acquires the status of the main (but not the only) man. In the strict sense, monogamy (monogamy) has sunk into oblivion.
Fourthly, a series of marriages throughout life (marriage-divorce-marriage...) becomes the rule rather than the exception. In other words, if we consider marriage over time, it actually became polygamous.
All these changes in the institution of marriage, it seems to me, are not the result of a decline in morals. There is a deep process of liberalization of the rules of life, the sphere of human freedom is expanding, including the sphere of freedom of love and sexual relationships. The institution of marriage is only adapting to this change in love relationships.

13.11. Human meaning of creativity

1. As already mentioned, the meaning of human life is love and creativity. In love, a person reproduces himself as alive creature. In his creativity he reproduces himself as cultural animal. As such, he not only consumes culture, but also creates and creates it. The production of culture, the creation of spiritual or material wealth is what is usually called creativity. Scientists develop knowledge, artists create works of art, a new aesthetic reality, inventors create new objects that increase the amount of material and spiritual benefits in society. In all three cases, people feel themselves not only consuming, but also creating. It is no coincidence that in many religions the idea of ​​God the creator is fundamental. Word creator has the greatest value for humans. Creativity in general ensures the progress of life, makes a person more free and independent. The human desire for immortality, eternity, and infinity is realized in creativity. This is why love and creativity constitute the essence of man.

Which profession should I choose?

Here are some things to think about as you explore and reflect:
1. What am I, what is life, why do I live, what is the meaning of life? Why do you need to choose at all? Do you need to set a goal in life?
2. What determines the choice of profession? Choice terms: subjective and objective factors, previous life experience.
Subjective factors: characteristics of the psyche, bodily organization, character, thinking. A person must know himself, what he is like, how he differs from other people and what is similar to them, what is his similarity and difference with people of different professions.
Objective factors: life in given time, in a given place, in a given family, country. A person should have as much information as possible about different professions and trends in the development of society.
Life experience: childhood impressions, hobbies and activities, for example, impressions of working as a doctor or playing music, life in a family of musicians, creative dynasties (like in the circus).

3. How to try a profession, to be at least a little “in the shoes” of a professional?

Which people ask themselves and those around them. Some people try to ignore them, while others feel very strongly about the lack of an answer to them. There are people who don't see the meaning in life who, having not received an answer, voluntarily leave this life... All this is very bitter and scary...

If you conduct a survey of the population today, asking them questions: Why are you here? What is the meaning and purpose of your life? You can get a lot of vague answers with which people try to reassure themselves and create the illusion that the answers to these questions are obvious, so it’s stupid to even ask!

We will hear that a person lives in order to plant a tree, build a house and raise a son... Someone will say that we live like in a sandbox: we build what we want, then we break it, then we build again. And there is no point in this, we just live and that’s it. Just like children just playing in the sandbox. They play for nothing, their goal is just to play. So the goal and meaning of people’s lives is simply to live... (Although even children’s games have a purpose and meaning, but with life, it seems, everything is different...)

To be honest, these are just excuses that make absolutely no sense.

Just think about it! A person lives to plant a tree and build a house - a very worthy goal in life! It seems that gardeners and builders are the most happy people in the world! Listen, a person lives for so long, endures so many illnesses, works hard to feed himself and his family... And all this just to build a house and plant a tree?! A tree that may then be struck by lightning or broken by the wind, or someone else will live in the house, someone who did not build it...

Someone will say: well, having children is a worthy goal! Excuse me, but what about people who cannot give birth? It seems like they are not worth living at all... And why have children? So that they live the same way as you: get sick, work, worry, become depressed, sort out problems, experience disasters, have accidents, be horrified by terrorist attacks and slowly die from the terrible ecology??? Is this a worthy goal for you and your children? What are you living for?

If you take the second option, then everything is even worse! In fact, living for the sake of living is absolute nonsense! This means that you experience all of the above for nothing! Not even for the sake of the tree, son and house, but simply for nothing! You work and achieve everything so that someone else can take advantage of it after you. You will not take any of your achievements with you beyond the point of death. There is no point in your efforts, there is no point in achievements, there is no point in victories, because insects and invertebrates at a depth of 2 meters underground will admire them! Is this the goal you are striving for?

Someone will say: So what? Okay, you have now ridiculed the pathetic illusions of people in which they see the meaning of their lives, but how do you yourself answer the question: What is the meaning and purpose of a person’s life? Do you have an answer?

There is an answer not with me. The answer is in God, who created you and me, who gives us breath and life every moment. God gave the answer to this question a long time ago, but people don’t like this answer, and they don’t want to hear it. And they not only don’t want to, but in every possible way avoid any opportunity to hear him! You only have to say one word “God”, and people immediately run out of time, they remember that they are in a hurry to get somewhere, and now they don’t have a second to listen to what will be associated with this word “God” " They seem to have a terrible allergy to this word! Isn't this stupid? You searched the whole world, looking for the answer to your question, and when they want to bring it to you on a silver platter, you run away!?

The Bible says: " The Lord did everything for His own sake; and even the wicked [reserves] for the day of disaster" (Prov.16:4)

Answer: God created you and me for Himself! We are here because He needs us, because He created us for Himself.

Here you will probably be indignant: What nonsense! Am I a toy? How come? God created me for Himself?! I am a free person, I do what I want!

Look, that's the problem. People don't want to hear this answer because they are proud! The idea that they were brought to earth by aliens, like manure in a garden, is even more acceptable to them... But when it comes to God, they immediately “rear up on their hind legs”...

Listen, I haven't told the whole truth yet! If you do not want to belong to God, God does not force you! He gave people free will, and if you refuse to talk about God, that’s your right. And God Himself respects your right. There’s just one “but”...

God warns: if you choose your path without Him, meaninglessness and eternal death await you.

Suppose a person invented a robot capable of thinking and receiving independent decisions. A person created it for himself, so that this robot would perform a certain role and actions. But one day the robot suddenly decided that it was humiliating for him to be a human’s assistant and said: I don’t want to do this anymore, I believe that my purpose is to grow in the garden like potatoes...

Well, grow up to your health, just know that you are not meant for this. Destruction awaits you!

God miraculously created man, only man is not a robot, but a person, and he can make decisions himself. God did this so that man could love, because if there is no choice, there is no love. That is why God greatly appreciates it when a person voluntarily chooses Him.

For those who agree to belong to Him and do what He asks, God has the greatest privileges in store. He promised that such people would become His relatives - children who would share with Him His glory, Greatness and Power.

For those who reject His Authority and refuse to submit to Him, God is very sorry. He makes many attempts to give such people a chance to come to their senses and make the right choice. If a person, in his stubbornness and pride, continues to walk away from Him, God does not stop him, but says: Know that any choice has consequences. Choosing life without God is a path to nowhere and a path to eternal death. Think about it, maybe it’s worth turning around? Maybe what you are reading now was specially written for you, because God cares about you?

So why are we here? What is the meaning and purpose of human life? Answer: We are here to make the most important choice that determines our eternity - to be with God and live forever, or to live without God and perish forever. I made my choice, but what do you choose?

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15 Comment. to the article “The meaning and purpose of human life”

1. Julia writes:
   

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2. Rinat Writes:
   

   MAN IS GOD'S REGISTER ON EARTH.

   Man has a moral responsibility to make proper use of the resources God has provided and placed under his control.

   “Behold, your Lord said to the angels: “I will install a vicegerent on earth.” They said, “Will You place there someone who will spread mischief and shed blood, while we glorify You with praise and sanctify You?” He said: “Indeed, I know what you do not know” (Quran 2:30).

   So, man, through his father Adam, was sent to Earth as a caliph - a word that simultaneously designates a successor, viceroy, confidant, manager, protector. Thus, man became responsible for the Earth and its wealth.

   “Allah is the One who created the heavens and the earth, sent down water from the sky and raised fruits with it for your sustenance, subordinated to you the ships that sail the seas according to His will, subordinated the rivers to you, subordinated to you the sun and the moon, constantly moving in their orbits , made night and day subject to you" (Quran 14:32-33).

   “Don’t you see that Allah has subordinated to you what is in heaven and what is on earth, and has bestowed upon you in full His obvious and invisible blessings? But among the people there is one who argues about Allah, having neither knowledge, nor right guidance, nor the illuminating Scripture” (Quran 31:20).

   So, the Earth was created with a certain intention, for a specific purpose: to assist and support man in every possible way in achieving the goal for which he came into the world: to worship and serve the Creator.

   “I created the jinn and humans only so that they would worship Me” (Quran 51:56).

   Although the creation of Heaven and Earth is undoubtedly greater than the creation of mankind (see Qur'an 40:57), humans have a burden that the Earth and Heaven do not have to bear. In fact, the Lord offered, but Heaven and Earth refused such a huge responsibility, fully aware of how difficult this mission would be. Adam, on behalf of all people, expressed his consent. Alas, unlike the forefather Adam, many of his descendants turned out to be unfaithful, inept and unwilling to remain faithful to their duties.

   “We invited the heavens, the earth and the mountains to take responsibility, but they refused to bear it and were afraid of it, and man took it upon himself to bear it. Verily, he is unjust and ignorant" (Qur'an 33:72)

   By faithfully fulfilling his duties—worshipping and serving God as his innate sense calls upon—man earns God's pleasure and His reward. Otherwise, he needs God's forgiveness. Thus, a person tends to disobey only because he allows himself to move away from his nature, deviates from the straight path, deceived by the false speeches of the enemy of the Lord and people - Satan.

   “(Satan) said: “Look at the one whom You have given preference over me. If you give me a reprieve until Last day, then I will subdue his descendants, except for a few" (Quran 17:62).

   “Allah cursed him and he said: “I will certainly take away the appointed portion of Your slaves. I will certainly mislead them, arouse their hopes, order them to cut the ears of cattle and order them to distort the creation of Allah.” Whoever makes Satan his patron and helper instead of Allah has already suffered an obvious loss. He makes promises to them and raises their hopes. But Satan promises them nothing but deception” (Quran 4:118-120).

   So, the world around us - all creatures, living and inanimate - invariably serves and worships God and is in harmony. By understanding this and realizing his place in the world, a person can regain his original untainted essence by worshiping and submitting to the Supreme Lord. Among other commendable actions, we should not forget the responsibility for our world, in which, relatively speaking, there are two types of resources: animals and their habitat.

   “Allah is the One who has made the sea subservient to you so that ships can sail on it according to His will and so that you seek His mercy. Perhaps you will be grateful. He has subjected to you what is in heaven and what is on earth. Indeed, in this are signs for a people who reflect." (Quran 45:12-13)

3. admin Writes:
   

   I'm not talking about the “BUTs” that are invented by people in order to justify their godless lives. I'm talking about meaning based on the rejection of God. Anyone can read it and do as God asks and see what happens. Those who don’t want to do this will always find 1000 “BUTs” to justify their reluctance.

4. Mr.Rainbow Writes:
   

   Perhaps, perhaps. But! There is one “But”. We cannot claim that God exists. Therefore, this of course raises doubts. What if not? Man always finds oppositions. Science says that there is no God, but manuscripts say that there is. Again, one “But”. If you have read a history textbook, then you know that religion was created to unite people, to unite them. This again leads to a contradiction: what if there really is no God? Belief in God is associated differently for everyone. For me personally, it’s like moral support, a kind of faith in a “miracle.” Maybe there are people who believe, truly believe in God, I have no right to deny this. So everyone chooses their own. Personally, I believe (all this applies only to the Orthodox faith) that from childhood children are “accustomed” to God, which means that even if at the present time there are a huge number of atheists, these children who have “become” atheists have in their depths a certain part of themselves that believes in God. (And of course this is purely my opinion)

The emptiness of life, the lack of vital things to do, outright boredom - this is what sometimes leads to crimes and drugs. A young man may simply be at a loss: what to do with himself, what to do, why he is on this Earth. Mental confusion is fertile ground for all sorts of dislocations of behavior, for abnormal actions.

In this situation, it is very important to understand: in yourself, in life, what it is, what, from what moments it is made up, what is the meaning of life, whether you need to set a goal in life, etc., etc.

What is life?

Life is a way of existence of living things (organisms, animals, humans), expressed at least in the exchange of matter and energy with the environment and reproduction (reproduction of one’s own kind). For living organisms and creatures, life is a biological form of activity, for humans it is a biosocial form.

For a person, life is activity in general, integral activity, life activity in the deepest sense of the word. Against the background of life, a person carries out special or specialized forms of activity, such as communication, cognition, practical activity, work, rest, etc. These forms of activity exist and develop only in the general context of life, the life activity of the subject.

There are three levels of human life or three human lives:

1. Plant life is nutrition, excretion, growth, reproduction, adaptation.

2. Animal life is gathering, hunting, protection, sexual and other communication, caring and raising children, orientation activities, play activities.

3. Cultural life or life in culture is knowledge, management, invention, craft, sports, art (art), philosophy.

Such a division of life was already outlined by Aristotle (see “On the Soul”, 413a 21 ff., 414a30-415a10 ff.).

These three lives are relatively independent, equally important for a person, interact, influence and mediate each other. As a result, we have one very diverse, rich, contradictory, human life.

The presence of a third level of life in a person makes his life fundamentally different from the life of a plant or animal, and this difference increases with every step along the path of cultural progress.

Based on what has been said, we can give the following definition: a person’s life is his life as a living being and life in culture.

About the meaning of life

Fill every moment with meaning

Hours and days are an inexorable rush

R. Kipling. Commandment

The question of the meaning of life is, first of all, the question of whether human life is meaningful, that is, is it illuminated by the light of reason, thinking, or is it devoid of meaning, senseless, and in no way controlled by the human mind.

The question of the meaning of life is also a question of its value and significance for the person himself. Does life have meaning, is it worth living?

There is another nuance to this question: we talk about the meaning of life when life is comprehended generally when questions are clarified" what is life?", "why, why does a person live", "why, why do I live", "what am I doing in this world?", when our life is comprehended in the context of the life of all people, life on Earth in general, the existence of the world in general.

We must clearly distinguish between the concepts of “meaning of life” and “purpose of life”. When a person has the goal of becoming, for example, a doctor, scientist, engineer, then this still does not answer the question that worries him about the meaning of life (in any case, the answer is felt by him only intuitively, in a purely emotional way). A person goes further in his thoughts: why do you need to become a doctor, engineer, scientist? Thus, if the goal indicates what a person strives for, then the meaning of life speaks of the purpose for which he does this.

Some people, including some philosophers, believe that the meaning of life is to seek that meaning. Russian philosopher N.A. Berdyaev wrote, for example: “Even if I don’t know the meaning of life, but the search for meaning already gives meaning to life, and I will devote my life to this search for meaning” (“Self-Knowledge”, Chapter III). This view of the meaning of life in form nothing more than a play on words, cleverness...

It seems to me that searching all the time, all my life for the meaning of life is some kind of infantilism. An adult, mature person somehow finds the meaning of life and realizes it, lives a meaningful life. A person who is looking for the meaning of life, just trying to find it, is an undecided, unformed person who has not yet emerged as a solver of life’s problems. The meaning of life is similar to a goal. Before achieving a goal, moving from goal to result, a person must determine a goal for himself and set it. But goal setting is only the first stage. A person performs actions not only to set and define a goal, but in order to achieve it. So is the meaning of life. Finding the meaning of life is the first part of the problem. The second part is the realization of the meaning of life, a meaningful, meaningful life.

Further, it is very important, on the one hand, to seek and find the meaning of life, and, on the other, not to overestimate the importance of this issue, not to get hung up on the search for the meaning of life. Life is partly meaningful and partly meaningless.

Life has meaning to the extent that it is meaningful, intelligently organized, and humanly significant.

Life has no meaning, that is, the question of its meaning is irrelevant to the extent that it is automatic and vegetative, to the extent that it is controlled by instincts, regulated by organic needs. The French “selyavi” (“such is life”) perfectly conveys its automatism and vegetation. The presence of this second side of life allows a person not to strain too much in search of the meaning of life, not to rush with vital answers and decisions, that is, to relax to some extent, surrender to the flow of life, go with its flow.

What exactly is the meaning of life? It is clear that everyone answers this question in their own way. On the other hand, it has some common points. This is love and creativity. In the overwhelming majority of cases, people comprehend and evaluate their lives precisely in line with these two categories. Love supports, multiplies life, makes it harmonious, harmonizes. Creativity ensures the progress of life.

The purpose of life

Blessed is he who has chosen the goal and the path

And he sees the essence of life in this.

Schelling

A person lives most at the time when he is looking for something

F.M. Dostoevsky

Life is a process of constant choice. At every moment a person has a choice: either retreat or advance towards the goal. Either a movement towards even greater fear, fears, protection, or a choice of goal and growth of spiritual forces. Choosing development over fear ten times a day means moving toward self-realization ten times.

A.Maslow

The goal “sets” the integrity of the activity. If this is the purpose of life, then it determines the integrity of life. For a person who does not have a goal in life, life is not realized as an organic whole in the biosocial, i.e., human sense. “A life without a goal is a man without a head,” says popular wisdom.

Even in my youth, I defined a life goal for myself, which I expressed in the following words:

People often scatter their lives in a mass of small pleasures and joys, without thinking about the meaning of life as a whole, about the main goal of life. They are guided by the rules: “live while you can,” “take everything you can from the present and don’t look into the future,” etc. Although, for the most part, small joys make life pleasant and rosy, nevertheless they cannot - truly satisfy a person. For a person is not only the sum of states and experiences. Man is integrity, the unity of all his states. He cannot be satisfied with small, momentary pleasures. He needs joy that is all-encompassing. It is not a simple sum of small joys. This great joy is born in a persistent struggle that lasts throughout life.

Setting the main goal of life, striving for this goal with all the strength of the soul and, finally, achieving it - this is the highest joy of life!

Not every person sets a goal in life, but if he does, then the person considers it as targeted activity.

In general, in real life there is a whole goal tree. The purpose of life is the main or general purpose of life. In addition to it, there are either subordinate, intermediate, or secondary goals. Subordinate and intermediate goals are goals, the implementation of which opens the way to the main goal of life and brings us closer to it. Side or parallel goals are goals that form the entire “cuisine” of life and determine the full harmonious development of a person. In their totality, they are no less important than the main goal of life (for example, the goal of improving health through physical education, building a house, various hobbies, hobbies). In some situations, a conflict arises between the main goal of life and secondary goals. This conflict can end either in the victory of the main goal of life or in the victory of secondary goals.

The main goal of life is a goal, the implementation of which justifies the life of a person as a whole, as an individual, a subject standing somewhere on an equal footing with society, aware of his goals as the goals of a person in general or the goals of a particular community of people. In the main goal of life, according to the logic of things, the aspirations of man as an individual and the goals of society merge together.

The problem of determining the purpose of life is akin to the problem of choosing a profession. Chance, necessity, external circumstances, incentives, and internal motivations “participate” in the formation of the purpose of life.

Usually, the purpose of life is understood as the goal that a person sets in line with professional, creative activity, which orients him in the direction of creating something new, unprecedented, new material or spiritual benefits, values.

In fact, if we proceed from the fact that the meaning of life lies not only in creativity, but also in love, a person should set himself at least two goals in life. One goal concerns the realization of love, life-creation. It is indisputable, that is, every person, regardless of anything, must set the goal of creating a family, a home of love, having children and raising them. Without this, there will be no continuation of the race, no continuation of the life of humanity. Another goal of life concerns the professional, creative activity of a person.

And in creative activity it also happens that a person does not stop at choosing any one goal in life. A striking example: the two lives of A.P. Borodin as a composer and a chemist.

If a goal is set, then it becomes a law of activity, a categorical imperative, a necessity to which a person submits his will.

Thus, we see two sides of conscious life: goal setting(search for a goal, choosing a goal) and focus(purposefulness, movement towards a goal, or rather, from a goal to a result). Both sides are equally important for a person.

Understanding the importance of the goal and the goal-setting and determination associated with it, one should not, however, make it absolute. Life in a sense is a unity of purpose and purposelessness, i.e. the unity of organization and disorganization, work and rest, tension and relaxation. Aimlessness is realized primarily in the fact that, along with the main goal of life, there are many secondary goals. The search and implementation of a secondary goal (and at the same time a distraction from the main goal) can be interpreted as aimlessness. They say that you can’t work all the time, think about one thing, that you need to be distracted, have fun, relax, relieve tension, and switch to another type of activity. It is no coincidence that modern man pays more and more attention to side activities and hobbies, intuitively realizing that the stress of work, the main goal, the main business of life can simply destroy him.

It must also be borne in mind that a person’s life does not always proceed at the level of goal setting and goal implementation. A person can perform expedient actions, bypassing the stage of goal setting, purely instinctively, unconsciously. For example, the need for rest and sleep can be “realized” in the form of a goal (searching for a place to sleep, etc.) or directly - a person unnoticed fell asleep in the subway. Or this example: when a person accidentally touches a hot object with his hand, he pulls it away - this is a completely purposeful action, but there is no goal-setting or conscious desire for a goal.

When does the need for goal setting arise? Probably when there is some kind of obstacle between the need and its satisfaction (not very large, but not very small either) or in order to satisfy the need it is necessary to perform complex indicative actions.

For many young people and their parents, higher education is a goal. But what is the purpose of education? Do we always understand why we strive to get a high-quality or prestigious education, and what it will actually give us? We are talking about this with crisis psychologist Mikhail Khasminsky.

— Recently, the media has been literally full of reports about teenage suicides, putting forward all sorts of theories about the reasons for such actions, alternately blaming the incorrect (in their opinion) behavior of teachers, parents who neglected to look after their child, or even the Ministry of Education. How valid are the claims against our education system in this context?

— Young people who suffer from depression, which arises due to the fact that a person cannot get an education, very often turn to me for help. In modern times, this, unfortunately, is not uncommon, because not everyone, let’s be honest, financial situation allows you to get a diploma. Although, of course, it happens that money is far from playing the first fiddle, and sometimes circumstances are not the best, and a person simply does not have the opportunity to get some kind of education...

But, one way or another, a person begins to experience frustration, leading to depression. And now I’m talking not only about children, but also about their parents, and even teachers. After all, if, for example, children do poorly at school, both parents and teachers are drawn into this, who need “good performance indicators” in the class. The students themselves, first of all, are constantly under stress, because the same “good indicators”, etc., begin to be demanded from them, and the purpose of education is not clear to them.

A long stay in such a stressful situation, of course, plunges all its participants into varying degrees of stress, leading to depression, including suicide.

And it is not surprising that lately we have increasingly heard reports not only of teenage suicides, but also of “breakdowns” of teachers, of their psychosomatic illnesses (and most of them are simply frayed with nerves). I'm not even talking about parents.

All of the above is precisely a consequence of constant stress due to the race for prestigious education and “indicators”.

It is worth noting that currently in our society the opinion that higher education is mandatory is being specifically imposed. But we, the older generation, still remember, for example, the “stagnant years” of the USSR, when C students went to study at a vocational school, rather than pay bribes for admission to a university. At that time, a person who went to a vocational school received a profession, and, please note, this was treated quite normally. Now the situation has changed: everyone must get a higher education...

— Why did such a situation arise?

- This is ordinary human vanity - both of the children themselves, and even to a greater extent - of their parents. For some reason, it is important for parents that their child has a prestigious diploma. For this reason, they force children to graduate from college. And they are not at all interested in whether the children themselves want this.

— Isn’t higher education, in fact, an important factor in the development of a person’s personality and mind?

— Of course, in itself the skill of mastering, memorizing new information, which is present during conscientious study at a university, has a great influence on the development of the mind and memory. But do many people see this as the purpose of education? And the very quality of education in modern Russia leaves much to be desired. In Russia there is no one left to teach at universities, because there are simply no teachers with a sufficient level of knowledge, because the old ones have already left, and the chain has been broken. I'm not even talking about the pseudosciences that fill the minds of children.

It's no secret that you can “buy” almost everything - from assessments to entrance exams, grades for tests/exams before, in fact, the diplomas themselves. In addition, unfortunately, modern universities often become breeding grounds for drug addiction, alcoholism and other vices, the rise of which we can see in our modern society. And here it is very important to emphasize - the more prestigious the university, the higher the level of all kinds of addictions and perversions.

Western higher education should not be idealized either. It is also not aimed at personal development at all. The Bologna education system almost completely deprives a person of creativity, requiring him to exclusively memorize material. What kind of lawyer is this without a creative gift? How will he conduct business? After all, at the trial he will not be asked to choose the correct option “A, B, C, D”

- But there are people who really gnaw on the granite of science, gain knowledge, strive for something?

- Of course, there are, and, thank God, there are quite a few of them. But not that much either. In some universities (especially commercial ones) you don’t even have to chew on anything, just pay money for tuition, and in the end you will receive a diploma.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn called representatives of such education “obrazovantsy.” In his understanding, these are people who, in their opinion, have received a good education and consider themselves intelligentsia, although in fact they, having received a mediocre education and possessing very superficial knowledge, have imagined too much about themselves. Unfortunately, we now have enough of such “educated people.” Hordes of businessmen, accountants, and economists with at best nominal knowledge have flooded the labor market. But it’s absolutely scary to watch how an “army” of false doctors, false teachers and other important specialists is being formed. And no one thinks about how these would-be specialists will treat us and teach our children.

Parents often come to me for consultation and say: “We don’t know what to do. The child has withdrawn into himself. He used to study, but now he doesn’t want to. We want to see him as a human being, because now there’s nowhere without higher education...” During the conversation, it turns out that this young man is actually a humanitarian, and his parents are literally driving him to technical university or vice versa, driving into the child’s head the myth about the need for crusts. Parents are ready not only to pay money, but also, in fact, to subject their child to suffering just so that he receives a decent (in their opinion) education.

This, of course, does not mean that there is no need to get an education at all. Not at all. It’s just that here we need to emphasize a very important point: there is wisdom, and there is education. There is knowledge of life, and there is a diploma, and these things practically do not intersect. The purpose of education these days, alas, is not to become wise and happy.

- Is it possible to teach wisdom and knowledge of life?

- Let's look at the experience of our ancestors. Let's take, for example, the Russian peasant. The peasants taught their children neither literacy nor information technology, but mainly about what was vitally important to them - how to survive, what kind of relationships they should have with people. They were told the commandments and explained why, for example, an envious person suffers and makes himself unhappy; why does the killer suffer, etc. They were taught how to build a temporary home and how to navigate the forest so as not to get lost. That is, they were given a minimum set of knowledge to help them survive, rather than dumping a lot of information noise and useless information on their heads. Children were taught how to navigate life, to survive, to continue their family line, to absorb the wisdom of their elders and pass it on. Moreover, most of the wisdom was precisely the religious basis. What do we see now? Who will survive if lost in the forest? Who knows how to navigate by some traces, notches or something else? Who understands how to live in a family? Nobody!

And then everything is simple: garbage fills children’s heads, children, naturally, fall into frustration, because they are required to mark them, and because... They don’t know how to live; when faced with some kind of crisis, they fall into depression, which neither their parents nor teachers teach them to cope with. Children are taught higher mathematics, biology, chemistry, and other sciences, but they are not taught the most important thing - they are not taught how to build relationships between people. “People shouldn’t quarrel,” they tell children. What's the point? If a person is proud and puts himself at the center of the world, it is useless to urge him not to quarrel. He will argue with everyone until he gets his way, or until he is proven otherwise using brute physical force.

Children are not taught the right things, and accordingly, they will not be able to transfer the necessary knowledge further. From this we can conclude that degradation will only increase.

For example, if earlier in some locality If there was a fire, all the village residents immediately flocked to help the fire victims, because everyone understood that they could not survive alone, and like ants they began to help each other. They lived communally. Now society has been divided, making everyone selfish. By the way, education contributes a lot to this. The person was not given the most important thing, everyone is disconnected, which means no one is anyone’s comrade or brother, and when something happens to someone, everyone simply turns away from him, passing by. And then we wonder why there are so many neurotics, suicides, etc. in the country. The answer is simple - no one needs anyone, total egoism reigns all around and, unfortunately, no one wants to teach anyone altruism, because no one needs this either.

- Why did this situation arise?

- No love. Love, alas, is not given just like that at birth. It must be acquired through labor, understanding exactly how. But where can it come from if no one teaches you to love? Previously, in traditional society, if a child was left without parents for some reason, he was taken in by his grandparents, or the community decided who would take this child. There were no orphanages. Such children were loved as if they were their own, they were not abandoned, in other words, they were “saturated” with love. Not by education, but first of all by love. This was the basis. If a person is imbued with this love, he can continue to pass it on to someone else.

Now, instead of love, parents are trying to give their child “crusts” by paying for his education, fueling his (and their own) vanity, thereby saying “you are now the best, because you graduated from such and such a university, not like those idiots over there.” And now the person already feels that he is really worth something more.

Although previously it was not education that decided who was worth what. We focused on the outcome of life to which we are all moving and arriving very quickly. After all, they won’t ask: “What university did you graduate from?”

Here I want to give one metaphor. We need to build a house. Experienced, a wise man who knows how to build a house, even from scraps building materials can make himself a completely decent shelter that would correspond to the tasks facing him. Perhaps the home will not be very comfortable, but quite suitable for wintering. If you give a carload of the best building materials to an ignoramus who absolutely does not know how to build, nothing good will come of it, because the ignoramus will make himself such a shelter that will then cover and crush him. This is what we are seeing now.

Once they brought me for a consultation a young man who studied at a very prestigious university. “He doesn’t communicate with anyone and is not friends with anyone,” his mother complained to me. During our conversation, I understand that this student has no knowledge. My head is empty. I try to communicate with him on various topics, but then I find out that the main reason for his inability to communicate lies in the fact that he is simply ignorant. No one is interested in him, because there are no topics on which he can communicate. Without losing hope, I go through different topics, trying to catch on to one, but everything is in vain! As a result, I touch on the topic of the world economy (the young man was just studying at the Faculty of World Economy). I ask him: “What is the Federal Reserve System?” And he could not answer this question for me, although he was a third-year student at the Faculty of World Economics. A person who studies at the Faculty of World Economics should at least know something about this. I ask him: “What books have you read?” He tells me that the last time he read was almost “Oorfene Deuce and his wooden soldiers.”

- Yes... and what do they teach in universities now?...

- Anything except one thing - work. Previously, the child was taught the main thing - to work, and not to earn points/grades.

Work is the natural, basic state of man. Does anyone teach people how to work now? Everyone is trying to earn something at someone else's expense, it doesn't matter - money or recognition.

Everyone is chasing status. His most important principle: you don’t have to be someone, but you have to seem like someone, that is, create a certain image. And this very status leads to the fact that a person becomes ignorant.

— That is, the pursuit of status makes a person become ignorant, because his efforts are focused not on content, but on obtaining this status?

- Yes. It is important for a person to maintain a certain status, while observing all the external attributes - cars, cottages, apartments, career, second, third or fifth education, fashionable devices, etc. Behind all this, in fact, there is essentially nothing.

Everywhere and everywhere they trumpet status, cultivating a certain image, for example, that a family should have a certain set of “status attributes.” What kind of relationship there should be between the members of this family is not even mentioned anywhere. So it turns out: on the outside everything is there - a car, a dacha, a prestigious school/university, but on the inside there is nothing! Absolutely empty!

This can be compared to a shovel handle and a tree. A shovel handle stuck into the ground can be felled with a simple blow, in any direction, but a tree with deep roots cannot be felled so easily. Although outwardly the trunk and stalk may look similar. “Status” people, unfortunately, fall down just like cuttings: when faced with any difficulty that can refute their existing status, their self-esteem is deflated balloon because there is nothing behind it. And a person cannot survive the loss of status, because he does not even understand what a person is and what the purpose of human life is.

- So this is where depression and despondency come from...

- Certainly. The man never looked at himself soberly, he was in character.

Artist! An artist who played himself as someone else. But reality always turns out to be cruel to such “actors.” Any troubles, be it illness, a failed romance, divorce or something else, instantly deprive a person of balance. That’s when thoughts of suicide begin to come to mind, since no one has ever taught a person to look at his true self, which, by the way, is taught in Christianity.

Hence all our disasters of incredible proportions. If we look at the statistics, the number of divorces has exceeded 50%. Why? No one taught how to live in a family, how to build relationships. Although 200 years ago there were no psychologists, and divorces were rare - about 0.5%. There were also significantly fewer suicides. Now this phenomenon has become widespread!

— What if, for example, we introduce “the basics of Orthodox culture” in schools? In your opinion, could this somehow improve the situation?

“I think nothing good will come of it if teachers who do not themselves live an Orthodox life teach lessons on the “basics of Orthodox culture” in schools. After all, if you start “chasing” children based on dates and “statistics,” this, on the contrary, will discourage them from learning this subject. The essence of Orthodoxy is not in externals - who was born when, who built what, what they did, etc. Orthodoxy lies in the inner life, in inner beauty, in the inner teaching that makes a person happy and resistant to any trials.

— Orthodoxy gives a person an inner core, helps him find meaning …

- Exactly. When a person has no inner core, no understanding of what he should strive for, no understanding at all of the meaning of life, crises happen to him. And if a person has no meaning, then everything else is meaningless. Why then do you need diplomas and knowledge? If you don’t know where to go, then why do you need, say, a set of building materials? Why do you need a car if you have no idea how to use it? That is man walking through life, not understanding the meaning or what it should be family life, nor what relationships with others should be... These questions arise precisely during crisis stages, and the most pressing of them is the question of the meaning of life.

— What are crisis stages?

— The crisis stage is a turning point in life, for example, marriage, divorce, death of a loved one, violence, etc. At these stages, people are faced with the question of the meaning of life. They are trying to find the answer to this question, but many never find it...

This is very sad. After all, if educational institutions, in addition to secondary knowledge, also taught knowledge about the basics of human life, then, probably, there would be an order of magnitude fewer suicides and people who for years cannot come to their senses after a divorce or the death of a loved one, who go crazy when I found out I had cancer. People could find support in themselves at turning points in life.

Our ancestors also experienced crises, their loved ones died, something went wrong somewhere, unhappy love happened, they were seriously ill, lost friends, and so on. It all happened! But, nevertheless, in the absence of psychologists, these people continued their lives and maintained mental and physical health in any crisis. And these are the same uneducated peasants...

- Is there a way out?

“There is a way out for individual people, for individual families. A person must understand something himself, find his core and pass it on to the child. In any case, you can try to do this. It’s just a pity that this will not be done on a state scale, because the consumer society is aimed at completely different things. The personality of each person, the value of his life, the salvation of his soul cannot be considered a priori by the consumer society. It considers the purchasing power of a person, just as the value of a cow is measured by the amount of milk it produces, and nothing more.

So, alas, saving drowning people is the work of the drowning people themselves. Each parent must take it upon himself to understand these basics, because if parents have chaos in their heads, then what can they expect from their children? After all, the purpose of education, neither at school nor at university, is upbringing. No one will raise the child except the parents themselves. Teachers educational institutions They will rather pay attention to the external successes and manifestations of the child, but not to his inner world and condition. And to introspect your inner world, as well as how to observe oneself, only parents can teach a child, as well as, for example, to ask for forgiveness and repent.

Without this, parents will grow up to be a soulless monster, from which they themselves will suffer when he wants to send them to a boarding school for the elderly. But the monster will be with higher education and a beautiful “crust”! Wildness!

— If we summarize the above, it turns out that most often people fall into depression and despondency because they simply lack knowledge?

- Certainly. What is depression and sadness? A person becomes depressed because he cannot achieve something, or does not know how to achieve it, or how to cope with the situation. In general, I found myself in a kind of dead end. Previously, a person was given “basic knowledge” so that he would not get into a dead end; he had broad perspective- from the beginning of his birth, until death and further eternal life. And everything that came his way was perceived in the context of a deep understanding of the long-term perspective. “You have to overcome, this is a lesson for you, then something will happen. And even further there will be eternal life,” and so on. Therefore, the events did not cause frustration in the person, because he had a very wide field of view, which has now become narrow: “You must bring us a diploma, because it has status. If you don’t have status, then you won’t have anything.” Content is being replaced by form! And a person really begins to believe in it because he has no experience. But sometimes he cannot achieve something due to various reasons and circumstances.

- Can you give an example?

- Let's say unrequited love. Let's say I'm in love with a woman, but she doesn't reciprocate my feelings. And I no longer understand why I live. I don’t know that I live in order to perfect my own soul for the future eternal life, and not in order to be with this woman.

Another example: I died close person. And I have become so dependent on him that I don’t know how I can continue to live. I don’t understand that we will meet in another life, that now I should not shed tears, but help the soul of this person with my prayers, for example. And because of such situations, people reach the point of madness and serious illness. Here are the reasons - narrowed, tunnel thinking, imposed from the outside.

- And by whom?

— Those who create and control the consumer society.

People's perceptions have been narrowed and they are forced to follow this narrowed path. At the same time, a person looks like a horse with blinkered eyes. Blinders are placed on the horse's eyes (plates that block the vision on the sides) to keep him on course, and he doesn't get lost. But this same blinkered horse cannot go around any obstacle, because it sees everything very narrowly.

This is where queues to see psychologists arise. But the trouble is that although there are simply an incredible number of psychologists now produced, as soon as they are faced with serious problems in people, be it the death of loved ones or suicide, they mostly try to get away with it in general phrases because they themselves don’t know what to do. No one taught them this at university. They taught various classifications, terms, theories... And by and large, in Russia you can simply count on one hand the number of psychologists who can actually help those who are grieving or suicidal. I mean real help in the form of restructuring your thinking and inner world, and not endless conversations about past experiences.

Why did we come to this world? What is our purpose? The question of the meaning of life probably arose along with the first man’s awareness of himself. Millions of years have passed, but to this day we have been able to answer it no more than our cave ancestors finishing a piece of mammoth meat by the fire. But this does not mean that attempts have not been made to derive a universal concept of what the meaning of life is.

Scientists and alchemists, psychologists and philosophers, religious preachers and mystics - they all offer man their own version of the meaning of existence on earth. For example, in various religions, it is proposed to follow rules of behavior in order to achieve various (most often, available only after death) benefits.

What is the meaning of human life?

• The Vikings believed that the meaning of life was conquest, campaigning and battle; death was most honorable on the battlefield in order to get to Valhalla, where fallen warriors feasted at the table of the gods, surrounded by beautiful women.
• Christian religions consider the meaning of a believer’s life to be all pacification of the flesh and exaltation of the soul, in order after death to go to heaven, where eternal bliss awaits the righteous.
• In Muslim religions, the meaning of a believer’s life is to honor Allah and his commandments, as well as to perform good deeds in order to appear before Allah after death and receive his favor.
• In Hinduism and Buddhism, the meaning of life is spiritual self-improvement, knowledge of oneself and the Universe, improvement of one’s karma, in order to take a higher level of incarnation during a new rebirth.

In short, all religions offer NOW refuse in every possible way to myself, try to follow some rules, in the hope of SOMEDAY AFTER, get for that retribution.

The meaning of the present and the future remains a mystery.

Any skeptical person will ask himself a logical question: “Should I devote my whole life to atonement for sins or meditation in order to gain something later? What if there is nothing after death? After all, no one has ever returned from there? Is this really the meaning of earthly life?”
Philosophers, speaking about the purpose of man, are also not far from preachers. For example, Plato suggests devoting your life to self-improvement and spiritual development human personality, knowledge of truth. It sounds beautiful, of course, but is this the true meaning of life?

The meaning of life is like insurance against suicide.

Psychologists, starting with the “grandfather” Sigmund Freud, argue that a person’s search for the meaning of life is a normal state of personality. The entire life of an individual passes between the desire for sensual pleasures and reproduction (Eros) and the desire for self-destruction and death, which is simultaneously associated with the fear of death (Tonatos). It is in various ways to reduce the fear of death that Carl Gustav Jung explains the abundance in the collective unconscious of various ways of life after death. From various collective fears, it is believed in psychology, various monsters, bobcats and chupacabras appear.

It is the presence of meaning (purpose) in life that keeps a person in balance, and a person who has lost the meaning of life loses this fragile balance, which leads to depression and suicide. Psychologists believe that suicide after losing the meaning of life is typical for infantile people with an immature psyche. A mature person will always be able to find arguments to overcome this peculiar crisis of worldview and live on.
Crisis center specialists most often work to restore personal harmony and a kind of “redirection” of a person, helping to overcome people’s own mental infantilism, which pushes them to commit suicide.

Consequences of losing the meaning of life.

As stated in the prophecies of Nostradamus, with the advent of many high technologies that free humanity from daily worries about finding food and protecting themselves and their offspring, man is increasingly losing the meaning of life. Goals in life are becoming smaller and smaller, and achieving them is becoming easier. And more and more often you can meet people who have forgotten how to enjoy life. Such people, like robots, move according to a memorized “home-work-home” algorithm. There are also many destructive ways to regain the “taste for life” - drugs and alcohol, extreme sports and various sects, extreme asceticism and debauchery. If a person does not have an internal idea of ​​the meaning of his life, all these external surrogate substitutes are only a temporary measure in order to stop feeling at least for a while. inner emptiness. Further, the dose becomes larger, the risk is higher, and the result is the same - the cessation of the individual’s existence without the meaning of life.

Reasons for the loss of meaning in life.

There are many reasons for the loss of meaning in life, here are just the most common:

Emotional trauma, when a person connects the meaning of his life with someone outside (partner, parents, children, some abstract dream hero). When someone is lost or disappointed in this person, a person’s worldview and habitual behavioral patterns are destroyed, emotional dependence on the object of adoration is broken, and personal frustration arises. The very fact of forming a connection between one’s existence and an external object is characteristic of initially immature, infantile individuals who are unable to be responsible for themselves, but who try to shift this responsibility onto someone else.

If at the stage of personality formation, in adolescence, such phenomena are considered the norm (within reasonable limits, of course), then in adulthood such infantile individuals are dangerous both for themselves and for society as a whole. After all, this is ready-made material for the emergence of various religious extremist fanatics, destructive sectarians, and serial killers. Adherents of external “idols” are capable of fanatically defending their ideal by any means, including the physical elimination of those who disagree.

Change social status as a reason for the loss of meaning in life. It occurs quite often in modern society. Developmental psychology even identifies such a concept as “retirement crisis,” which describes frustrating personality changes with the end of labor activity. Imagine a shop foreman who has worked all his life at one enterprise, rising through the ranks from a simple worker to a manager. He is respected by his colleagues and subordinates, they consult with him, the whole meaning of his life is quality work for the benefit of his native enterprise. And suddenly, he is sent to retire. Alone, a useless pensioner in an empty apartment! No, he will not commit suicide, his body will cope with this task perfectly well on its own. A constant state of frustration and stress from realizing the meaninglessness of further life will psychosomatically lead a person to the grave. A heart failure or high blood pressure will cause death, but the real reason will remain the loss of the meaning of life.

Family is the most important factor influencing life values.

Constructively overcoming a change in social status is not possible for everyone. The main helpers in this are family and hobbies. It is much easier for family people to find support from their loved ones and to “refocus” faster. Having a hobby or even just pets allows you to simply change the status of your hobby from “on the weekend, after work” to “master of your craft.” Caring for pets makes you feel needed and not alone.

Achieving a goal in life as a reason for the loss of meaning in life. Many people set themselves material goals, such as: “Become the richest in the city,” “earn a million,” “buy a villa in the Canaries,” and the like. With due persistence and diligence, these goals are quite achievable. And now we see an unfortunate millionaire who asks himself the question: “I am the best, and then what?!”

The reason for this problem is that the goals are too petty. Which, however, is not uncommon for modern society with his satiety, spoiling with various benefits and conveniences. It is not without reason that many science fiction writers depict the future of man as a society of passive consumers without the slightest glimmer of interest in life.

Live with meaning and you will be happy!

Summarizing the above, you understand that the meaning of life belongs to the same category as health. It is like the air around us; when it is there, we do not notice it, but as soon as it disappears, we suddenly realize its significance. Just look at a person who has recovered from a serious illness or survived where he should have died. This is where the true enlightenment of consciousness is, where are all the brahmanas! After all, you don’t need to answer the question of the meaning of life every day; it’s much more important to wake up with a joyful smile, greet the happiness of the birth of a new day, and rejoice at the successes of loved ones and friends. There is no need to pile up definitions of the meaning of life - they were all invented by those who are deprived of it. You just need to be happy and enjoy life, then you can safely say that life has meaning, and this meaning is in the first ray of sun, drops of dew on the grass, the smile of a child and the singing of birds.

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