Ethics, morals, ethics
in the context of PEDAGOGY and CULTURE
Good , Beauty, Truth – pedagogy formula:
what should a person do? - do good
Through Beauty, striving towards Truth.
This is the ethics and principle of pedagogy.
The concepts of ethics, MORALITY and MORALITY are used colloquially aspartially interchangeable.
Moral – a concept that is synonymous with morality (the Russian version of the Latin term “morality” comes from the word “morality”).
Ethics – (lat ethics, from Greek ethike tech– science and art of morality) –1. Science, the object of study of which is morality, ethics as a form of social consciousness and as a type of social relations. 2. Norms of behavior, human morality.
Morality – from lat. moralis – related to like, character, mentality, habits, – from mos, plural more– customs, morals, behavior .
Ethics is the basis of life
Recently, the word “ethics” has become frequently used (and even commonplace), thanks to the spread of words related to management topics - for example, such a phrase as “corporate ethics” has become common, because of which there has been a persistent and erroneous idea that , what if in an organization, institution we install their rules and norms of relations, then it will be its own, its own ethics. Therefore, the word “ethics” requires reflection; this concept needs purification.
It is necessary to remember that ETHICS are the same, and the norms of relationships, morality, are the same for everyone. These are rules, laws of life, uniform and binding for everyone. They have existed since ancient times among all peoples and are associated with universal human values, with the simplest forms of relationships between people, with philanthropy . Tell the truth, keep promises, do not appropriate someone else’s property, do not harm your neighbors and everything around you, and so on. – considered the norm at all times; among all peoples have always been encouraged - honesty, courage, generosity, modesty, but were condemned - cruelty, hypocrisy, envy, cowardice...
Treat everyone with respect, help each other in difficulties, not be indifferent to people, to nature, to the highest, to all living things - this is Ethics, and its three components - KINDNESS, DUTY, CONSCIENCE form the norms of relations between people. In other words, do good- This duty man, prompted by him conscience. This is the essence of ethics. Ethics is not a showy, external (false) relationship, but the essence of life. AND iva Ethics- the cultural basis of life.
CULTURE and ETHICS from the point of view of modern scientific approach
Ethics is a fundamental concept that means vital principles emanating from the very foundations of the universe. From the point of view of modern science, in the context of a holistic view of man and the entire cultural and historical process, culture plays a leading role in the cosmic evolution of humanity. We are talking about the nature of Culture as a cosmic phenomenon, where ethical moments form the basis of a person’s connection with the Supreme, the Cosmos. The understanding of Ethics, thus, expands significantly, including not only interpersonal and social meanings, but going beyond them, acquiring a cosmospatial meaning.
The ethical and energetic process of human transformation (improvement of his internal qualities) is generally inseparable from Culture; this is the main component of the path of his cosmic evolution.
Thus, it is necessary to realize that moral principles have their roots in the deepest foundations of the Universe; the cosmic process is ethical in the deepest sense .
The time has come when society needs to realize the evolutionary need to adhere to the ethical principles of existence at all levels - both external, behavioral, and internal, psychological, emotional and mental ( strive to think honestly - imperative of time).
How does pedagogical science view the concept of MORAL?
Morality is the basis of culture, directing human activity to affirm the self-worth of the individual, the equality of people in their desire for a decent and happy life; subject of study of Ethics.
Morality expresses the need and ability of people to unite, cooperate and live a peaceful life together according to laws binding on everyone. Morality is consciousness responsibilities(in a broad sense) of a person in front of other people.
Morality reflects human and social needs, based on a generalization of the experience of many generations. It contains humanistic perspective development of humanity.
Good (as opposed to evil) duty And conscience – basic categories of morality.
Good expresses the focus of morality on ideal humanity, duty is its imperative nature, and conscience is its intimate and personal nature.
Morality with its values of collectivism, love of neighbor, tolerance is the basis of human spirituality and culture.
The denial of universal human morality leads to a crisis of society and the individual.
In the context of the development of modern civilization, with an increase in potential dangers threatening the existence of mankind, with an increase in the degree of risk of human activity that harms the environment, a responsible attitude towards morality, ethics, recognition of the priority of universal human values is a choice that has no alternative.
(Russian Pedagogical Encyclopedia. – M.: 1993)
In what form is morality expressed?
Regarding the human individual morality is a goal, a prospect for his self-improvement, a requirement. Its content is expressed in the form norms and assessments, which have a universal character, obligatory for all people, claim to be absolute (direct consciousness and regulate human behavior in all spheres of life - in work, in everyday life, in politics, in personal, family, intra-group, international relations, etc.).
Morality defines criteria for assessing human goals and means of achieving them. Moral norms receive ideological expression in general fixed ideas (commandments, principles) about HOW d O the right thing to do in different situations.
The "Golden Rule" of Morality
The essence of morality, associated with the ideas of all-humanity and personality, is embodied in one of the most ancient moral commandments, called the “Golden Rule” of morality:
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Along with the “Golden Rule” morality developed general humanistic principles: “thou shalt not kill”, “thou shalt not lie”, “thou shalt not steal” . The strength and justification of moral precepts, always unconditional in form and extremely severe in content, lies in the fact that a person must, first of all, apply them to yourself and only through your own experience present to others .
How do moral principles work?
Moral principles support (or, conversely, require changing) certain foundations, the structure of life; morality refers to the main types regulatory regulation human actions (such as law, customs, traditions etc.), but has significant differences from them. Legal regulations are formulated and implemented by special institutions; moral standards rely on spiritual sanctions and authorities (conscience, the beauty of a moral act, the power of personal example, etc.).
How is moral regulation accomplished?
IN morality not only the practical actions of people are assessed, but their motives, motivations And intentions. In this regard, in moral regulation (actions to develop in the right direction), a special role is played by the formation in each person of the ability to relatively independently determine his own line of behavior without external control, relying on such ethical categories as conscience, honor, sense of personal dignity and so on.
The forms of moral regulation are self-regulation, self-esteem And self-education.
Education of morality
The social significance of moral education is great and obvious: a society that neglects moral values inevitably dooms itself to destruction. Moral education is focused on universal human values, the humanistic perspective of the history of society.
Education of morality– is the education of a person in his integrity, the formation of fundamental human qualities. This is one of the important aspects of the multifaceted process of personality formation, the individual’s mastery of moral values; developing the ability to focus on the ideal, to live according to the principles, norms and rules of morality, when beliefs and ideas about what should be embodied in real actions and behavior.
Eternal moral principles, which are concentrated in the memory of the heart, provide the spirit with IMMUNITY, ensure the integrity and stability of the moral guidelines of the individual in circumstances that are constantly changing.
Moral education – self-education and self-improvement
In general, the process of reproduction of morality is amenable to purposeful influence and conscious control, mainly in the form self-education, self-improvement.
Morality is not an ordinary goal that can be achieved in a certain period of time through a certain set of specific actions; it can rather be called the last, highest goal, a kind of goal of goals, which makes the existence of all other goals possible and is not so much in front as at the basis of human activity itself. More precisely, morality can be called not a goal, but an ideal - a regulatory principle and scale for assessing human behavior.
The formula “the end justifies the means” does not apply to morality. Moral education as a rationally organized activity makes sense insofar as in the course of this activity morality turns from an ideal goal into a real one.
How can a person influence his own moral development?
A person can influence his own moral development through the cultivation of certain actions and behavior, summed up in moral character traits.
As are the actions, so are the moral qualities of a person. .
By evenly distributing benefits in exchange between people, a person learns to be fair; By showing courage in danger, he gains masculinity.
At the same time, it is through actions that a person exerts a moral influence on other people. “Moral education begins where one stops using words” ( A. Schweitzer), it is carried out through the power of one’s own example. This way you can avoid moralizing And hypocrisy– a source of social falsehood.
Thus, action is the basis of a person’s moral self-education, and also the main channel through which he morally influences those around him. This is how the person being educated becomes an educator: By educating oneself, a person simultaneously educates others.
Working on yourself is working on your thoughts
It is rightly said: Only by deeds is a person known. However, all our actions and deeds are consequences of our thoughts and motives. Thought is life, and life moves by thought. Thought is the basis of creativity. According to scientific research, it can be visible and measurable. As an entity of the spiritual plane, thought cannot be destroyed, but can be neutralized by opposing a thought of greater potential. That is why it is necessary to learn the meaning of thought and realize responsibility for your mental creativity.
We must create a better atmosphere in all our daily life by cleansing thoughts.
Taking care of cleanliness thoughts, we will attract better opportunities throughout our lives and shorten the path to moral improvement.
Pure thought - this is a thought that is devoid of self-interested content, and every unclean thought must be driven away, replacing with her thought of the Common Good, to hasten to purify the spirit with broad creative thoughts about a better future. Selfless thoughts are the best space purifiers.
Learning to manage yourself, your thoughts and instilling responsibility for them means learning call upon the forces hidden in the depths of consciousness. This is how every person can improve their strengths - by recognizing them.
Mastering a thought is not only about deepening and focusing it. It is important to learn to free yourself from painful thoughts and untimely, unnecessary thoughts. We must remember: nothing hinders development more than heavy, immobile thoughts. Control of thought will ensure its purification.
The culture of thought is the crown of human existence.
Let everyone remember that by striving for moral improvement, he helps not only himself, but also acts for the Common Good.
Considering the interconnection of the concepts of “thought” and “feeling”, which form, along with the volitional sphere, human consciousness, a sense of responsibility becomes a necessary feature of a culture of thinking.
Fostering a culture of feelings And culture of thinking constitutes the ethical and aesthetic basis of culture, the foundation for the formation of both an individual and the culture of society as a whole.
The ethical is inseparable from the aesthetic
Moral forms of behavior are beautiful by nature, and what is beautiful, from the point of view of discerning aesthetic taste, cannot be immoral. This is how the ethical and aesthetic foundations of self-improvement are interconnected. This relationship is carried out through the Heart. (This is described in detail in previous materials prepared for the Day of Culture: “The path of Culture lies through the heart” and “Awareness of beauty will transform life” www.cultura.spb.ru)
Moral is the basis of spiritual values
Universal human goals and values are cultural, spiritual values. The criterion for such values is their humanistic content; spiritual and cultural values are eternal - they do not wear out in the process of consumption.
They find their embodiment in objects, ideas, norms, beliefs; it's the same theories, goals, ideals, traditions, strong-willed and others personality qualities, reflecting its humanistic orientation. Human values as the highest spiritual values manifest themselves in the forms of spiritual, moral, aesthetic development of people.
Spirituality and personal culture
Spirituality- a property of the soul, consisting in the predominance of spiritual, moral and intellectual interests over material ones (Dictionary of Russian language).
Spirituality- a concept broader than religiosity or morality.
Spirituality– the main characteristic of Culture.
Spirit , spirituality constitutes the basis of a healthy state and a great Culture. Personal spirituality– this is freedom and the will to improve; the ability to see the consequences of one’s actions for people, for the Common Good. The level of personal spirituality is influenced by: consciousness, thinking, intellect, and feelings, imagination, intuition, conscience, will, creativity.
Intelligence, balanced with love for everything beautiful, determines the spiritual orientation of the individual.
The level of a person’s spirituality is determined by the level of development of his consciousness. The most effective approach to spiritual improvement is the pursuit of cultural and moral values and their affirmation in the life of every day. This is how a person interacts with something more perfect and beautiful.
A necessary condition for the harmony of this interaction is a person’s life among people, the leading quality and main result of which is selfless, effective love. A person who elevates his personal interests into a cult and takes the path of egoism is not capable of such love and cannot be imbued with the interests of the Common Good. He destroys his spiritual integrity and departs from the law of unity. Then the spiritual world of a person becomes deformed and splits. Culture, or the aspiration towards the Light, towards the Beautiful, helps a person to avoid such a state of soul.
« Just don’t talk about spirituality, don’t scare us with such words!“- says the presenter of the TV channel “Culture” during a discussion of vital issues. But it is spirituality that is the question of life, the question of it norms. What reasonable explanation can be given for the reluctance to discuss this? The general tendency of the media is to shift the emphasis from the most important and most important to the secondary - this is a feature of the work of modern media.
Therefore, the work of a teacher in implementing moral education today is becoming much more complicated. The main burden of spiritual education falls on him. (Cm. " Teacher - a spiritual concept »)
References:
1. Anufriev V.P., Anufrieva E.I. The energy of our children // Children of the new consciousness: Materials of the international scientific community. conferences. 2006 – M.: International Center of the Roerichs, 2007.– http://lib.roerich-museum.ru/node/967
2. Valitskaya A.P. New School of Russia: Cultural Model / Monograph. – St. Petersburg: Publishing house of the Russian State Pedagogical University named after. A.I. Herzen, 2005.
3. Gindilis L.M., Frolov V.V. Philosophy of Living Ethics... //Questions of Philosophy. – No. 3. – 2001. – P. 85-102.
4. Sokolov V.G. Living Ethics and a new paradigm of culture // Culture and Time. – 2008. – No. 1. – P. 4-17
Today, in the traditional column “Holy Truth,” Archpriest Andrei Tkachev will explain why humanity is painfully going through the processes of comprehension, and how this is related to morality.
Brothers and sisters, I greet you! Tomorrow, at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus' will solemnly open the 26th Christmas readings. This year they are called: “Moral values and the future of humanity.”
We will now say two words about this. What kind of event is this anyway? The nature of the Church is conciliar. This is how we profess the Church - One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. Conciliarity is realized in the most diverse forms of our church life. It is necessary for people to gather at the deanery level, clergy or missionaries, for example. At the level of dioceses, at the level of the fullness of the episcopate. At the level of the fullness of the Church, which happens at full-fledged Councils held from time to time.
But in inter-council times, Sobornost also seeks opportunities to realize itself. And the laity want to play a more active role, especially Christian believers. Those lay people who are employed in the fields of education, law, medicine, and the army. In such significant key things, where a person is required to have high personal self-awareness, a moral core, historical thinking, and loyalty to Christ in the present day. These are the people from all sides of our vast Motherland who gather at the appointed time in the Mother See of White Stone City, Moscow, in order to talk about, for example, monasticism in the modern world.
The world is changing so much that monasticism can sometimes be included in the White Book. And sometimes, on the contrary, it surprises us with a sudden burst of holiness in the middle of this desert.
At the upcoming Christmas readings, such a topic as the old rite in the Russian Church will also be considered. Also very important. The Old Believers psychologically preserved many of the disappearing features of the Russian ethnic group, the Russian believer, even from those times, from the 17th century, when the disaster of the schism occurred.
Next - the Church and culture, the educational process, the presence of the Church and Christian ideas in the educational process and the difficulties associated with this. There will be such a section as “The Year of Good Cinema” - based on the material of those festivals that take place in large numbers. It is at its borders, where culture and the Church come into contact. This is Orthodox animation, Orthodox cinema, Orthodox drama. There are such things.
A very important topic is family, youth ministry, family building. After all, the family is sometimes almost the last bastion of morality in a dying world, a real family, which, as Paisius the Svyatogorets said, if it disappears, then everything will disappear, both the priesthood and monasticism, and all prayer life will cease.
All this will be discussed by people, representatives of all dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church and all canonical territories belonging to it.
But let’s return to the beginning, so to speak, to the leitmotif, to the slogan, slogan, moto, the name that today’s readings are called: moral values and the future of humanity.
What is it, this humanity? It painfully experiences the processes of self-awareness. As an adult, you need to be aware of yourself, compare your childhood period of life with yourself as a young man, with yourself who sinned for the first time, with yourself who repented, with yourself as you grew older, with yourself moving into eternity. You constantly need to analyze yourself with the world around you, in your relationships. God gave such hard work to the sons of men so that they could practice it.
But humanity must also be aware of itself. It must realize itself through its heart, through the Church of Christ, which knows not only itself, but also knows its Creator. And now, technologically equipped, morally disoriented, ideologically devastated, entangled in wire and wireless communications, modern humanity risks being either a mutant, or something very beautiful, but weak, which can kill itself with one wrong step. The mere technology of our life, with nuclear power plants, with chemical production, with high speeds, with nuclear weapons accumulated, makes us vulnerable to ourselves.
What is it like, this humanity and is it possible for it to live on, not caring about morality. After all, we agree that the commandments as a moral basis, and in general the issues of distinguishing between good and evil, are a matter of such a heated, sometimes to the point of shedding one’s own blood, struggle for what is good and not bad. For choosing the best of the two. This struggle has gone beyond the brackets of modern humanity. She went to the periphery of consciousness.
Humanity worries about ecology, but does not link it with morality, but they are connected. Humanity worries about demography, but does not connect it with morality. And they are connected. Humanity worries about the gap between rich and poor, but does not connect this with morality. And this is connected. Humanity is worried about a thousand problems.
We are neurotics, we are children of a neurotic era. We move frantically in the light of day and wake up at night from nightmares that come to us in our sleep. Our neurotic humanity suffers from many things that ancient civilizations did not know. But all this must be connected with morality. With what is good and what is bad. How “a little son came to his father and asked the little one: what is good and what is bad?” And how our possibility of living tomorrow depends on it. In general, is our life possible tomorrow if today we do not deal with the issues of what is proper and what is not proper, what is preferable and what is condemned, what is sacred and what is profane, what is heavenly and what is earthly.
Ancient wisdom says that a person who does not distinguish between everyday life and holidays, evil from good, heavenly from earthly, loses the right to be called a person. Human civilization may well become an inhuman civilization. Participants and active users from all these information resources of Christmas readings will also talk about this. They are already 26th. This is a lay people's council, with the active participation of representatives of the clergy. This is one of the forms, I repeat, of our conciliarity, which inseminates with the correct logos the consciousness of hundreds of thousands of people who will then disperse to their towns, villages and diocesan centers in order to put into practice what they have been enriched with, what they have learned, and that to which their eyes have been opened.
Let us wish them God's blessing and hope that we will not lose the ability to distinguish between the profane and the sacred, the heavenly and the earthly, the forbidden and the blessed. And we will not lose the opportunity to remain human.
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The class hour is held with the aim of familiarizing students with the biblical history of Christmas, expanding knowledge about the origins of the Christmas holiday, getting to know the value guidelines in human life, creating conditions for the formation of socially significant personal qualities and value orientations in children, and nurturing a spiritual and moral personality.
"Moral values and the future of Russia."
Open class hour in grade 5 “B” as part of Christmas readings.
Objectives of the event:
Educational: familiarizing students with the biblical history of Christmas, expanding knowledge about the origins of the Christmas holiday, becoming familiar with value guidelines in human life;
Developmental: development of cognitive abilities, interpersonal communication skills, cognitive activity of students; development of mental functions of students: thinking, emotions, attention, will, memory; formation of self-control skills;
Educational:create conditions for the formation of socially significant personal qualities and value orientations in children, promote the education of a spiritual and moral personality, and provide an opportunity for the development of a culture of relationships.
Required equipment and materials:
Preparation:
Progress of the event
Video "Children about Christmas"
Conversation with children.
- What is "Christmas"? What does this holiday mean to you?
Conversation with a star
Boy : You until dawn
In the sky, little star, you are burning!
And when I go to bed,
You're blinking at me again.
Listen, little star, tell me,
Is it good to live in heaven?
Star : You're still just a baby:
You play during the day, you sleep at night
And you know little about God -
What mom said.
But I will answer you:
There is eternal joy in heaven.
Boy: Star, you have been around for many years
You shine for people on earth.
I'll ask you a question:
How was Christ born into the world?
Star: Oh, I remember everything perfectly!
That star, my sister,
I told everyone,
That He came to Bethlehem.
It was so long ago,
But I remember this night:
We, the heavenly bodies,
Shined brighter that night
And furtively, through the cracks,
They looked at the King of kings.
The angels sang wonderfully,
Don't forget this song
Unearthly voices...
If only you could hear for yourself!
Boy : I'm not a star, I'm a boy
And I'm not even old enough...
You know, star, it’s a shame -
I didn't see anything:
No Savior, no heaven,
I haven’t been to Bethlehem either.
I would become a star like you
I could see everything from above!
Star : Head up, baby,
After all, you are sad in vain.
You are happier than many stars:
Christ is next to you!
2. Teacher’s story about the Biblical origins of the holiday “Christmas”(7 min).
Christmas is not just a holiday when gifts are given, it is the beginning of a new era, marked by the coming of God to us on earth to save us from evil, illness, death and give us eternal life. Let's listen to the story of the birth of Jesus, which is recorded in the most ancient book - the Bible.
Reading a passage from the Bible: Matthew 1:18-25 with teacher's comments.
The birth of Jesus Christ was like this:
upon the betrothal of His Mother Mary to Joseph,
before they came together,
It turned out that She was pregnant with the Holy Spirit.
Joseph is her husband,
being righteous and not wanting to make Her public,
wanted to secretly let her go.
But when he thought about it, -
behold, the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream
and said: Joseph, son of David!
do not be afraid to accept Mary your wife,
for that which is born in Her is of the Holy Spirit;
will give birth to a Son,
and you shall call His name Jesus,
for He will save His people from their sins.
And all this happened
that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled,
who says:
behold, the Virgin is with child and gives birth to a Son,
and they will call His name Immanuel,
which means: God is with us.
Getting up from sleep,
Joseph did as the Angel of the Lord commanded him,
and he took his wife, and did not know her,
How Finally She gave birth to Her firstborn Son,
and he called His name Jesus.
This little boy grew up and gave His life for each of us. When he walked across our land, He healed, resurrected, wiped away tears and gave people hope.
In the Bible we read (John 3:16): “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Preserving moral values, remembering every year the birth of Jesus, God, the savior, is our task. Our future, the future of our entire country, Russia, depends on what principles we follow in life. People, rejecting spiritual and moral values, risk living in a society where evil, theft, betrayal, and selfishness reign. What kind of society would we like to live in? Society, country - it's you and me. If you want to change the world, start with yourself.
Game "Moral Values"
On the board are cards with life values, real and false. Choose those that the guys would like to live by; false ones are removed. The choice is made frontally: the teacher touches a card with some value, the children clap if they agree to live by it, stomp if not.
Divide into groups of 4 people (2 desks). Choose a card with a situation and determine what chance life sends, and decide whether to use this chance.
You have money, and the first spring flowers are being sold on the corner.
Your classmate came with tear-stained eyes.
A baby stands alone in the middle of the street.
You see a lady sitting in the first row on a broken chair.
During the lesson, a classmate offended the teacher.
Something falls from the bag of the person in front.
A lost puppy with a broken leash is running around the yard.
You found a cell phone in the school hallway.
Your little sister or brother broke your toy.
The sage and the disciple were sitting at the gates of their city. A traveler comes up and asks: “What kind of people live in this city?” “Who lives where you came from?” - asks the sage. “Oh, rude, evil, unkind people,” the traveler replies. “You will see the same thing here,” answered the sage.
After some time, another traveler came up and also asked what kind of people were in this city. “Who lives where you came from?” - asked the sage.
“Wonderful people, kind and sympathetic,” answered the traveler. “Here you will find the same ones,” said the sage.
“Why did you tell one that bad people live here, and the other – good people?” - the student asked the sage.
The sage replied: “There are good people and bad people everywhere. It’s just that everyone finds only what they know how to look for – good or evil.”
Each person has a sheet of paper on their desk; students use a marker to trace their palm and write their name on it in the center. And then it turns onsong "Dear Goodness".While it is playing, the children pass around a piece of paper with their name, when the song is interrupted, the passing of the sheets stops and the students write words of wishes on their fingers, then the song continues and they pass the sheets around again. At the end of the song, the leaves return to their owners.
The Nativity of Christ is a holiday, the meaning of which is to understand what the born baby Jesus did for humanity. He was born to show his boundless love for people. The grown baby - God - gave his life on the cross for each of us, so that we could become better people and have hope for eternity.
This holiday teaches us to believe, educates our hearts, so that we learn to forgive, sympathize, understand each other, tolerate the shortcomings of others - in a word, so that we learn to love the people around us.
Development in society of a dialectical pair: individualistic
and collectivist morality. Private education
property. The harmfulness of individualistic morality
for human civilization. It is appropriate to note that there is a danger of the destruction of humanity.
Salvation in communism. Should be aimed at
activities of the collectivist association, harmoniously
combining the personal, collective and social (communist-Marxists) - fighters against private property.
The roots of human morality are found in our animal ancestors, who led a herd lifestyle. To survive, our ancestors (and first of all, apes) had to act together, as a herd, helping each other, making sacrifices for the sake of the herd and not demanding compensation from it.
It is worth noting that the founder of the theory of evolution, the famous English naturalist Charles Darwin, in his book “The Descent of Man”, using specific examples, for the first time most thoroughly and fully showed that the morality of mutual assistance is common to all social animals; in their communities, social instincts prevail over personal ones. The famous Russian revolutionary, scientist, philosopher P.A. Kropotkin in his book on morality “Ethics” spoke on this occasion: “Nature is full of such examples, and in each class of animals it is the sociable species that are at the highest stage of development. Mutual assistance within the species will thus ... be the main factor, the main figure in what can be called progressive development” (P.A. Kropotkin. Ethics. M., It is worth saying - politizdat, 1991, p. 55)
Social moral norms were inherited from animals and to people, to their herds and primitive communal clans. And these norms of mutual assistance, like those of social, herd animals, contributed to human progress, as will be discussed below. We will call the original morality based on these norms collectivist.
With the advent of class society, new morals began to appear: selflessness began to be replaced by benefit, collective mutual assistance and self-sacrifice for the sake of the collective - by individual competition and hostility, etc. Let's call this new class morality individualist.
Each person initially contained and still contains both opposites: individualism and collectivism. The first is of biological origin, the second is of social origin, already present in its infancy in our ape-like ancestors, as well as other social animals. But although individualism has always “sat” inside a person, it received a wide opportunity to manifest itself only with the collapse of the primitive communal system and the emergence of class society. And here individualist morality actually became the morality of the ruling class, although for the sake of its dominance, he tried to instill it in the subordinate class in order to disunite it as much as possible, create competition within it and thereby make it easier for himself to rule over this class (according to the principle known since ancient times : divide and rule)
This new (individualist) morality arose and was formed in society on the basis of the individualist’s desire to stand out from among their fellow tribesmen and rule over them, exploit them. And such a separation became possible when a person became so strong that he could survive on his own without the help of others, without whom he previously could not do. And he could only stand out because of his wealth, which he appropriated for himself in one way or another from the community wealth (privatized, in modern language). Wealth gave him a better opportunity than other, poorer people of his kind-tribe to accumulate knowledge and provide for himself armed protection from enemies or their fellow tribesmen who would want to encroach on his individual independence, providing himself with the best tools of labor, leading to a more efficient accumulation of new wealth, etc. It is important to understand that it (wealth) became power in his hands, an instrument of his power over others and a means of subsistence at the expense of others. The individualistic separation of such wealth from communal property will be an act of creating private property. It is private property that will be the material, economic basis for the manifestation and maintenance of the individualism that each person has. Thus, with the advent of private property, a class of masters appeared, and next to it a class of those oppressed and exploited by them.
Initially, with the emergence of private property, collectivist morality was still predominant in such a class society. But with the development of class society, individualist morality becomes predominant. It is precisely this pattern that will exist in a class society of any formation (slave-owning, feudal, capitalist) - in any socio-economic formation, during its formation, collectivist morality prevails at the beginning, and at the end of its existence, individualist morality prevails. This pattern did not escape socialism, the essence of which was still class.
Individualist morality will remain most vivid and at the same time in its most dangerous form under capitalism. Here it is currently already affecting almost the entire society and finds its expression in the separation from society of the richer, stronger, more arrogant, more powerful, without honor, knowledge and responsibility due to the impoverishment, weakening, humiliation of others, leading to general aggressiveness towards everything around. This is clearly expressed at least in the pursuit of profit by the people of capitalist reality. A contemporary of K. Marx, the English trade unionist T. J. Dunning, characterized the terrible interior of this pursuit as follows: Capital fears the lack of profit or too little profit, just as nature fears emptiness. But when there is sufficient profit, capital becomes bolder. At 10 percent of the profit, capital agrees to any use, at 20 percent it revives, at 50 percent it is clearly ready to break its neck, at 100 percent it desecrates all human laws, at 300 percent there is no such crime that the capitalist would not risk, even under fear gallows (Daunning T.J.Trades'Unions Strikes. London, 1860, pp.35,36)
For some reason, the individualistic primary desire for personal and national material enrichment, for justice primarily in relation to oneself (for personal gain) will be the cause of the death of millions of people from hunger, disease and war, because of it they rob nature and destroy its environment a habitat. It is because of him that families and entire states fall apart, debauchery and violence flourish, entire nations disappear from the face of the earth, and previously flourishing nature turns into desert.
The danger increases with the current deepening and expansion of knowledge, ᴏᴛʜᴏϲᴙto the deepest, most intimate foundations of life and the secrets of nature. This knowledge, which increases our ability to influence nature, in the hands of an individualist infected with the thirst for enrichment at any cost, which will be the hallmark of capitalism, becomes a deadly weapon that threatens to destroy not only all life on the planet, but also the planet itself. For example, the growth of knowledge about the structure of the atom and its nucleus under capitalism has led to the creation of atomic, thermonuclear, neutron and similar types of weapons hitherto unprecedented in terms of their destructive power and inhumanity. Or another example: new knowledge about the human psyche can be used to transform most people into humanoid slave-robots, ϲʙᴏunshaped working cattle in human form, uncomplaining and obedient soldiers, etc., carrying out any will of the new modern slave owners for the sake of satisfying the depraved, anti-human needs for the immense growth of their wealth and power over the whole world (Hitler and his swarm of non-humans could only dream of such an opportunity)
The danger of capitalism increased a hundredfold with the collapse of the socialist system, which, before it was defeated by the virus of individualism, was a stronghold of collectivist morality and prevented the infection of individualism from spreading throughout human civilization. The current omnipresent capital, with its permissiveness and insatiability, satisfied not without the help of its material basis - technologies, devouring all the raw materials, energy, mental resources of the planet, poisoning the soil, air, water and soul, leads all of humanity to moral degradation, to the development of anticulture ("culture ", hostile to nature and corrupting, destroying the personality and health of a person) through the propaganda of violence, all kinds of horrors, banditry, debauchery, riotous life through television, cinema, print media, exhibitions, music and songs, entertainment clubs, casinos, brothels. Leads to the destruction of its habitat. And ultimately - to his death.
If at the dawn of human development collectivist morality was a factor in human survival, now its opposite - individualism - puts humanity on the brink of death. History already knows something similar, which happened more than once on our planet.
The first case of the harmfulness of individualism can apparently be considered the story of the disappearance of one of our ancestors - the Neanderthal. Herds of Neanderthals lived next to herds of Cro-Magnons. The first lived in separate families, were aggressive and, possessing significant physical strength, managed without much mutual assistance. On this basis, individualism prevailed among them. The latter were physically weaker and they could only survive in large herds with well-developed mutual assistance and collectivism. In the brutal struggle for life, the collectivism of the Cro-Magnons won and the individualistic Neanderthal disappeared from the face of the Earth. The human race was continued by the collectivist Cro-Magnon, to whom we consider ourselves.
Other examples of the destructiveness of individualism are the disasters that befell certain developed ancient and not-so-ancient civilizations. These were already class civilizations (slave-owning, feudal) and they were characterized, like any class society, by the growth of individualism and a relative decrease in collectivism. It is worth saying that in order to satisfy their individualistic needs, the pursuit of material values that provide these needs becomes uncontrollable, wealth is accumulated for the sake of wealth itself.
In such conditions, the growth of material needs takes on a perverted form, since it is mainly not for the provision and development of the life of the entire society, but for the luxury of the ruling class, often precisely at the expense of the livelihood of the oppressed. The rapid greedy accumulation of material wealth, which people can do without in their lives and which only corrupts them, leads to their exorbitant extraction and the creation on this basis of unfavorable conditions for the environment, its destruction. Eventually, a moment comes when the ever-increasing consumption of a depraved individualistic society can no longer be provided by its environment (the people or nature it exploits, the resources of which have a limit). A conflict ensues between such a society and the outside world. An internecine struggle begins for the possession of resources that have become scarce. As a result, such civilizations, torn apart from within by individualism with all its attendant aggressiveness and debauchery, perished either under the blows of more collectivist foreigners, or under the blows of more collectivist forces within society itself. This is precisely the fate that befell, for example, Do not forget that Babylon, the Ancient Egypt, Maya, the Roman Empire, Kievan Rus, etc. Notable in this regard would be, for example, Sparta. For many hundreds of years, the Spartans did not know defeat, primarily because they lived as a single community, without using money, which could be a source of accumulation. The impossibility of their accumulation was caused by the fact that iron money was introduced by a specially adopted law (it was forbidden to use silver and gold coins), unsuitable for other uses (they were specially made fragile). It is worth noting that they cost so little and were so bulky that for Moreover, in order to keep several hundred rubles at home, it was necessary to build a large pantry and transport money into it on a cart. Thanks to such a coin, crime stopped in Sparta: who would dare to steal, take a bribe or rob, since it was impossible to hide the booty? In addition, this money could not be used in trade with other states and, thus, a barrier was placed on the import of wealth from outside. Other laws of Sparta were also aimed against the accumulation and use of wealth, against luxurious life, which, in combination with laws aimed at strengthening the health of the body and spirit, collectivism, systematically resolved the issue of the existence of a stable, strong, strong state. Gold came into use by the Spartans after their victory over the Persians with their enormous wealth. After this, the decomposition of Sparta began and its death came in a military confrontation with the Romans.
The disasters that shook civilizations at that time were not disastrous for humanity, although dying civilizations often left deserts behind due to their destructive actions. After the catastrophe, the dying civilization was revived again mainly due to the forces that came to it from the outside or matured within it and brought into it new social relations and technologies, which gave impetus to new progressive development. If there were no such forces, then the revival of civilization with its further development never occurred, as happened, for example, with the Mayan state, which found itself lost in the jungle, or with the Babylonian kingdom, whose territory turned into desert.
Now we also have a case of the indicated catastrophe, but only for the capitalist civilization that has engulfed our entire planet. In the pursuit of maximum profit without any correlation with the production of material assets needed by society (huge profits, for example, are made from the production of weapons, drugs, porn products and others, which not only are not needed by people, but also kill them in the literal sense of the word) are destroyed our energy and raw materials resources, among which are the lungs of our planet - forests. The water, atmosphere and soil of our planet are polluted by industrial waste, vehicles, and fertile lands are destroyed. We have already talked about this in the section “Knowledge and the growing need for it” (specifically, see pp. 11-13). It is important to note that at the same time all sorts of obstacles are being put in the way of developing new technologies that would replace technologies for using energy and raw materials that are already being exhausted , from the extraction of which modern tycoons enrich themselves.
For the sake of exorbitantly growing profits, endless wars are being waged, “uncivilized” peoples are being robbed, spending on social programs is being reduced for most “civilized” (developed) countries, including spending on health care, education (in the USA, for example, millions of people are illiterate or even illiterate ) Wealth, which is not used to satisfy reasonable human needs and to which fewer and fewer people are allowed, can be used for entertainment that corrupts people and immoral actions. Due to environmental pollution, our body is weakened, conditions for the development of pathogens are improved, which leads to an increase in epidemics. For example, according to scientists, the restoration of the incidence of cholera and the annual epidemic of this disease in the south of Ukraine is due precisely to the pollution of our rivers. Environmental violations, which are caused by our barbaric, for the sake of money, attitude towards the environment, can lead to environmental disasters. Thus, pollution of the Black Sea increases the layer of bottom hydrogen sulfide and in some places it almost approaches the surface of the sea. During an earthquake, flammable gas can come to the surface, ignite and explode with the power of an atomic bomb, with subsequent catastrophic consequences. Military actions also lead to significant violations of the environmental situation. The recent wars in Iraq and Yugoslavia are reliable proof of this. A critical increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to global warming on the planet, and with it to increased melting of glaciers, which leads to increased humidity in the atmosphere, the number and power of atmospheric disasters, increased water levels in the seas, and so the process has already begun (remember, although the increase in heat or almost daily rains in the summer, the warming of winter) And another closest example of the destructiveness of individualism of the capitalist world. Most recently, Europe suffered a catastrophe as a result of an accident at a Romanian gold mine: toxic cyanide entered the Tisza and Danube rivers, resulting in the death of all living things in the area of the accident. All the Danube states (Ukraine, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania) refused to provide compensation for losses, which would have gone towards restoring ecological balance in the region, while millions of dollars are spent in these countries on the entertainment of a handful of rich people.
The catastrophes described here, leading to the disappearance of early civilizations, were local in nature, since these civilizations occupied the territory of only individual states. Now the capitalist “civilized” world has a global spread and practically covers the territory of our entire planet. The catastrophe is becoming worldwide and the danger from it threatens the whole world.
Individualistic in its uncontrollable greed for enrichment at any cost, modern humanity is objectively doomed to destruction. Only a new, more collectivist community of people can survive here, which will replace the dying capitalist civilization, as has happened many times in the history of mankind. It is precisely such a community that will be communist.
To come to a new collectivist society, which will replace the dying capitalism, strength is needed, as it always was during the revival of one or another human civilization.
There is no one here from the outside to come to the aid of our civilization, since it covers our entire planet, and the arrival of collectivist-minded aliens seems not to be expected.
It is worth noting that we can only hope that within our society there will be people with collectivist morality, harmoniously combining the personal, collective and social, who will be able to prevent the destruction of humanity, just as the Bolsheviks saved Russia from destruction, and then and the whole world.
does not consider material enrichment to be the main meaning of human life;
loves nature, strives to cooperate with it and does not consider himself its master; in creative creative activity he does not strive to change objectively current natural processes, i.e. processes that follow the laws of nature, and not according to schemes invented by man without taking into account these laws;
ready to selflessly help everyone who needs it, selflessly cooperate with everyone who wishes the good of people and nature, help everyone who wants it to improve, and help prepare their desire;
ready to sacrifice himself, his condition for the sake of the happiness of others;
5) is ready to strictly observe the norms of behavior accepted in the association and dictated by the surrounding nature, acting on the principle: do not harm others, do to others as you would do for yourself;
6) ready to decisively expel from their ranks those who violate the moral norms of the association, as elements alien to it;
7) wishes to practically participate in the replacement of technologies that consume irreplaceable raw materials and energy resources, destroying the environment and man himself, with technologies of cooperation between Man and Man and Man and Nature, giving new breath to the development of humanity;
9) takes constant active, creative participation in moral activity, which is the basis for the formation and development of collectivist morality. And not only to be kind, but also to do good every day and actively.
The backbone, the core of such a union will be the working class (in complete harmony with classical Marxism), since it is among the workers, due to the collective nature of their work, that collectivist morality is natural and will last in relation to other social strata to the greatest extent.
It has already been said that private property will be the economic basis for the existence of individualistic morality, aimed at selfish enrichment, without taking into account the interests and needs of other people and, naturally, at the expense of others and the surrounding nature. It is not without reason that all outstanding representatives of humanity, its spiritual teachers, from the biblical and other religious prophets to modern progressive writers and scientists, opposed private property. There are a lot of examples that can be given here. For example, the entire progressive intelligentsia of Russia in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, from the Ukrainian Slavophiles to Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy, opposed private property. Let us give only some examples that relate to their negative attitude towards private ownership of land.
Taras Shevchenko in the poem “Cold Yar” narrated:
According to what is truthful,
Holy law
And the land given to everyone,
І warm-hearted people
Are you trading? Be careful
You will have a great time.
Leo Tolstoy in 1902, in a letter to Tsar Nicholas II on behalf of “one hundred million peasants,” spoke about the need to eliminate land ownership. Later, in letters dated August 1907 and September 1909, P. Stolypin spoke about this.
Therefore, it is no coincidence that even before the revolutionary October 1917, orders on land were adopted at rural gatherings throughout Russia. Based on these 242 local orders, the general “Peasant Order on Land” was compiled, which was published in August 1917. In this order it was written: “The right of private ownership of land is abolished forever. Land can neither be sold, nor bought, nor leased or pledged, nor alienated in any other way... All land: state, appanage, cabinet, monastic, church, possession, primordial, privately owned, public and peasant and etc. alienated free of charge, converted into national property and transferred to the use of all workers on it... All citizens (without distinction of gender) receive the right to use the land... who wish to cultivate it with their labor, with the help of their family, or in partnership, and only until then , while they are able to process it.” This text of the peasant mandate was then included in its entirety in the “Decree on Land”, adopted in Petrograd at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies on October 26 (November 8, new style) 1917. The Ukrainian Central Rada also supported this order and in 1918, in its Fourth General Assembly, expressed it in the following words: “In land rights, the commission, which was elected at the last session of the Central Rada, has already dissolved the law on the transfer of land to the working people without redemption, having adopted as a basis reduction of power and socialization of the land in the species before our decision at the 7th session.”
Among the Western European opponents of private ownership of land, one can name J. Rousseau, who narrated:
“The first person who fenced a piece of land and said, “This is mine,” and found people simple-minded enough to believe, was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, murders, from how many misfortunes and horrors would the human race be saved by the one who would shout to those like himself, tearing out stakes and filling up the ditch: beware of listening to this deceiver, you will perish if you forget that food belongs to everyone, and the earth - to no one.”
Based on what has been said, the proposed association, in order to prevent the destruction of humanity, should direct its activities towards the destruction of the basis of individualist morality - the destruction of private property. According to the “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” written a century and a half ago by the great collectivists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, this task was set before the communists, since communism is a society without private property, when wealth belongs to all people and everyone can use it. Private property will disappear - there will be no breeding ground for the manifestation of individualist morality, the morality of which is “everyone for himself, only one god for all” or “everyone rows to himself, only one chicken from himself.” In an already communist society, as at the dawn of the birth of humanity itself (at the stage of the primitive communal system), the collectivist morality of goodness, selflessness, mutual assistance, cooperation with nature, spiritual enrichment will again become predominant, seeking to exalt not an individual person or all of humanity above all others, but to merge all people together with the surrounding Nature.
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The material published below is the report “The Foundation of Traditional Values and the Core of Morality,” read by Mikhail Khasminsky at the 18th regional Christmas readings in Magadan, the theme of which this year is “Moral Values and the Future of Humanity.”
Mikhail Igorevich Khasminsky – head of the Center for Crisis Psychology at the Patriarchal Metochion - the Church of the Resurrection of Christ on Semenovskaya (Moscow), assistant rector of the metochion; member of the Public Council of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia (FSIN); member of the scientific advisory council of the Moscow Interregional Investigation Department for Transport of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation; member of the working group of the Ministry of the Russian Federation for the development of the Far East.
I would like to talk about the future of humanity from the point of view of a practicing crisis psychologist. Agree that the future of humanity directly depends on how our children live, because they are our future.
Education and upbringing
Schools, colleges, universities - all these institutions are called “educational”. The question is what is meant by education. Nowadays this is understood mainly as the transfer of a certain amount of knowledge, but not education.
Education, if we consider this word etymologically, is the giving of an image. And not just any image, but the image of God. This is done both with the help of knowledge and with the help of education - that is, it is a complex action in which any part cannot be isolated or discarded. I can confirm this with the words of famous philosophers: for example, the French writer and philosopher Michel de Montaigne wrote: “To those who have not comprehended the science of good, every other science brings harm.” He is echoed by Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev, our great scientist, saying that “knowledge without education is a sword in the hands of a madman.” And Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov simply wrote: “Not the sum of knowledge, but the correct way of thinking and moral education - this is the goal of education.”
Everything is obvious, but I’ll explain it with a few more examples. Everyone has probably heard about the rapist Chikatilo, whose name even became a household name. So he had three (!) higher educations (one of them incomplete) and one specialized secondary education: he graduated from the College of Communications, then entered MIIT, studied two courses there, and then graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Rostov University and the University of Marxism-Leninism at Pedagogical Institute. He worked as a teacher of Russian language and literature and a teacher at a boarding school.
Simply endowing young people with a certain amount of knowledge is not education in the full sense of the word
Another example: Jack the Ripper in England was the most famous and skillful and educated surgeon at that time. And in literary classics we find such examples. Here, in particular, is the evil genius Professor Moriarty from Conan Doyle: a very educated and cultured person. By the way, researchers suggest that Moriarty had a real prototype in the person of Professor Walter Lloyd McLarens, who taught mathematics at Oxford at the end of the 19th century
So, equipping young people with certain knowledge (not to mention the fact that modern graduates are simply trained to take the Unified State Exam) is, unfortunately, not education in its full sense. A person can have a higher education, but not have the image of God. If this continues in education, then the future of humanity is very sad, because then society will be composed of individuals without a core, without content, without the image of God.
Religion as the basis of morality and law
I would like to ask: what’s wrong with suicide? We are fighting this phenomenon, we want to reduce the number of suicides among minors, but what’s bad about it? Let's remember that in Ancient Rome suicide was a completely respected act, which was not only not condemned, but was even considered valor. And of course, the ancient Romans did not fight it. Why are we fighting this phenomenon now? We are fighting because when Christianity came to Rome, the commandments, and in particular the commandment "thou shalt not kill", began to determine people’s worldview, their behavior, their attitude, their morals and ethics. Including attitudes towards suicide. It was the religious basis that began to determine the moral state of society and the attitude towards this or that phenomenon.
The same, of course, can be said about killing another person. If a person commits the murder of another, not believing either in eternal life or in the fact that he will have to answer before God for this act - for example, he kills in order to get a lot of money and use it for the rest of his life - then from the point of view of a non-religious person, what what's wrong with that? Maybe it’s just (as we sometimes pretend) natural selection. This is how a person understands the world: “Why can’t I kill if I’m stronger? The right of the strong! Darwin rules."
But you cannot kill because it is a violation of the commandment. If a person understands that the one he wants to kill has an immortal soul and a priceless life given by God Himself, that after his death he will meet with the innocently murdered and that the most impartial Judgment for the innocently murdered person will inevitably await him, then he builds his attitude towards this action based on such an idea. And here it is clear why murder is a huge sin.
Further. Let's take robbery: why is it impossible, for example, to take something from another, to steal? What if you are stronger? It is impossible because it is a violation of the commandment "thou shalt not steal", this also has a religious basis. We remove the foundation - and in general it becomes unclear why this cannot be done.
Or corruption, for example, which everyone is now so passionately fighting. Why can’t you get something bypassing the law, but for your own money and, moreover, given at your own request? Moreover, sometimes it happens that a corrupt official can even carry out some useful work from a practical point of view: let’s say he didn’t pass some important document, but he was given the thumbs up, and he passed it. From a secular point of view, this is something that may not be necessary to fight. But this is something that must be fought against, because underneath this fight there is a religious basis, which determines the moral basis.
And in general, all law (the system of generally binding legal norms established by the state) came from the commandments of the main Abrahamic faiths. If we take the Criminal Code, we can see that this is practically an expanded interpretation of the last six commandments from the Decalogue (10 commandments given by God to Moses).
Let's consider such an act as cheating on one's spouse. It is not punishable by law, at least in our country, but it is condemned. And why? If, for example, someone cheated on his wife with a neighbor, and she, accordingly, cheated on her husband, and no one found out about it? It’s good for the man, and it’s good for the neighbor, too, so, strictly speaking, what’s wrong with that? No one killed anyone, did not cause damage to the state, everyone is alive and happy. But nevertheless, it is morally reprehensible. Why? Because this is again rooted in a religious basis: the commandment "don't fornicate". And if we recognize “do not fornicate,” then we recognize everything that follows from here. If we don’t admit it, then everything that follows loses its meaning and becomes completely incomprehensible to our students. And we won’t be able to explain this to them! We will not be able to raise them into moral people who understand these roots. And I will say more: if they are not moral, then most likely, unfortunately, they will be moral monsters.
They may object to me: in the Soviet Union there was no religious foundation, but at the same time the people were highly moral, and I have to agree with this. But there is a very simple explanation: for centuries we have been a Christian country, and for many generations people raised their children and grandchildren accordingly. And just as a tree with its roots cut off does not die immediately, when this religious foundation was gone, people continued to educate the younger generation in an essentially Christian spirit.
What can the destruction of a religious foundation lead to?
It is almost impossible to explain why something cannot be done without explaining the religious basis.
But the time has come when this inertia of centuries-old Christian traditions ended. And now we see that the same ossification begins, examples of which we see both on social networks and in real life, in the pseudo- and counterculture that surrounds us. All these things are closely interconnected! At the same time, it is almost impossible to explain to a child why this or that cannot be done without explaining the religious basis. Thanks to modern technology, our children already live in a different world. Try, from a secular point of view, to explain to the egoistic consumer why one must respect one’s father and mother. By the way, this also worries us all. If a child has no authority, no basis, no God, then why should he, strictly speaking, limit himself in consumption for the sake of his aged parents, and not send them to a boarding school (nursing home) to wait for the next fire? There is, I believe, no secular explanation here. Is it just that we didn’t do this to our parents? Just because we raised him that way? This is not an explanation. Because, let’s say, until adolescence you, as parents, are in authority, and then you are no longer in authority, others are already in authority.
Pyramid without a core, or Faulty operating system
So, if a person does not have this correct religious foundation, then, unfortunately, the entire educational process will be doomed. I sometimes compare it to a children's pyramid. The pyramid, as everyone has probably noticed, is often assembled incorrectly by small children - simply by placing rings on top of one another, but the most important thing in it is the base and the core. And if there is no religious basis from which this moral core grows, then most likely the pyramid will be assembled incorrectly, crookedly, and perhaps there will be no possibility of reassembling it correctly.
If we are talking about metaphors, then I would like to compare education with a computer operating system. We all have computers, and we imagine that if the operating system malfunctions, then, accordingly, all programs, all applications will work poorly. It’s the same in a person: if the moral system works poorly, then everything we teach him will also work, alas, poorly, and this will not necessarily manifest itself now, it can manifest itself at other stages of life. Moreover, a faulty operating system can even break the entire computer. And we see this when a person commits a crime or commits suicide: mental programs come into conflict with each other, that is, the person cannot understand the situation and cannot behave correctly, he does not have the skills for this. And a person, like a computer, “breaks down”.
“The little son came to his father, and the little one asked:
"What is good and what is bad?""
I would also like to draw attention to the fact that we ourselves often broadcast very strange things to our children. In general, what is good and what is bad is the first, vital thing that a father taught his son from ancient times. This, by the way, was reflected in the famous poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky. And my father said unequivocally: this is bad, but this is good. And - what is important - he proved his words with everyday example. That is, I lived like that myself!
Absurd: we tell children that suicide is bad, but at the same time we do not object to abortion as against murder
We constantly talk about the value of human life. And the value of life is a category that is also determined religiously. Life is priceless, it is a gift. Who gives this gift? God gives. This means that God will ask us for this life - for this priceless gift of His. And it is clear that if there is an understanding of this, as well as the fact that the soul is eternal, then doing disgusting things, and even more so ending, for example, committing suicide or killing a person, becomes simply unnatural.
But if the commandments are not the foundation, then the result is often absurd. We tell children that suicide is bad, that killing is terrible, implying that life has the highest value. But at the same time, we do not object to abortion publicly and clearly as we do against murder. And this is the paradox: here human life is important, we are talking about its value, about its preservation, even when a person himself is ready to give it up (because, again, his “operating system” is broken), but at the same time For some reason we ignore the importance of the life of a very small unborn person. How so?! How can children understand that life is valuable if there are so many abortions in society and they sometimes know that their mother had an abortion before him? How can a child then talk about the value of human life?! This is a very important point. After all, almost always the value of human life, the attitude towards one’s own soul determines a person’s behavior.
Gold in exchange for glass
The value of life is determined by the religious positioning of the individual, but our children do not have this!
Speaking about the causes of suicidal behavior, I would like to give one more metaphor. Everyone remembers the story when Europeans, having arrived on the American continent, exchanged gold from the indigenous inhabitants for glass beads. And, of course, it was an unequal exchange, now we understand this very well. And we know that then almost all of the Indians were destroyed, that is, not only was their precious metal taken away, but they themselves were killed - for example, in return they were given a blanket infected with smallpox, and so on. This was real genocide. But the Indians could have resisted! Could they? Why did they need to exchange gold for some pathetic pieces of glass? Of course they could, but their problem was that they didn't realize that these attractive pieces of glass were actually just processed cheap quartz sand, soda and limestone. And at the same time, they did not understand the price of what they had in abundance, that is, the price of gold. That is why they agreed to such an unequal exchange. And this begs the question: isn’t the same thing happening today, when children easily exchange their own priceless lives for some strange promises of scum about a country of blue whales, a colony, and so on? Children destroy and do not value their lives, do not appreciate the joy of every day. And it is completely logical that such children, not having an integral personality structure, living in a fragmented selfish consciousness, challenge both the Creator and all of us. And with this challenge they directly prove that the value of life is determined by the religious positioning of the individual, which they do not have.
I have seen hundreds of people who want to kill themselves, but I have never seen mentally healthy and truly (I emphasize: truly) Orthodox or Muslims attempt suicide. I am not making the data absolute; I admit that my colleagues may have had such cases, but I am sure that these cases are simply isolated.
What distinguishes “healthy” regions from “sick” regions
We are talking about the prevention of destructive behavior in minors, we are looking for what could reduce the level of such behavior by at least a few percent per year - this year we have 15% fewer suicides than last year (all age categories in general), and this is already an achievement. And I can give a recipe on how to significantly reduce not only suicide, but also solve the issue of demographic security, and much more.
And I can prove this with Rosstat data, which is presented in this diagram. It shows suicide rates in the Far East, Siberia and Ingushetia and Dagestan (calculated as the number of suicides per 100,000 population). It is striking that the difference is 15–30 times between the Far Eastern region (Jewish Autonomous Region) and Ingushetia and Dagestan. How can this colossal difference be explained? Neither economic nor social reasons can explain this. Thus, in the Far East there cannot be an economic situation 25 times worse than in Ingushetia. Also, there cannot be such a colossal difference either in the number of psychologists in schools, of course, or in the number of mentally ill people, or in the quality of psychiatric care. Well, there can’t be 25 times more mentally ill people in the Far East than in Ingushetia! The only, in my opinion, real explanation for this phenomenon can be that in the Caucasus there is a traditional society that structures a person and gives specific answers to all questions. It also clearly positions what is acceptable and what is unacceptable in society, based, again, on Abrahamic traditional Islam. And simply belonging to religious roots and following certain laws reduces the amount of suicidal behavior tenfold.
I will also note that in the more traditional society of these regions there are completely no orphanages or boarding schools for the elderly (although I was told that there are boarding schools there, but only for Russians, to our shame), that various types of addictions are a much smaller problem there ( alcohol, drugs, gaming, etc.), if taken per 100,000 people. There is a higher percentage of people actively involved in sports, but there’s nothing to even say about having many children. The family institution is much stronger there: in exactly the same proportion as suicides, there are fewer divorces than in the Far East. It turns out how belonging to traditional values radically changes the situation! And if we raise our children in our traditions, then we will also greatly reduce the number of tragedies.
Why does my soul hurt?
I would like to remember the founder of suicidology, Emile Durkheim, a famous French sociologist and philosopher, who said: “Morality is a mandatory minimum and a severe necessity, it is our daily bread, without which societies cannot live.” But morality, as we see, cannot develop and exist on its own, without religious roots.
Morality based on consumption cannot exist, because a person cannot be completely satisfied. And here I would like to quote another famous person - the writer Ernest Hemingway. He said one thing about material needs that, in my opinion, is deeply psychological, the confirmation of which we can easily see in our hearts:
“Give a person what he needs, and he will want convenience. Provide him with amenities - he will strive for luxury. Shower him with luxury - he will begin to sigh for the exquisite. Let him receive the exquisite - he will crave madness. Give him everything he wants, and he will complain that he was deceived and that he did not get what he wanted.”
These are very wise words.
In principle, you cannot be satisfied with material things! Because the soul is immaterial and requires something completely different
In principle, a person cannot be satisfied with something material! Because the soul is immaterial. It requires a completely different diet! And when a person cannot be satisfied with something, he falls into so-called frustration. He cannot achieve something, and he no longer likes the reality around him. And he has such, for example, ways out: to go into gambling addiction, that is, into some illusory world where he can achieve anything. Or go into a drug frenzy or another kind of destructive behavior. But at the same time, without thinking about the soul, that is, without satisfying the true needs that can correct the situation. But you can’t satisfy those needs that you yourself don’t know about, that you don’t feel!
And here’s what’s interesting: when you ask people in a state of crisis about their well-being, almost everyone, with very rare exceptions, says that their soul hurts. That is, they still feel the soul, understanding the localization of pain, when it hurts terribly. But at the same time, many do not go to the Church, this hospital of souls, but often try to knock out the “wedge with wedge” of consumption, entertainment, addictions and other destructive actions, which does not solve the problem itself, but usually leads to tragedies.
But let's see why the soul hurts.
I think no one will argue that anger sometimes leads to human destruction—internal destruction. And everyone knows very well that anger can lead to murder or suicide. Can fornication lead to suicide? Of course it can. Very often, betrayal - when someone was cheated on or the person himself cheated on them - leads to either murder, or suicide, or alcoholism, or drug addiction. Can love of money lead to murder? Yes, and we know a lot of examples of this. What about hatred? Of course, there is no need to even explain here. Dejection? Yes. Pride? Certainly. And even gluttony. Maybe? Maybe. Question: what is this listed here? Anger, hatred, fornication, love of money, gluttony - these are passions! Human passions, long described in ascetic literature. Previously, this was explained to children from a very young age and made it clear that these passions must be fought, and they were taught exactly how. And now how many people even know that passions must be fought and that passions destroy the personality and soul? On the contrary, passion is often presented as the norm. So how can you fight a disease that you do not perceive as a disease?!
Who is guilty?..
Unfortunately, it's our fault. It is our fault that our children suffer, that they kill themselves, that they get divorced (in 70% of cases on average in the country). All this happens because spiritual weeds grow in the souls of our children, and the children do not even understand that these weeds need to be pulled out before they grow into an impenetrable thicket. And this also relates not only to their future, but also to our own future. Of course, the lack of traditional values in upbringing, as we discussed above, leads to destructive actions. Of course, behavior is often determined by atheistic ideas about life after death, namely the absence of such ideas. Like, why be afraid to live by the rules? “We only live once! You have to try everything! Do what you want!" You can even kill - there are no brakes, you won’t have to answer, and after death nothing will happen.
There is an imposition of consumer and hedonistic philosophy instead of traditional forms. But we understand where consumer philosophy comes from. It is profitable to turn people into consumers so that they buy, buy and buy. Consumers are the fuel of the economy. But this is not beneficial for the person himself! And it is not profitable to make consumers out of our children. Here we have completely different interests from producers of goods and services.
Consumerism will take over children if they do not have a religious understanding of life, the experience of Christian life
Consumerism will take over our children if they do not have an alternative religious understanding, an experience of Christian life. And they won't have it if we don't teach it to them. And for this, we must live like this ourselves and show them a positive example, and not the one they can see on the Internet. It is difficult, it is complicated, but there is something for parents, teachers, and officials to become different for.
We may not give enough material goods, but we must give the child much more - the traditional hierarchy of meanings. We must explain from the point of view of our traditional culture why a person lives, why family life is needed, why one needs to change oneself. So far, alas, children do not receive answers to these questions. We explain very little to children. Of course, we want children to know meaning: the meaning of life, and the meaning of creating a family and raising them; so that they understand the meaning of suffering and correctly determine their attitude towards work and the country. And we need to give this religious core, this accumulated experience of all past generations who also went through various crises. We went through crises in the family, experienced the loss of loved ones - and moved forward; they lived when they didn’t want to live, when there was war, when there was famine... They knew how to relate to all this in order to overcome it! And they overcame it. We ourselves, our existence is evidence that they overcame this.
So, only a religious basis allows one to cope with the crises that are inevitable in the life of every person. It gives the concept of the absolute authority of God, which is higher than momentary human morality, based on nothing.
I often visit various youth audiences. And when you ask what love is, usually everyone simply answers that love is a feeling. Almost no one says that this is creation, that this is compassion, that this is sacrifice. But sacrifice is everything! This is when a person wants not to take, but to give. Why do most divorces happen? Because a girl is raised as a princess and she is used to taking, and a boy is raised the same way, and then they join into a family, and each wants to take more from the other than to give. Naturally, this leads to divorce. What was a family built on before? On sacrifice. Just to do something for free for a loved one, so that he feels good. And the other did the same, because he was raised the same way.
And in general, everything that moved our country, and everything that can determine our future, is and was determined by sacrifice, bestowal, and not by selfishness and consumerism. This is not only family, but also patriotism (if there is no sacrifice, then who will go to defend the country? For what?), it is both work and creativity (for it is impossible to make a masterpiece for money). And in general, creative development is always a return. And, of course, children should understand this.
...and what to do?
The great Ivan Aksakov said: “Progress that denies God ultimately becomes regression, civilization ends in savagery, freedom in despotism and slavery. Having taken off the image of God, man will inevitably take off the human image and become jealous of the bestial image.”
And when you see satanic symbolism in death groups, when you hear children swearing, learn about children’s atrocities against each other, read about violence and blood, then know that they simply stripped off the image of God and exchanged it for the image of an animal.
And let's agree that even now we are not trying to fully return the image of God to children by educating them. We look for extremes in tragedies, think about secondary things, without paying enough attention to the main problem.
Let me return to the pyramid metaphor. Let's imagine: a pyramid with or without a rod. If there is no rod, then just hit this structure with your fingernail - and everything will fall apart, which we actually see more and more often when the next tragedies happen.
In conclusion, I would like to quote the words of Blessed Augustine of Hippo - a great scientist, saint, ascetic, who himself made many mistakes in life, but nevertheless acquired a Christian core and was able to become the father of the Church: “If God is in first place, then everything else will be in his own."
So let's pay close attention to this and think about what exactly we can do for our children, who have a priceless soul, and we must nourish it with the life-giving energy of love and beneficial knowledge, and not with formal Unified State Examinations, scores and not with a consumerist and hedonistic attitude to life, which can only lead to suffering and disaster.
