Pseudo-rational civilization

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

At the end of the 19th century. Freud for the first time draws the attention of Western rational society to the isolation of the rational idea of the world from the internal motives of a person, from the sphere of irrational drives. The works of Freud and his followers unambiguously show that people in modern society (and the scale of this phenomenon is global!) Are not able to reconcile, coordinate their rational picture of the world, the need to proceed from which society, culture dictates to them, with their inner aspirations. Freud for the first time develops a method for solving this problem - psychoanalysis, which gave the name and the very direction of psychology, the essence of which is to unravel and unblock unconscious motives, ideas, behavior patterns, thrown into the basements of the brain, etc. Unconscious motives play the role of puppeteers who force a person to select one or another rational justification for the commission of actions that are often outwardly completely meaningless and unnecessary to him. A person fixes a certain belief, idea, a way of behavior, which become a dogma in his mind, on the other hand, this dogma is supported by a certain unconscious desire, an intuitive desire, which a person subconsciously tries to follow.

A strange compromise arises between the need to behave externally, superficially - rationally, and internal motives, in fact - such behavior and the corresponding rational cover contributes to the implementation of some goals that have a purely subjective significance that do not actually correspond to these seemingly rational actions … Awareness of the true reasons for their actions makes a person reject false rationalization, false justifications for their behavior and false ways of realizing their internal motives. Freud unambiguously solves the dilemma - a person must learn to behave rationally, and the way to this is awareness. A person, in the absence of a dogmatic traditional system, with clearly stated assessments, can arbitrarily, by chance, assign certain ideas, considering them correct and suitable for the realization of his own motives, he may be mistaken in this, but that is why he is a reasonable person, in order to put correctness above a habit, a once-chosen assessment, and to be able to figure out the correct state of affairs, instead of following your habit, emotional attachment and distorting your perception of the world as a result.

Modern civilization, however, misleads a person into a double delusion: on the one hand, it is suggested to him that everything has a rational basis, that everything has been studied, answers to questions have been given and there are ready-made solutions for the vast majority of problems, and there is no need to come up with anything special, but this is not so, on the other - that he is given the opportunity to freely realize any goals and desires, and all this is easy to achieve and receive, just lift a finger, and you will be happy, provided, etc., and this seeming ease of realization of desires is also deception. And a person, under the influence of these delusions, easily grasps any ready-made rational justifications, attaching them to his desires and believing that everything is correct, not being able to realize them, he can dogmatically prove and defend his dogmatic pseudo-rational justifications for a long time. falseness of these rationalizations, but this very often does not prevent him from making mistakes again and again. Thus, under the pseudo-rational content that fills the cultural and information space of our civilization, one can understand such considerations, ideas, etc., which do not carry either a purely ethical, traditional load, but, at the same time, do not carry a rational load - they are designed to justify the desires, motives and needs of people and satisfy them in an erroneous way.

The modern level of rational understanding of the world and the possibilities of the structure of society is not enough in order to consistently implement the internal motives and needs of people, however, it is no longer possible to refuse to use rational motives and approaches - after all, they provide noticeable progress and a much better realization of those motives and needs that are already were prevalent among people to the arrival of a pseudo-rational civilization. The triumph of pseudo-rational approaches is harmful both from the point of view of traditional morality and from the point of view of rational perception. In the first case, it is moral relativism, in the second, it is militant amateurism, deceiving people striving for a true understanding of the world. It is necessary to fight against pseudo-rational concepts, ideas of militant amateurs, for the sake of a truly rational understanding of things and a truly rational approach to the perception of the world.

So, our civilization is a civilization in a pseudo-rational phase, a civilization in which the cultural basis of an emotional civilization based on a system of values of emotional comfort, benefit, love and other attributes of emotional perception of the world is covered from above with a rational content, in fact, practically all of this the content to one degree or another is not rational, but pseudo-rational, that is, it is not rational and objective, but rational in form, but adjusted to emotional motives, representation. Freud back in the 19th century. drew attention to this fact, setting the task of clearing the rational ideas of a person from emotional pollution, separating and searching for the correct, truly rational ways to realize their internal motives. However, as long as the emotional, old system remains the main and leading value system, people will still continue to strive to fit rational ideas to their desires, without thinking about the correctness of their actions, they will recklessly use rational technologies to the detriment of ethical and moral norms, for the sake of realizing their selfish ambitions, they will deceive themselves and deceive others, believing that truth is less important than profit and emotional comfort.

The only possible way out of this situation is the transition to a new system of values, to a reasonable perception of the world, the rejection of the false belief that the mind is only an instrument for fulfilling desires and selfish ambitions, the elimination of disdain for righteousness and truth. The only possible way out is the primary desire to understand the world, to the fact that the mind will set the criteria for actions, to the fact that the true and only correct criterion for performing actions will be their correctness, justification with the help of reason, and not mindless indulgence of desires. Now, when people assume that the only criterion for studying a question, for gaining knowledge, for finding out the truth is a practical imperative, need, motivation to benefit from this knowledge, they remain completely unreasonable beings and can only make stupid, pseudo-rational decisions. People must unconditionally and immediately find a reasonable basis in their inner essence, without which they are doomed to forever remain the slaves of their dogmatic constructions, as well as their complexes and obsessive aspirations.

Humanity must unconditionally and immediately switch to a new system of values and start building on its basis a truly intelligent society and a truly intelligent idea of the world, building an integral system, an integral worldview based on a rational approach, only with the help of which humanity can avoid mistakes, reach a qualitatively new the level of development and avoid self-destruction in the selfish madness of the morally and intellectually degraded adherents of capitalism and the old system of values. The modern pseudo-rational worldview is extremely superficial in terms of a true understanding of the world, even when it comes to areas such as natural sciences (the next article will be about modern science).

This worldview claims that it is based on ethical standards and meets the all-round satisfaction of people's needs, which is a deception, because due to the impossibility of harmonizing needs and their full satisfaction by each person in society, society ends up in the hands of a handful of egoists who consciously use pseudo-rational justification for covering up their selfish goals. We clearly see that Western society, like our own society after the transition to capitalism and the borrowing of Western culture, is slipping into degradation, all ethical norms and traditions are trampled in it, stupidity and a desire for senseless burning of life are implanted in it, technologies and education are considered as an opportunity to steal, cheat, organize a criminal business, etc., and not benefit society.

Advertising, election manipulation, the latest orange "revolutions", etc. are examples of the global deliberate slipping of pseudo-rational justification to people, tailored to certain motives, and this slipping works, because people are too stupid to recognize deception and are too naive, to buy into the promise of easy fulfillment of all their expectations and problem solving. People who lived in the USSR were dissatisfied with both the restriction of freedom and the insufficient degree of satisfaction of needs, they were classically deceived by slipping instead of real, but partial satisfaction of needs, and a real, but limited opportunity to freely realize their abilities, creative ideas, etc., a surrogate in the form of both an immoral and unreasonable system, a deception that represented only the appearance of satisfying needs and the appearance of freedom. Of course, a society that is in a state of self-deception, degradation and meaningless existence, guided by surrogate values, is inevitably doomed to destruction and destruction. Only by passing to a new system of values, we will be able to build a real intelligent society on the site of a pseudo-rational civilization.