The Drive to Superiority

The Drive to Superiority
 
The second edition

Andrii Bilousov
Special thanks to Alexey Kuchko



The drive to superiority is not simply the desire of one person to be better than another. In a deeper sense, it is a philosophical understanding of the very principle of human development—a fundamental idea that underlies both individual and collective activity and, to a considerable extent, determines the movement of society.
If such a drive did not exist, human beings would have no inner foundation for development. They would simply be satisfied with what had already been achieved, while society would gradually become confined within the boundaries of its existing order. There would be no need to seek new knowledge, create new forms of culture, improve social relations, or pursue goals that extend beyond the present.
Thus, the drive to superiority should be understood as a universal principle of transcending existing boundaries. It not only shapes the individual but also manifests itself in the activity of social institutions, in the development of science and culture, and in the creation of new ideas and forms of social life.
Ultimately, the drive to superiority is the human desire to surpass oneself, overcome existing limitations, and move toward a state that one considers more perfect. In this sense, it becomes one of the fundamental ideas capable of explaining the continuous movement of humanity and society forward.





INTRODUCTION

“Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”
(Proverbs 19:21)

Human beings have always sought to rise above themselves. Long before the emergence of science, philosophy, and complex social institutions, people were already asking questions about their purpose, their place among others, and what makes one person stronger than another. The desire for superiority has accompanied human history from its very beginning. It manifests itself in the struggle for power and wealth, in the pursuit of knowledge, in the desire to be first, recognized, heard, and respected. But are all forms of superiority equally valuable?
This question becomes the starting point of Andrii Bilousov’s book “The Drive for Superiority.”
At first glance, superiority seems to be a simple and obvious category. One person is stronger, more educated, wealthier, more influential, or more successful than another — therefore, he or she is superior. However, on closer examination, it becomes clear that human superiority cannot be measured on a single scale. Physical strength can make a person powerful, but not necessarily wise. Wealth can provide independence, but does not guarantee dignity. Power allows one to give orders, but does not imply inner superiority. Intelligence opens vast opportunities, yet without moral guidance it can be used for both good and evil.
Therefore, the drive to superiority has a dual nature. On the one hand, it is precisely what drives a person to develop, learn, create, discover new things, and overcome their own limitations. Thanks to the desire to be better, scientific discoveries, works of art, technological achievements, and social transformations emerge. On the other hand, the same drive can turn into a thirst for domination, subjugation, and the destruction of another human being.
The boundary between these two directions is extremely thin.
Human history provides us with many examples of people who sought greatness. Some achieved it through knowledge and creation, others through power and violence. Some left behind ideas that changed the consciousness of millions, others left fear, destruction, and suffering. Therefore, the question is not only whether a person strives for superiority, but also over what exactly they seek to prevail.
Perhaps the greatest victory of a human being is not victory over another person, but victory over oneself.
Overcoming one’s own weakness, ignorance, fear, envy, aggression, and dependence on others’ opinions is sometimes far more difficult than subjugating another. External superiority may be visible to others, while internal superiority often remains invisible. A person may appear weak, possessing neither wealth nor power, and at the same time possess immense inner strength.
That is why the phenomenon of superiority deserves not only social or psychological, but also philosophical reflection.
A human being exists among other people. Their desires, beliefs, and actions constantly collide with the desires, beliefs, and interests of those around them. Society creates rules, norms, and restrictions that both protect a person and limit their freedom. A paradox arises: a person strives to be free, yet is forced to live among other free people. They want to determine their own destiny, yet constantly encounter circumstances beyond their control.
It is in this contradiction that much of human struggle is born.
We want to be independent, yet we depend on society. We strive for recognition, yet recognition depends on others. We desire power, yet power itself requires recognition from those over whom it is exercised. We seek truth, yet our understanding of truth is limited by knowledge, experience, and the nature of our own consciousness.
Thus, the pursuit of superiority cannot be considered separately from human nature.
This book invites us to look at a human being not only as a biological organism, but also as a personality constantly in the process of becoming. A person is never fully formed. They change under the influence of upbringing, education, culture, society, life experience, and their own decisions. Over the course of life, one may become better or worse, stronger or weaker, freer or more dependent.
Consciousness plays a particularly important role here. It is what allows a person not merely to exist, but to comprehend their own existence. An animal struggles for survival, whereas a human being is capable of asking themselves why they live. A person can renounce immediate benefit for the sake of principle, sacrifice personal well-being for another, dedicate their life to an idea or cause whose results will belong to future generations.
In this lies a special kind of human superiority — a superiority that cannot be acquired solely through money, power, or social status.
The author does not treat the problem of superiority as a simple question of who is stronger, smarter, or richer. Far more important is understanding the mechanism that drives a person to constantly compare themselves with others. Why do we need recognition? Why does another’s success sometimes evoke admiration and sometimes envy? Why is a person capable of sacrificing their own dignity for social status? And why do some people, despite possessing immense power, continue to feel the need to prove their superiority?
These questions lead us from the external world to the internal one.
Perhaps a person who constantly strives to prove their superiority over others is, in fact, trying to compensate for inner insecurity. Conversely, a person who truly possesses inner strength may not feel a constant need to demonstrate it to others.
Therefore, true superiority may be paradoxical: the more a person needs to prove their superiority, the less obvious it becomes.
True strength is revealed not only when a person is able to win, but also when they are able not to use their opportunity to humiliate another. Not only when they can force, but also when they are able to persuade. Not only when they obtain power, but also when they are capable of using it responsibly.
In this sense, superiority becomes a moral category.
However, the book does not aim to provide the reader with a final formula for human superiority. On the contrary, its purpose is to provoke reflection. The author invites us to view familiar phenomena from a different angle, to question established ideas, and to search for answers independently.
Therefore, the reader is not obliged to agree with all the ideas expressed here. Disagreement can be no less productive than agreement. Moreover, it is often the clash of opposing views that becomes the source of intellectual development.
Truth is rarely born in the silence of complete agreement.
It arises where there is a question that has no final answer yet; where a person is able to say, “I may be wrong.” The ability to doubt one’s own correctness is not a sign of weakness, but one of the most complex forms of intellectual maturity.
“The Drive to Superiority” should therefore be seen not as an attempt to establish a universal hierarchy of people, but as an exploration of one of the fundamental human drives. What makes us rise higher? What makes us compare ourselves with others? Where does a healthy desire for development end and the desire for domination begin? And finally, is superiority possible without humiliating another?
Each reader will have to seek the answers to these questions on their own.
Ultimately, a person constantly stands before a choice: to strive to be above others or to become above oneself.
The first path may lead to power. The second — to personality.
And perhaps this is the main idea of the book: true human superiority begins not where a person gains the ability to rise above others, but where they acquire the ability to rise above their own limitations.
This book is an invitation to such a search.
Not a search for someone else’s truth to be accepted, but for one’s own — a truth that must be endured, tested by reason, life experience, and conscience.
And if, after reading this book, you find yourself with new questions and some of your previous beliefs are shaken, then its main purpose will have been fulfilled.
For a person does not develop when they receive all the answers.
They develop when they begin to ask deeper questions.



TABLE OF CONTENTS


1. THE DRIVE TO SUPERIORITY
2. WHAT DO WOMEN WANT?
3. GHOSTS: REALITY OR ILLUSION?
4. THE SECRET OF SUCCESS IN SHOW BUSINESS
5. WHO IS DESTINED TO BECOME RICH?
6. THE DEPENDENCE OF DESTINY ON CIRCUMSTANCES
7. ROME REBORN
8. THE “CALIGULA” PHENOMENON, OR THE LIBERATED CONSCIOUSNESS
9. THE FOUNDATION OF THE POLITICAL ICEBERG
10. CONCLUSION




THE DRIVE TO SUPERIORITY

«“Then I said, Wisdom is better than strength: nevertheless the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard.” — Ecclesiastes 9:16»

STRENGTH IS NOT ALWAYS SUPERIORITY
If a person possesses great physical strength and a well-developed body but lacks the ability to reason logically, many people will regard him as grotesque, unpleasant, or unintelligent. Strength alone is not a sign of superiority. It merely gives a person the ability to influence the world around him. If he does not know how to use that ability properly, strength may prove useless or even become the cause of his defeat.
A person may be able to lift enormous weights, endure exhausting physical work, run quickly, and possess excellent reflexes. Yet none of these qualities will help when a situation requires an accurate assessment of circumstances, anticipation of consequences, and the selection of the most reasonable course of action. Physical strength enables a person to act directly. Reason determines what action should be taken in the first place.
The same applies to wealth. A person may possess enormous amounts of money but lack the ability to reason logically. Money provides opportunities, but it does not automatically provide the ability to use them wisely. A wealthy person can buy the best education, medical treatment, equipment, travel, and professional assistance, but he cannot simply purchase the ability to distinguish truth from error. Material prosperity can even create an illusion of superiority. Someone accustomed to obtaining whatever he wants through money may begin to believe that his opinion is automatically more valuable than the opinions of others. Yet economic superiority and intellectual superiority are entirely different things.
KNOWLEDGE IS NOT THINKING
The same distinction applies to education. A scientist may know every detail of his field, remember formulas, definitions, dates, names, and the results of countless studies, yet still be incapable of independent reasoning. One can know an answer without understanding why it is correct. One can repeat another person's idea without being able to defend it. One can even reach the correct conclusion by accident without knowing how one arrived at it.
In all these cases, a person possesses information but does not necessarily possess genuine thinking. Logical reasoning, in the intellectual sense, is the ability to form concepts clearly, establish relationships between them, detect contradictions, and carry an idea to its natural conclusion. A person who merely repeats other people's words may appear educated, but his education remains external. Genuine thinking begins when a person can independently examine knowledge and understand why it should be true.
REALITY AND HUMAN DESCRIPTIONS
Many people fail to distinguish between reality and imagination, or between knowledge that can be tested through experience and ideas that exist only within the mind. This is understandable. We are born into an already ordered world and gradually construct similarly ordered schemes in our minds. Yet those schemes do not necessarily correspond to underlying reality.
Before a person begins to reason independently, he is told what is good and bad, right and wrong, normal and abnormal. He receives a language, a value system, religious or secular beliefs, political opinions, historical interpretations, and countless ready-made answers. Eventually, he may begin to perceive these answers as reality itself.
But every description of the world differs from the world. A map is not the territory, and a human concept is not the object it describes. Therefore, genuine thinking requires us constantly to compare our ideas with reality.
THE ARTIFICIAL WORLD OF CIVILIZATION
Modern culture has profoundly changed human life. We have created an enormous artificial environment and become so accustomed to it that we often forget how different it is from natural conditions.
Imagine a modern person spending hours at a computer, immersed in interactive websites and computer games. He may have completed the most difficult games, know their rules and characters, and have an opinion about almost everything. Yet virtual experience is not the same as practical experience.
Such a person may confidently speak about God, culture, politics, history, and society. His confidence may be limitless. But confidence is not evidence. A person can be absolutely certain that he is right and simultaneously be absolutely wrong.
Imagine sending such an expert to Ancient Athens. Suddenly, many assumptions that seemed obvious within his familiar environment would have to be reconsidered. The artificial world created by civilization can give a person extraordinary abilities while simultaneously concealing the limits of those abilities.
INTELLECT AGAINST BRUTE FORCE
Sparta became historically associated above all with military discipline, physical endurance, courage, and obedience to the state. Athens followed a different cultural path, one in which philosophy, literature, art, political thought, and intellectual debate flourished. The ideas associated with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle have survived for thousands of years and continue to influence human thought.
The contrast should not be understood as a simple judgment that one civilization possessed virtue while the other possessed none. Rather, it reveals two different forms of power. Military power can conquer territory, impose obedience, and defend a state. Intellectual power can influence generations that never experienced the original historical conflict.
Athens therefore left an extraordinarily influential philosophical and cultural legacy, while Sparta became primarily a historical symbol of military discipline. This reveals one of the greatest lessons of civilization: brute force can conquer territory, but intellect can conquer time.
Military power can subjugate a person, but it cannot make that person think. A weapon can destroy a city, yet an idea once born in the human mind can outlive entire empires.
Ultimately, history preserves more than the victories of armies. It preserves the ideas that change how subsequent generations understand the world.
One society may value strength, discipline, and courage. Another may value reasoning, debate, and creativity. A third may value wealth, entrepreneurship, and practical success. Therefore, human superiority cannot be measured by a single criterion.
Yet in the intellectual sphere there is one quality that allows information to be transformed into new knowledge: the ability to reason.
TECHNOLOGY AND THE WEAKENING OF HUMAN ABILITIES
Technology has made life easier, but this convenience may have a price. We no longer need to memorize enormous amounts of information because search engines can provide almost any answer instantly. We do not need enormous physical strength because machines perform much of our physical work. We require less endurance and agility for most everyday tasks. We no longer have to struggle for food in the way our ancestors did.
Life has become considerably easier. But if a person completely surrenders his natural abilities to technological progress, the consequences may be serious.
Technology should be an extension of human ability, not its replacement. A calculator is useful. But if using one causes a person to lose the ability to understand elementary mathematical relationships, he has become dependent on the instrument.
A search engine is an extraordinary achievement. But if a person stops evaluating the information he finds, access to more knowledge does not make him wiser. A computer can provide an answer. It cannot always tell us which question should be asked.
Often, formulating the right question is more difficult than finding the answer.
DEVELOPMENT REQUIRES RESISTANCE
If we do not reclaim our natural abilities from civilization, we risk serious degradation. Nature has given us a physical body to interact with the world and a mind to understand it.
Everything around us is constantly changing. A passive person is therefore out of harmony with the nature of existence. Development requires tension. A muscle develops when it works. An intellect develops when it encounters difficulty. Character develops when a person must overcome resistance.
An excessively easy life, when a person creates no voluntary challenges for himself, can gradually deprive him of the ability to overcome real obstacles.
For this reason, development requires a certain degree of resistance. Difficulty is not necessarily an enemy of human development. Sometimes it is precisely the condition that makes development possible.
GREAT THINKERS AND HISTORICAL NECESSITY
In the history of European civilization, we may identify two extraordinary figures: Jesus Christ, the Messiah sent by God, and Immanuel Kant, whom we might metaphorically call a “Messiah sent by Science.” This metaphor is not intended to place Kant in a religious position equivalent to Christ. Rather, it expresses the extraordinary intellectual transformation associated with his work.
Great figures do not appear in isolation. They are born from their historical moment. A great thinker does not become great merely because he decides to be great. Behind him stands a historical necessity.
Before a new idea can appear, countless previous ideas, contradictions, unanswered questions, and attempts at solutions must accumulate. Every major thinker stands on top of an enormous intellectual structure built before him.
An educated person knows what has already been created. A great thinker can see what others have not yet seen.
This is why the greatest achievements of human thought are not simply additions of information. They are changes in the structure through which humanity understands reality.
Newton did not create nature. Darwin did not create evolution. Einstein did not create space and time. They created new ways of understanding phenomena that existed independently of them.
PHILOSOPHERS AND THINKERS
We may distinguish, for the purposes of this work, between two broad intellectual tendencies.
The first consists primarily of those who interpret, systematize, and develop existing ideas without producing a fundamental transformation in the structure of human understanding.
The second consists of thinkers whose work moves human thought toward a qualitatively new level.
This distinction is not absolute. A philosopher may interpret earlier ideas while simultaneously creating entirely new ones. Indeed, some of the greatest philosophers in history did precisely this.
Among the thinkers who profoundly transformed human understanding we may place Aristotle, Epicurus, Spinoza, Kant, Adam Smith, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, and others.
The essential distinction is therefore not between “philosophers” and “non-philosophers,” but between intellectual activity that primarily preserves existing structures of thought and intellectual activity that fundamentally transforms them.
A thinker does not merely repeat existing knowledge; he changes the structure through which knowledge is understood.
A discovery does not necessarily mean discovering a new object. Sometimes it means discovering an entirely new way of looking at something already known.
SOCIAL SUCCESS AND INTELLECTUAL GREATNESS
In modern society, people best adapted to social conditions often occupy positions of political, economic, or administrative power. They may possess confidence, persuasive ability, leadership qualities, and the ability to achieve socially important goals.
But an important contradiction arises here. A person may be extremely useful to society without being a great thinker. Conversely, someone may make important discoveries and understand profound truths while receiving little recognition because society does not yet understand the practical value of his achievements.
Society cannot always recognize a new idea immediately. History contains many examples of thinkers who were misunderstood by their contemporaries.
Therefore, social recognition is not an absolute criterion of truth.
We must communicate, defend our interests, explain our actions, and persuade others to accept our proposals. The ability to persuade is therefore an important part of social existence.
But persuasion and intellectual greatness are not the same thing. The ability to convince others may produce social success without producing truth.
THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION
Modern education largely prepares people to function within an existing culture. It provides knowledge necessary for participation in an established system.
But a person who seeks knowledge for its own sake can go further, attempting to understand the laws of nature and humanity's place within the world.
Understanding gives a person a sense of control. Unknown things frighten us. Contradictions irritate us. Uncertainty creates anxiety. Therefore, the human mind attempts to organize reality into a coherent system.
Yet this creates a danger: a person may begin defending not truth, but his own system of beliefs. Logic then ceases to be an instrument for discovering truth and becomes a weapon for defending a predetermined position.
True logical thinking must be prepared to change its conclusion when an error is discovered.
Therefore, thinking must include not only the ability to win an argument, but also the ability to discover one's own mistakes.
PERSUASION AS A FORM OF POWER
The ability to defend one's position is vital in modern society. We encounter advertising, political promises, stereotypes, social pressure, and countless attempts to influence our behavior.
Which promise is realistic and which is merely attractive rhetoric? The ability to expose false reasoning is an important element of intellectual survival.
But disproving another person's argument does not automatically prove our own argument correct. We may show that one position is false without establishing the truth of its opposite.
Here lies the boundary between genuine reasoning and ordinary argument.
In an argument, people often want to win. In reasoning, they should want to understand.
True persuasion differs from manipulation. A manipulator wants another person to accept a desired position regardless of whether it is true. A thinker should demonstrate why a particular conclusion follows from particular premises.
If a person can defend his position logically, he gains an intellectual advantage. If he can simultaneously identify weaknesses in his own position, he gains an even greater advantage — superiority over himself.
DARWIN AND THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF EVOLUTION
The popular claim that “humans descended from monkeys” has often obscured the real meaning of Darwin's theory.
Natural selection concerns all living organisms, including humans and other animals. Human beings and modern apes do not stand in a simple parent-and-child relationship. They share common ancestors, just as humans share more distant common ancestors with many other forms of life.
Natural selection is not simply the survival of the strongest. It is the differential survival and reproduction of organisms whose heritable characteristics are advantageous under particular environmental conditions.
Mammoths possessed enormous physical strength, yet they disappeared. Ants, despite their tiny size, remain extraordinarily successful.
Strength is therefore only one possible instrument of survival, not a universal law. Sometimes development means becoming stronger. Sometimes it means becoming more adaptable. Sometimes it means becoming more efficient, cooperative, resilient, or capable of responding to environmental change.
Evolution therefore provides another powerful example of why physical strength cannot be treated as a universal measure of superiority.
SOCIETY AND THE POWER OF WORDS
Society exists because its members recognize certain rules. Laws change, moral standards change, and political systems disappear, but the need for some form of social order remains.
Therefore, the ability to persuade is also an ability to survive.
Physical force acts directly upon the body. Money acts through material possibilities. Political power acts through social structures. Persuasion acts directly upon consciousness.
A person capable of changing another person's opinion through argument possesses a special kind of power.
But this power becomes dangerous when separated from truth. Persuasive speech can defend truth or spread lies. Therefore, eloquence is not enough.
One must be logical. One must distinguish the persuasiveness of form from the truth of content.
Beautiful words do not make a lie true. A confident voice does not make an erroneous conclusion correct. Most people evaluate persuasion through emotional impact, whereas logical thinking requires examination of the structure of an argument.
Here lies one of the true forms of intellectual superiority: not in speaking louder, intimidating others, possessing more money, or having a stronger body, but in seeing relationships between causes and effects and being able to explain those relationships to another person.
THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK
We want this book to serve as a guide to life — a reminder for those prepared to face the powerful and constantly accelerating dynamics of modern society.
A person must recognize what is happening in time, understand how to respond, and avoid being deceived by promises that create false expectations and misleading directions.
Information now spreads at extraordinary speed. An event occurring on the other side of the planet can become known to millions within minutes. Advertising can reach a person precisely when he is most vulnerable. A political statement can instantly influence public opinion. False information can spread faster than it can be verified.
Under such conditions, independent thinking is not a luxury. It is a necessity.
A person needs solid knowledge, powerful reasoning, and the ability to persuade. But knowledge must not simply be accumulated. It must continually be tested.
Logic must be used not only to prove our own beliefs but also to examine them. Persuasion should be based not on emotional pressure but on demonstrating the reasonableness of a conclusion.
SUPERIORITY OVER ONESELF
This brings us to the deeper meaning of superiority.
Superiority is not necessarily power over another person. In a deeper sense, it is the ability to become freer from one's own misconceptions.
A person who can recognize his own mistake is, in one respect, stronger than someone who will defend an error at any cost. A person who can change his opinion when new evidence appears is stronger than someone who refuses to change simply because he fears admitting a mistake.
A person who can listen to an opponent's arguments is stronger than one who hears only himself.
Therefore, intellectual superiority requires inner discipline. One must know how to listen, not merely speak. One must analyze, not merely argue. One must understand, not merely win.
True superiority combines several qualities: the ability to think, act, adapt, persuade, and distinguish personal advantage from truth.
But its deepest form is self-transcendence: the ability to rise above one's own ignorance, prejudices, emotional impulses, and previously accepted conclusions.
THE HIGHEST FORM OF SUPERIORITY
The power of superiority is not simply one person's power over another. It is the power of reason over the chaos of one's own ideas.
It is the ability not to remain a passive object of circumstances, but to become an active participant in events.
We cannot stop society from changing or technological development from advancing. But we can develop our minds enough not to become lost in this movement.
We can use machines without becoming machines, use the Internet without becoming its slaves, and receive knowledge from others without abandoning independent thought.
We can pursue success without making success our only value. We can persuade others without deceiving them. We can defend our interests without losing the ability to recognize the interests of others.
This is why the highest form of superiority is not the suppression of another person, but the preservation of one's own intellectual independence.
A physically strong person may force a weaker person to submit. A wealthy person may purchase what a poor person cannot afford. A powerful person may force others to obey.
But a person who understands why events occur and can convincingly explain that understanding to others possesses a different and more enduring kind of power.
Such power is not always visible. It does not necessarily come with wealth. It is not necessarily connected with high social status. Sometimes its possessor may be almost completely unknown.
Yet such power can outlive the human body, wealth, and political authority.
Physical strength disappears with the person. Wealth can be lost. A position can be taken away. A state can disappear.
But an idea that genuinely changes human thought may survive for centuries.
That is why human history is not merely a history of wars, states, and wealth. It is also a history of ideas.
Some people built empires. Others destroyed them. Some created weapons. Others created philosophical systems. Some controlled enormous territories. Others possessed nothing but their own minds.
And sometimes an idea proved stronger than an army.
WISDOM IS STRONGER THAN POWER
This gives the words of Ecclesiastes — “Wisdom is better than strength” — their deeper meaning.
But another question immediately arises: why can the wisdom of a poor person be ignored while the words of a powerful or wealthy person are readily heard?
Because society does not always recognize genuine value immediately.
People often evaluate the source of information before evaluating the information itself. If a rich person speaks, people tend to believe him. If a famous person speaks, they listen. If a person with a prestigious title speaks, his words are treated more seriously.
If an unknown person speaks, he may not even be heard.
This is one of the fundamental weaknesses of human society. We often evaluate not the argument, but the person making it.
True logical thinking requires the opposite approach: first examine the argument; only then evaluate its author.
Truth does not become true merely because a great person said it. Falsehood does not become false merely because an unknown person expressed it.
Therefore, intellectual freedom begins when a person can separate the content of an idea from the status of its author.
THE PATH OF CONTINUOUS DEVELOPMENT
One of the principal aims of this work is to demonstrate the necessity of developing the ability to think.
We must learn to recognize contradictions, ask questions, distinguish facts from assumptions, distinguish confidence from proof, and understand that sometimes the strongest intellectual statement is simply: “I don't know.”
A person who knows the limits of his own knowledge has already taken the first step toward expanding it. Someone who believes he knows everything closes the door to further development.
Therefore, superiority is not a final state. It is continuous movement.
A person does not become permanently wise; he can only become wiser. He does not become permanently strong; he can become stronger. He does not reach ultimate truth in a single step; he can continually move closer to it.
If nature is in constant motion, then a person who wishes to remain part of nature must also move — physically, intellectually, and spiritually.
Passivity means stopping.
And stopping in a world that continues to move is, in effect, moving backward.
THE FINAL MEANING OF SUPERIORITY
The power of superiority lies above all in the ability not to stop: not to stop learning, developing, questioning one's own beliefs, or moving forward when difficulties arise.
And, most importantly, not to stop at what has already been achieved.
A person may defeat another person and remain unchanged. But a person who has defeated his own ignorance has already transformed himself.
That form of superiority is the most enduring because it cannot be taken away by physical force. It cannot simply be bought with money or destroyed by a title or position. It exists within the person himself.
Therefore, the greatest human power is not the ability to strike harder, accumulate more money, or occupy a higher position. It is the ability to see, understand, reason, and persuade.
When this is combined with the ability to act according to one's understanding, a person can do more than adapt to the surrounding world. He can become a factor in changing it.
This is genuine superiority.
Not superiority of strength over weakness, of wealth over poverty, or of status over obscurity, but the superiority of understanding over misunderstanding, knowledge over ignorance, logic over contradiction, and independent thought over the blind repetition of other people's words.
This is the superiority a person can win over himself.
And that is why it is the most difficult — and at the same time the most valuable — form of superiority.
CONCLUSION
The drive to superiority is not simply the desire of one person to be better than another. It is a deeper principle of human development: the impulse to surpass an existing condition, overcome limitations, and create something that did not previously exist.
In this sense, the drive to superiority can be understood as one of the forces underlying the development of both individuals and social institutions. It encourages people to create something new, advance knowledge, develop science and culture, improve education, establish institutions, and transform social relations.
Government, schools, universities, science, art, technology, and other forms of collective activity can therefore be understood, in different ways, as manifestations of humanity's continuous attempt to overcome existing limitations and move toward a different future.
If such striving did not exist, human beings would have little inner motivation for development. Society would tend to preserve its existing condition rather than transform it. Instead of cooperation, exchange of knowledge, and creation of a common future, human activity would increasingly become confined to the repetition of what had already been achieved.
But the drive for superiority should not be understood as a desire to dominate other people.
Its highest form is the desire to surpass oneself.
To surpass one's ignorance, prejudices, limitations, the knowledge already possessed. To surpass the conclusions that one has accepted without sufficient examination.
In this sense, superiority is not a permanent possession. It is a direction of movement.
The individual moves from ignorance toward knowledge, from confusion toward understanding, from dependence toward independence, and from passive acceptance toward conscious judgment.
Society undergoes a similar process. Each generation inherits an intellectual and cultural structure created by previous generations, but it also possesses the possibility of transforming that structure.
The greatest thinkers demonstrate this principle. They do not merely add another fact to the accumulated store of knowledge. They change the way humanity sees the facts that were already there.
Thus, the deepest meaning of superiority is not domination but development.
The person who defeats another may demonstrate strength. The person who defeats his own ignorance demonstrates something greater.
The person who forces others to obey possesses power over them. The person who understands, reasons, and persuades possesses power of another kind.
And the person who can recognize the limits of his own understanding possesses perhaps the most important form of intellectual freedom: the freedom to continue developing.
Therefore, the drive superiority should ultimately be understood as the human drive to become more than one already is.
It is the movement from the existing toward the possible.
And perhaps this is the most fundamental form of superiority of all: not to stand above another human being, but to rise above oneself.



WHAT DO WOMEN WANT?


“Husbands, deal with your wives with understanding, as with the weaker vessel.”
1 Peter 3:7

WOMAN IN THE EYES OF MEN
In many cultures, women have been recognized as extraordinary beings: tender, caring, attractive, graceful, delicate vessels that must be held with the utmost care, for fear of dropping and breaking them. In European culture, in particular, men captivated by passion have traditionally given their hearts to women, voluntarily surrendering themselves to the bondage of love. They wrote poems for them, celebrated their beauty, built temples in their honor, and laid conquered kingdoms at their feet. A woman became for a man not merely a life companion, but a source of inspiration, an object of devotion, and a goal for which he was prepared to perform the most incredible deeds.
ADMIRATION AND CRITICISM
Yet alongside admiration and praise, there has always been criticism. Since ancient times, women have endured attacks from men who accused them of inconsistency, fickleness, excessive talkativeness, and excessive emotionality. Why, then, were poets and writers so unfavorable toward women? Could there be some truth in these accusations? Or were men simply trying to understand women by judging them according to their own qualities and their own way of thinking?
WOMAN THROUGH THE EYES OF ANCIENT POETS
For illustration, let us turn to examples from ancient literature. According to Virgil, woman is an inherently fickle and changeable creature. This image already contains a traditional male conception of female nature: a woman is supposedly capable of quickly changing her mood, attitude, and decisions. But if we look more deeply, another question arises: is such changeability really a weakness, or could it be connected with a different way of perceiving life?
Here are several other well-known sayings:
“Girls’ words are lighter than falling leaves.”
“There is nothing more unbearable than a rich woman.”
“Two women are worse than one,” says Plautus.
“A woman is more changeable than a gust of wind.”
“A woman never keeps silent.”
Let us also remember Plautus’s words about women being talkative. Let us read what Catullus wrote:
“Believe me, what a woman says passionately to a man in love should be written on the wind and on rushing water! A woman often triumphs because pleas and tears are a woman’s weapons.”
MEN LOOK FOR THEMSELVES IN WOMEN
After such statements, one gets the impression that poets were unwilling to recognize the full femininity of women and instead sought their own masculine reflection in them. They compared women with themselves, expected them to behave in ways characteristic of men, and therefore perceived many natural female characteristics as shortcomings. If a woman openly expressed her feelings, this was called emotionality; if she spoke at length about her experiences, it was considered excessive talkativeness; if she changed her mind, this was perceived as inconsistency.
Virgil, for example, celebrated love for a member of the male sex in his poetry, which may have contributed to his being given the nickname Virgil (virgina, Latin — virgin). Regardless of the historical accuracy of such interpretations, however, the example itself demonstrates how easily people project their own ideas about love and human relationships onto others.
WHEN A MAN LOOKS FOR A “MAN” IN A WOMAN
One of our acquaintances was approaching his thirty-second year and still could not find a life partner—or, rather, could not make a choice. After listening carefully to his opinion about what his future wife should be like, we came to the conclusion that he was looking for a man to marry. He was advised: “You should look for a man, not a woman, because the qualities you like are more commonly associated with the male half of humanity.”
Of course, this was not meant literally. The purpose was to draw his attention to the contradiction between his expectations and the actual characteristics of women. Above all, he wanted to see in his future wife qualities traditionally associated with masculinity: consistency, firmness, determination, independence, and the ability to act without hesitation.
When we met him six years later, there could hardly be any doubt about what answer he would give when asked whether he had found his other half. Representatives of one sex who possess character traits traditionally associated with the other are extremely rare. Therefore, a person who looks exclusively for masculine qualities in a woman risks remaining dissatisfied with his choice for the rest of his life. He is trying to find his own reflection.
MALE AND FEMALE QUALITIES
Physiological differences in bodily structure and different social roles—the woman gives birth to and raises children—also shape a different relationship with life, a different view of things, and, consequently, different behavior. Men and women differ not only in appearance. Their differences also manifest themselves in how they perceive the world around them, assess danger, relate to the future, and make decisions.
DIVERSITY AS A CONDITION OF LIFE
Human beings are one form of life. Nature possesses the ability to survive by adapting to harsh environmental conditions through diversity, using us as an instrument and thereby perpetuating itself. One species disappears, and another takes its place. Life on Earth did not cease when the dinosaurs became extinct; their disappearance opened the way for the development of other species. This is possible only because of the diversity of living organisms.
Diversity is one of the fundamental conditions for the existence of life. If all living beings possessed identical properties, identical abilities, and identical ways of responding to external circumstances, life would be far less capable of adapting to change. It is precisely differences that enable nature to preserve life under a wide variety of conditions.
THE NATURAL PURPOSE OF MEN AND WOMEN
A woman, too, has her own purpose in nature, just as a man does. Nature is concerned with only one thing—the preservation of the form of life. A girl who later becomes a mother instinctively worries about her future child. Her choice concerns more than herself. In a certain sense, she also chooses the future father of her children and the qualities that may appear in the next generation.
CHOOSING A PARTNER AND CONTINUING THE SPECIES
A woman faces the difficult choice of a mate: his physical characteristics, health, ability to protect the family, and ability to provide for it materially. When choosing a life partner, preference may be given to appearance, strength, the ability to provide security, and qualities that a woman wishes to see later in her children. Her personal ideals of attractiveness may thus be embodied in her image of a future child.
NATURE AND CULTURE
Human culture, however, has greatly altered and complicated our natural patterns of behavior. Today, people often marry for financial gain, social status, career opportunities, certain advantages, or the prospect of a more comfortable life. Love may become mixed with calculation, while the natural desire to create a family may become intertwined with numerous social circumstances.
Nevertheless, the call of nature cannot be completely erased. Nature ultimately asserts itself, concerned with the continuation and preservation of the species. Even when people consider themselves completely free from natural instincts, those instincts continue to operate deep within them. They may take different cultural forms, but they cannot disappear entirely.
WOMAN AND THE PRESERVATION OF THE SPECIES
The fact that humanity still exists as a species and has not disappeared from the face of the Earth is due in no small measure to the female half of humanity. Through giving birth to and raising the next generation, women participate directly in the continuation of human life. Their care for children becomes one of the most important forms of preserving the species.
THE SURVIVAL INSTINCT AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR
In the wild, the human organism is programmed for instinctive survival. We restrain ourselves only when circumstances constrain us—when society, upbringing, morality, or fear of consequences forces us to control our desires. That is why people sometimes give free rein to their passions, unable to resist temptation.
This becomes particularly apparent when living conditions change dramatically. Qualities that were necessary for survival under previous difficult circumstances can become uncontrolled. What once helped a person survive may, in a different environment, become the cause of their mistakes.
IS EMOTIONALITY A WEAKNESS?
What do we actually mean when we speak of emotionality? External behavior or internal judgment? This is a fundamental question. If a woman cries, speaks emotionally, expresses dissatisfaction, or openly displays joy, does that mean that she makes decisions solely under the influence of emotions?
EXPRESSIVENESS AND RATIONALITY
A woman may be expressive and inclined to release her emotions openly, but that does not necessarily mean that she is guided by them. She instinctively worries about her offspring and makes choices not only for herself but also for her future child. This instinct can guide a woman throughout her life and may manifest itself even when she is unaware of its origins.
MEN AND EMOTIONAL ATTRACTION
A man, like a moth, flies toward a beautiful flower and, when making a choice, is instinctively guided by his emotions. He may have a stronger tendency to pursue an object that evokes admiration, desire, and feeling. He can follow his dream for a long time precisely because emotional attachment becomes a source of energy.
Thus, what appears to be weakness from one perspective may prove to be strength from another. The shortcomings we identify in either sex may be considered shortcomings only from an individual point of view. What seems like a defect to one person may be an essential quality to another.
TWO FORMS OF WISDOM
Women’s wisdom lies in their rationality and their ability to make the optimal choice. Men’s wisdom lies in their consistency, driven by an irresistible emotional attraction to the object of their desire, their dream, or the person who represents the meaning of their existence.
A woman may carefully assess circumstances, compare different possibilities, and consider the consequences of her decision. A man, having once seen his goal, may be capable of moving toward it despite numerous obstacles. Here we see a difference between two forms of wisdom.
FEMALE RATIONALITY AND MALE CONSISTENCY
A woman strives to choose what is most appropriate, while a man strives to achieve what he has desired. One side thinks more about the correctness of the choice; the other thinks more about persistently moving toward the chosen goal. Therefore, male and female wisdom need not contradict one another; they can complement each other.
THE CAUSES OF MALE AND FEMALE INFIDELITY
Emotionality can also be a cause of infidelity. A man may encounter a woman who is more beautiful, tender, or desirable. His attention may shift toward another person who has made a stronger emotional impression on him. In such a case, the cause is the attractiveness of the new person and the emotional attraction he feels toward her.
Women, on the other hand, may become unfaithful when their husbands are unable to create even minimal material conditions, fail to give them sufficient attention, or humiliate them. Imagine the following situation: the husband stays at home while his wife works herself to exhaustion, and he makes no attempt to change anything. In such circumstances, a woman may gradually lose her sense of security and confidence in the future.
WOMAN AND THE NEED FOR SECURITY
A woman likes to feel protected by a strong shoulder. For her, a man’s strength may be expressed not only in physical abilities but also in his ability to make decisions, take responsibility, act, and provide stability for the family. When this sense of security disappears, part of her emotional attachment may disappear with it.
BEAUTY AS AN EMOTIONAL SIGNAL
From what has been said above, we can draw the following conclusions.
We say of a woman that she is beautiful; of a man, that he is attractive. Beauty is an emotional evaluation. Charm and tenderness attract a man, awakening desire and love in him. A man perceives female beauty primarily as an emotional signal that creates a desire to approach the woman and possess her.
WHAT DOES A WOMAN WANT FROM A MAN?
If we take the female desire to possess a man completely and absolutely to its extreme, it follows that a woman primarily wants power over him in order to fully satisfy the instinct of continuing the species. This does not mean power in the ordinary social sense, but rather the desire to achieve emotional and physical certainty that the man belongs to her and will remain beside her.
THE PARADOX OF POSSESSION
If she achieves what she desires, however, her striving subsides. Once the maximum has been reached, the stimulus also disappears. A goal that was distant and therefore seemed particularly attractive loses much of its former power once it has been completely achieved.
This is why, according to the logic under consideration, men who surrender themselves completely to women may become uninteresting to them, and in some cases even repulsive. Here lies a peculiar paradox of relationships between men and women: a woman strives to obtain a man, but once she possesses him completely, she may lose interest in him.
STRENGTH THAT YIELDS TO TENDERNESS
Women seek to possess masculine strength, which from time to time escapes control, but upon hearing a tender word or a gentle request, this unruly strength surrenders again into the hands of the enchanting captor. Male strength attracts a woman precisely because it implies protection, confidence, and support.
Thus, a sense of security is created in the presence of a strong hand. It is important for a woman not merely to possess a man, but to feel that the person beside her is capable of being strong when necessary. At the same time, that strength must be capable of yielding to tenderness, love, and affection.
DESIRE AND EXPECTATION
Men who know how to make promises are particularly successful with women—not fantastic promises, but promises that seem almost within reach, with something constantly preventing their fulfillment. Such a promise preserves anticipation and prevents desire from disappearing completely. As long as the goal seems close but has not yet been achieved, emotional tension remains, and with it, interest.
WHY DOES THE UNATTAINABLE ATTRACT US?
Thus, relationships between men and women constantly contain a peculiar movement between desire and its fulfillment. A goal that is too distant may seem unattainable, while a goal that has been completely achieved may lose its attractiveness. Therefore, the strongest state may be the one in which the desired object is close, but has not yet been fully obtained.
THE PARADOX OF HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS
This is where the paradox of human relationships appears: people may desire most strongly precisely what does not yet fully belong to them. Desire is sustained by anticipation, hope, and the sense of a future achievement. Once everything becomes completely certain, however, emotional tension gradually weakens.
MUTUAL ATTRACTION OF OPPOSITES
This is precisely why male and female nature, despite all their differences, are continually drawn toward one another. A man seeks beauty, tenderness, and emotional inspiration in a woman, while a woman seeks strength, consistency, and a sense of security in a man. Each seeks in the other what is lacking in themselves.
MAN AND WOMAN AS COMPLEMENTS
Thus, the differences between men and women become not only a source of contradictions but also the foundation of their mutual attraction. What one person perceives as weakness may be perceived by another as a necessary complement. And if we do not demand that a woman be a man, or that a man be a woman, we can begin to see in each a distinct form of wisdom corresponding to their nature.
THE STRENGTH OF DIFFERENCE
A woman does not become valuable by imitating a man.
A man does not become valuable by suppressing everything traditionally associated with masculinity.
A woman may possess tenderness, sensitivity, intuition, adaptability, and a capacity for care while also being strong, intelligent, decisive, and independent.
A man may possess determination, courage, persistence, and physical or psychological strength while also being gentle, compassionate, emotionally expressive, and caring.
Human beings are more complex than stereotypes.
Nevertheless, differences between the sexes can possess a deeper significance than simple opposition.
A woman can bring into a relationship qualities that encourage attachment, care, emotional connection, and consideration for the future.
A man can bring qualities that encourage persistence, protection, initiative, and the pursuit of a goal.
Neither set of qualities is exclusively male or female.
But when complementary qualities meet in two people, something greater than either individual may emerge.
The strength of a relationship does not necessarily come from two people being the same.
It may come from their ability to remain different without becoming divided.
A woman remains a woman not because she lacks strength, but because her strength can take a different form.
A man remains a man not because he lacks tenderness, but because his strength can coexist with tenderness.
The deepest attraction between them may therefore lie not in sameness, but in complementarity.
Each person discovers in the other something that is not simply a reflection of himself.
And perhaps this is the answer to the question with which we began:
What do women want?
Not all women want the same thing. Not all men want the same thing.
But beneath individual preferences there may be a more universal human desire: to find in another person something that completes, challenges, supports, and inspires one's own existence.
The ultimate object of attraction is therefore not merely possession.
It is connection.
And the greatest strength of that connection may be found precisely where difference becomes complementarity.



GOSTS: REALITY OR ILLUSION?


“You think that you are moving, but it is you who are being moved!”

FAIRY TALES, MYTHS, AND THE HUMAN DESIRE FOR THE UNKNOWN
Since ancient times, humanity has raised children through fairy tales, legends, traditions, and myths. Through fictional stories in which extraordinary events intertwine with human relationships, children receive some of their first moral lessons. Through fairy-tale characters, they learn to distinguish between good and evil, understand the consequences of their actions, empathize with others, and imagine themselves in circumstances different from their own. A fairy tale allows a child to enter mentally into a world beyond familiar reality and thereby expand the boundaries of understanding. It teaches not only through facts but through images. Fairy tales are not necessarily lies or deliberate attempts to present an alternative reality as something that actually exists. They are primarily instruments of education, allowing serious questions to be expressed in figurative form. At the same time, they reveal an important feature of human nature: our attraction to everything strange, inexplicable, magnificent, and mysterious.
CURIOSITY AS A DRIVING FORCE OF CIVILIZATION
The desire to discover the unknown gives rise to curiosity. The wish to learn what lies beyond the visible world encourages us to explore our surroundings, ask questions, formulate hypotheses, and search for answers. Even the fantastic ideas of ancient peoples played a role in cultural development. They stimulated imagination, and imagination became one of the sources of inquiry. When a person looks at the starry sky, he can imagine the enormous expanse of space that remains unexplored. Behind every star may lie something unknown; behind every cosmic phenomenon another mystery may await discovery. The desire to penetrate the unknown is one of the forces that drives civilization forward. Yet curiosity has another side. The human mind does not merely ask questions; it also creates explanations. When knowledge is insufficient, those explanations may take the form of myths, supernatural forces, or imagined worlds.
MYTHOLOGY AND THE ORIGINS OF THE FANTASTIC
An element of mythology can be found in virtually every culture. Myths were among the earliest forms through which human beings attempted to explain phenomena they did not understand. One need only recall the journeys of Odysseus: his encounter with the Cyclopes, his meetings with goddesses, his journey to the realm of the dead, the Sirens with their deadly voices, and the strange creatures he encountered. Such images demonstrate how deeply the desire for the extraordinary is rooted in the human mind. Yet fantastic ideas constantly encounter resistance from everyday experience. We live in a world in which events appear to follow a certain order. We wake up, work, eat, communicate, observe objects moving, and gradually become accustomed to the regularity of events. Nevertheless, ordinary experience has never completely eliminated belief in the extraordinary.
WHEN THE SUPERNATURAL ENTERS EVERYDAY LIFE
Fantastic ideas continue to exist in stories about encounters with extraterrestrials, ghosts, deceased relatives, and other supernatural beings. Here a difficult question arises: how can we convince someone who has encountered a dead person that the experience was not real when, for that person, the encounter was absolutely convincing? We cannot simply say, “You did not see anything.” The person may genuinely have seen an image, heard a voice, or experienced the presence of another being. The important distinction is between the reality of the experience and the objective reality of its supposed cause. An experience can be completely genuine without proving that the object perceived exists independently of the observer.
A STORY ABOUT MAGIC, GRIEF, AND FEAR
A story told to us by an acquaintance demonstrates how convincing such experiences can become.
“Many years ago, I rented a room in the apartment of a certain family. A terrible tragedy had occurred in their lives: they had lost their only child, in whom they had placed so many hopes. The parents had made enormous efforts for his future, invested their resources in him, and, one might say, invested a significant part of the meaning of their existence in him. But one day everything came to an end. They lost the precious gift that, as they believed, fate had bestowed upon them. The family suffered an irreparable loss, and this gradually affected their former prosperity. In order to ease his grief, the father began drinking. Alcohol temporarily allowed him to distance himself from painful emotions, but at the same time weakened his ability to evaluate his circumstances rationally. After some time, he became involved with a woman who had long desired him and now saw an opportunity to take advantage of the family's tragedy. Passion, love, and tears—what person is completely immune to emotional temptation? Constant alcohol consumption only intensified his amorous adventures. But that was not the end of the matter. The woman decided to resort to magic. Love spells and the advice of fortune-tellers, in her opinion, were supposed to help her gain complete possession of the man. Before long, this contributed to the collapse of the marriage.”
THE “LOVE WITCH”
The newly proclaimed “love witch” tried every possible trick. She scattered salt in front of the apartment door, performed strange gestures, and made crosses that were supposedly intended to influence the victim from a distance. Every new action was explained in magical terms. At that time, a young man lived in the apartment. I moved in later. The woman managed to make her daughter friends with this young man. Taking advantage of the moments when the family was away, the daughter visited the apartment and secretly left needles, tied bones, and other strange objects among ordinary belongings. Meanwhile, the mother of the deceased child was experiencing severe emotional difficulties. When she discovered what was happening in her home, she was astonished by the rival's attempts to interfere in her family and began fighting for the last hope that still connected her to her former married life.
SEARCHING FOR EVIDENCE OF A CURSE
Everything became clear after a thorough inspection of the apartment. Clothes, bedding, and other belongings were examined. Every seam was inspected, every pillow was shaken out, and everything was checked. When strange objects such as tied bones were discovered, the family became convinced that the lovesick intruder was deliberately carrying out some kind of scheme. The wife asked her friends to persuade her husband to visit a clairvoyant and have the supposed curse removed. After much pleading, they succeeded. The “bewitched” man gradually began to recover. He stopped drinking, reconciled with his wife, and their relationship slowly improved. That was the state in which I found their marriage. The previous tenant was thrown out. Later, he married the woman's daughter and lived with them. It seemed that everything was over.
THE RETURN OF OLD PROBLEMS
A year later, however, the head of the family resumed his amorous adventures. They were accompanied by drinking and quarrels. The family's friends again tried to convince him that he had been bewitched and advised him to visit a fortune-teller. This time he refused. He openly declared that there was no witchcraft and simply said that he no longer wanted to live with his wife. Alcohol, constant tension, and endless arguments began to damage his health. His wife asked me to confirm that he had been cursed so that she could bring her husband back to a normal life. Eventually, he agreed to visit the fortune-teller.
WHEN FEAR BECOMES CONTAGIOUS
As a witness to these events, I myself experienced severe psychological tension. Constant conversations about witchcraft, curses, love spells, and supernatural forces gradually affected my own mind. One weekend, while the family was away, I slept in the owners' bedroom because my room was being renovated. In the middle of the night, I heard footsteps. I raised my head and opened my eyes—and almost died of fright. Standing at the head of my bed was the woman who had caused the family drama. I froze. Fear seemed to paralyze my entire body. She tilted her head and looked at me carefully. My first impulse was to turn on the light, scream, or run away, but I could not move. Finally, somehow, I struck at the figure's legs—and it disappeared into the darkness. Only afterward did I begin to understand what might have happened. After months of frightening stories and psychological tension, my mind had become prepared to interpret an ambiguous nighttime perception as something supernatural. At such moments, we often remember God, even if we do not normally think about Him. I recited the Lord's Prayer, crossed myself, pulled the blanket over my head, and eventually fell asleep. After that night, I never again spent the night in the owners' bedroom.
THE END OF THE FAMILY DRAMA
The owner of the apartment was taken to fortune-tellers several times, who partly succeeded in convincing him that a curse had been placed upon him. My frightening experience added to these beliefs. At the same time, his constant drinking seriously damaged his health. Hospitals, medication, expenses, and new problems followed. Then came a heart attack, heart surgery, and permanent dependence on medication. His health made it impossible to continue his previous lifestyle, and gradually the family returned to its former way of life. During yet another quarrel, I moved to another apartment.
THE PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND THE “GHOST”
This story is interesting not because it proves the existence of ghosts, but because it demonstrates how strongly expectation and emotional tension can influence perception. When a person expects something frightening, ambiguous sensations may acquire a particular meaning. A shadow can become a figure, a sound can become footsteps, and an ordinary movement can appear intentional. The resulting fear is completely real. What remains uncertain is not the person's emotional reaction, but the interpretation placed upon its cause. This distinction allows us to take the experience seriously without automatically accepting a supernatural explanation.
AN ENCOUNTER WITH THE DEAD
Let us consider another case that happened to an acquaintance of ours. The mother of a young woman, being single, brought a man into the household. After some time, the family received news of his tragic death. The deceased had been energetic, sociable, and full of life. His death was a shock to everyone, but the family grieved especially deeply. He was buried in the local cemetery. On the second day after the funeral, there was a knock at the door. Our acquaintance opened it and froze. The deceased was standing before her. He looked completely normal, with his familiar expression, as though nothing had happened. He asked where the girl's mother was. When told that she was at work, he asked her to say that he had come. Then he turned around and left. The girl could not recover from the experience. She wondered whether it had been his soul coming to visit them. Perhaps, she thought, he had left something unfinished or had been unable to say something while alive. Such interpretations were consistent with beliefs she had heard throughout her life.
THE GRAVE WAS UNDISTURBED
The next day, she and her mother went to the cemetery to see whether the grave had been disturbed. “Maybe he rose from the dead?” our acquaintance remarked. The burial site was completely untouched. Afterward, they went to church, prayed, and lit a candle for the repose of his soul. No one in the family ever saw him again. Our acquaintance remains convinced that she encountered the soul of the man who had lived with them for about a year. But once again, we must distinguish between the certainty of an experience and proof of its objective cause.
SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE AND OBJECTIVE REALITY
Human perception is not a photographic camera that mechanically records the surrounding world. Between an external stimulus and conscious awareness lies the complex activity of the brain. Perception therefore involves not only receiving information but also interpreting it. Memory, emotion, expectation, cultural beliefs, and physical condition can all influence this process. Death and grief can be especially powerful. A person who has recently lost someone may be intensely focused on memories of that individual. Under unusual circumstances, a vivid perception can therefore acquire extraordinary significance. The experience may be sincere and compelling, but sincerity does not transform an interpretation into objective evidence. The same principle applies to all unusual perceptions: what a person experiences deserves to be taken seriously, but what caused the experience must be established separately.
THE MAN WHO LIVED IN A WORLD OF MYSTICISM
We also heard an interesting story from a man who, in our opinion, illustrated another form of immersion in mysticism.
“At our workplace, there was an employee who was excessively interested in books of a mystical nature and Scandinavian mythology. During one of our heated arguments, he tried to prove the existence of ghosts. He claimed that some group of scientists studying this phenomenon had concluded that there were certain concentrations of energy, nourished by the driving force of nature, which they called spirits. Previously, he had often talked about how he sometimes immersed himself in another, imaginary world and, by distracting himself from everyday life, forgot about his problems. As it turned out, washing the dishes after himself and dealing with other small matters that revealed his laziness, as well as life itself as it really was, were also problems for him. His wife and children burdened his existence, while the world of fantasy at least temporarily gave him peace. His conversations often came down to stories about how well he had relaxed: drinking wine, smoking his pipe, watching a film, or sitting with his brother over a few beers. Reality itself seemed to him the greatest ordeal. There were too many problems in it, and therefore he withdrew into an unreal space. Naturally, he tried to hide this escape into a world of illusion from others, having already experienced ridicule and mockery.”
MYSTICISM VERSUS ESCAPE FROM REALITY
Many people are interested in mysticism, read science fiction, watch films, and follow fantastic stories. Such interests do not in themselves indicate a psychological problem. Human beings have always been attracted to the unknown. The important difference is between enjoying fantasy and using an imaginary world as an escape from reality. In the world of fantasy, our hero could temporarily free himself from household responsibilities, family conflicts, and other difficulties. But real problems cannot always be avoided indefinitely. Eventually, reality demands a response. A person who constantly escapes from reality may ultimately discover that he has been escaping from himself.
HOW THE MIND CREATES IMAGES
We comprehend the world through concepts, memories, ideas, and mental images. We do not need an actual chair in front of us to think about a chair; the mind can retain its form and characteristics as a representation. This ability allows human beings to think independently of the immediate presence of objects. But it also means that the mind can produce representations that do not correspond to independently existing objects. We can remember a deceased person without that person being physically present. We can imagine a mountain without a mountain standing before us. We can construct entire worlds that exist only in thought. The ability to create images is therefore both a strength of the human mind and a possible source of error.
WHEN THE BRAIN CREATES AN EXTERNAL “PRESENCE”
The brain can generate vivid perceptions without the conscious intention of the person experiencing them. Such experiences can occur under various conditions, including severe stress, fear, exhaustion, and sleep-related states. An internally generated image may be experienced as though it were external. The person does not consciously decide to invent it and may therefore naturally assume that it originated outside himself. But the absence of conscious control does not establish a supernatural cause. This provides one possible explanation for why people sometimes report seeing ghosts or deceased individuals. The experience can be unexpected, vivid, and emotionally overwhelming while still originating within the processes of perception.
THE EMOTIONAL INFORMATION OF PLACES AND OBJECTS
Objects and places acquire meaning through human activity, memory, and association. A painting can evoke powerful emotions because of its subject, history, or the circumstances surrounding its creation. An old house can produce a strong psychological impression when we know something about its former inhabitants or past events. The atmosphere of such a place can therefore be psychologically real without requiring the existence of supernatural energy. Information, memory, expectation, and emotion can interact with the physical environment to produce a powerful subjective experience.
THE OLD HOUSE AND THE EXPECTATION OF THE SUPERNATURAL
Imagine moving into an old house and being told that a tragedy once occurred there. Under ordinary circumstances, a creaking floorboard, a moving curtain, or a change in lighting might pass unnoticed. But if the person expects something frightening, each phenomenon may be interpreted differently. Expectation does not necessarily create a conscious fantasy. It changes the way ambiguous information is understood. A shadow may become a figure; a sound may become a footprint. The resulting perception may be involuntary and completely convincing. Nevertheless, its subjective certainty cannot by itself establish the existence of a supernatural entity.
ARE GHOSTS REAL?
Reports of ghosts should first be examined in relation to human perception, memory, emotion, expectation, and the functioning of the brain. This does not require us to mock or dismiss people who report such experiences. Their experiences may be profound, frightening, and completely sincere. What must be rejected is the assumption that sincerity alone constitutes proof. To experience something is one fact. To establish what caused that experience is another. At present, there is no sufficient evidence to establish ghosts as independent supernatural entities. This does not prove a metaphysical impossibility; it simply means that extraordinary claims require evidence capable of distinguishing a supernatural explanation from the many known ways in which perception can produce convincing experiences. The deeper philosophical question, therefore, is not merely whether ghosts exist. It is whether the certainty of our experience can ever be sufficient to establish the independent reality of what we perceive. Human beings do not encounter the world as passive recording devices. We perceive, interpret, remember, expect, and construct meaning. Perhaps this is why ghosts have accompanied humanity throughout history. They may tell us less about a supernatural world beyond us than about the extraordinary world within us—a world capable of transforming fear into presence, memory into vision, and uncertainty into conviction. The mystery may therefore not be whether ghosts inhabit the world outside us, but how easily the human mind can create the experience that they do.



THE SECRET OF SUCCESS IN SHOW BUSINESS

“Everything we consider to be accidental actually happens according to a hidden pattern.”
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger

For many years, we have tried to understand what lies behind the extraordinary success of the group Laskovyi Mai. The phenomenon has been discussed by journalists, music critics, fans, and commentators, and numerous explanations have been proposed. Yet none of them seems sufficient by itself. The former Soviet Union produced countless musical groups and performers. Some had remarkable voices, others possessed considerable professional skill, and some benefited from influential connections or from the opportunities provided by the state concert system. Yet almost none generated the kind of mass enthusiasm associated with Laskovyi Mai. The scale of that success is particularly striking. Performers associated with Alla Pugacheva reached thirteen consecutive concerts at Luzhniki Stadium, whereas Laskovyi Mai performed seventeen. Such a comparison does not prove the superiority of one musical style over another, but it demonstrates that something extraordinary occurred. The phenomenon therefore cannot be explained simply by musical quality, fame, advertising, or ticket prices. Something else was present: a precise correspondence between the character of the songs and the psychological condition of a large audience.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FOUNDATION OF SUCCESS
One fan described his experience of discovering Laskovyi Mai in a revealing way:
“When I first heard the songs of Laskovyi Mai, I did not pay much attention to their simplicity. By that time, people were already listening to them everywhere: from open windows, in courtyards, in cars, at discos. Young people walked through the streets carrying tape recorders in their hands, spreading those simple melodies to every corner of the former Soviet Union. I did not even notice how, while spending time with friends, watching the pink evening, entering the gray night, and experiencing a gentle May day, I began to derive emotional pleasure from those unremarkable melodies. Eventually, I could no longer stop listening to them.” This account reveals something more important than a preference for a particular musical style. The attachment developed gradually. At first, the songs seemed ordinary. Then they became part of the listener's environment. Finally, they became associated with familiar places, people, moods, and memories. Music had ceased to be merely something heard. It had become part of the listener's emotional world. This suggests an important principle: people do not always choose music through conscious evaluation. A person may consider a song simple or even artistically weak while nevertheless experiencing considerable pleasure from it. Intellectual judgment and emotional attraction do not necessarily coincide. This distinction is essential for understanding mass culture.
SIMPLICITY IS NOT ENOUGH
Some explanations of Laskovyi Mai's popularity emphasize the low price of its concerts. But inexpensive or free concerts were hardly unique in the Soviet Union. Public performances on Khreshchatyk and elsewhere did not automatically produce millions of devoted followers. Nor can the phenomenon be explained simply by the popularity of the musical genre. Soviet popular music already contained numerous performers working with accessible melodies, simple lyrics, and danceable rhythms. Therefore, simplicity was a condition of accessibility, but not the ultimate explanation. The decisive question is not merely whether a work is simple. It is whether its simplicity corresponds to something already present within the audience. A song becomes exceptionally powerful when the listener recognizes himself in it.
THE CREATOR, THE PERFORMER, AND THE MEDIATOR
Every talent requires someone capable of recognizing it and bringing it to an audience. For this reason, much of Laskovyi Mai's success has traditionally been associated with Andrei Razin. There is a rational basis for this interpretation. Razin possessed a remarkable ability to recognize commercial and psychological potential. He understood that certain songs could reach an enormous audience and created a system capable of distributing them on a scale previously difficult to imagine. But this does not mean that Razin alone created the phenomenon. The songs were created by Sergei Kuznetsov. Yuri Shatunov gave them their distinctive vocal identity. Razin recognized their potential, organized their presentation, and transformed them into a mass cultural phenomenon. Each performed a different function. This distinction is important because the ability to create something valuable and the ability to recognize its value are not the same talent. A person can write an excellent song and fail to find an audience. Another person may possess little creative ability of his own but have an extraordinary instinct for recognizing what the public will accept. Mass success often emerges where these two abilities meet. Kuznetsov's early songs are particularly interesting because they appear to have been created not as the result of a grand commercial theory but under the influence of a particular emotional and psychological state. This does not mean that the author's biography proves the meaning of his songs. It means only that the emotional atmosphere in which a work is created may influence its character. For this reason, we will concentrate primarily on the first album and on selected songs from the second and third albums. In our view, many later compositions associated with Kuznetsov and his subsequent projects no longer possess the same combination of emotional lightness and psychological accessibility.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF EMOTIONAL LIBERATION
Consider a simple example:
“The boys won't laugh at me anymore
Outside your entrance,
I don't need to wander around with you at night;
Better to sleep peacefully instead.” On the surface, this is a song about separation. Psychologically, however, another process is taking place. The hero transforms defeat into apparent freedom. Instead of saying, “I was rejected,” he effectively says, “I do not need this anymore.” The unpleasant reality is thereby converted into a voluntary decision. This mechanism is psychologically powerful because people find it difficult to accept helplessness. It is easier to reinterpret an unwanted outcome as something we chose ourselves. The hero does not simply suffer. He declares himself free. The surrounding imagery reinforces this transformation: the evening, the sky, the night, the movement through the city. The emotional conflict remains, but it is placed within an atmosphere that makes the pain bearable. This combination of sadness and lightness is characteristic of many of Kuznetsov's early songs.
THE EMOTIONAL PARADOX OF “WHITE ROSES”
The most famous example is “White Roses.” The song describes fragile flowers exposed to cold and destruction:
“White roses, white roses—their thorns are defenseless.” The subject is vulnerability. Yet the melody remains light, memorable, and almost carefree. This creates an emotional paradox. The words contain sadness, while the musical form prevents the listener from becoming completely immersed in despair. The listener can experience sorrow without being overwhelmed by it. The song therefore performs a kind of psychological transformation: pain is acknowledged, but it is placed at a safe emotional distance. This may be one reason why the song became so accessible to a mass audience. The listener does not have to solve the problem. The song allows the listener simply to experience it.
THE ROLE OF RHYTHM AND MELODY
The musical structure reinforces this psychological effect. A moderate and relatively even rhythm does not demand continuous concentration. It can accompany conversation, walking, travelling, dancing, or ordinary daily activity. The listener does not have to stop and analyze the composition. The melody also possesses a rolling, repetitive quality. Repetition reduces the need for conscious attention. The listener gradually ceases to analyze the structure and simply remains within it. This does not make the music artistically meaningless. On the contrary, the very accessibility of the structure can be one of its greatest strengths in mass culture. Music that demands intellectual concentration serves one psychological function. Music that allows consciousness to relax serves another. Laskovyi Mai was exceptionally effective at the second.
THE PROBLEM AND ITS EMOTIONAL RESOLUTION
Another recurring structure is the appearance of a problem followed by an emotional resolution. In “White Roses,” warmth exists behind the glass while cold surrounds the flowers:
“A little warmer behind the glass, but in the bitter frost
I enter these doors as though entering a garden of July flowers.” The hero then wants to protect the flowers: “I want so much to warm them with my affection.” But the flowers remain vulnerable. The listener therefore encounters a familiar human pattern: something beautiful exists, something threatens it, and the individual attempts to protect it. The same structure appears in songs about love, jealousy, loneliness, rejection, and separation. These are not rare experiences. They belong to ordinary human life. That is why the songs could reach such a large audience.
THE TARGET AUDIENCE
Laskovyi Mai appealed especially strongly to teenagers and young people, one of the most active groups of music consumers. But the age of the audience alone cannot explain the phenomenon. The deeper explanation lies in the psychological correspondence between the songs and the emotional experiences of their listeners. Adolescence is a period in which recognition, rejection, first love, loneliness, independence, resentment, and the desire to appear mature acquire particular importance. Kuznetsov's experience working with teenagers may have helped him understand these emotional states. Whether consciously or intuitively, he found forms capable of expressing them in extremely simple language. The songs did not require the listener to learn a philosophical system. They required only recognition. The listener could hear a situation and think: this is about me. That moment of recognition is one of the foundations of mass art.
MUSIC AS A MIRROR
A later song performed by Yuri Shatunov contains the words:
“Forget him, forget him, love will pass like smoke,
Because in his dreams it is not you, not you, not you.” Here the psychological mechanism is different but related. A person suffering from unrequited love hears a painful conclusion expressed directly: the desired person does not dream about you. Why would someone deliberately listen to something that intensifies an existing pain? Because recognition itself can produce relief. The listener already feels the emotion. The song gives that emotion a form. Music becomes a mirror. The person hears someone else expressing what he or she has been unable to formulate. This is why emotional art can be pleasurable even when its subject is sadness. The listener does not necessarily seek happiness from the song. Sometimes the listener seeks confirmation of an existing emotional reality.
TWO TYPES OF MASS SUCCESS
At this point we can distinguish two different mechanisms. The first is psychological success. A work succeeds because it corresponds closely to the emotional state of its audience and provides recognition, release, or temporary liberation from psychological tension. The phenomenon of Laskovyi Mai belongs largely to this category. The second is ideological success. A work becomes powerful because it expresses an idea that has significance beyond the immediate emotional state of the listener. This second mechanism can be observed particularly clearly in the history of The Beatles.
THE BEATLES: FROM PSYCHOLOGY TO IDEA
achieved extraordinary worldwide success, and their music remained influential long after the group ceased to exist. Their popularity cannot be explained solely by melody, rhythm, vocal performance, or psychological relaxation. Behind many of their songs lies a broader idea. One of the simplest and most universal is love. The Beatles frequently expressed love not as a destructive passion but as closeness, tenderness, affection, and the desire to be with another person. A phrase such as “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” requires almost no intellectual preparation. Its meaning is immediately accessible. This simplicity was not a weakness. It was one of the conditions of universality. A complex philosophical proposition may be understood by thousands. A simple expression of a fundamental human need may be understood by millions.
“ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE”
This becomes particularly clear in “All You Need Is Love.” The phrase is extremely simple and is repeated until it becomes almost a formula. Repetition fixes an idea in consciousness. The statement therefore functions on two levels. It is simultaneously a line in a popular song and a simplified worldview. The idea is not presented as a philosophical argument. It is presented as an emotional truth. This is one of the great powers of mass culture: it can transform an abstract idea into an emotionally accessible formula. At this point music begins to move beyond entertainment. It becomes a vehicle for ideas.
JOHN LENNON AND “IMAGINE”
A further example requires an important clarification. “Imagine” is John Lennon's solo song, not a song by The Beatles. Nevertheless, it is relevant to the broader development of the cultural ideas associated with Lennon and the generation that emerged from the Beatles era. The song proposes imagining a world without familiar divisions between nations, without war, and without certain traditional religious and political boundaries. Its vision is deliberately utopian. Yet its power lies partly in the simplicity of the proposition: imagine another world. The listener is not required to construct a political theory. The listener is simply invited to imagine. This demonstrates another mechanism of cultural influence. An idea can spread not because it is philosophically complete, but because it is presented in a form that allows millions of people to recognize and emotionally adopt it.
FROM MUSIC TO THE COLLECTIVE MIND
This leads us to a broader question. Why do certain ideas appear at particular historical moments and become enormously successful? We often describe such events as accidental. But “accidental” may simply mean that we cannot see all the causes. A song may become successful because of a particular performer, a particular producer, a particular historical moment, a particular technology, and a particular emotional condition of society. Yet behind these circumstances may lie something deeper: the existence of an idea already developing within the collective consciousness. A successful creator may not invent that idea. He may give it a form that society is finally ready to receive.
THE STRONGEST IDEAS OF THE HUMAN MIND
We propose that beneath many great cultural and social phenomena lie five strongest fundamental ideas of the human mind. We call them the strongest ideas because they correspond to the deepest and most persistent directions of human consciousness. They repeatedly appear in different civilizations, religions, philosophies, political movements, literature, art, and popular culture. They are:
I — THE IDEA OF THE STRONG INDIVIDUAL.
WE — THE IDEA OF BELONGING, SOLIDARITY, AND CARE FOR OTHERS.
FREEDOM OF CHOICE — THE IDEA THAT A PERSON CAN DETERMINE THE DIRECTION OF HIS OR HER OWN LIFE.
HAPPINESS — THE STRIVING TO REALIZE ONE'S PERSONAL IDEAL OF LIFE.
THE MEANING OF LIFE — THE STRIVING TO UNDERSTAND AND FULFILL THE ULTIMATE PURPOSE OF ONE'S EXISTENCE.
We do not claim that these five ideas exhaust everything that can be found in the human mind. Rather, we propose that they represent five of its strongest fundamental orientations. Other important concepts—truth, beauty, justice, love, knowledge, power, and others—can often be understood as expressions, combinations, or consequences of these deeper orientations. The five ideas therefore function not as a rigid psychological classification, but as a philosophical model of the strongest directions of human consciousness.
I — THE STRONG INDIVIDUAL
The first idea is the individual. A human being wants to exist as an independent and powerful personality. He wants to overcome limitations, distinguish himself from others, and demonstrate his own abilities. Few philosophers expressed this principle as radically as Friedrich Nietzsche. His concept of the Superman became one of the strongest philosophical expressions of the aspiration toward individual superiority. Modern mass culture constantly reproduces this idea. The enormous popularity of superheroes—from Superman to Spider-Man—demonstrates how persistent the human attraction to exceptional individual strength remains.
WE — THE HUMAN COMMUNITY
The second idea is “We.” Human beings do not exist only as isolated individuals. They seek belonging, solidarity, family, friendship, community, and mutual care. The religious expression of this principle can be found in the idea of humanity as a spiritual family. Within Christianity, the idea of God as Father gives this principle an especially powerful form: human beings are not merely separate individuals but members of a larger moral community. In this interpretation, the idea of God has not only a religious dimension but also a social and moral one. External religious ritual, when separated from moral content, can degenerate into superstition or fanaticism. The deeper significance lies in the moral relationship between human beings.
FREEDOM OF CHOICE
The third idea is freedom. Human beings want to determine their own lives rather than simply submit to external forces. Political history provides countless examples of movements built around this desire. Revolutionary movements often transform freedom into their central principle. Vladimir Lenin and the revolutionary tradition associated with him provide one historical example of how ideas of liberation, equality, and popular power can become forces capable of transforming society. Yet freedom also contains a fundamental problem. If freedom means merely the ability to make any possible choice, then the individual must still determine which choice is good and which is destructive. Freedom therefore inevitably leads to morality. The deepest form of freedom is not simply the absence of restrictions. It is the capacity to choose consciously and to accept responsibility for that choice.
HAPPINESS
The fourth idea is happiness. Every person seeks some conception of a good life. For one person, happiness may mean love. For another, prosperity, family, health, recognition, spiritual fulfillment, or inner peace. Religious and spiritual movements frequently express this desire in simplified formulas: “God loves me.” “God blesses me.” “After death, I will live in a better world.” Here religion can become a means of expressing the human desire for personal happiness. The idea itself is powerful because it concerns the individual's most immediate question: How should I live in order to become happy?
THE MEANING OF LIFE
The fifth idea goes beyond immediate happiness. A person may ask not merely, “How can I be happy?” but: Why do I exist? This is the question of meaning. Religious traditions have often provided comprehensive answers to it. Within Judaism, for example, human life is connected with responsibility, commandments, moral obligation, and the relationship between humanity and God. In Christianity, the meaning of life is likewise connected with a relationship to God and with moral transformation. The question of meaning therefore reaches beyond temporary pleasure. It concerns the ultimate purpose of existence.
THE FIVE IDEAS AND COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS
These five ideas exist not only within individuals but also within societies. At different historical moments, one may become more powerful than the others. A society can become fascinated with individual strength. At another time, collective solidarity may dominate. At another, freedom may become the central aspiration. Elsewhere, personal happiness may occupy the foreground. In a religious age, the question of ultimate meaning may become dominant. The balance is never permanent. The strengthening of “I” can weaken “We.” The strengthening of “We” can restrict individual independence. The pursuit of happiness can diminish the search for meaning. The pursuit of unlimited freedom can conflict with moral responsibility. Human history can therefore be understood partly as a continuous movement among these fundamental ideas.
CHRISTIANITY AND THE IDEA OF GOD
From our perspective, Christianity is particularly significant because it attempts to integrate several of these ideas within a single moral structure. The idea of God as a spiritual Father expresses “We.” The moral freedom of the individual expresses responsibility and choice. The pursuit of eternal happiness relates to the human desire for fulfillment. The meaning of life is connected with the ultimate purpose of existence. The Christian idea therefore does not merely provide one isolated answer. It attempts to organize the strongest directions of human consciousness into a coherent moral system. This is why we distinguish between the external form of religion and its underlying idea. The formula “God is love” can be emotionally powerful, but by itself it may be too simple. If the idea of God is reduced merely to a pleasant emotional state, its moral demands disappear. The deeper conception is that the idea of God imposes a principle upon human conduct.
LOVE AS A MASS-CULTURAL FORM OF A DEEPER IDEA
This helps explain the cultural significance of love in modern mass culture. After the catastrophes of the twentieth century, particularly the Second World War, European society experienced an enormous crisis of confidence in traditional political and moral structures. War, mass violence, and destruction challenged established ideas about civilization. Yet the need for morality did not disappear. According to our hypothesis, some of the moral content traditionally expressed through religious language increasingly began to appear in secular culture through simpler concepts: love, peace, tolerance, human solidarity, and mutual understanding. Love therefore became more than a private emotion. It could function as a secular language for expressing a deeper moral need. This helps explain why a phrase such as “All You Need Is Love” could acquire cultural significance far beyond the boundaries of an ordinary love song.
SUCCESS AS RECOGNITION OF AN UNEXPRESSED IDEA
We can now return to the original question: what produces extraordinary success? The answer is not simply talent. Nor is it advertising. Nor is it money. Nor is it historical circumstance. These factors can contribute, but exceptional success often occurs when several conditions converge. A creator must produce something capable of affecting people. A performer must give it an appropriate human form. A mediator must recognize its potential and bring it to an audience. The historical moment must be favorable. And, most importantly, the work must correspond to something already present within the consciousness of its audience. In the case of psychological success, this may be an emotional state that people are unable to express themselves. In the case of ideological success, it may be a powerful idea that society has not yet expressed in a sufficiently simple and attractive form. The creator who discovers such a form may appear extraordinarily successful. But perhaps he has not created the demand. He has recognized it.
WHAT IS THE MOST UNSTABLE IDEA TODAY?
This brings us to a final question. Which of the five strongest ideas of the human mind is currently in the most unstable condition? If we examine contemporary society, we see enormous numbers of political conflicts, protests, cultural confrontations, and disputes about individual rights and social obligations. This suggests that freedom of choice may currently be one of the most unstable and contested of the five ideas. The problem is not freedom itself. The problem is its boundaries. If freedom is interpreted as the right to choose anything without moral responsibility, it eventually becomes contradictory. The individual receives freedom but loses any clear criterion by which to determine what should be chosen. A more coherent understanding of freedom is the ability to choose consciously and to accept responsibility for the consequences. In our view, the deepest form of freedom is therefore not freedom from morality but freedom within moral choice—the capacity to choose between good and evil and to understand that the choice itself has consequences. This subject may possess enormous potential for future mass culture. If artists, writers, filmmakers, and musicians succeed in expressing the problem of freedom in a form accessible to the collective mind, the result may have considerable cultural power.
THE SECRET OF SUCCESS
We can now return to Laskovyi Mai. Its extraordinary success was not necessarily the result of extraordinary musical complexity. Its strength lay elsewhere. The songs corresponded with the emotional world of their audience. They were simple enough to remember, rhythmic enough to accompany ordinary life, emotionally recognizable enough to become personal, and light enough to provide temporary relief from psychological tension. Kuznetsov created the material. Shatunov embodied it. Razin recognized its potential and transformed it into a mass phenomenon. The Beatles demonstrate another mechanism. Their music combined psychological attraction with ideas capable of extending beyond a particular moment. Love, peace, closeness, and the dream of a different society could be expressed in forms simple enough to reach millions. Thus, there is more than one path to mass success. A work can succeed because it relieves psychological tension. It can succeed because it expresses a powerful idea. The greatest cultural phenomena may combine both. The deepest secret of success in show business, therefore, may be neither talent nor advertising alone. It may be the ability to sense what already exists within people before they themselves have fully recognized it—and then to give that hidden psychological state or powerful idea a form that millions can understand. What appears to be sudden success may therefore be the visible result of a much longer invisible process. The audience was already waiting. The idea was already developing. The emotion was already present. The successful creator was simply the person who found the right form at the right time.



WHO IS DESTINED TO BECOME RICH?

“Almighty Fortune and Inexorable Fate.”
— Virgil

Nowadays, money has become an inseparable part of human existence, and there is no escaping this fact. Whatever attitude a person may have toward material wealth—whether negative, indifferent, or openly desirous—money continues to play an essential role in modern life. It is necessary for purchasing food, housing, education, medical care, transportation, information, and practically everything that constitutes the material side of human existence. Therefore, earning money for one's existence is nothing more than a necessity. Yet the necessity of earning a living and the desire to become rich are by no means the same thing. The former is determined by natural needs; the latter is often connected with ambition, the desire for independence, power, security, prestige, or the wish to change one's position in society. Many people constantly ask themselves: “How can I become rich?” But we can formulate the question differently: Is it actually possible to become rich? If so, who succeeds, and why? In this form, the question becomes considerably more interesting. If wealth were exclusively the result of personal effort, then every person who made sufficient effort should, in principle, have the opportunity to achieve a similar result. Yet reality demonstrates something entirely different. Some people work all their lives and remain poor. Others gradually accumulate wealth. Some unexpectedly receive a large inheritance. Others win the lottery. Someone becomes wealthy because of talent, someone because of a favorable combination of circumstances, while another gains access to opportunities that remain completely unavailable to the majority. Why does such a difference arise? We will try to answer this question on the basis of our own experience, observations, and analysis of the cause-and-effect relationships underlying human life. People often say: “Everyone has their own destiny, and if someone is destined to become rich, they will become rich.” Let us admit that those who say this, although their words may sound like superstition, are nevertheless right in a certain sense. But another question immediately arises: Why is one person destined to become rich while another is not? The answer, as it seems to us, lies in the circumstances that compel a person to act in one way rather than another. And we are speaking not only about external circumstances. A person's background, upbringing, education, abilities, health, character, place of birth, historical period, social environment, accidental encounters, available opportunities, and countless other factors play an enormous role. In the course of our analysis, we will see that a person does not make decisions in a vacuum. They always act within an already existing system of circumstances. Human life is based on cause and effect, which is a condition of the existence of both nature and humanity. When we do something, it seems to us that we are exercising our own will and that the choice depends entirely on ourselves. Indeed, if we take an isolated action, such as dropping a coin onto the floor, we can say: “I decided to drop it.” But if we connect this isolated event with a longer period of time, the picture changes. We can then see how a sequence of previous events led to this particular result. For a person to find themselves in a particular place at a particular time, an enormous number of other events must previously have occurred. They had to be born into that particular family, receive a particular upbringing, meet particular people, acquire certain knowledge, make countless decisions, and find themselves in particular circumstances. We usually notice the final action but fail to see the entire chain of causes that led to it.
THE LINE OF DESTINY
Every person has their own destiny, their own life path, different from that of others, and their own calling. We walk along a road, with high cliffs standing on both sides, preventing us from changing direction indefinitely. They allow us to move only within a certain space of possibilities. A person can choose the direction of movement within this space, but this choice is conditioned by their accumulated psychological experience. Moreover, they cannot create an entirely new reality for themselves that is independent of the laws of nature and society. This raises the question: Is it possible to predict the future? The answer is: “It can be guessed, but it cannot be stated with certainty.” Why? Because the circumstances surrounding our lives are so diverse that calculations of this kind become practically impossible. Literally a few decades ago, it might have seemed to a person that destiny was considerably more predictable. It was enough to analyze the ten years preceding a particular moment, and one could assume that the following ten years, with certain adjustments, would develop according to approximately the same pattern. But this was probably only an apparent sense of stability. The modern world is so interconnected that an event occurring in one place can almost instantly change the situation of millions of people somewhere else. A technological discovery made thousands of kilometers away, in another country or on another continent, can transform economies, professions, lifestyles, and even the value systems of people who have never heard of the person who made that discovery. Likewise, a crisis, catastrophe, war, epidemic, natural disaster, or financial collapse can alter the destinies of enormous numbers of people within a very short period of time. The financial and economic crisis of 2008, which began in the United States, had consequences for economies throughout practically the entire world. People who only yesterday considered their financial position secure suddenly faced unemployment, declining property values, reduced incomes, and radically altered life plans. Thus, a person may make plans for decades, while reality itself can change the direction of their movement within months or even days.
TWO LINES OF EXISTENCE
A person constantly connects the intellectual cause-and-effect relationship of their thoughts with the line of destiny—that is, with reality—except in cases in which normal rational perception is seriously impaired. Let us consider a simple example. A person goes to a store to do some shopping and finds a large banknote on the way. From an intellectual point of view, they found it by chance. They did not plan to find it, did not know that the money was lying there, and could not have calculated this event in advance. But from the perspective of the natural sequence of events, we can say something else: they were in that particular place because they went shopping; the owner of the money was there for another reason; the money fell from their pocket; and the other person arrived at precisely that place at precisely that moment. Every event had its own preceding cause. In nature, chance exists for our consciousness as an absence of knowledge about the complete chain of causes. Therefore, the intellectual line of cause and effect in the flow of our thoughts is constantly interrupted by what we call chance. In our lives, we can therefore conditionally distinguish two lines of existence: the line of destiny and the intellectual line. The intellectual line is the sequence of our thoughts, intentions, plans, and decisions. The line of destiny is the objective sequence of events occurring independently of how completely we are aware of them. We constantly perceive and correct primarily our own flow of thought. Therefore, an illusion arises that we directly control our destiny. In reality, we constantly compare our thoughts with reality. We planned one thing—reality introduced a correction. We changed our plan—a new circumstance arose. We corrected our actions again—and once more encountered something unexpected. Thus, we constantly attempt to bring the two lines of existence into greater or lesser synchronization. If we hypothetically assume that we completely control our destiny, we would have to eliminate the element of chance. But this is impossible. We cannot break the material line of destiny—that is, reality—and completely adapt it to our desires.
CAN DESTINY BE PREDICTED?
Predicting destiny does not at all mean that there is no way out or that we are doomed to the inevitable. On the contrary, people constantly attempt to foresee the future. This is a necessary condition of existence. We plan, calculate, compare, make forecasts, acquire knowledge, and use experience precisely because we want to reduce uncertainty. However, our assessment of what is happening may not correspond to the actual course of events. For example, you look at a person who lies endlessly on a sofa and think: “Nothing is ever going to happen for you, my friend.” Some time later, you receive astonishing news: that apparently idle person has won a large amount of money in the lottery. Some people are simply lucky! But even here, we must consider the person's character. Perhaps the person who won the money by chance has a tendency toward risk, a gambling temperament, and courage. Yet these same qualities can lead to the opposite result. They may win a million and lose it several years later. Therefore, a single event does not determine a person's destiny. We must consider not only the result but also the tendency. You are reading this book now. The very fact that you are interested in information of this kind demonstrates curiosity and reveals a tendency to expand your life experience. Over time, a person may make fewer mistakes because it is only through experience that we are capable of expanding our knowledge. But experience does not guarantee complete control over the future. It merely allows us to navigate the space of possibilities more effectively. If someone believes they are capable of calculating everything and achieving the desired result, only applying their calculations in practice can demonstrate whether they are right. When confronted with harsh reality, a person often says: “I did not think everything through carefully enough. I was wrong. I failed to calculate everything to the end.” But perhaps the problem was not a lack of intellectual ability. They simply lacked sufficient life experience. Mathematical calculations are precise within given conditions, while the laws of nature and human behavior cannot be reduced to a single mathematical model. And this is why an experienced person, in certain life situations, may prove considerably wiser than someone possessing excellent abilities for abstract calculation.
WEALTH AND THE ILLUSION OF CONTROL
Once, while talking with a certain “expert” on the subject of “how to become rich,” we discovered that approximately ten years earlier he had read the book Think and Grow Rich and had since become fascinated with literature of this kind, continuing to study such books persistently. According to him, it was very important to repeat the words: “I will become rich” like a magic spell every morning several times and sincerely believe in them. A dreamer! Let him add to his faith the results obtained through this method. Over the course of ten years, he had not increased his wealth at all, but he had significantly developed his ability to fantasize. He could list numerous books about wealth, success, thinking, and motivation, but he could not demonstrate a corresponding transformation in his own material life. This is where a fundamental problem arises. Reading a book about wealth is not the same as creating wealth. Believing in success is not the same as achieving success. Wanting to earn money is not the same as earning money. Formulating a goal is not the same as accomplishing it. Between thought and material result lies an enormous field of reality filled with actions, competition, risk, circumstances, and chance. “I recently read a book called You Don't Have to Go to School to Become Rich. There are many interesting ideas in it,” he said. We failed to notice the logic in the title of this book. Are we taught at school how to become rich? The school curriculum is primarily designed to develop a socially functional consciousness, enabling a person to meet the challenges of society and respond to them adequately. School is not obliged to turn every student into a millionaire. Its task is considerably broader: to give a person basic knowledge, teach them to interact with other people, understand the surrounding world, use information, develop the ability to reason, and make decisions. Creative thinking and calculation can bring considerably greater practical benefits in terms of increasing one's capital: investing money in a promising business, real estate, valuable objects, developing professional skills, or creating a new product or service. But even correct calculation provides no absolute guarantee. An investment may prove unsuccessful. A promising business may go bankrupt. Real estate may lose value. A new product may fail to find buyers. That is why wealth cannot be viewed exclusively as the result of correct thinking.
“I WANT TO BECOME RICH SO THAT I CAN HELP OTHERS”
“I want to become rich so that I can help others,” he continued. “Were Jesus and his disciples rich? Of course, one of them became rich through thirty pieces of silver—Judas—but that is a completely different story.” “The possibility of becoming rich depends on the individual. Everyone can become rich if favorable circumstances come together for them.” Having presented his hypothesis, the man did not even notice the logical inconsistency between the two parts of his statement, because chaotic thinking was reinforced by the confidence created by his emotions. “The possibility of becoming rich depends on the individual.” This statement suggests that the decisive factor is the individual themselves. But then another part appears: “Everyone can become rich if favorable circumstances come together for them.” Here, dependence on circumstances is already acknowledged. This creates a contradiction. If wealth depends exclusively on the individual, then external circumstances should not have fundamental importance. If, however, favorable circumstances are necessary for wealth, then the possibility of achieving the result depends not only on the individual. “If favorable circumstances come together for them” is a hypothetical statement concerning a particular condition. “The possibility of becoming rich depends on the individual. Everyone can become rich” is a general categorical statement. Experience demonstrates unequivocally that favorable circumstances cannot come together for everyone. For example, a person may be born into a poor family, in a country with a low level of economic development, receive inadequate education, have physical limitations, or face other circumstances that significantly narrow the range of opportunities available to them. Another person may be born into a wealthy family, receive an excellent education, inherit capital, and have access from childhood to information and people unavailable to the majority. Can we say that the starting opportunities of these two people are identical? Obviously not. Therefore, the logical statement should be formulated as follows: Only those people can become rich for whom favorable circumstances come together. In the example above, there is logical equivalence between the two parts of the statement. The categorical statement made by our interlocutor can only be presented hypothetically: “Everyone could become rich if favorable circumstances came together for them.” By formulating the idea in this way, we make the two parts of the statement logically equivalent. The hypothesis, in this case, has a logical connection, but it does not correspond to reality. Everyone cannot become rich because favorable circumstances cannot come together for everyone. Moreover, if everyone were simultaneously rich, the very concept of wealth would lose part of its relative meaning. Wealth exists not only as an amount of money but also as a person's position relative to other people and to the resources available within society.
WILLPOWER AND THE LIMITS OF FREEDOM
“I believe that nothing is unconditional and that everything has its own cause. But we are capable of controlling these causes. Through willpower, we can change destiny, directing it according to our wishes along the necessary path leading to the realization of our intentions. A person has the freedom to choose the paths along which they walk,” our interlocutor insisted. Yes, if these paths demonstrate a particular tendency, perhaps he guessed correctly in making his choice. But choice itself is not yet a guarantee of the result. A person chooses a profession but does not know how the labor market will change. A person creates a business but does not know whether a competitor will appear. A person buys real estate but does not know how the economy will change. A person invests money but does not know how the market will behave in the future. A person enters into a relationship but cannot determine all future circumstances in advance. Thus, freedom of choice exists within certain boundaries, but our inner psychological experience is the principal guide that shows us which choice to make. The lottery winner who wins a million may, by nature, be a person inclined toward gambling and unafraid of risk. But this same character trait can lead to rapid impoverishment. A person inclined to take risks may win a large amount of money once and then decide that luck has become a permanent feature of their life. They begin repeating risky actions. The first success strengthens their confidence. The second success creates the illusion of a pattern. The third may convince the person even more strongly of their own infallibility. And then comes the loss. The person discovers that random success had been mistaken for proof of personal control over destiny. For some reason, they attributed the cause-and-effect relationship solely to their own personality, forgetting about the multitude of people like themselves pursuing exactly the same goal. They all crowd onto the same narrow path, and at the finish line only those best adapted to the challenge remain—those possessing a natural predisposition for such trials. When many people simultaneously strive toward the same goal, the success of one person does not automatically mean the success of everyone else. On the contrary, competition makes the situation even more difficult. When encountering others who are also making their way through life, a person is pushed onto the path along which they can proceed only by overcoming those weaker than themselves—physically, financially, intellectually, or otherwise—and yielding to those who are stronger. This is destiny.
“THOUGHT IS MATERIAL”
“Thought is material, and therefore dreams of wealth also become materialized.” Yes, we agree that as a physiological process occurring in the brain, thought indeed has a material basis. The brain is a material organ, and the thinking process is connected with physical and biochemical processes. On the other hand, the content of thought is ideological—that is, immaterial. We may have a material carrier of thought, but the idea itself is not a material object in the same sense that money, a stone, or a car is material. This mistake is made not only by modern popular psychology but also by representatives of certain Eastern religious traditions. If a person says that thought materializes, we must clarify what exactly they mean by materialization. If they are referring to the physiological influence of thought on behavior, then a certain connection exists. A person thinks about a goal, begins to act, changes their behavior, acquires skills, searches for opportunities—and as a result, the probability of a particular outcome may increase. But this does not mean that thought itself somehow magically transforms into a material object. What, then, does the concept of “matter” include? Does some kind of “immaterial matter” really exist? If we mix the material and the ideal, we risk losing logical clarity. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish between thought as a physiological process and the content of thought as an idea.
MONEY AND POWER
“Money is freedom,” he concluded his argument with a final phrase, apparently borrowed from everyday wisdom. According to Thomas Hobbes, money combined with freedom constitutes a great power. Indeed, money can expand the space of possibilities available to a person. It allows one to obtain education, purchase housing, travel, engage in entrepreneurship, acquire goods and services, and buy time and the labor of other people. But money is not absolute freedom. A person possessing enormous capital nevertheless remains dependent on the laws of nature, the state, society, their own body, and other people. Money can expand the field of action, but it does not eliminate the boundaries of existence. Deep within every person lies the drive for superiority. It seeks the possibility of satisfying many instincts whose expression is restricted by the social boundaries of what is permissible. In some people, this desire is strongly expressed through ambition; in others, it remains dormant. Money is, in a certain sense, a substitute for power. It provides an opportunity for some instincts to expand the field in which they can operate. The greater a person's material resources, the greater their opportunities to influence the surrounding environment. But at the same time, responsibility increases as well. Therefore, money in itself does not make a person free, happy, or moral. It merely increases their possibilities. How a person uses those possibilities depends largely on their character.
CONQUERORS AND FIGHTERS
We can distinguish two basic psychological types according to their attitude toward life. The first are conquerors, accustomed to winning. The second are fighters, struggling for survival. Conquerors set a goal and direct all their strength toward achieving it. The means they employ become the instruments of their victories. It has long been said: “The end justifies the means.” But this statement itself must be treated with caution. If a person sets a material goal, they may be prepared to make considerable sacrifices in order to achieve it. Fighters, by contrast, are satisfied with the struggle itself, and the means become an end in themselves. Such people often stop halfway, becoming fascinated by one thing, then another, and ultimately being unable to complete what they originally set out to accomplish. They are satisfied with the process of “survival” itself rather than with triumph over the summit they have chosen to conquer. For one person, struggle is a means of achieving a result. For another, struggle itself becomes the content of life. One constantly asks: “What have I achieved?” The other: “Am I still fighting?” The difference between them may appear insignificant, but it can determine a person's long-term life trajectory.
PSYCHOLOGICAL TENDENCIES AND WEALTH
Here are the principal psychological tendencies that reveal certain patterns in life: The dreamer dreams of becoming rich but makes no material or intellectual progress toward that goal. They replace action with fantasy and gradually begin to perceive the dream itself as an achievement. The gambler, inclined to take risks, has a possibility of becoming rich quickly and becoming poor just as quickly. Risk can lead to a major gain, but the same mechanism can destroy accumulated wealth. The hardworking, thrifty person, gradually and steadily increasing their savings, demonstrates a tendency toward future prosperity. Such a path rarely produces instant wealth, but it creates the foundation for stable financial security. The ambitious person, prepared to go to great lengths, persistent, patient, and capable of achieving their goals, demonstrates a tendency toward power and money. Such a person is capable of maintaining their direction long after others have already given up. The person living beyond their means, spending more than they have—a “perpetual debtor,” a squanderer—demonstrates a tendency toward future impoverishment. Even a high income cannot save a person if expenses constantly exceed their means. The kind, generous, responsive, gentle person who readily goes out of their way to help others tends to acquire the love and respect of relatives and acquaintances. Such a person may not become rich, but they acquire another form of capital—human trust and respect. All of the tendencies listed above can be reinforced by the wisdom contained in the popular saying: “You reap what you sow.” However, this proverb should not be understood mechanically either. Sometimes a person sows hard work and receives failure. Sometimes a person does almost nothing and unexpectedly receives enormous benefit. Therefore, we are speaking not about a guarantee but about a tendency.
THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY
An individual understands themselves only within the context of society, and this makes them deeply dependent on social laws. A person does not exist separately from their environment. They are born in a particular country, speak a particular language, receive a particular upbringing, acquire particular habits, and interact with other people. Even their concept of wealth is formed by society. For one person, wealth means a large house. For another, the ability not to work. For a third, power. For a fourth, the freedom to travel. For a fifth, the ability to help others. Therefore, the endless statements that everyone is the absolute master of their own destiny are nothing more than fiction and illusion. A person does indeed possess a certain degree of freedom. But that freedom always exists within a system of limitations, and their choice is conditioned by their psychological experience. We can choose between several roads, but we cannot choose all roads simultaneously. We can change our profession, but we cannot change the years that have already been lived. We can earn money, but we cannot guarantee that circumstances will not destroy the result. We can make plans, but we cannot order the future to fulfill them.
LITERATURE ABOUT WEALTH
Books such as I Attract Money, How to Become Rich, Think and Grow Rich, and You Don't Have to Go to School to Become Rich are attractive primarily because of their enticing titles. When you buy them, the opposite process may take place: those who are skillful at fantasizing become richer, while you become poorer. Statements such as: “If you're so smart, show me your money.” Or: “If you want to become rich, be rich.” And other similar pieces of sophistry sound rather amusing. Books of this kind are filled with various pieces of advice that correspond fully to the supposed rules of achieving success. They are interesting, entertaining, and even captivating. They paint pictures of future prosperity in our imagination, fill us with hopes and expectations, and make us believe in the possibility of change. But here the principal question arises: Where does useful motivation end and self-deception begin? Let us repeat once again that such books are merely theory. When we apply their instructions in practice, we obtain a result corresponding only to our own capabilities within the circumstances that constrain our lives—and nothing more. A book can provide an idea. It can offer a method. It can change a person's way of thinking. But it cannot provide someone with another person's abilities, inheritance, health, place of birth, connections, or favorable historical moment. Therefore, a book can increase the probability of success, but it cannot guarantee it.
UTOPIAS OF PROSPERITY
Books of this kind were written as far back as antiquity. They claim to offer practical instruction, but in reality they generally reflect human hopes and aspirations dictated by the particular historical period in which they were written. For example, during the time of Plato (428–347 BC), powerful states had emerged around the Mediterranean: the Persian Empire and Carthage, while Rome and Greece were developing into major powers. Motivated by the idea of creating an ideal state, Plato wrote his famous work The Republic. As history has demonstrated, over more than two thousand years, an ideal state has never appeared on the map of the world. This does not mean that Plato's ideas were useless. On the contrary, they exerted enormous influence on the development of political philosophy. But an ideal and reality are two different things. An idea can be perfect on paper and practically unattainable in reality. With the advent of Christianity, Augustine of Hippo wrote The City of God, reflecting the hopes and intellectual concerns of another historical period. One of the most prominent representatives of the Renaissance was Thomas More, with his Utopia. Every historical period creates its own image of an ideal society. People dream not only of wealth but also of justice, equality, happiness, freedom, security, and harmony. Modern expectations have given rise to numerous humanistic movements and works of literature. Such works are full of instructive recommendations, but unfortunately they may portray reality from an idealized perspective. Rather than explaining reality, they can sometimes confuse our thinking if we approach this type of literature without critical judgment. Humanists may claim that smiling, kindness, and politeness guarantee success in life. But it is enough to look at the world around us to understand that a kind person is not necessarily rich, a polite person is not necessarily successful, and a smile by itself does not create capital. Kindness can contribute to the formation of trust. Politeness can facilitate communication. The ability to cooperate can expand one's social connections. But none of these qualities constitutes an absolute guarantee of material success. In time, new tendencies will emerge, and these books will remain in the past as products of particular forms of human imagination. In the future, people may speak of them approximately as follows: “In those days, people believed that you could become rich only if you became kind and smiled at everyone.” Such books have existed and will continue to exist. For historians, they are certainly of great interest. They allow us to understand what people of a particular era wanted, what they feared, what they hoped for, and how they imagined the ideal future. But modern people must distinguish between a description of the desired world and a description of the real world. Modern books offering such “utopian lessons” are often accepted unquestioningly, without critical examination. This is where the danger arises. A person begins to perceive a beautiful formula as a law of nature. They begin to believe that if they simply want something strongly enough, their desire must inevitably come true. But between desire and result lies an enormous territory of reality. That territory contains effort, abilities, competition, circumstances, chance, time, social restrictions, and human nature. Therefore, the question “Who is destined to become rich?” cannot be solved by a single formula. Wealth is not exclusively the result of a dream. Nor is it exclusively the result of hard work. It is not merely the consequence of luck. And it is not exclusively the result of willpower. It arises at the intersection of many causes, some of which a person can influence while others remain beyond their control. A person can prepare for an opportunity but cannot guarantee that the opportunity will appear. They can use a favorable moment but cannot create all the circumstances that produced that moment. They can increase the probability of success but cannot turn probability into absolute necessity. Therefore, the popular expression “Everyone has their own destiny” contains much more meaning than it may initially appear to. And this is why it is more reasonable not to promise everyone wealth but to study those patterns that increase or decrease the probability of achieving it. Ultimately, no one is capable of controlling their own destiny completely because choice itself is conditioned by preceding causes. However, if a person takes a different course in their life, they do not necessarily escape their destiny; they simply follow another path that has itself arisen from their previous circumstances and psychological experience. Such people are predisposed to make such a change. In other words, the ability to change is itself part of their destiny. They cannot command the world to provide opportunities that do not exist within their reality. This is the fundamental difference between a rational pursuit of wealth and a utopian belief in its inevitability. Wealth is possible, but it is not guaranteed. Success is achievable, but it is not determined exclusively by desire. A person is capable of choosing a direction of movement, but they are not capable of abolishing all the circumstances surrounding their life. And perhaps this is the most realistic answer to the question with which we began our discussion: A person becomes rich not simply because they want it more than everyone else, but because their abilities, actions, and favorable circumstances coincide at a particular moment in such a way that an opportunity that arises is actually transformed into a result.
SUCCESS, CIRCUMSTANCES, AND THE PREDETERMINATION OF CHOICE
Every successful undertaking is accompanied by certain elements of success. However, it would be a mistake to assume that faith, determination, an overwhelming desire, perseverance, and patience by themselves are capable of turning any undertaking into a successful enterprise. If we attribute all these qualities to a person who has embarked on a venture that has no prospects from the outset, then, despite excessive effort, we may achieve nothing but failure. This leads to an important conclusion: first and foremost, there must be a viable idea, as well as real means and opportunities for putting it into practice. Faith, persistence, patience, determination, and all other psychological qualities become effective only after an objective possibility of achieving the desired result already exists. They can strengthen a promising undertaking, but they cannot create prospects where none objectively exist. In other words, the possibility of success must exist first, and only then is there room for personal qualities to manifest themselves. Imagine, for example, that you own a factory producing alcoholic beverages and are trying to earn a large amount of money by exporting your products to the United Arab Emirates. You may be an extremely enterprising person, possess an enormous desire to become wealthy, tell yourself every day that you will certainly succeed, hire the best specialists, and spend substantial sums organizing the export. But if the laws and prevailing social regulations do not allow your idea to be implemented in the form you have envisioned, your psychological qualities will not be able to remove this obstacle. The United Arab Emirates have strict regulations concerning alcohol, and its distribution is subject to licensing and other legal restrictions. Thus, everything has its own limit, its own place, and its own time. We cannot achieve a result simply because we want it very strongly. In other words, success accompanies a promising undertaking. If someone wants to sell catapults capable of throwing stones in order to shoot down jet aircraft in African countries, it is unlikely that such an enterprise will succeed. One may believe in the idea as much as one wishes, demonstrate persistence, convince others of its brilliance, and repeatedly tell oneself that success is inevitable. Yet the idea itself does not correspond to real needs or technological reality. Therefore, ask anyone with sufficient life experience how to achieve success, and they will most likely answer approximately as follows: “Start a business that is in demand at the present moment or that may become popular in the future if it is genuinely needed, and possess the necessary resources—both material and psychological—that is, the appropriate character, temperament, knowledge, and abilities—to bring it to life. The person who tries, makes an effort, learns from their own and other people's mistakes, falls, gets back up, and continues moving persistently toward the goal is the one who has a chance of succeeding.” The word “chance” is especially important here. Even a combination of a promising idea, adequate resources, and appropriate personal qualities does not turn success into an absolute guarantee. It merely significantly increases the probability of success. Between possibility and result there always remains a space occupied by circumstances that a person cannot completely control. It is precisely this circumstance that we consider fundamental.
THE ART OF PERSUASION
Although one can learn something from unusual books about achieving wealth and success, the first thing one can learn from them is the art of persuasion. This is precisely the force of superiority that we mentioned earlier. The author of a book may possess an outstanding ability to influence the consciousness of the reader. They choose convincing language, provide individual examples of successful people, tell stories of rapid enrichment, and create the impression of a pattern where in reality there are numerous unknown factors. Armed with such persuasive power, authors can convince readers that their advice is genuinely capable of working miracles. And then something particularly interesting happens: the reader buys the next book, the next course, the next set of recommendations, while the author gains fame and money. Thus, sometimes the most successful product of such books is not a method of becoming wealthy, but the reader's belief that a universal method of becoming wealthy exists. A paradoxical situation arises: a person reads a book about how to become rich, while the person who becomes rich first is the one who wrote the book.
HOW PEOPLE BECOME WEALTHY
A person can become wealthy by inheriting money. Luck may come to someone who happens to be in the right place at the right time. Wealth may result from entrepreneurial talent, high professional competence, a successful investment, a political or social situation, family connections, or a combination of circumstances. A person's ambitions may make them wealthy, as may their willingness to place their health, safety, and well-being—and that of their loved ones—at stake. Sometimes wealth is achieved through extreme rationality in one's behavior, when a person constantly follows the principle: business is business. In such a case, friendship and love may be pushed into the background, while mercy and compassion become dulled, and personal benefit becomes the principal criterion. However, let us clarify: such a person does not necessarily have to appear openly selfish. On the contrary, manifestations of kindness may prove useful instruments on the road to wealth. A family can be an important factor in a person's advancement up the career ladder. Charity can also create a positive public image. The ability to be polite, attentive, and responsive can contribute to establishing useful social connections. Thus, outward friendliness and a person's inner motivation do not always coincide. Imagine a kind-hearted person who helps others without seeking personal benefit, values friendship and love above business relationships, often makes concessions, is modest, does not display their ego, does not seek to dominate others, and is not prepared to step over other people for the sake of personal advancement. Tell us: what are the chances that such a person will become genuinely wealthy? We do not claim that such a person will necessarily remain poor. They may become wealthy through inheritance, a fortunate coincidence, professional talent, or a completely unexpected opportunity. But this is precisely what confirms our point: personal qualities determine not everything, but only a portion of the probability of a particular outcome.
CIRCUMSTANCES ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN DESIRE
Character traits merely indicate certain tendencies in life and are not absolute determinants of success. A more important role is played by the circumstances surrounding our lives. A person may have an enormous desire to become wealthy but be born into conditions where access to education, capital, social connections, and opportunities is limited. A person may possess a high level of intelligence but find themselves in an environment where intellectual abilities are not valued. Someone may have excellent physical abilities but lack the opportunity to obtain the necessary athletic training. A person may be exceptionally entrepreneurial but be born in a country or historical period where entrepreneurial activity is severely restricted. Consequently, we cannot consider a person separately from the environment in which they exist. Among the principal circumstances that shape our destiny, three major groups can be identified: Place of birth, the opportunities associated with it, and the family's prosperity; Upbringing and education; Sex and physical condition. Many other circumstances can be added to these factors: the historical period, the economic condition of society, the political system, the state of the labor market, access to information, social connections, chance encounters, health, and countless other factors. But even the three groups listed above already demonstrate how limited the idea of complete human control over one's own destiny really is.
FAMILY AND UPBRINGING
It should be noted that having money in a family is not always a guarantee of a child's positive development. To a great extent, healthy development depends on the character, level of education, and intelligence of the parents themselves, as well as on their attitude toward the child and toward each other. Some people argue: “Everything depends on the child himself. Good children can also grow up in dysfunctional families.” Of course, exceptions exist. But an exception does not invalidate a general pattern. Imagine the following situation: the mother and father constantly drink, quarrel, humiliate each other, behave aggressively, beat the children, or constantly punish them. What exactly will the child absorb? If there is no one nearby who can demonstrate a different model of behavior, it will be extremely difficult for the child to form an alternative model independently. A child is not born with a ready-made system of social ideas. They observe, imitate, compare. They gradually absorb the surrounding world as a norm. The basic patterns of behavior are formed during childhood and can remain established for many years: kindergarten, school, the street, friends, hobbies, relationships with parents, first successes, and first defeats. Even something that seems insignificant to an adult may become a crucial life lesson for a child.
TEMPERAMENT AND DESTINY
Temperament, influenced in part by genetic inheritance from one's parents, plays an important role in human life, but it is neither the only nor, especially, the principal factor. Let us take the choleric temperament—the most energetic and impulsive type in the classical typology. Such a person reacts quickly to life's challenges, is capable of making decisions under pressure, and often succeeds in unstable situations. They may adapt well during crises, in military environments, in extreme circumstances, and in situations where authority must be demonstrated. Yet the same speed of reaction can become their weakness. A choleric person may lack thoughtfulness, patience, and the ability to analyze the consequences of decisions over a long period. They may win a situation quickly but lose in the long run. Stability and social order may be less favorable to them, because in such conditions success is determined not only by personal qualities but also by money, connections, education, reputation, and social position.
THE SANGUINE
The second temperament type is the sanguine. Representatives of this type are generally pleasant, sociable, emotionally open people who tend to have a gentle character. They express themselves more externally than internally, which can sometimes lead to insufficient reflection. Nevertheless, precisely because of their friendliness, ability to establish contact, and capacity to maintain relationships, they may receive support from more powerful patrons. Under certain social conditions, this can become a tremendous advantage. A person may not be the smartest or hardest-working member of a group, but if they know how to inspire trust and maintain relationships, their social opportunities may be considerably greater.
THE PHLEGMATIC
The third temperament type is the phlegmatic. The main characteristic of a person with this temperament is the ability to maintain a relative balance between the inner and outer worlds. Such a person is thoughtful and calculating and tries to find harmony both in relationships with others and within themselves. They are not as fast as a choleric or sanguine person and may therefore lose out to them in situations requiring an immediate reaction. But over the long term, their advantages become more apparent. The main energy of such a person is directed toward deep reflection, analysis, and planning, which sometimes reduces outward manifestations of activity. Such a person can succeed where careful allocation of resources, consistency, and endurance are required. They may become a good politician, manager, or strategist because they know how to seek compromise and find a middle ground.
THE MELANCHOLIC
The melancholic is the fourth temperament type. Its representative often finds themselves in the exact sciences, analytical work, and activities requiring meticulousness, perseverance, and intense concentration. They like solitude, are not particularly talkative, and tend to be more focused on their inner world. A person with such a temperament may become an excellent scientist, financier, programmer, analyst, or researcher. A weakness in one area may simultaneously be an advantage in another. As we can see from the above, temperament can, to a certain extent, influence the sphere of activity in which a person can more easily realize their abilities. Imagine that a gloomy melancholic suddenly becomes a political leader, while a strong-willed choleric devotes themselves entirely to philosophy. We may immediately notice a certain mismatch between temperament and presumed vocation and say: “Stop pretending. Be yourself!” Yet here too we must avoid extremes. Temperament is not a sentence. It merely creates certain tendencies that a person can partially compensate for through upbringing, education, experience, and conscious work on themselves.
KNOWLEDGE AS THE FOUNDATION OF POSSIBLE SUCCESS
To acquire the knowledge base necessary for possible success, it is important to study subjects such as sociology, morality and law, economic theory, finance, accounting, marketing, and others. This is necessary so that a person does not become detached from reality and is capable of assessing a situation soberly and acting appropriately. Otherwise, how can a person achieve success if they have limited intellectual potential, inadequate physical abilities for professional sports, lack leadership qualities, possess no starting capital, and have no understanding of how the financial system works? If a person is unfamiliar with the documentation required to conduct business and has no influential acquaintances, relatives, or friends, perhaps they should put aside fantastic books about “how to become rich” and begin working on themselves. They need to acquire knowledge. Develop their abilities. Understand their real strengths and weaknesses. Determine the sphere in which those strengths can be used. And only after that should they seek opportunities for implementation. Everything else may, perhaps, follow naturally.
THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM OF CHOICE
Many contemporary authors build their books around the theme of “freedom of choice,” and such books can be found in abundance on bookstore shelves. Let us take a few examples: How to Win Friends and Influence People, How to Become a Personality, The Formula for Success, How to Earn a Large Amount of Money Without Starting Capital, and others. The authors of such books often base their arguments on situational examples. They take a particular case in which a certain action led to a certain result and then offer the reader the impression that this case represents a universal pattern. But an individual example is not yet a law. A person may achieve success in a particular way, but this does not mean that any other person who repeats their actions will obtain the same result. Why? Because the initial conditions are different. In our opinion, this is where the principal error of such theories arises.
THE MAXIM OF BEHAVIOR
In making choices, a person is guided by maxims of behavior that reason derives from circumstances. For example, if a person follows the maxim: “Treat others as you would like them to treat you,” then the intentions underlying their actions, even without possessing special psychological techniques, will first and foremost be fair and correct in their own eyes. If a person constantly seeks personal benefit at the expense of others, they will eventually encounter resistance from society and from their own conscience. No psychology of manipulation can completely eliminate this contradiction. Moreover, books of this kind can sometimes encourage immoral behavior. Armed with techniques of influence over others, some people begin using psychological methods exclusively to obtain situational advantages, without considering the consequences. We consider it extremely important that our actions contain echoes of moral maxims and bring benefit both to the individual and to society.
FREEDOM OF CHOICE AND MORALITY
Freedom of choice is the intellectual ability of a person to alter the character of their intentions—for example, to transform evil intentions into good ones. The assessment society gives to our actions may not coincide with the nature of the intentions underlying them. But this does not change the essence of our inner state. Even if actions initially motivated by evil intentions are interpreted by society as good, deep inside we may feel that only people's attitude toward us has changed, not our essence itself. For example, the burning of heretics at the stake in the Middle Ages may have been perceived by its perpetrators as an action motivated by good intentions—to protect the Church and people from the influence of those considered heretical and displeasing to God. The consequences of such actions were also considered necessary and correct by many people. In today's reality, such actions, regardless of whether they resulted from good intentions or not, are condemned by society as criminal. Consequently, society evaluates our actions according to the customs, prejudices, and laws of a particular place and historical period. Therefore, we can independently evaluate primarily our intentions as good or evil, right or wrong. The final social evaluation of our actions, however, will be given by other people.
SCHEME OF THE PREDETERMINATION OF THE CHOICE OF ACTIONS
Two people find themselves in exactly the same situation. They face a choice: one commits a crime, while the other refrains from doing so. Each acts individually, making a choice based on their life experience, upbringing, character, temperament, and inner state. Thus, each person is predisposed to take precisely the step dictated by their life experience and personal circumstances. If we assume that a person acts completely arbitrarily, this would mean that their choice does not depend at all on upbringing, character, temperament, or past experience. The person would then resemble grass bending in different directions under gusts of wind, with their life determined exclusively by external circumstances. Moreover, if a choice is not connected with your personality, then in actual fact it is not yours. Everyone makes their own choices, yet those choices are closely connected with the individual's qualities and position in society. A person acts according to necessity, and according to our concept, their choice is predetermined. Cause and effect govern our entire lives. We cannot change the past because we are unable to break the chain of preceding actions. Nor can we directly change the future, which will become a consequence of the present. We can attempt to influence the present, but even our attempts are already the result of previous experience. This is precisely why the paradox arises: A person feels free precisely because they cannot see the entire chain of causes that led them to a particular choice.
THE SCHEME OF CAUSE AND EFFECT
FATHER — SON — GRANDSON
Within the chain of cause and effect, a break is impossible. In the natural world, unlike the intellectual world, everything has a cause, and nothing exists that is completely arbitrary, independent, and unconditional. Every event is a continuation of the previous state of a system. If we see only one moment, it seems to us that it arose by chance. But if we are able to trace the entire chain of events, chance gradually turns into a pattern that we simply failed to notice before.
HAPPINESS AS A FUNDAMENTAL GOAL
Every human being naturally strives for happiness. Happiness is not a continuous state of euphoria. It is rather an intangible idea of a state of peace or joy, wealth, a beautiful life, fame, respect, freedom, love, and much more. For one person, happiness may consist in wealth; for another, in family; for a third, in scientific discovery; for a fourth, in freedom; and for a fifth, in recognition from others. Therefore, happiness cannot be measured according to precise and universal criteria. It is an idea embedded in us by nature, to which each person gives their own content and through which they seek to realize their conception of a desirable life. All our actions, sometimes appearing absurd or contradictory, ultimately lead toward some goal behind which lies our conception of happiness. From the earliest age, we absorb social values. The mind constantly scans the circumstances of our lives, compares people, events, and opportunities, and gradually forms its own picture of the desired future. In relation to the ideas underlying our existence, the mind often operates intuitively. It sums up the circumstances available to us and reaches a certain conclusion, which then influences the direction of our future preferences.
A CHILDHOOD DREAM
As strange as it may sound today, during the Soviet era V. I. Lenin was a moral and intellectual authority for many people. An acquaintance of ours once said: “When I was still a child, I dreamed of becoming like Lenin. Over time, I abandoned this dream, considering it merely a product of childish fantasy, although the idea of becoming like Lenin unconsciously guided my entire life. It was the beacon that attracted me and gave preference to one choice over another. In the short term, my actions seemed not only imperfect to me, but in some cases even terrible. At the time, I could not know that my mind was selecting from the available options those that best corresponded to my unconscious goal. Today, looking back, I understand that if my childhood dream had been different—for example, to become rich like Henry Ford—I might have achieved more materially. Or perhaps I would not have.” This story demonstrates how deeply an idea formed during childhood can influence a person. A person may forget their original dream, stop talking about it, and regard it as a childish fantasy, yet the very structure of their aspirations may continue moving in the same direction.
THE EDUCATION OF A DREAM
If a child absorbs from an early age the idea of wealth or a luxurious life but lacks the material resources and opportunities to realize it, they may resort to extremes simply to bring that attractive, and sometimes unconscious, idea of wealth to life. Therefore, from an early age, children should be raised around moral authorities and constructive ideals. For example, the dream of becoming president requires considerable physical effort, intellectual development, leadership qualities, good education, the ability to communicate with people, the capacity to make decisions, and many other useful qualities. Even if a person never becomes president, the dream itself may compel them to develop. It becomes a driving force behind education, discipline, and self-improvement. The idea of wealth or a “beautiful life,” absorbed by a child during childhood, may produce an entirely different result. If wealth is perceived solely as the ability to satisfy one's desires, a person may gradually become selfish, greedy, and acquisitive. In another case, the idea of a “beautiful life” may turn a person into a partygoer or a spendthrift. And if they cannot realize this idea through legal means, it may potentially push them toward crime. Consequently, the problem lies not only in the dream itself, but also in the moral content of that dream.
THE DREAM AS A HIDDEN DRIVING FORCE
Human actions—bad or good, useful or harmful, rational or meaningless—may lead toward the dream that the mind formed during childhood. A person may never achieve it, but it nevertheless determines, to a greater or lesser extent, the character of their actions. When we advise someone to change something in their life, giving them various recommendations and hoping they will follow them, we often forget about the “great” goal—achieving happiness—that keeps us on our chosen path. Everyone follows their own route toward it. And for each person, happiness has a different appearance. One sees happiness in wealth, another sees it in love, a third in respect, a fourth in freedom, a fifth in service to society. Therefore, there is no universal recipe for happiness.
THE DREAM OF A PEOPLE
Moreover, such a guiding star exists not only for an individual but also for an entire people. When it passes from an unconscious idea into a clearly defined goal, a people becomes united by a common aspiration to achieve it and becomes a nation. Thus, a collective idea can perform the same function as a personal dream. It unites many people, causes them to sacrifice the present for the sake of the future, and shapes political movements, cultural projects, and historical processes. A people may exist for a long time with an unconscious conception of its desired future. But when this conception receives a clear expression, it becomes a political or social objective. And then movement begins.
DESTINY AND CIRCUMSTANCES
Consequently, much in our lives depends on circumstances—both favorable and unfavorable, both internal and external. It is precisely the totality of these circumstances that determines a person's opportunities to become wealthy. It merely seems to us that we act as we please. In reality, the entire psychological experience accumulated before the moment of action guides our choice. We do not choose from an infinite number of possibilities. We choose from those possibilities that we are capable of seeing, understanding, and accepting. And our ability to see an opportunity is itself shaped by our previous experience. Thus, a person may experience a sense of freedom of choice while simultaneously remaining bound to an enormous system of causes and circumstances. This is where we encounter one of the most difficult philosophical problems. If a person's practical choice is predetermined, while a person is capable primarily of changing the character of their intentions—whether good or evil—then how are social freedom, moral responsibility, and ethical choice possible at all? This question goes far beyond the problem of wealth. It concerns the very foundation of human existence. For this reason, in the next topic we must examine how freedom and responsibility for human actions can exist in the presence of causal predetermination.



DEPENDENCE OF FATE ON CIRCUMSTANCES

“Fate leads the willing and drags the unwilling.”
— Cleanthes, Greek philosopher, 3rd century BC

FATE AS A CAUSAL RELATIONSHIP
The ancient Greeks understood fate not merely as a mystical force governing human life. In many philosophical interpretations, fate was closely connected with necessity and causality — with the idea that events arise from preceding conditions and that every action becomes, in turn, a cause of subsequent events.
From this perspective, there is no need to appeal to superstition. A rational idea emerges instead: a person cannot arbitrarily alter what has already become the result of a particular combination of causes. We can change our attitude toward what happens. We can act, resist, adapt, and attempt to influence the world around us. Yet our actions themselves also become part of the chain of cause and effect.
This leads to one of the most difficult questions of human existence: How free is a person in determining his or her own fate?
Every day, we seem to choose between several possibilities. We decide where to go, whom to speak with, what profession to pursue, whether to marry, whether to have children, whether to accept an offer, whether to purchase something, or whether to begin a particular undertaking. Yet behind every choice there are preceding circumstances: upbringing, education, character, physical condition, previous experience, social environment, financial circumstances, relationships, accidental encounters, and countless other factors.
Freedom of choice may therefore be considerably more limited than it appears.
We choose, but the choice itself does not arise from nothing. It emerges from a particular state of the individual interacting with a particular state of the surrounding world. It is precisely this dependence that we propose to examine.
THE ANCIENT HUMAN AND LIVING NATURE
The culture of Ancient Greece differed in many respects from modern culture in its attitude toward the surrounding world. For the ancient person, nature was not simply a lifeless mechanism existing solely for the satisfaction of human needs. Streams, forests, groves, mountains, and meadows could be perceived as parts of a living and meaningful world. Human beings did not necessarily regard themselves as absolute masters of nature. Rather, they understood themselves as participants within a larger order. This distinction is important.
Modern human beings, through the development of science and technology, have acquired extraordinary abilities to influence their environment. We transform landscapes, harness energy, construct complex machines, travel enormous distances, and intervene in natural processes. Gradually, this has encouraged the perception of nature as something that can be measured, calculated, controlled, and utilized.
Ancient consciousness was generally more cautious. A human being was conscious of his dependence on forces that greatly exceeded individual capabilities. The ancient Greeks represented many of these forces through gods, fate, necessity, and mythological images. The gods could punish arrogance, pride, and attempts to place oneself above the established order. Ancient culture therefore contained an important insight: the human being is not the absolute measure of everything that exists. No individual can violate the order of reality without consequences.
Of course, Greek mythology did not explain the laws of nature in the modern scientific sense. Nevertheless, mythological consciousness sometimes expressed with remarkable psychological accuracy an observation that remains relevant: human beings are not capable of controlling everything that happens to them.
FROM ANCIENT REALISM TO MODERN INDIVIDUALISM
Modern culture has taken a different path. Instead of a predominantly collective and mythological perception of reality, modern societies have increasingly developed an individualistic understanding of human existence. A modern work of art is often regarded primarily as an expression of the artist's individual vision.
There is an enormous advantage in this development. It has opened cultural space for countless individuals to express their talents. An artist, writer, or musician no longer has to reproduce a single officially accepted image of the world. He or she can create an individual interpretation of reality and express private experiences, fantasies, fears, desires, and convictions. At the same time, however, the relationship between the individual and reality has changed.
A modern work of art does not necessarily have to be realistic. It may be subjective, symbolic, strange, abstract, or deliberately incomprehensible. Its value may lie precisely in its individuality. One person may see genius in such a work, another may see nonsense, while a third may perceive an expression of the artist's inner world. Modern culture has therefore greatly expanded the possibilities of individual self-expression. But it has also strengthened the tendency to perceive the individual as an autonomous center of existence.
From this tendency emerges a popular idea: “Every person is the architect of his own destiny.”
At first glance, this principle is attractive. It promises almost unlimited freedom: if a person is sufficiently persistent, intelligent, disciplined, and determined, he is supposedly capable of creating whatever future he desires.
Yet experience forces us to treat this proposition with caution. A person may make enormous efforts and still fail to achieve the desired result. Another person may achieve success with comparatively little effort. One individual is born into favorable circumstances; another is born into poverty, conflict, or deprivation. One receives strong family and social support; another encounters obstacles from childhood. Therefore, circumstances cannot be excluded from any serious analysis of human fate.
THE HUMAN BEING AND RELENTLESS FATE
The ancient Greeks observed with considerable subtlety the dependence of human beings upon forces exceeding their individual will. In their worldview, the human being existed within the embrace of an inexorable fate. To modern consciousness, such a worldview may appear excessively pessimistic. Modern culture, by contrast, tends to emphasize self-realization, personal success, autonomy, and the ability of each individual to transform his own life.
But does this optimistic picture correspond completely to reality? If human beings were capable of controlling their fate entirely, why would tragic accidents, severe circumstances, natural disasters, wars, economic crises, unexpected illness, and sudden death exist? Why does one person encounter a favorable sequence of circumstances while another encounters a destructive one?
There is no simple answer.
Nevertheless, we may propose that fate need not be understood as a separate mystical force. It can instead be understood as the outcome of an enormous number of interacting causes, many of which remain outside an individual's control. In this sense, fate becomes not the opposite of logic, but one of the consequences of causality.
THE MYTH OF NARCISSUS
To gain a deeper understanding of human nature, let us turn to the ancient Greek myth of Narcissus. According to the best-known version of the story, Narcissus was exceptionally beautiful. Many people desired his affection, but he remained indifferent to them. When the nymph Echo fell in love with him, he rejected her. Echo gradually withered away, leaving only her voice.
Those whom Narcissus had rejected sought punishment for him, and Nemesis answered their appeal.
One day, after returning from a hunt, Narcissus approached a clear spring and saw his own reflection in the water. He became fascinated by the image and could no longer turn away from it. Narcissus became a prisoner of his own reflection.
He could not possess the object of his love because the object was himself. His desire therefore became a closed circle from which there was no escape. Eventually, Narcissus died, and according to the myth, a flower grew where he had died.
The story has acquired enormous significance in the history of Western thought because it can be interpreted as a symbolic representation of excessive self-involvement. Narcissus becomes an image of the human being trapped within his own “I.”
THE EGO AND HUMAN LONELINESS
We propose to consider the myth not merely as a story about vanity, but as an image of a broader psychological process.
Human beings constantly compare themselves with others. They seek recognition, affection, friendship, respect, belonging, and social significance. A person learns something about himself through other people. He encounters himself in their reactions: he is loved or rejected, respected or despised, accepted or excluded. There is therefore a permanent tension between a person's internal image of himself and the responses of the surrounding world.
If an individual considers himself highly significant while the surrounding society evaluates him differently, an internal conflict may emerge. Conversely, if a person repeatedly receives messages that he is useless, unattractive, incapable, or unwanted, these experiences may gradually become incorporated into his self-conception.
This is where isolation from other people can become especially dangerous. When an individual loses meaningful connections with others, his own interpretation of himself may become increasingly difficult to correct through ordinary social interaction. The person begins to live inside an increasingly closed psychological system.
ON SUICIDE AND THE LIMITS OF JUDGMENT
Throughout history, societies have often judged suicide with exceptional severity. In some cultures, people who died by suicide were denied ordinary burial rites or treated as morally condemned.
Modern understanding is considerably more complex. Suicide cannot be reduced to a single cause, nor can it be explained in every case as selfishness, weakness, or a desire to punish others. Suicidal behavior may arise in connection with severe psychological distress, psychiatric disorders, traumatic experiences, social isolation, hopelessness, interpersonal crises, or combinations of many factors.
Nevertheless, a philosophical question remains relevant: What happens when a person's internal image of himself becomes profoundly disconnected from the reality surrounding him?
In extreme despair, a person's attention may become so concentrated on his own suffering that the rest of the world becomes psychologically inaccessible. The individual may temporarily lose the ability to perceive the consequences of his death for those who love him.
This does not mean that suicide should be interpreted simply as egoism. Such a judgment would be both psychologically inadequate and morally dangerous. A person in a suicidal crisis may experience a profound narrowing of consciousness in which alternatives that are visible to others become practically invisible to him.
Yet the consequences for others remain real. The death of a loved one does not end with the death itself. It may leave parents, children, partners, relatives, and friends with grief that continues for years or even for the remainder of their lives.
In some individual cases, suicidal thinking may also contain fantasies of finally proving one's importance, expressing anger, communicating unbearable pain, or forcing others to recognize the depth of one's suffering. But this should not be treated as a universal explanation. Human motives are usually more complex than a single psychological formula.
The philosophical significance of the problem lies elsewhere. A person can become so immersed in his own internal reality that he temporarily loses his sense of belonging to a larger human world.
The restoration of this connection is therefore of fundamental importance. Love for other people does not eliminate suffering, but it can restore a person's awareness that his existence is connected with the existence of others. His life is not an isolated object belonging exclusively to himself. It participates in a network of relationships.
This is one reason why support, communication, psychological assistance, and human connection can become crucial during periods of extreme despair.
The problem of suicide therefore requires not condemnation, but an attempt to understand the complex circumstances that bring a human being to a state in which death appears to be the only remaining possibility.
REASON AND THE “DESTRUCTIVE IDEA”
Here we approach the central part of our argument. A human being lives not only in a world of physical objects. He also lives in a world of ideas. From facts, impressions, memories, experiences, relationships, and social interactions, a person's conception of himself gradually develops. We do not wake up every morning and consciously reconstruct our personality from the beginning. We simply experience ourselves as ourselves. In this sense, the idea of the “I” has an immediate and deeply rooted character for human consciousness.
The mind constantly processes information. It connects separate events, compares experiences, identifies patterns, and forms more general representations.
A destructive conclusion may therefore emerge gradually. It may not be a single thought consciously chosen by the individual. Rather, it may become the result of a long accumulation of experiences and interpretations.
This distinction is essential. A person does not necessarily choose every conclusion that appears within his consciousness. Some conclusions emerge from the interaction between circumstances, memory, emotion, interpretation, and previous experience.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DESIRE AND INTERNAL CONCLUSION
One of the most important distinctions in our analysis is the difference between what a person consciously desires and the conclusion he gradually reaches under the influence of accumulated circumstances.
A person in a difficult situation may desire a completely normal life. He may want to restore relationships with loved ones, solve his problems, improve his financial circumstances. He may want to feel needed again. Yet at the same time, another conclusion may gradually emerge:
“Nothing will ever change for me.”
A conflict therefore appears between conscious desire and internal belief. This is why conscious desire cannot be equated entirely with the totality of psychological processes taking place within a person.
An individual may consciously want one thing while acting under the influence of a deeper system of assumptions, expectations, fears, and interpretations. In this sense, a person's path through life may be shaped long before he consciously understands the direction in which he is moving.
FATE AND CIRCUMSTANCES
Fate is therefore connected not only with dramatic events. It is formed through a multitude of circumstances, many of which appear insignificant when considered individually.
One event influences another. One acquaintance changes the direction of a person's life. One chance encounter creates another opportunity. One decision produces new conditions from which subsequent decisions arise. Human fate should therefore not be imagined as a prewritten script existing independently of reality. It is more useful to understand it as a continuously developing chain of causes and consequences. We exist within this chain and simultaneously become part of it. Our actions affect other people. Their actions affect us. Social processes influence individual lives, while individual actions can sometimes influence society. As a result, every person exists within a vast system of interactions that can be controlled only partially.
This gives particular meaning to the ancient formula attributed to Cleanthes:
“Fate leads the willing and drags the unwilling.” We can resist circumstances, but resistance itself becomes another event in the causal chain.
Human freedom therefore does not necessarily consist in the ability to break causality. Perhaps it consists primarily in understanding circumstances, recognizing their influence, and choosing the most constructive response available within those circumstances.
Thus the ancient idea of fate unexpectedly converges with the modern philosophical problem of free will. The deeper we investigate human behavior, the more apparent it becomes that a person does not exist separately from circumstances. Circumstances shape the person. The person responds to circumstances. That response creates new circumstances. Within this continuous interaction, what we call fate emerges.
TRAGIC DEATH: COINCIDENCE OR PATTERN?
If human fate is formed through circumstances, another question arises: What, then, is a tragic death? Is it simply an accident — a random convergence of circumstances that could not have been predicted? Or does even an apparently accidental event possess a history consisting of many preceding conditions, each of which seemed insignificant at the time?
To approach this question, we must examine the structure of human behavior. Every person exists simultaneously in the physical world and in an internal world of ideas, memories, expectations, and values. Each individual possesses a particular character, habits, experiences, desires, and expectations concerning the future.
But where does this self-image come from? Throughout life, enormous quantities of information enter the human nervous system. Some of it is consciously noticed; much of it is not. Experiences are compared, connected, remembered, forgotten, and interpreted. Gradually, a relatively stable model of the self emerges. We do not constantly repeat to ourselves:
“I am I.”
The sense of personal identity usually exists without deliberate effort. A significant part of our psychological structure is therefore formed through processes that are not completely accessible to conscious control.
HOW THE INNER IDEA IS FORMED
Imagine a person who, over many years, receives predominantly negative information about himself. He repeatedly hears or thinks:
“I am not needed by anyone.”
“I am uninteresting.”
“I am unattractive.”
“I am incapable of success.”
“Nobody loves me.”
“I will never succeed.”
“My life has no meaning.”
Any one of these thoughts, by itself, does not determine a person's future.
But repetition can have a cumulative effect. The mind may begin to treat repeated interpretations as evidence of a stable pattern. Individual experiences merge into a general image, and this image gradually becomes an internal model of reality.
The person no longer merely thinks that he has experienced failure. He begins to think of himself as a failure. He no longer merely experiences loneliness. He begins to see himself as someone destined to be alone.
When an individual circumstance becomes incorporated into the definition of the “I,” changing the situation can become considerably more difficult. The person begins to act according to the model he has formed. Thus a feedback loop emerges: circumstances influence self-image; self-image influences behavior; behavior creates new circumstances.
MIND AS A SYSTEM OF CONCLUSIONS
Here we use the concept of “mind” in a specific philosophical sense. Conscious reasoning allows a person to compare information, analyze alternatives, formulate arguments, and make deliberate decisions.
By “mind,” in the broader sense used here, we mean the deeper capacity to synthesize accumulated experience and form general conclusions, including conclusions that are not constantly present in conscious attention.
If a person accumulates a large number of negative experiences, the resulting internal conclusion may become highly pessimistic.
At the same time, conscious desire may contradict it. A person may want to live. He may want love, family, friendship, success, and a normal future. Yet his internal model of the world may tell him that these things are impossible. A contradiction therefore arises between conscious desire and the system of beliefs that has developed over time.
The situation becomes particularly difficult when the individual ceases to test his beliefs against reality. He begins to live inside his own model of the world.
TRAGIC COINCIDENCE
Let us return to the question of tragic death. Sometimes a person dies under circumstances that appear completely accidental.
Yet the accident itself may be the final point of a long chain of preceding events.
To illustrate this idea, let us consider a story related to one of our acquaintances.
When he was sixteen years old, he and several friends travelled to a neighboring village approximately six kilometers from his home. There they spent time together, talked, listened to music, and met new people.
One day, he met a fourteen-year-old girl who had come from Kyiv to spend her vacation with relatives. In the city, her freedom was more restricted, whereas in the village she had been allowed to remain outside with friends until late in the evening.
For several days, nothing unusual happened. The young people talked, joked, listened to music, and gradually became acquainted. Yet the sequence of these ordinary events later acquired tragic significance.
THE FIRST DAY
On the first day, they met. Nothing appeared unusual. It was an ordinary meeting between two young people that might have ended in friendship, a brief romantic interest, or nothing significant at all.
Yet if fate is understood as a chain of causes and consequences, the chain begins precisely with such apparently insignificant events.
THE SECOND DAY
On the second day, the girl unexpectedly began speaking about the afterlife. A month earlier, the young man had read a book about vampires, so he was able to participate in the conversation. He had not particularly wanted to discuss dark subjects, especially in the evening, but the girl was interested and the conversation continued.
In itself, there was nothing dangerous about this discussion. Its significance emerged only retrospectively.
THE THIRD DAY
On the third day, the girl asked the young man to remain longer than usual. Instead of leaving at approximately eleven o'clock, they continued talking until around half past one in the morning. They discussed music, which was one of the central topics of communication among young people of that age.
Before they parted, the girl told a story about an eleven-year-old boy who had once entered a neighbor's garden to eat cherries. According to the story, the
owner had surrounded the tree with electrically charged wires. The boy died from an electric shock.
At the time, this story appeared to be nothing more than an unpleasant anecdote.
Later, however, it acquired an extraordinary symbolic significance.
THE FOURTH DAY
On the fourth day, the young people met again. After rain, they decided to change their usual route and walk on the opposite side of the street. The road was wet, and the ground had become heavy with mud. It was this apparently insignificant change of route that became another link in the tragic sequence.
Suddenly, the girl screamed and fell into a puddle. She raised her hand. The young man was nearby. Not understanding what was happening, he grabbed her wrist. At that moment, an electric current passed through his body.
THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE
The first electrical shock was so powerful that the young man felt his body gradually cease to respond to his will.
In such circumstances, the threat of death becomes immediate. Consciousness can change dramatically. Memories, images, and faces of loved ones may appear with unusual intensity.
Yet the most important struggle takes place at the physical level. The body attempts to resist the electrical current. After several seconds, the young man's strength was almost gone. It seemed that death was inevitable.
Then an unexpected movement changed the situation. Under the influence of his own body weight, he fell backward and his hand was torn away from contact with the girl. He was free.
The girl, however, remained exposed to the electrical current. The attempt to
rescue her began immediately. One of the friends ran to obtain a motorcycle and use its light to illuminate the scene.
The young man himself was soaked by the rain, and there were no dry clothes nearby. He removed his wet vest and attempted to use it as an insulating barrier while trying to pull the girl away. The electrical danger remained. His physical strength was rapidly diminishing.
Eventually, an electrical wire was discovered. Using the vest as an insulating aid, he attempted to pull the wire away from beneath the girl. Despite the danger, he continued. After some time, he managed to remove the wire. But the girl could not be saved.
THE CHAIN OF CIRCUMSTANCES
At first glance, this appears to be an ordinary tragic accident. An electrical wire happened to be in a dangerous place. Rain created a puddle. The girl happened to be nearby. The young man happened to be beside her. At that precise moment, he took her hand.
Yet if we examine the sequence more closely, an enormous number of preceding circumstances appear. They had met only a few days earlier. The girl had come to the village for a vacation. She had chosen to spend time with precisely these young people. One evening, the conversation had lasted unusually long. The following day, they changed their usual route. It had rained. They walked along a different part of the road. An electrical wire happened to be there.
None of these circumstances, taken separately, necessarily possessed tragic significance. Their combination did. This is the central point. An event may appear accidental while simultaneously possessing a long causal prehistory.
LATER INFORMATION
Several years later, the young man learned additional information from the mother of the deceased girl. Shortly before the tragedy, a difficult conversation had taken place within the family. The mother had tried to persuade her daughter not to spend time with village boys because she believed that such relationships could lead to an undesirable future.
The conversation became emotional. The daughter reportedly said:
“I will leave and never come back.”
These words may have been nothing more than an emotional reaction from a teenager. After the tragedy, however, they acquired a different emotional significance.
The girl had also recently experienced the end of a relationship with another boy. For an adult, such an event may appear relatively insignificant. For a teenager experiencing a first romantic attachment, however, the loss can feel overwhelming.
Again, we cannot say that any of these circumstances caused the tragedy. They simply demonstrate how much information may exist behind an event that, from the outside, appears instantaneous and accidental.
INFORMATION THAT REMAINED IN MEMORY
An especially striking circumstance was that on the day of the tragedy, members of the girl's family had discussed the electrical wire. They reportedly spoke about neighbors who had failed to report the malfunction to the local authorities.
It is possible that the girl saw the wire or heard the conversation. We cannot know whether she consciously remembered this information or whether it influenced her behavior in any way. Nor can we claim that the information caused the tragedy. The philosophical significance lies elsewhere.
Human beings constantly receive enormous amounts of information, much of which never becomes the object of conscious reflection. Nevertheless, memory, attention, expectation, and perception are interconnected. Information that appears insignificant at one moment may acquire meaning later.
This demonstrates how difficult it is for an individual to know the entire chain of causes contributing to a particular action or event.
CAN THIS BE CALLED FATE?
We do not claim that the described case proves the existence of mystical fate.
On the contrary, it allows us to formulate a more rational question. If even one link in the sequence had been different, the tragedy might not have occurred. But this is precisely what makes fate such a difficult concept.
It may depend not only on major decisions, but also on seemingly insignificant circumstances.
A change of route.
A conversation.
A meeting.
A delay.
A weather event.
A technical failure.
A moment of inattention.
Each may become a link in a much larger chain.
A PERSON DOES NOT KNOW THE ENTIRE CHAIN OF CAUSES
Every person is unique. The same circumstance may produce completely different reactions in different people. For one individual, the loss of a relationship may be a temporary disappointment. For another, it may become a profound psychological crisis. For one person, criticism may be a stimulus for development. For another, it may confirm an already existing belief in personal inadequacy. For one person, loneliness may become an opportunity for reflection.
For another, it may become a source of despair. Therefore, human fate cannot be understood solely through external circumstances. The internal state of the individual must also be considered. It is the interaction between external conditions and internal structure that produces a particular pattern of behavior.
THE MIND AS AN “INTERNAL JUDGE”
The mind constantly compares present circumstances with accumulated experience.
It evaluates events, establishes relationships, and forms conclusions.
We cannot always know what exact conclusion will emerge. Sometimes it is conscious and explicit. Sometimes it is implicit. Sometimes a person knows why he acted in a certain way. Sometimes he understands his motivation only afterwards.
The mind may therefore be described metaphorically as an internal judge. But this metaphor has an important limitation. The mind does not necessarily produce objectively correct conclusions. It works with the information available to it.
If the initial information is incomplete, distorted, or one-sided, the resulting conclusion may also be incorrect.
This is one of the fundamental problems of human cognition: a person can construct a logically coherent interpretation from incorrect premises.
THE DANGER OF THE HUMAN FACTOR
This problem becomes especially visible in situations where human error can lead to catastrophe. People working in hazardous industries constantly face the need to account for the human factor. Even the most sophisticated technical system does not exist independently of human beings.
A person can become tired or distracted. He can misunderstand instructions, overestimate his abilities, become afraid of superiors. He can make an incorrect decision under pressure. For this reason, modern safety systems attempt to reduce dependence on individual human error in critical processes.
Yet the human factor can never be eliminated completely. Technology is designed by people. Instructions are written by people. Control is exercised by people. Decisions are made by people. Therefore, human behavior remains one of the fundamental elements of any complex system.
FATE AND THE INSTINCT OF PRESERVING THE SPECIES
Human beings are both biological and social creatures. They require food, physical security, and biological survival, but they also require relationships, belonging, recognition, and meaningful participation in social life. Family, children, friends, professional activity, creative work, and social recognition can contribute to a person's sense of significance. A prolonged absence of meaningful relationships or social belonging may create severe psychological tension.
However, we must not turn this observation into a universal rule. A particular age, marital status, or family structure does not automatically determine psychological well-being. People are too diverse. One person may have a family and remain deeply unhappy. Another may have no children and nevertheless find profound meaning in science, art, professional work, friendship, or service to society. Therefore, what matters is not simply the external form of a person's life but the sense of meaning, significance, belonging, and connection that he experiences.
A PERSON FINDS MEANING THROUGH CONNECTION WITH OTHERS
Here we return to the social nature of human beings. People frequently evaluate their lives through their relationships with others. This is why the old saying about planting a tree, building a house, and raising a child has retained its symbolic power.
Behind these simple images lies a deeper idea: people want their existence to continue beyond the immediate boundaries of their individual lives. This continuation may be biological — through children. It may be material — through a house, a business, or another creation. It may be intellectual or spiritual — through a book, an idea, a scientific discovery, or a work of art. A person wants to feel that his existence has produced something that remains. This feeling can become an important source of psychological stability and meaning.
FROM INDIVIDUAL TRAGEDY TO COLLECTIVE ONES
If the fate of an individual is formed through the interaction of many circumstances, then the fate of a large group becomes even more complex. Disasters in which dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people die cannot usually be explained by one isolated cause.
They arise from interactions between technical systems, organizational structures, human decisions, environmental conditions, political institutions, and failures of communication.
The Chernobyl disaster provides a powerful historical example. Whatever broader political conclusions one may draw about the Soviet system, the catastrophe demonstrated how technological risk can be amplified by organizational deficiencies, inadequate safety culture, communication failures, and human decisions.
In a rigid hierarchy, a subordinate may hesitate to challenge a superior. The superior may, in turn, be following instructions from higher management. Information is transmitted through a chain. Each participant may assume that someone else has already assessed the danger. In this way, an individual error can become a systemic failure.
AUTHORITARIANISM AND TECHNOLOGICAL RISK
The more complex a technological system becomes, the more important transparent communication becomes. If an employee is afraid to report a problem, the system loses an opportunity to correct the error. If a subordinate is expected to obey without question, critical thinking is weakened. If management assumes that its decisions cannot be wrong, warnings may be interpreted as disobedience rather than as safety information.
Technical safety therefore depends not only on the quality of equipment.
It also depends on institutional culture.
A technological civilization requires more than mathematical calculation. It requires the ability to question assumptions, verify information, communicate doubts, identify errors, and revise decisions.
FUKUSHIMA AND THE LIMITS OF CALCULATION
Similar problems have appeared in other technologically advanced societies. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident demonstrated that even a highly sophisticated technological system cannot be completely separated from natural forces, technical limitations, organizational decisions, and human judgment.
This leads to an important philosophical conclusion: Calculation is not identical with reality. A mathematical model may be extremely accurate within a specified set of assumptions.
Reality, however, may contain circumstances that were not included in the model.
Therefore, mathematical modeling must remain connected with observation, testing, experience, and continuous reassessment. Here we encounter the broader question of the role of mathematics in human cognition.
MATHEMATICS AND NATURE
Humanity made an enormous intellectual advance when it learned to describe relationships mathematically. Ancient civilizations gradually moved from counting concrete objects to manipulating abstract quantities. The development of mathematics in ancient Egypt was an important stage in this process, although mathematical thought developed independently and progressively in several ancient civilizations.
The crucial intellectual step was the ability to consider not only concrete objects but also relationships between them. Two objects could be represented by the number two. Five objects could be represented by the number five. Eventually, numbers could be manipulated independently of the objects they originally represented.
This was a fundamental intellectual transformation. Human beings became capable of constructing abstract models that existed first in thought and could later be applied to physical reality. One of the foundations of science and technology emerged from this capacity.
MATHEMATICS AS THEORETICAL SYNTHESIS
Mathematics possesses a remarkable feature. It allows us to construct structures that may not exist directly in immediate experience. We can mentally construct a figure, calculate its properties, determine relationships between quantities, and then investigate whether an analogous structure exists in nature.
In this sense, mathematics is not merely a passive record of observation. It allows human beings to generate new theoretical structures.
But a limit appears here. A mathematical object is idealized. A physical object is not. A mathematical point does not age. A mathematical circle does not deteriorate. A mathematical quantity does not become tired. Physical objects, by contrast, exist within changing environments and are subject to countless influences.
Therefore, mathematical models should not be confused with reality itself. They are representations of selected aspects of reality. Their extraordinary effectiveness does not eliminate the distinction between model and world.
IDEAL THINKING AND THE REAL WORLD
Thinkers such as Plato, Leibniz, and Descartes demonstrated the extraordinary power of abstract reasoning. Their philosophical systems show how human beings can construct concepts that extend far beyond immediate experience. This is one of the greatest powers of philosophical thought. Human beings can mentally construct an ideal state, a perfectly just society, an ideal human being, a flawless logical system, or a perfect mathematical model.
But there is a fundamental difference between an idea and reality. An idea may be internally consistent while reality remains resistant to complete conceptual organization. A mathematical model may be perfect within its formal structure, while real human beings do not necessarily behave according to that structure.
This is why philosophical and political systems that appear logically impeccable can encounter serious difficulties when confronted with history.
Human society is more complex than any ideal scheme. The human being is not exclusively rational. Human behavior includes emotion, instinct, habit, fear, desire for recognition, desire for superiority, attachment, imitation, and many processes that are not fully conscious. Therefore, every ideal theory of human behavior encounters the complexity of the actual human being.
THE MAIN PROBLEM OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
This brings us to an important problem in modern applied psychology. Psychological counseling, personal-development programs, and various forms of psychological assistance seek to influence human behavior by working with perception, interpretation, emotion, and thought.
But an important question arises: To what extent can a person independently transform his own internal structure? People often assume that thinking and will are instruments completely under conscious control. It seems that we first think, then decide, and finally act.
But the process may also be viewed from another perspective. We constantly receive information from the world, see people, hear their words, read books, watch films, receive education. We experience success and failure. All of this contributes to the formation of our internal system of representations.
A person does not consciously choose every thought that appears in his mind.
The thought simply appears. Sometimes we accept it, sometimes we reject it, sometimes we do not even notice it. But the very possibility of a particular thought arising is connected with previous experience and present circumstances.
REASON, THINKING, AND WILL
For the purposes of our analysis, it is useful to distinguish three levels of cognitive activity.
The first is information received from the external world.
The second is the processing and interpretation of that information through thought.
The third is the formation of broader concepts, values, and conclusions.
Reason, in this process, performs a synthesizing function. It connects separate pieces of information and creates a more general picture. That picture then influences thought and will.
A person does not act simply because he has received information. He acts according to the meaning that information acquires within his psychological and value system.
The same event can therefore have completely different meanings for two people.
For one person, dismissal from a job may be a catastrophe. For another, it may be an opportunity to begin a new life. For one person, criticism may mean humiliation. For another, it may represent useful advice. For one person, loneliness may mean suffering. For another, it may mean freedom. An external circumstance therefore does not determine behavior by itself. It interacts with an internal structure that has already developed within the person.
REASON, CIRCUMSTANCES, AND CHOICE
Reason and circumstances can be regarded as two complementary systems whose interaction shapes human choice. The individual possesses a system of values, memories, expectations, and interpretations that guides practical decisions. At the same time, the external world determines the conditions within which those decisions can be made.
When we judge the actions of others — or reconsider our own decisions after the event — a choice may appear foolish, irrational, or mistaken. Yet such judgments are often based on incomplete information.
We are rarely able to reconstruct the entire psychological and external situation that existed at the precise moment when a decision was made. A person acts not only on the basis of objective circumstances but also under the influence of previous experience, emotions, beliefs, expectations, and perceptions.
Human choice therefore cannot be understood solely as the product of completely independent reasoning. At any particular moment, the mind works with the psychological material accumulated up to that point. Circumstances determine the space of possibilities, while psychological experience influences how that space is perceived.
Our choices are therefore formed at the intersection of two realities: what is happening around us and what has already been formed within us.
CAN AN EXCESS OF INFORMATION LEAD TO MENTAL DISORDER?
It is sometimes claimed that excessive information overloads the brain and causes incorrect conclusions that may eventually lead to serious mental disorders.
Such a claim requires caution. A large quantity of information, by itself, does not mean that a mental disorder will develop. Modern human beings receive enormous amounts of information every day: news, social media, books, conversations, images, advertising, and professional material.
The human brain possesses mechanisms for selecting, filtering, and processing information.
The problem therefore cannot be reduced simply to quantity. What matters is also how information is interpreted, how contradictory it is, how stressful the environment becomes, how capable the individual is of adapting, and what psychological vulnerabilities are already present.
Informational overload, chronic stress, and clinical mental disorders must therefore be distinguished.
The philosophical problem is more precise. If a person repeatedly receives distorted or incomplete information and constructs his internal model of reality from it, that model may gradually diverge from reality.
REALITY AND THE INTERNAL MODEL
Human cognition creates an internal representation of the world. This representation can never be a complete copy of reality. We cannot simultaneously perceive every existing circumstance. Consciousness selects certain elements, connects them, assigns meaning to them, and constructs an interpretation.
In this sense, every person lives simultaneously in two worlds: the objective world of circumstances and the subjective world of interpretation. The greater the discrepancy between these worlds, the more difficult adaptation may become.
Healthy thinking therefore requires some capacity to test internal beliefs against external reality. A person needs opportunities to encounter disagreement, recognize mistakes, revise assumptions, and change conclusions.
This is one reason why social interaction is so important for intellectual development.
LONELINESS AS A SOURCE OF INTELLECTUAL ISOLATION
One circumstance capable of changing a person's internal world is prolonged loneliness. When an individual is isolated from society for a long period, he loses an important mechanism for testing his perceptions against the perceptions of others.
The problem is not merely the absence of communication. It is also the absence of intellectual exchange. A conversation forces us to explain ourselves. An objection forces us to examine an argument. Criticism can reveal weaknesses.
Agreement can reinforce certain conclusions. Society therefore functions, metaphorically, as a mirror in which individuals continually encounter alternative interpretations of themselves and the world.
WITHDRAWAL INTO ONESELF
Another circumstance is conscious or forced withdrawal into a closed intellectual environment.
Imagine the leader of a small ideological or religious group who encounters almost no intellectual resistance. Followers constantly confirm his correctness. He has little contact with people outside the group. A closed intellectual system may gradually emerge. Each new thought confirms the previous one.
Each follower strengthens the authority of the leader. Each external criticism may be interpreted as evidence of hostility from the outside world. Such a system becomes increasingly stable internally while becoming increasingly resistant to external correction.
A person may therefore become absolutely convinced of his own correctness even when his beliefs appear completely unreasonable to outsiders.
The important point is not that religious or ideological commitment is inherently pathological. The danger arises when any system — religious, political, ideological, scientific, or personal — becomes completely closed to correction.
CONCENTRATION ON THE EXACT SCIENCES
A third circumstance concerns excessive confinement of thinking within formal systems.
Mathematics possesses a feature that distinguishes it from most social relationships. Within a specified formal system, once a proposition has been rigorously demonstrated from accepted premises, the proof settles the question within that system.
For example:
2 + 2 = 4.
There is no need to negotiate the result according to personal preference.
Social life is fundamentally different. There is no simple mathematical equivalent for most human situations.
A person may be right from one perspective and wrong from another. One action may produce benefits for one person and harm for another. Therefore, transferring the certainty of formal mathematical reasoning directly into the social world can produce excessive confidence.
Mathematics is extraordinarily powerful for describing quantitative relationships. Human life, however, contains qualitative, historical, emotional, and interpersonal dimensions that cannot always be reduced to numbers.
THE DANGER OF CREATING ONE'S OWN REALITY
If a person remains inside a closed intellectual environment for a long period, he may encounter less and less resistance to his beliefs. He no longer hears opposing opinions. He stops testing his conclusions. He does not correct mistakes. His internal system begins to function as a self-confirming structure. Eventually, he may conclude that the entire surrounding world is wrong rather than considering that his own interpretation might be mistaken.
Healthy intellectual development requires the opposite process. We communicate, explain, encounter objections, make mistakes, revise our conclusions. We test our ideas against reality. This continuous process helps maintain contact between internal representations and the external world.
UNDERSTANDING AND REASON
Here we return to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. For the purposes of our study, Kant's distinction between understanding (Verstand) and reason (Vernunft) is particularly important.
Understanding is concerned with concepts, judgments, and the organization of experience.
Reason seeks broader unity. It attempts to connect individual forms of knowledge within more comprehensive systems of thought.
The distinction is relevant to our investigation of fate and circumstances because human beings do not merely encounter isolated events. They constantly attempt to connect them. We see individual phenomena and search for relationships among them. We experience separate events and attempt to construct a general picture. In this sense, the human mind has a natural tendency toward synthesis.
CAN REASON BE WRONG?
If reason draws conclusions from available information, another question arises:
Can the conclusion itself be wrong?
Certainly.
But it is useful to distinguish between the logical structure of reasoning and the truth of its premises.
A person may reason consistently from the information available to him. Yet if that information is incomplete, distorted, or one-sided, the resulting conclusion may fail to correspond to reality.
The problem therefore does not necessarily lie in the ability to reason. It may lie in the material from which the reasoning begins. If a person is constantly exposed to only one side of reality, his understanding may become one-sided as well.
Intellectual development therefore requires not merely information, but comparison, criticism, alternative perspectives, and the willingness to revise conclusions.
SOCIETY AS A SYSTEM OF CORRECTION
A person does not construct his entire system of values from nothing. Society transmits an enormous amount of cultural experience accumulated over generations. Moral norms, traditions, laws, philosophy, religion, literature, art, and education all provide frameworks through which individuals orient themselves.
When one system of values loses authority, society begins searching for alternatives.
This is why people cannot exist in a complete vacuum of meaning. When traditional explanations of the world weaken, new explanations emerge. Psychology, philosophy, religion, ideology, popular culture, and various spiritual movements can all become sources of meaning. Human beings need more than information. They also need an interpretation of their existence.
PSYCHOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY, AND RELIGION
Modern psychology has, in some respects, assumed functions that were historically associated primarily with philosophy, religion, and moral education.
A person does not necessarily approach a psychologist only with a concrete practical problem.
He may also ask:
Why am I the way I am?
Why am I unhappy?
How should I live?
What is my place in the world?
These questions extend beyond clinical psychology. They contain philosophical and existential dimensions.
When traditional systems of meaning weaken, individuals often search for new sources of explanation and hope. This helps explain why psychologists, philosophers, religious figures, spiritual teachers, fortune-tellers, and folk healers may all attract people seeking answers to questions of existence. Their popularity cannot be explained solely by ignorance. It can also reflect a deep human need for meaning, explanation, belonging, and hope.
PRACTICAL FREEDOM
If fate is connected with causality, does this mean that there is no freedom?
We do not believe that such a conclusion is necessary.
A person possesses a certain degree of practical freedom.
He can interrupt an impulse. He can refuse to act, reconsider the past, change his conception of the future. He can choose among available alternatives. But this freedom is not absolute. It exists within a system of limitations. A person cannot abolish the laws of nature. He cannot change what has already happened. He cannot instantly appear thousands of kilometers away without passing through some physical process.
We may imagine ourselves on a distant island, but in order to reach it physically, we must travel. Nature contains no arbitrary gaps. Events are connected through processes and conditions.
SOCIAL FREEDOM
There is another level of freedom: social freedom. Society restricts individual behavior through laws, morality, traditions, institutions, and social expectations.
At first glance, this appears to reduce individual freedom. But social restrictions can simultaneously create conditions for greater freedom at the collective level.
If every person were free to satisfy every desire regardless of its consequences for others, the freedom of one individual would quickly become a limitation on the freedom of another.
Civilization therefore requires the mutual limitation of individual claims.
We surrender some possibilities in order to create the possibility of living together.
Social freedom is therefore not simply the absence of restrictions. It is also the existence of conditions in which people can coexist without constantly destroying one another's freedom.
THE HUMAN BEING AS OBJECT AND SUBJECT
A person can perceive himself in two different ways. On the one hand, he is an object: a physical organism existing in space and time. On the other hand, he experiences himself as a subject: an inner “I” capable of thinking, desiring, evaluating, and choosing.
This duality creates one of the central philosophical problems of psychology.
Where does the idea of the inner “I” come from?
Our faces differ from the faces of other people. Our bodies possess particular characteristics. We have received a particular upbringing. We have specific relationships, memories, possessions, habits, knowledge, and interests. Our cognitive system integrates these elements into a relatively stable representation:
“This is me.”
The inner “I” therefore does not arise in isolation. It develops through continuous interaction with the surrounding world.
IS OUR CHOICE PREDETERMINED?
If every state of a person has preceding causes, a difficult question about free will inevitably arises.
We choose an action. But why do we choose that action? Because we have a particular character. Why do we have that character? Because it has been influenced by heredity, upbringing, experience, education, and environment. Why did we receive precisely those experiences? Because certain events occurred before them.
Thus an apparently endless chain of causes emerges. Our choice becomes part of general causality.
But this does not mean that responsibility should disappear. On the contrary, understanding the causes of behavior may increase responsibility.
If we understand why certain circumstances provoke particular reactions, we may become capable of modifying those circumstances or changing our response to them.
Freedom may therefore consist not in destroying causality, but in understanding causality and acting consciously within it.
INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM
Human beings possess an important form of freedom in thought. We can imagine different futures, reinterpret the past, construct alternative possibilities. We can change our attitudes toward events and people. But intellectual freedom does not imply physical freedom from the laws of nature.
We can imagine flying without an aircraft. Our imagination does not thereby make the human body capable of unaided flight. We can imagine returning physically to the past. Imagination alone does not reverse the passage of time. We can imagine ourselves in any place on Earth. Physical movement to that place nevertheless requires time, energy, and appropriate conditions.
Human freedom therefore exists within objective reality, not instead of it.
CAN PSYCHOLOGISTS AND HEALERS HELP?
We cannot categorically claim that psychological assistance or traditional healing practices never produce benefits.
Conversation, attention, emotional support, expectation, and belief can affect a person's subjective experience and, in some circumstances, their behavior and physiological state.
Stress can negatively affect sleep, concentration, mood, and general well-being. If a person reduces anxiety, sleeps better, receives social support, and regains a sense of security, his overall condition may improve.
Therefore, an intervention may sometimes produce a real benefit even when the explanation given for that benefit is incorrect.
This distinction is important. The reality of an effect does not automatically prove the truth of the explanation attached to it.
THE POWER OF SUGGESTION
Let us recall the story of an elderly woman describing an experience from her childhood.
When she was seven years old, she was noticeably shorter than other children of her age. Her parents took care of her, but they remained concerned about her development.
Eventually, her mother took her to a folk healer. The healer performed a ritual and announced that she had discovered a “curse.”
According to the woman's later recollection, she subsequently began to grow.
Today, such a story cannot be used as evidence for the existence of a supernatural curse.
Children naturally grow, and the timing of growth can vary considerably. Nevertheless, the psychological effects of the experience may have been real. The child may have received emotional reassurance. Her mother believed that something was being done to help her. The girl may have experienced hope rather than helplessness. At the same time, her body was naturally undergoing developmental changes.
Thus, the coincidence of two events does not establish a causal connection between them. But the psychological effect of the experience itself may nevertheless have been genuine.
WARTS AND THE PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECT
Another example concerns a young man who had warts on his hands. His parents tried several methods of treatment. Eventually, his mother took him to a folk healer. After the ritual, the warts disappeared.
Again, this cannot automatically be regarded as evidence of supernatural healing. Some skin conditions resolve spontaneously. Treatment may have coincided with natural remission. Nevertheless, belief in treatment may influence emotional state and stress.
A calmer person may experience less anxiety and improved general well-being. The relationship between belief and physical condition is therefore more complex than a simple opposition between “scientific” and “unscientific.” One must distinguish between the effect of an experience and the explanation offered for that effect.
STRESS AS A FACTOR IN HEALTH
Human beings constantly interact with their environment. Stress can arise when perceived demands exceed a person's perceived ability to cope with them. When stress becomes chronic, it may negatively affect sleep, mood, concentration, behavior, and general health.
Sometimes, therefore, what helps a person is not an unusual treatment itself but the experience of being heard, supported, protected, and no longer completely alone.
This is why a conversation with a relative, friend, therapist, or even an unexpected acquaintance can sometimes have a powerful psychological effect.
The person feels better partly because his internal world is no longer completely closed.
CONTRADICTORY ADVICE
A problem arises with some popular psychological recommendations.
A person may be told: “Change yourself. Become better. Take control of your life.”
Then he may hear: “Remain yourself. Accept yourself as you are.”
At first glance, these statements contradict one another. Yet they address different psychological needs. The first emphasizes development. The second emphasizes self-acceptance.
If a person completely rejects himself, self-acceptance may be necessary. If a person uses “self-acceptance” to justify destructive behavior and refuses all development, change may become necessary.
The phrase “be yourself” is therefore insufficient by itself. We must first determine what we mean by the “self” and which aspects of that self should be accepted, changed, or developed.
PSYCHOLOGY AS ANALYSIS
Psychological analysis becomes particularly valuable here. Instead of merely giving a person advice, it may be more useful to investigate the causes of his behavior.
Why does he react in this particular way? What circumstances formed his beliefs? What experiences shaped his understanding of himself? Why do certain situations produce fear while others produce aggression? Why does one person adapt easily to change while another becomes overwhelmed by it? These questions are considerably deeper than simple recommendations.
Psychology becomes especially useful when it helps a person see the structure of his own behavior.
CRIME AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
This problem is also important for society. Traditional legal systems generally respond to crime after an offense has been committed.
A person violates the law. An investigation follows. Punishment may follow. Rehabilitation may then be attempted.
But another question arises: Can some causes of harmful behavior be addressed before an actual crime occurs?
Preventive work may be valuable when it focuses on identifiable risk factors, dangerous circumstances, escalating conflict, or requests for help.
However, extreme caution is essential. A person must never be treated as a criminal merely because of personality traits, appearance, diagnosis, social background, or isolated psychological characteristics. Any preventive system must respect individual rights and the presumption of innocence. Otherwise, the attempt to prevent crime can itself become a source of injustice.
Psychological analysis should therefore be used to provide assistance, identify dangerous situations, and reduce actual risks — not to punish people for crimes they have not committed.
PSYCHOLOGICAL PREVENTION
Ideally, society should seek not only to correct consequences but also to reduce the probability that destructive situations will arise.
This requires:
accessible psychological assistance;
family support;
social integration;
education;
open communication;
early support during serious personal crises;
safe working environments;
effective mechanisms for identifying and addressing dangerous situations;
protection for people facing severe social or psychological difficulties.
This approach corresponds directly to the general logic of our study. If circumstances contribute to the formation of fate, then changing circumstances can change subsequent outcomes.
FATE AND THE POSSIBILITY OF CHANGING IT
At the beginning of our discussion, we asked: Can a person change his fate? We can now give a more complex answer.
If fate means a mystical scenario predetermined in every detail, its existence cannot be demonstrated empirically.
If fate means the continuously developing sequence of causes and consequences that shapes human life, then it exists as a real feature of human existence.
We cannot cancel the past. But we can change the present. And changing the present becomes one of the causes of a different future. A person therefore cannot escape causality. But he can become an active participant within it. This distinction is fundamental.
We do not choose all our circumstances but we can influence some of them. We do not choose the past but we can change our interpretation of it. We cannot know the entire future but we can create conditions that increase the probability of certain outcomes.
At the same time, not every person possesses equal psychological, social, material, or physical resources for such change. Therefore, personal transformation should not be presented as a simple matter of willpower.
THE SYSTEM OF VALUES AND THE MIND
Sociology provides another important perspective because it examines the individual within networks of relationships, institutions, groups, and social structures. It studies patterns of behavior and social development through observation, empirical evidence, and statistical analysis rather than through individual impressions alone.
At the same time, sociology, like every empirical discipline, must remain within the limits of what can actually be investigated.
From this we can draw an important conclusion. Changing one's position in life does not change the laws of nature themselves. It can, however, radically change one's relationship to those laws. A person may change his beliefs, values, and goals, while the external world remains governed by its own processes.
What changes first is the person himself — his perception of circumstances, interpretation of events, and direction of action.
Applied psychology has therefore acquired an increasingly significant role in modern society.
This development is understandable. Modern science has challenged many traditional explanations of the world and has transformed the intellectual environment in which religious and philosophical systems once operated.
Works such as Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species and Albert Einstein's theory of relativity contributed to an intellectual transformation in which natural phenomena could increasingly be explained through naturalistic models rather than exclusively through traditional theological concepts.
As a result, psychological and scientific interpretations of human existence increasingly occupy intellectual territory that was once dominated by religious explanations.
Yet human beings continue to need systems of meaning. Not everyone is capable of independently constructing a sophisticated philosophical worldview. Most people need a comprehensible framework capable of organizing enormous quantities of fragmented information into a meaningful structure.
This helps explain the continuing expansion of psychology, self-development culture, philosophy, spirituality, and other systems of interpretation.
Human beings will continue to ask fundamental questions:
Why should I live?
How should I treat others?
What should I consider valuable?
How should I respond to suffering?
What makes life meaningful?
These questions cannot be eliminated simply by increasing the quantity of information available to us.
THE HIERARCHICAL ORGANIZATION OF THE MIND
By the word “system,” we mean a hierarchical organization of ideas in which more general concepts organize more specific ones.
For clarity, this structure can be represented as follows:
Central idea
Abstract concepts and principles
General ideas
Concrete objects and experiences
Concrete experiences are organized through general ideas. General ideas may, in turn, be subordinated to more abstract principles. Ultimately, a person's understanding of the world may become organized around one or several central ideas.
For some people, the central idea may be God. In such a system, individual events, moral norms, knowledge, suffering, and personal goals acquire meaning within a religious framework.
Modern individualistic culture often encourages people to organize their lives around the idea of the self. The individual is encouraged to regard himself as an autonomous center of decision-making, possessing freedom and responsibility.
The religious hierarchy places the ultimate reference point elsewhere. The central idea is God's will.
Here the traditional saying is appropriate:
“Man proposes, but God disposes.”
When Jesus Christ prayed before His arrest, according to the Gospel of Luke, He said:
“Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.”
— Luke 22:42
The difference between the two systems therefore lies not simply in the presence or absence of values. It lies in the position occupied by the highest organizing principle.
In one system, the human “I” occupies the highest position. In another, God occupies that position.
HOW THE CENTRAL IDEA ORGANIZES INFORMATION
Depending on which principle is central, people tend to interpret new information through that framework. If new information contradicts a fundamental belief, the mind may reinterpret it, integrate it into the existing structure, or reject it.
This phenomenon is not exclusive to religion. A person whose worldview is centered on God may interpret contradictory evidence through theology.
But a person whose worldview is centered on the autonomous “I” may also reject information that threatens his belief in complete independence, control, or personal superiority. Every worldview can become closed.
The emergence of numerous books and systems teaching people how to organize their lives, overcome difficulties, achieve happiness, control their destiny, and attain success reflects a growing cultural emphasis on psychological self-management.
Modern culture has therefore developed a powerful secular system of values centered on the individual. This does not necessarily mean that religion will disappear. Rather, it indicates that human beings increasingly employ several competing frameworks when searching for answers to fundamental questions.
THE PRINCIPLE OF THE MIND
Within the conceptual framework proposed here, the mind may be understood as the capacity of the brain and consciousness to synthesize circumstances into ideas, values, and practical orientations, and to direct behavior toward their realization.
The mind is dynamic. Circumstances change. As circumstances change, the significance assigned to them can also change. Some values become stronger. Others weaken. Still others disappear.
Imagine a person who experiences a serious accident and comes close to death. At one moment, he may conclude that life has lost its meaning. But if he survives and his circumstances change, the same experience may later acquire a different interpretation. Meaning can return.
The mind therefore constantly reevaluates reality. Human beings evaluate almost everything. Objects and events may appear pleasant or unpleasant, useful or harmful, desirable or undesirable. We love, dislike, fear, desire, reject, admire, or ignore.
Imagine a person who owns a laptop and is completely satisfied with it. Then he sees a newer computer belonging to a friend. Later, he discovers that many of his acquaintances already use newer models. His evaluation changes. The old laptop, which was previously sufficient, now appears less desirable. The mind has reassessed the circumstances. The person may decide to acquire a new computer.
Someone might object: “I am satisfied with my old laptop.”
That is entirely possible. In that case, another value may simply occupy a higher position. Perhaps the person prefers to save money for travel, education, housing, or family needs. The mind can therefore sacrifice one value in favor of another that it considers more important.
Human behavior is not determined by isolated desires. It is influenced by the hierarchy of values.
OPINION AND TRUTH
An opinion may be understood as a provisional interpretation of a phenomenon based on incomplete information.
In simplified form:
OPINION = available factual information + interpretation + hypotheses and assumptions
When a person lacks sufficient facts to reach a logically complete understanding, the mind fills gaps with hypotheses.
This is unavoidable. Human beings constantly make provisional assumptions in order to navigate an uncertain world. If a hypothesis later corresponds with additional evidence, the original opinion becomes more accurate.
But a correct guess is not identical with knowledge. Truth requires correspondence between a proposition and the reality to which it refers.
In simplified form:
TRUTH = a conception that corresponds to the phenomenon itself.
The distinction between opinion and truth therefore concerns not simply confidence. A person may be extremely confident and still be wrong. What matters is correspondence with reality.
GRIEF, JOY, AND HAPPINESS
For the purposes of our conceptual model, grief can be understood as a psychological state in which perceived unfavorable circumstances outweigh favorable ones, particularly when the unfavorable circumstance concerns a highly valued object.
A serious loss can overshadow many positive circumstances. The death of a loved one, for example, may make financial success, possessions, or professional achievements temporarily seem insignificant.
We may therefore represent the idea schematically:
GRIEF = perceived unfavorable circumstances outweigh perceived favorable circumstances.
The idea of death represents an extreme form of loss:
DEATH = the irreversible loss of life.
Joy, by contrast, can be understood as a state in which favorable circumstances predominate over unfavorable ones.
JOY = favorable circumstances predominate over unfavorable circumstances.
Happiness is more complex.
It may be regarded as a broader and more stable condition in which a person perceives his life as fundamentally favorable and meaningful.
Absolute happiness, however, is difficult to define because real life always contains uncertainty, loss, change, and new demands. The pursuit of happiness therefore becomes a process rather than a permanently secured state.
DREAMS AS THE WORKING OF THE MIND
The operation of the mind may also be explored through dreams. During sleep, ordinary critical control changes, while memories and emotional experiences continue to be processed.
During the day, a person receives countless impressions. Among them, one dominant emotional state may emerge: joy, anxiety, fear, grief, anticipation, or excitement. The mind may connect these fresh experiences with memories and previously established associations.
Dreams can therefore contain combinations of recent experiences and older memories. Their content may be distorted, symbolic, fragmented, or emotionally exaggerated.
Freud famously interpreted dreams in connection with wishes and unconscious desires.
Our proposed interpretation is somewhat different. A dream may also be viewed as an attempt of the sleeping mind to construct some form of coherence from fragmented sensations, memories, and emotions.
This does not mean that all dreams have one universal mechanism. Nor does it mean that nightmares represent hidden wishes for terror or destruction. Rather, dreams demonstrate that the mind can organize experience in ways that differ radically from ordinary waking reasoning.
THE TRANSCENDENTAL NATURE OF THE HUMAN BEING
According to the philosophical concept proposed here, an important feature of human existence is its capacity to transcend immediate experience through ideas, ideals, goals, and meanings.
Nature is characterized by constant transformation. Matter changes from one state to another. Events occur in sequences. We interpret these sequences through causal relationships.
Yet human beings do something additional. They construct meanings that extend beyond the immediate present.
A person can live according to a future goal. He can sacrifice present pleasure for a future purpose. He can act according to an ideal that has never been perfectly realized. He can preserve the memory of someone who is no longer alive. He can devote his life to an idea whose consequences may appear only generations later.
Human existence therefore cannot be adequately described only as the immediate succession of biological events. Human beings live through meanings as well as through physical processes.
TRANSCENDENTAL, TRANSCENDENT, AND IMMANENT IDEAS
Here an important philosophical clarification is necessary.
In Kantian philosophy, transcendental does not simply mean “beyond experience.”
Kant uses the term to refer to the conditions under which experience and knowledge are possible.
By contrast, transcendent refers to what goes beyond the limits of possible experience.
This distinction is important for the terminology used in our argument.
A transcendental analysis asks: What makes experience or knowledge possible in the first place?
A transcendent idea, in contrast, concerns something that cannot be established as an object of possible empirical experience.
For example, God, the soul, freedom, and immortality become, in Kant's philosophy, central ideas of reason, but they cannot simply be treated as empirical objects demonstrated in the same way as physical phenomena.
We therefore propose to distinguish three categories.
Immanent ideas are ideas that remain within the domain of possible experience and can, at least in principle, be investigated empirically. For example, the proposition that matter has an atomic structure belongs to the domain of empirical investigation.
Transcendent ideas concern what goes beyond possible empirical experience. They may function as metaphysical, moral, or regulative ideas, but they cannot be established simply through ordinary empirical observation.
Transcendental analysis, finally, concerns the conditions that make experience and cognition possible.
This distinction prevents the three concepts from being treated as synonyms.
THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN IDEAS
Human evolution occurred together with the development of increasingly complex forms of cognition.
According to the hypothesis proposed here, the earliest human consciousness was primarily oriented toward immediate biological needs: survival, food, protection, reproduction, and avoidance of danger.
As the environment became more complex, human beings required increasingly sophisticated systems for understanding their surroundings.
A rudimentary awareness of the self emerged.
The first idea: “I.”
The individual recognized himself as a distinct organism. With this recognition came awareness of an external world that did not obey his wishes.
Then came the necessity of taking other people into account.
The second idea: “We.”
Collective existence increased protection against danger and created cooperation, dependence, and shared interests. From this social structure emerged increasingly complex ideas about personal and collective well-being.
The third idea: “Happiness.”
At the same time, human beings encountered forces they could not explain: storms, lightning, earthquakes, disease, death, and the enormous scale of the cosmos.
These phenomena encouraged the development of supernatural explanations.
The fourth idea: “God.”
Finally, the problem of death demanded another explanation. Human beings developed concepts of continued existence after death.
The fifth idea: “The Afterlife.”
Reward and punishment after death could then become principles guiding behavior in earthly life.
These five ideas should not be understood as a literal historical sequence established by scientific evidence. They represent a philosophical model of how human consciousness may organize fundamental questions:
self ; community ; well-being ; ultimate reality ; destiny beyond death.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD'S MIND
If we observe the development of a modern child, certain broad analogies can be drawn with this philosophical model.
First, the child gradually develops an awareness of personal identity. Then he discovers other people and develops an understanding of belonging to a family and society. He becomes increasingly aware of his own desires. Later, he begins to ask questions about justice, death, existence, the world, and meaning. A more comprehensive conception of existence generally develops much later, as separate values become integrated into a broader worldview.
This does not prove that individual development literally repeats the historical evolution of humanity. It simply suggests an interesting analogy: the development of the individual mind may recapitulate certain structural questions that humanity has confronted throughout history.
Psychology, in this framework, concerns the individual's internal experience and behavior.
Philosophy addresses broader questions about the systems of meaning within which those experiences are interpreted.
THE EVOLUTIONARY SCHEME
The five fundamental ideas in the evolutionary model can be represented as follows:
I
We
Happiness
Freedom of choice
Meaning of life
Here:
Freedom of choice means the perceived ability to select among available possibilities and pursue personal goals.
Happiness represents the ideal of favorable existence and personal well-being.
Meaning of life represents the attempt to understand and realize an ultimate purpose of existence.
Within such a system, a person may be regarded as moral when he adopts a principle such as:
Treat others as you would like them to treat you.
THE RELIGIOUS SCHEME
The religious system may be represented as follows:
Soul
God
Freedom of choice
Blessing
Kingdom of God
Here:
Blessing represents the desire to live in accordance with divine will and receive God's favor.
Freedom of choice represents the capacity to choose between morally different intentions and actions.
The Kingdom of God represents the ultimate goal of a righteous life.
Within this interpretation, religious systems can be regarded as historically significant because they provided comprehensive frameworks for understanding existence long before modern secular systems emerged.
Despite their differences, religious and secular evolutionary systems address many of the same fundamental questions.
What is the human being?
What is valuable?
How should one live?
What is the purpose of existence?
What happens after death?
What distinguishes them is primarily the interpretation of these questions. In the religious conception, the central concepts may be God, the soul, moral freedom, divine blessing, and the Kingdom of God.
In secular systems, the unifying principle may be humanity, love, individual flourishing, freedom, scientific progress, or another universal value.
The difference is therefore not necessarily the presence or absence of values. The difference concerns the ultimate foundation upon which those values are organized.
MORALITY AND PERSONAL WELL-BEING
When a person concentrates exclusively on himself and loses his connection with society, he may gradually lose an important source of meaning.
This does not mean that everyone oriented toward personal well-being becomes immoral. Personal well-being is not itself an evil. The problem arises when personal interests become so dominant that the interests and dignity of other people are systematically ignored.
Human beings exist within complex networks of relationships. Personal well-being depends partly on family, friends, colleagues, communities, institutions, and society.
A difficult question nevertheless arises. If many people whom we consider immoral live successful lives and survive into old age, does this mean that morality has no relationship with human fate?
The answer may lie partly in the relativity of human judgment. People frequently disagree about what constitutes a moral action. An individual may behave in ways that appear immoral to outsiders while believing that he is acting out of loyalty to his family, community, organization, or nation.
Therefore, morality cannot be reduced simply to loyalty toward one's own group. A broader moral principle is required.
The Christian tradition expresses such universality through the command to love God and one's neighbor.
The historical condemnation of Jesus also demonstrates an important fact: social judgments of morality are not infallible. A society can condemn a person whom later generations regard as morally exemplary.
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM
Freedom is one of the most difficult problems in philosophy.
Immanuel Kant gave the problem a particularly sophisticated treatment by distinguishing theoretical and practical reason and connecting moral action with autonomy.
We may also turn to the words attributed to Jesus Christ:
“If you abide in My word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Freedom in the Christian understanding does not necessarily mean the absence of all obligations. A person may be liberated from one form of dependence in order to voluntarily accept another commitment.
Freedom can therefore be understood partly as the capacity to determine one's intention and orientation.
Kant's moral philosophy offers another important dimension. The categorical imperative asks us to act according to principles that could be willed as universal laws.
For example, Kant's discussion of suicide examines whether a maxim permitting suicide could coherently be universalized.
The philosophical significance of this argument lies not simply in the practical conclusion, but in the attempt to evaluate an individual action through the universal principle underlying it.
Yet another difficulty appears. A person's intention and society's evaluation of his action may diverge.
Imagine a city surrounded by an enemy. One person persuades its defenders to surrender because he believes that unconditional love for one's enemy requires reconciliation.
From the perspective of his personal moral principle, he may believe himself justified. From the perspective of the city's inhabitants, however, his action may appear as betrayal if surrender exposes them to severe danger.
Therefore, the moral evaluation of action involves both intention and consequences, and different ethical theories assign different weights to each.
This demonstrates the complexity of translating abstract moral principles into concrete historical situations.
THREE TYPES OF FREEDOM
We propose to distinguish three dimensions of freedom:
1. Freedom within nature
2. Intellectual freedom
3. Social freedom
Freedom within nature does not mean freedom from the laws of nature. Rather, it refers to the human capacity to regulate behavior instead of responding automatically to every physical impulse.
A person can experience hunger and postpone eating. He can experience fear and nevertheless act according to a considered purpose. He can experience anger and refrain from aggression.
Thus, the human being is simultaneously free and dependent. He is dependent as a biological organism embedded in nature. He is capable of freedom as a conscious subject capable of evaluating impulses and forming intentions.
Intellectual freedom includes the ability to imagine, deliberate, compare alternatives, revise beliefs, and choose intentions.
Social freedom includes freedom of movement, speech, association, participation, and other liberties recognized within a social order.
The mind evaluates values:
good and bad,
right and wrong,
love and hatred,
generosity and greed.
The will then translates selected intentions into action.
Morality emerges when a person is capable of subordinating immediate impulses to broader values.
MORALITY AS A DYNAMIC PROCESS
Morality operates most effectively when its principles are supported by a significant part of society.
An individual may change his intention immediately. He cannot always change the consequences of an action that has already occurred.
This creates a fundamental asymmetry. How can it be overcome? One answer lies in the continuous development of moral consciousness.
The Christian tradition teaches that a person should glorify God through his actions. From a broader philosophical perspective, moral development begins with individuals and can gradually influence communities. When a moral principle becomes widely accepted, institutions and social practices may begin to change accordingly.
Morality is therefore not a static possession. It is a dynamic process. It requires transmission, education, example, criticism, and renewal. A moral system also requires ideas capable of focusing human attention.
Within the Christian framework, one of the most powerful unifying formulations is:
“Our Father who is in heaven.”
This expression places human beings within a larger moral family and establishes a reference point beyond individual self-interest.
FAITH AND PERSONAL WELL-BEING
If a person perceives himself as belonging to a reality greater than ordinary material existence, values derived from faith may become more important than immediate personal comfort. In such a case, personal well-being may become secondary to the idea of inheriting the Kingdom of God.
But the believer remains a physical human being. Religious history contains examples of hermits and recluses who withdrew from ordinary society in order to devote themselves entirely to God.
Yet withdrawal is not the only possible expression of faith. A religious worldview can also encourage active service. The believer may regard helping others, caring for the weak, and spreading moral values as a higher purpose than personal comfort.
Thus, faith can transform the hierarchy of values without requiring physical withdrawal from society.
THE PRACTICAL UNDERSTANDING OF FREEDOM
In everyday life, freedom is primarily a practical concept. We solve problems, make plans, pursue goals, overcome obstacles, we observe that we could have acted differently and therefore conclude that our choices depended upon us. In this way, the mind develops a practical concept of freedom.
Ancient Greek and Roman thought distinguished between concepts such as fatum — necessity or destiny — and fortuna — fortune or chance.
A person cannot know the complete future with certainty. He does not know which circumstances will arise. Yet even someone who believes that destiny is predetermined continues to act, to hope, to choose. Perhaps fortuna will become favorable.
This demonstrates an important point: the practical concept of freedom can guide behavior even if the metaphysical question of absolute free will remains unresolved.
ABSOLUTE FREEDOM AND IMAGINATION
Absolute freedom, if the term is used at all, belongs primarily to the domain of imagination. The mind can construct possibilities that cannot immediately be realized.
Human intellectual activity may therefore be illustrated through two major capacities:
mathematical construction and imagination.
Imagination can expand knowledge by combining existing experience in new ways.
The idea of human flight provides a good example. People observed birds and imagined flying. They gradually acquired knowledge of mechanics, materials, aerodynamics, propulsion, and control. Eventually, the idea became technically realizable.
We can express this schematically:
IDEA OF HUMAN FLIGHT + accumulated empirical knowledge + technological development = practical possibility
The same principle can be applied to complex technological problems. Consider the idea of sending human beings to Mars. The goal itself does not solve the problem. It must be connected with knowledge concerning propulsion, life support, radiation, navigation, energy, communication, landing, and countless other factors. The more necessary knowledge is acquired, the closer the idea comes to practical realization.
But there is another form of imagination: the construction of possibilities for which no practical principle has yet been demonstrated. A person may imagine a machine capable of physically travelling into the past.
If no physical mechanism capable of producing such movement exists, the idea remains hypothetical regardless of the sophistication of the mathematical model.
Modern technology can, however, simulate historical environments. Virtual reality may create the impression of entering another historical period. But a virtual reconstruction is not the physical reversal of time.
It is therefore necessary to distinguish between: the expansion of practical experience and the simulation of experience.
RELIGION AS A CHANGE IN THE SYSTEM OF VALUES
Human beings cannot always consciously construct the deepest foundations of their own value systems. Many values emerge gradually through upbringing, culture, relationships, experience, and reflection. Nevertheless, people can sometimes transform their hierarchy of values.
A striking example can be found in the Sermon on the Mount attributed to Jesus Christ.
Among its central teachings are the Beatitudes:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
This system of values makes it possible to reinterpret suffering, defeat, rejection, persecution, and even death.
Within our interpretation, the Sermon on the Mount represents a transformation in the meaning assigned to suffering and loss. A person who has become desperate about earthly existence may discover another system of reference.
Through religious faith, his former hierarchy of values may symbolically “die,” while another hierarchy emerges. Physically, however, the person continues to live.
This transformation can change behavior precisely because it changes the meaning assigned to circumstances.
It is important to emphasize that this does not describe every believer.
For many people, religion is primarily a cultural tradition, family practice, or form of community participation.
The present argument concerns the person for whom religious belief becomes the central organizing principle of existence and provides a new framework through which suffering and uncertainty can be interpreted.
CHANGING DESTINY THROUGH CHANGING VALUES
Human cognition developed the capacity to synthesize enormous numbers of circumstances and direct behavior toward selected goals. Yet the resulting direction does not always correspond to broadly accepted values. Sometimes it may produce destructive consequences.
This leads to one of the strongest conclusions of our argument: One of the most accessible ways in which a person can alter the course of his life is by changing his system of values. When a person changes his values, he begins to evaluate the same circumstances differently.
What once appeared to be defeat may become a challenge. What seemed to be meaningless suffering may acquire significance. What appeared to be an ending may become the beginning of another stage.
Changing one's worldview does not change the objective laws of nature. It changes the direction of behavior within those laws.
The mind creates a meaningful reality — not a separate physical universe, but an intellectual framework within which circumstances acquire significance.
Here we encounter an important form of inner freedom. Freedom does not consist primarily in controlling nature. It can also consist in reorganizing the meanings through which nature and circumstances are interpreted.
The mind remains part of nature, yet through ideas, ideals, values, and goals it can transcend immediate impulses and organize behavior around abstract purposes.
The human being therefore belongs simultaneously to two dimensions. He is a biological organism subject to natural necessity. But he is also a meaning-producing subject capable of constructing ideals and goals that extend beyond immediate biological demands.
We regard this ability as one of the principal foundations of human freedom.
Changing one's system of values does not magically change fate as an objective sequence of circumstances. It changes the path through which a person moves within that sequence. He does not gain control over every event. He gains the possibility of responding differently to events.
This is the central idea of the present concept: A person cannot completely control the world, but he can, to some extent, change the system of values through which he perceives the world. By changing that system, he can change his interpretations, decisions, actions, and direction in life. And because every action becomes a new cause, a change in values can become a change in the subsequent chain of circumstances.
In this sense, the human being does not stand outside fate. He participates in its formation. He is shaped by circumstances, yet he also acts upon them. He receives the past, interprets the present, and contributes to the future.
Thus fate is neither simply an external force nor merely a private illusion. It is the continuously developing relationship between circumstances, human nature, consciousness, values, choice, action, and consequence.
The ancient question therefore remains open: Does fate lead the willing and drag the unwilling?
Perhaps the deepest answer is that we are never completely outside the chain that determines our lives. But within that chain, there remains a space — however limited — for understanding, evaluation, intention, and action. And it is precisely within that space that human freedom becomes possible.



THE RESURRECTED ROME


“Every life is subject to its own fate;
no one can escape mistakes…”
Qu Yuan

THE MYSTERY OF HUMAN ORIGINS
If human beings have acquired the ability to solve the most complex logical problems, created technologies that allow them to influence the world around them, and even come close to controlling the forces of nature, an inevitable question arises: is there an even more perfect intelligence capable of creating humanity itself?
Or perhaps everything is much simpler? Perhaps the answer should be sought not in some higher form of intelligence, but, on the contrary, in the lower nature of human beings — creatures that, at the beginning of their historical journey, were guided primarily by the instincts of survival, reproduction, and superiority.
In any case, the origin and development of humanity remain among the greatest mysteries of existence. As Karl Jaspers noted, the emergence of the human being represents a profound mystery that has still not become completely accessible or understandable to us.
Let us mentally return to the distant past — to the era when early humans were only beginning to separate themselves from the animal world. One possible hypothesis is that changes in the environment forced our distant ancestors to search for new sources of food and gradually abandon their familiar arboreal habitat.
Upright walking can likewise be regarded as the result of prolonged adaptation to new conditions. Freed from their role in locomotion, the upper limbs acquired new functions: carrying food, using primitive tools, throwing stones, holding sticks, and defending themselves against predators. Gradually, the hands ceased to be primarily organs of locomotion and became essential instruments for interacting with the environment.
Thus, biological change gradually became a cultural advantage. A hand capable of making a tool was no longer merely a part of the body; it became a means of transforming nature.
THE STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL AND THE STRIVING FOR SUPERIORITY
Like many animals, early humans lived in groups. Within these groups, a certain hierarchy developed, and the strongest, most experienced, or most aggressive male could occupy a dominant position.
Similar relationships can be observed among many social animals. The struggle for position within a group is connected not only with access to food, but also with reproduction, security, and influence over other members of the community.
However, changing environmental conditions gradually made the struggle for existence more difficult. When resources became scarce, different groups of humans inevitably came into conflict with one another. The struggle for territory, food, and security became part of everyday existence.
Thus one of the most contradictory characteristics of human nature gradually emerged: human beings are capable of uniting with one another, but they are simultaneously capable of destroying other human beings for their own interests.
The struggle for superiority acquired increasingly complex forms. Whereas an animal acts primarily according to immediate instinct, human beings are capable of planning, remembering, developing strategies, and even anticipating the consequences of their actions.
Here we encounter one of the great tragedies of human existence.
THE BIRTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND MEMORY
We can imagine an ancient human being who became responsible for the death of another member of his group — perhaps even his own brother. This was no longer simply a conflict between two animals.
Human beings are capable of becoming aware of what they have done. They can remember the dead, experience guilt, regret what has happened, and attempt in some way to restore a connection with someone who can no longer be brought back.
Perhaps experiences of this kind became one of the possible foundations of early religious ideas.
A dead person did not disappear completely from the consciousness of the living. He continued to exist in memory. The thought arose that he must be somewhere else — in another world, among the ancestors, beyond visible reality.
From this could emerge the first rituals, burial places, symbolic objects, and forms of worship directed toward unknown forces.
Human beings were confronted for the first time with a fundamental contradiction: physical existence comes to an end, while the memory of a person continues to live.
In this sense, death may have been one of the important sources of philosophical thought. Human beings began asking questions that could not be answered through direct observation: What happens after death? Where does a person go? Why does life exist? Where did the world come from? Is there another reality beyond visible existence?
Thus an instinct-driven creature gradually became a symbolic being.
HUMANITY — CREATOR AND DESTROYER
Human beings differ from other living creatures not only in their ability to create, but also in their ability to destroy what they have created.
They invent tools and, at the same time, weapons. They develop methods of healing and means of destruction. They build cities and are capable of destroying them. They create culture and can simultaneously use the achievements of culture against themselves.
Therefore, the principle that “the strongest survives” acquires a special meaning in human society.
Human beings seek not merely to survive. They seek to surpass others. This striving can manifest itself through wealth, knowledge, power, physical strength, political influence, technological superiority, or cultural authority.
This becomes particularly evident in the history of weapons.
Many achievements of human ingenuity initially emerged under conditions of military competition. States sought an advantage over their enemies, while technologies later found peaceful applications.
Thus human history contains a profound paradox: the desire to destroy another human being has sometimes become a stimulus for the development of civilization.
Yet the same process creates a danger, because technological power can develop faster than humanity's moral capacity to control it.
ANCIENT GREECE AND THE BIRTH OF THE AESTHETIC IDEAL
A special place in the history of humanity belongs to Ancient Greece. Greek culture developed a distinctive aesthetic and philosophical relationship with the world. Beauty was understood not merely as something that produced pleasure, but also as an expression of harmony, proportion, and measure.
Modern culture has substantially transformed aesthetic values. An enormous space for artistic creativity has emerged, in which there are virtually no universally binding standards.
On the one hand, this represents freedom. On the other, it raises an important question: can absolute freedom of aesthetic choice lead to the loss of the very concept of beauty?
Modern popular culture possesses enormous power. The commercialization of art encourages works to be judged not only by their artistic value, but also by their ability to attract attention, provoke an emotional reaction, and generate profit.
Therefore, there is a fundamental difference between an everyday understanding of beauty and the aesthetic-philosophical concept of the beautiful.
THE FORMATION OF TASTE
When one person looks at an object and says, “I like it,” while another replies, “It is ugly,” people usually say, “Beauty is a matter of taste.”
But another question arises: if taste is shaped by culture, education, and the surrounding environment, can every form of taste really be considered equally developed?
Aesthetic perception requires a certain degree of cultural experience. We may perceive an object as beautiful not simply because it gives us immediate pleasure, but because we recognize an inner harmony within it: nothing unnecessary, proper proportion, unity of form, and correspondence among its elements.
The same principle can be applied to human appearance. Throughout history, different cultures have created their own ideas of ideal proportions of the human body and face. This was particularly evident in ancient art.
Aesthetic perception can therefore be regarded not merely as an emotional reaction, but as a complex form of intellectual and cultural experience.
Taste must be developed. It is formed gradually — through acquaintance with works of art, the history of culture, architecture, music, literature, and philosophy.
This is why the question of beauty is simultaneously a question of human education.
THE CONTRADICTION OF ANCIENT BEAUTY
However, it would be a mistake to regard ancient culture as completely harmonious.
A. F. Losev drew attention to the paradoxes of Plato's attitude toward art. In Plato's ideal state, the artist and poet do not occupy the privileged position that we might expect from a culture regarded as one of the principal sources of European aesthetic ideals.
Here we encounter a contradiction: the civilization we perceive as one of the greatest sources of art and aesthetic culture itself had a highly ambivalent attitude toward art. Therefore, ancient beauty was not simply a system of rules.
Perhaps modern civilization also has an opportunity to create a new aesthetic space — a new aesthetosphere — in which traditional ideas of beauty could acquire new meaning.
But the new does not necessarily mean rejection of the past. On the contrary, the task may be to unite historical experience with contemporary forms of creativity.
GREEK TRAGEDY AND THE FORMATION OF THE HUMAN BEING
Greek tragedy had an enormous influence on the ancient human being. The works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides presented humanity before fate, the gods, nature, and the inevitable consequences of human actions.
Tragedy forced spectators to experience the suffering of the hero. But this experience had more than an entertaining purpose. By witnessing another person's tragedy, the spectator was given the opportunity to confront emotionally something that might also happen to him.
Greek theatre thus became a kind of school of human existence. Music, the chorus, acting, and dramatic action were united within a single artistic space.
At first, theatrical action was relatively simple, but the introduction of additional actors eventually made dialogue, conflict, and more complex dramatic structures possible.
Tragedy showed human beings the limits of their own abilities. In the face of fate, they were not all-powerful masters of their own lives, but beings forced to accept existing limitations.
Modern drama often places greater emphasis on human psychological sensitivity. This can broaden emotional culture, but it can also contribute to increased vulnerability.
In the ancient world, however, tragedy was not merely a source of compassion; it was also a way of confronting inevitability.
THE ILIAD AND THE ODYSSEY: THE BIRTH OF CULTURAL MEMORY
The high aesthetic ideal can also be observed in two great works traditionally associated with Homer — The Iliad and The Odyssey.
Greek culture developed in close connection with mythological tradition, and these epic works occupied a central place within it.
The Iliad does not tell the entire story of the Trojan War from beginning to end. Its narrative focuses on a particular episode of the war and on the conflict involving Achilles.
The Odyssey, by contrast, possesses a more complete structure of journey and return.
These works not only preserved the memory of the past, but also shaped society's understanding of heroism, honor, fate, loyalty, revenge, and human dignity.
The epic was transmitted from generation to generation, and its performance formed part of collective culture.
Many Greeks learned these works by heart and sang them. Constantly comparing one work with the other, people sought to supplement and perfect the Iliad, inventing various beginnings and endings for it. The completeness of the Odyssey showed them a path by which they could supplement the Iliad and restore the logical completeness of its narrative. In terms of their content, these were great works that required a high moral and aesthetic quality in the myths with which the Iliad could be begun and concluded.
Perhaps this was precisely how a high culture was born—a culture of aesthetic perception of the world, founded on a profound sense of harmony between human beings, nature, and society.
The idea of harmony among these elements remained one of the central questions of European thought for many centuries.
THE FIRST TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION
For many centuries, the everyday life of human beings changed relatively slowly.
But at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century, Europe entered a period of accelerated technological development.
The central question is: why did this happen at that particular time?
To understand this process, we must turn to the history of the Roman Empire. Rome created an enormous political system that united many peoples and territories. The empire included territories of the northern Black Sea region, including important Greek cities.
The widespread use of slave labor reduced the economic necessity for certain forms of technological development. Cheap forced labor could make the introduction of complex machinery less attractive.
The fall of the Western Roman Empire became a crucial turning point in European history.
THE CRISIS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Among the factors that contributed to the weakening of the Western Roman Empire, we can identify:
exhaustion of military resources;
continuous internal and external conflicts;
demographic difficulties;
economic problems;
weakening of social institutions;
political instability;
growing internal contradictions;
pressure from external peoples and migration processes;
changes in the cultural and religious structure of society.
However, the fall of Rome cannot be explained by a single cause. The history of the empire was the result of a complex interaction among economic, political, military, demographic, and cultural processes.
Christianity also became an important part of these transformations, but reducing the fall of Rome exclusively to the emergence of a new religion would be an excessive simplification.
CHRISTIANITY AND EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
It is necessary to distinguish between the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Christian religious tradition, and the specific historical institutions of the Christian Church.
There was indeed a contradiction between the Gospel ideal of love and certain historical actions carried out by religious institutions.
European history knows religious wars, persecution of heretics, the Crusades, and the Inquisition. These phenomena demonstrate how far historical institutions could depart from the original ethical principles of a religion.
At the same time, however, the Christian tradition introduced into European culture ideas of mercy, compassion, the value of the individual, and moral responsibility.
Therefore, the historical role of Christianity in Europe cannot be evaluated in purely black-and-white terms. It was simultaneously a source of spiritual unity, moral ideas, and cultural development — and, during certain historical periods, an instrument of power and repression.
It is precisely this duality that makes its historical significance particularly complex.
FROM ALCHEMY TO THE TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION
After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, European societies underwent a long period of transformation.
New states, new economic relationships, and new forms of intellectual life gradually emerged.
Alchemy played a special role in this process. Alchemists sought to transform ordinary substances into gold, searched for the philosopher's stone, and investigated the properties of metals, minerals, and various compounds.
From the standpoint of modern science, many of their ideas were incorrect. Nevertheless, the experimental character of alchemy played a certain role in the development of chemical knowledge.
Human beings increasingly sought not merely to contemplate nature, but to experiment with it.
This transformation in worldview was of enormous importance. Observation gradually became experiment. Assumption became a testable hypothesis. Craft became technology. And curiosity became systematic investigation.
In this way, the foundations for the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions gradually emerged.
THE RESURRECTED ROME
The history of Europe represents an extraordinary cycle.
The Roman Empire once united a vast part of the European world. After its collapse, numerous states emerged and developed independently of one another for centuries.
Yet the idea of European unity did not disappear. It survived in the language of culture, Roman law, Christian tradition, ancient philosophy, and a shared historical heritage.
Centuries passed. European states experienced wars, religious conflicts, revolutions, economic crises, and technological transformations. And yet the idea of a united Europe gradually returned.
In this sense, the European Union can be viewed as a kind of historical return to the idea of political and economic unity on the continent.
Of course, the European Union is not a literal continuation of the Roman Empire. It is a fundamentally different political system, based not on conquest and subjugation but on voluntary cooperation among states. Nevertheless, the symbolic connection remains. Rome once created European unity through force.
Modern Europe attempts to create unity through law, economics, common institutions, and political agreement.
That is why the title “The Resurrected Rome” can be understood not as a claim that the empire has literally been restored, but as a philosophical metaphor for historical memory.
Civilizations disappear, but ideas can outlive states. Empires collapse, but cultural heritage continues to exist. Peoples change, but the human striving for unity, superiority, security, and meaning remains.
This reveals the central paradox of human history: humanity constantly creates new forms of society in an attempt to overcome the limitations of its own nature, yet it repeatedly reproduces the same ancient conflicts.
We begin with a struggle for food and territory, create cities, states, and empires, develop science and technology, and construct extraordinarily complex political systems — and still continue to confront the questions that arose among the first human beings.
What is a human being? Why does humanity strive for superiority? Why are human beings capable of both love and destruction? Why do we create beauty while simultaneously creating weapons?
And will humanity ever be capable of building a civilization in which the development of reason outpaces the development of instinct? Perhaps the answer to this question will determine the next stage of human history.



THE “CALIGULA” PHENOMENON OR THE LIBERATED CONSCIOUSNESS

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, yet remains more of a slave than they are.”
 — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Emperor Caligula remains one of the most notorious figures in Roman history. In popular culture, his image is firmly associated with madness, cruelty, depravity, and unlimited power. Modern representations have been particularly influenced by literature, theater, and cinema, where Caligula is often portrayed as a mentally unstable ruler incapable of rational thought. Yet such an image inevitably simplifies the historical personality.
If we set aside the most scandalous episodes of his biography and examine the broader pattern of his actions, another question emerges: how could a man supposedly devoid of reason acquire and maintain power over an enormous empire, rapidly assess political circumstances, secure the support of the army and the people, initiate administrative measures, organize large-scale construction projects, and simultaneously conduct a complex struggle with the Senate?
Was Caligula really as unintelligent as popular culture often portrays him? Or are we dealing with a considerably more complex psychological phenomenon—a man whose consciousness may have been profoundly affected by childhood trauma, the constant threat of death, prolonged dependence upon others, and the sudden acquisition of virtually unlimited power?
For the purposes of our psychological analysis, we will provisionally replace the nickname “Caligula” with “Little Boot.” The Latin word caligula was a diminutive form of caliga, a type of military footwear. The nickname originated during his childhood, when he accompanied his father, Germanicus, on military campaigns. Military clothing was made for the child in an appropriate size, including a small pair of soldiers’ sandals. These sandals gave him the nickname by which he became known.
Germanicus was an experienced military commander and enormously popular among the Romans. It is therefore reasonable to assume that his young son found himself at the center of public attention from an early age. For a child, such attention can become a powerful psychological stimulus. The child begins to perceive himself partly through the reactions of others: today he is admired, loved, and surrounded by attention; tomorrow circumstances may change, and everything may disappear.
If a stable internal system of values has not yet developed, such fluctuations can exert a profound influence on personality. The child may gradually learn that security and social recognition are unstable and that his position depends upon forces beyond his control.
The brief period of family prominence was followed by far more difficult circumstances. Popularity was no longer sufficient; survival became the primary concern. Caution, cunning, endurance, and resourcefulness became essential. He had to observe the moods of those around him, anticipate danger, and understand what others might be thinking before they expressed it openly.
When his father died, his mother returned to Rome with the children. Her relationship with the emperor Tiberius was extremely tense. Little Boot witnessed the destruction of part of his own family. After his mother was exiled, he and his sisters lived under the constant surveillance of Tiberius’s agents. In effect, the child lived under conditions resembling imprisonment.
Yet perhaps the most significant feature of his behavior was that he did not openly display hatred. He agreed to accompany Tiberius to Capri. From the perspective of ordinary morality, such conduct may appear submissive. From the perspective of self-preservation, however, it could have been entirely rational. To survive, he had to remain silent. He had to conceal his emotions. He had to observe. He had to wait.
The years spent on Capri may therefore be regarded, at least hypothetically, as a kind of school of survival. During this period, his mother and brother died in confinement. He was forced to experience the destruction of people close to him while simultaneously demonstrating loyalty toward a man whom he may have associated with the misfortunes of his family.
A psychological state of this kind could hardly have passed without leaving a trace. Advancement and survival required silence, suppression of anger, and control of emotional expression. He had to pay an extraordinarily high psychological price for his safety.
Yet the mechanisms developed for survival do not necessarily disappear when the danger disappears. A strategy that once protected a person can later become a source of destructive behavior. What was once necessary for survival may eventually become a permanent way of perceiving the world.
Little Boot escaped the fate of several other members of his family and eventually gained Tiberius’s favor. A prolonged struggle for survival may have strengthened his instinct for self-preservation to an exceptional degree.
A person living under such conditions may become extraordinarily sensitive to danger. He learns to read expressions, intonation, gestures, changes in behavior, and even silence. He remains internally prepared for something to happen.
For an ordinary person, such a state may be exhausting. For a future ruler, however, the same psychological sensitivity could become an instrument of political power.
POWER AS A CONTINUATION OF THE INSTINCT OF SELF-PRESERVATION
Little Boot understood that his advancement in Tiberius’s eyes depended partly upon his relationships with those who surrounded the emperor. His attention was drawn to a Praetorian named Marcus, with whom the future emperor established friendly relations. This political maneuver apparently proved useful. Marcus spoke favorably of Little Boot, thereby reducing Tiberius’s suspicions. Later traditions even suggested that Marcus may have contributed to accelerating his rise to the throne.
Regardless of how reliable these stories are, the underlying political logic deserves attention. Little Boot appears to have understood how individuals function within a political system. He could distinguish between people who might be useful, those who represented threats, those who could facilitate his advancement, and those who might become dangerous once circumstances changed.
Here we encounter one of the most important possible features of his character.
A person who has spent a long period in the position of a potential victim may, after acquiring power, begin to perceive other people less as equals than as potential sources of danger. A simple psychological formula may emerge:
If I do not control another person, that person may eventually control me.
If control over others becomes associated with personal survival, power ceases to be merely a political instrument. It becomes a psychological necessity.
Several months after being proclaimed emperor, Little Boot became seriously ill. Ancient sources associated the illness with different circumstances, including excessive indulgence and possible poisoning. The exact cause remains uncertain. Yet regardless of the medical reality, the psychological significance of such an event could have been considerable.
He had just acquired almost absolute power and almost immediately encountered the possibility of his own death.
Such an experience could reinforce an already deeply rooted conviction that death was never far away—even when danger appeared to have disappeared.
After recovering, he ordered the execution of certain people who had connected their political calculations or oaths with his possible death. From the perspective of the psychological model proposed here, this may represent an important threshold.
Before the illness, power could still be experienced primarily as an opportunity.
After the illness, power may have become associated with survival.
At this point, a profound transformation could occur. A man who had spent much of his life fearing that he might be destroyed had acquired the ability to destroy others. The potential victim had become a potential source of danger.
FEAR OF DEATH AND UNLIMITED POWER
From this point onward, the emperor’s behavior appears increasingly difficult to separate from the problem of fear.
Little Boot may have become a prisoner of an intensified instinct for self-preservation. Having acquired immense power, he increasingly sought to eliminate potential threats before they could materialize.
The fear of death can distort judgment. When a person perceives danger everywhere, eliminating threats becomes more important than distinguishing between real and imagined threats. Eventually, the very possession of power may increase rather than decrease anxiety.
Death becomes, metaphorically, a permanent judge standing behind every decision.
One of the first major conflicts was with the Senate. The emperor humiliated senators, demonstrated their dependence upon him, interfered in their personal affairs, and undermined the traditional dignity of Rome’s political elite.
Such behavior may certainly be interpreted as cruelty. Yet it may also have possessed a political dimension.
The message could have been:
You can no longer control me.
Before his accession, the Senate still possessed considerable political influence and retained memories of republican traditions. Tiberius’s long absence from Rome had also allowed elements of the senatorial elite to operate with a certain degree of independence.
The new emperor therefore confronted people who possessed their own understanding of how political power should function.
If Little Boot perceived the Senate as a potential threat to his survival, weakening it would have been a logical political objective, regardless of the psychological motivations behind it.
Here we encounter a familiar mechanism of authoritarian power. A ruler seeking to consolidate authority must obtain sufficient support from several pillars of society: the people, the military, and at least part of the political elite.
Little Boot began moving in precisely this direction.
THE PEOPLE, THE ARMY, AND POLITICAL POPULISM
Seeking popular affection, the emperor organized spectacles, gladiatorial games, and mass entertainments. At the same time, he identified targets for public resentment among individuals associated with the previous regime and among wealthy citizens.
This is a recurring political mechanism. When a society experiences dissatisfaction, directing that dissatisfaction toward a recognizable group can be easier than explaining the complexity of economic, political, and social circumstances.
Little Boot also sought the support of the army by increasing soldiers’ payments.
For a ruler who understood the nature of political power, this was crucial. The army was not merely a military institution. Within the political structure of the Roman Empire, it was one of the principal guarantees of the emperor’s position.
At the same time, he dismantled elements of Tiberius’s system of repression and recalled exiles. He could therefore present himself as a ruler who had arrived to liberate society from the legacy of the previous regime.
Administrative measures followed:
the abolition of certain taxes;
assistance to people who had lost property in fires;
the organization of public rewards and competitions;
the admission of new individuals into the Senate;
the restoration of certain electoral and participatory procedures.
These measures could increase his popularity while simultaneously irritating the traditional aristocracy.
Yet another pattern soon appeared. Popularity purchased at enormous expense eventually encounters financial reality.
Extravagance can exhaust a treasury. When existing resources become insufficient, the ruler must search for new sources of revenue.
The direction of policy then reverses. If previously the emperor had given to the people, he increasingly began to take from them.
Wealthy citizens were accused of crimes, after which their property could be confiscated. The wealthy thus became convenient targets for public resentment, while their possessions became a source of state revenue.
New fees and taxes appeared. Various mechanisms were employed to replenish the treasury, including charges associated with legal proceedings, marriages, prostitution, and other activities. Former centurions were also pressured to surrender accumulated property.
The political system therefore gradually moved from generosity toward coercion.
THE ADMINISTRATIVE ABILITIES OF LITTLE BOOT
A period of political and administrative activity was followed by a food crisis associated with disruptions in the grain supply from Egypt. The situation may also have been aggravated by shortages of ships and substantial state expenditures.
Yet the imperial response was comparatively rapid. Measures were taken to restore supplies and improve the functioning of important ports.
Large engineering and architectural projects followed. Among the most significant were the aqueducts Aqua Claudia and Anio Novus, monumental works that later became outstanding examples of Roman engineering. Other construction projects were initiated, including roads, fortifications, temples, and monumental structures.
These activities force us to reconsider an excessively simple characterization of Caligula as a man completely incapable of rational thought. Even if some ancient accounts were exaggerated, distorted, or influenced by political hostility, effective administration of an enormous state required certain intellectual capacities.
The ruler had to evaluate situations rapidly, choose among competing courses of action, understand the psychology of different groups, take military interests into account, supervise officials, allocate resources, respond to emergencies, and maintain political alliances.
Therefore, it may be more productive to study not simply Caligula’s alleged intellectual inadequacy but the transformation of a personality that acquired virtually unlimited power.
The crucial question is not necessarily whether he was rational or irrational.
The more interesting question is how rational abilities can coexist with destructive impulses. A person does not need to be completely irrational to behave irrationally in certain circumstances.
THE WAR WITH THE SENATE
Having secured substantial support from the army and the people, Little Boot increasingly confronted the Senate.
He reviewed judicial proceedings from the time of Tiberius and questioned their legitimacy. Representatives of the previous regime came under pressure.
The famous story of his horse Incitatus being appointed to high office became the culmination of his apparent mockery of the Senate.
The historical interpretation of this episode remains uncertain. It may have represented eccentricity, satire, political provocation, or an intentional demonstration of imperial power.
Within the framework of our concept, however, its symbolic meaning is particularly interesting. If a political institution claims authority, yet the ruler can supposedly threaten to replace its representatives with an animal, then the actual subject of the demonstration is not the horse. It is power.
The message becomes: I can appoint even an animal to this position, and you are powerless to prevent it. The act therefore becomes a form of political humiliation.
Little Boot seemed to be demonstrating that titles, traditions, ancestry, and institutional dignity were meaningless without actual power behind them.
In this way, political institutions can be weakened not only by their formal abolition but by the public demonstration of their inability to resist the ruler.
THE SUBJUGATION OF NATURE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF MAN INTO A “GOD”
One of the most famous episodes associated with Caligula concerns his alleged campaign toward Britain, after which his soldiers were supposedly ordered to collect seashells.
Traditionally, the story has been interpreted as evidence of madness. Yet such accounts should be treated cautiously. Ancient history was written by people who often possessed strong political motives, and unusual actions could easily be transformed into stories designed to ridicule an unpopular ruler.
The army was one of the principal pillars of imperial authority. It is therefore difficult to assume automatically that Caligula would deliberately seek to destroy his own credibility among soldiers.
The order may have had a symbolic purpose, may have been connected with a military demonstration, or may have been interpreted differently by later historians.
Whatever its precise meaning, the story illustrates an important change in the emperor’s public image. Once a ruler has acquired a reputation for eccentricity or madness, every unusual action becomes evidence confirming that reputation.
Yet alongside the scandalous episodes existed entirely rational administrative and architectural projects.
Little Boot continued major construction works, including the Temple of Augustus, aqueducts, roads, fortifications, and monumental structures. A grand circus was constructed, and an enormous obelisk was brought from Egypt.
Projects of this scale required organization, labor management, financial resources, logistics, engineering, and administrative coordination.
Here we encounter a striking contradiction. On one side stands a political strategist and administrator capable of organizing large-scale projects. On the other stands a ruler who performed actions that appeared absurd, humiliating, or self-destructive.
Perhaps the contradiction itself is the key to understanding the phenomenon. Human consciousness does not always operate as a unified and perfectly rational system. A person may possess extraordinary abilities in one sphere while simultaneously being governed by destructive impulses in another.
DIVINITY AS PSYCHOLOGICAL COMPENSATION
Little Boot was fascinated by divine imagery and reportedly appeared in the clothing of gods while demanding forms of treatment that emphasized his exceptional status.
Politically, such behavior could serve to emphasize imperial grandeur and distance him from ordinary human beings. To the Senate, it could be deeply humiliating.
Psychologically, however, it may also have represented something deeper. A person who experienced powerlessness in childhood can, after acquiring enormous authority, attempt to become the complete opposite of what he once was.
Once he depended upon the decisions of others. Now their decisions depended upon him. Once he had to conceal his feelings. Now he could force others to conceal theirs. Once he feared death. Now others feared him.
This creates a form of psychological compensation. The person attempts to construct an identity that is radically different from the vulnerable self he once experienced.
This may explain why absolute power can be especially dangerous for individuals who have experienced prolonged humiliation or helplessness.
External power does not necessarily heal internal trauma. It may instead provide trauma with an almost unlimited field in which to express itself.
FAMILY AND THE BOUNDARIES OF THE NORMAL
Rumors concerning Caligula’s intimate relationships with his sisters represent some of the most scandalous elements of his biography.
Such accounts must be approached critically. Ancient political propaganda frequently relied upon accusations of sexual depravity to destroy the reputation of rulers and political opponents.
Nevertheless, within the psychological model proposed here, the subject possesses symbolic significance.
Little Boot lost a substantial part of his family through political persecution. His closest relatives became victims of a struggle for power.
Under such circumstances, attachment to surviving family members may have acquired an unusual psychological intensity.
If a person begins to perceive himself not merely as a family member but as a figure possessing absolute authority, ordinary relationships can become distorted. Love may become possession. Care may become control. Closeness may become dependence.
This is one of the dangers of what we call the liberated consciousness. When external boundaries disappear, a person may begin to regard as permissible actions that would previously have been impossible.
As the Polish saying puts it:
“What is too much is not healthy.”
Excess can transform even a natural human impulse into a pathological form of behavior.
CALIGULA AND THE PARADOX OF SECURITY
An excessive pursuit of security can ultimately produce the opposite result. A person attempts to destroy every possible threat. But the more threats he destroys, the more people begin to fear him. The more people fear him, the more potential enemies he begins to see around himself.
Little Boot could therefore become trapped within a self-reinforcing system.
The senators feared him. He feared the senators. The army supported him. Yet the army was also capable of becoming the instrument of a coup. The people admired him. Yet public opinion could change.
Absolute power therefore does not necessarily free a person from fear. It may merely increase the number of things he believes he must fear.
Eventually, members of the Senate and the Praetorian Guard participated in a conspiracy against the emperor.
Yet it is important to recognize that support for Caligula among different groups did not necessarily disappear simultaneously. To some, he was a hated tyrant. To others, he could still appear as a popular or beneficial ruler.
The same individual can therefore become a symbol of liberation for one social group and a symbol of oppression for another.
This leads us beyond Caligula’s biography toward a more general question: How is human consciousness formed, and why does society regard certain actions as normal while considering others insane, immoral, or criminal?
SOCIAL FREEDOM AND THE FORMATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS
At the earliest stages of human development, people were largely powerless before nature. They depended upon climate, hunger, predators, disease, and countless other threats.
To survive, human beings had to cooperate. This cooperation created a need for internal restrictions. A person had to renounce certain immediate desires for the sake of the group. He could not simply take another person’s food without consequences. He could not constantly violate established rules. He could not kill members of his own group without threatening the stability of the community.
Human reason, interacting with experience, gradually contributed to the formation of behavioral rules that compensated for human weakness before nature.
In this sense, civilization created a new form of freedom: freedom from the immediate dominance of instinct and circumstance.
Human beings did not cease to be biological organisms. Instead, they acquired the ability to regulate their behavior.
They could suppress hunger. They could restrain aggression. They could endure pain for the sake of a future objective. They could sacrifice immediate personal benefit for the survival of the group.
The ability to control immediate impulses became one of the great advantages of the human species.
FROM MORALITY TO LAW
As primitive settlements grew, a new problem emerged.
Within a small group, personal relationships, traditions, customs, and religious beliefs could regulate behavior. But as societies expanded, moral unity alone was no longer sufficient.
Ancient cities, particularly Athens, faced the necessity of formalizing relationships between increasingly large numbers of people.
Thus law emerged. Law became, in a certain sense, an external continuation of morality.
Morality says: Do not do this. Law says: If you do this, consequences will follow.
This was a fundamental stage in the development of social freedom. People acquired the ability to live among large numbers of strangers because a system of rules existed that restricted everyone’s behavior.
Yet another paradox immediately appears. The more freedom people possess, the more rules may be required to preserve that freedom. One person’s freedom ends where another person’s freedom begins. Society must therefore constantly establish boundaries.
Initially, these boundaries were maintained primarily through religion, custom, and tradition. Later, the state, law, education, and other institutions assumed an increasingly important role.
THE WEAKENING OF INTERNAL LIMITATIONS
As civilization developed, human beings acquired increasing control over their environment.
Mathematics and technology expanded their capabilities. People learned to construct cities, create machines, control energy, treat diseases, travel enormous distances, and transform their surroundings.
External control became so powerful that, in some areas, the necessity of internal restraint began to appear less obvious.
Modern people can express thoughts that might once have resulted in exile, imprisonment, or death.
This represents an enormous expansion of social freedom.
But another problem emerges. Society may expand external freedom faster than individuals develop the internal culture necessary to use that freedom responsibly.
A person may be free to speak without being capable of using speech responsibly. He may possess power without being capable of governing himself. He may possess wealth without knowing how to manage it. He may possess social status without being psychologically prepared for it.
This is where the phenomenon of the liberated consciousness appears.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE FRAMEWORK DISAPPEARS?
Human consciousness can be understood, in part, as an internal system of restraints. These restraints are formed through family, culture, religion, education, society, the state, and personal experience. They establish boundaries beyond which a person attempts not to intrude upon the freedom of others.
But what happens when external restraints suddenly disappear?
Imagine a person who has dreamed of wealth throughout his life but has never possessed the means to satisfy his desires. If he suddenly receives an enormous inheritance, his behavior may change.
Yet wealth itself did not necessarily create new desires. It provided an opportunity to realize desires that already existed.
The same mechanism can operate with power. If a person has spent his life experiencing humiliation, envy, aggression, resentment, or a desire to dominate, but circumstances have prevented him from expressing these impulses, external conditions may temporarily suppress them.
Once power is acquired, those limitations may disappear. Accumulated impulses may then emerge.
This does not mean that every poor person who becomes wealthy becomes immoral, nor that every person who acquires power becomes a tyrant. The decisive factor is not power alone. It is the relationship between power and the internal structure of the personality.
GRADUALITY AND THE SUDDENNESS OF CHANGE
The gradual nature of social development is extremely important. A child raised in a prosperous and morally stable environment may become accustomed to responsibility from an early age.
He learns how to handle resources, learns to consider the interests of others, learns that decisions have consequences.
If wealth and responsibility are present throughout his development, prosperity is not experienced as a sudden liberation.
A person who suddenly acquires enormous wealth may experience something entirely different.
Yesterday he could not buy, today he can buy almost anything. Yesterday he depended upon others, today others depend upon him. Yesterday circumstances limited his desires, today circumstances may no longer constitute an obstacle.
Such a psychological transition can be extraordinarily powerful.
Therefore, it may not be the change in status alone that matters, but also the speed with which that change occurs.
A sudden transition from powerlessness to authority may be particularly dangerous for a personality that has not had sufficient time to develop internal restraints.
THE LIBERATED CONSCIOUSNESS
Within the concept proposed here, the liberated consciousness emerges when previously suppressed desires and accumulated dissatisfaction acquire the opportunity to become actions.
Psychological tension can be imagined metaphorically as energy enclosed within a closed system. As long as social boundaries remain intact, a person is forced to restrain certain impulses.
When those boundaries disappear, previously restrained behavior may emerge. Power becomes permission, wealth becomes permission, impunity become permission.
Isolation from society can also become permission.
Yet liberation from external restraints does not necessarily mean liberation of the individual. On the contrary, the individual may become a slave to his own impulses.
This brings us back to Rousseau: A person may consider himself the master of others while remaining a slave himself.
Caligula represents an especially striking example within this framework.
He could force others to obey him, yet he may have remained dependent upon his own fear. He possessed power over people, but not complete power over himself.
He could eliminate an enemy, but he could not eliminate the fear that another enemy might appear. He could force senators to bow before him, but he could not force himself to stop fearing them.
Absolute power therefore did not necessarily make him free. It may have made him a prisoner of his own psychological structure.
THE MORAL THRESHOLD AND THE FORMATION OF THE CHILD
The formation of consciousness begins partly through the suppression of behavior considered socially unacceptable.
Yet the boundary of what is permissible varies according to the environment. What is considered normal in one family may be unacceptable in another. What is permitted within a particular group may be condemned by society. What is acceptable in one country may contradict the laws of another.
The moral threshold is therefore not identical for all people. It develops through several overlapping levels:
family and immediate environment;
community and social group;
state and national culture;
international society and universal concepts of human rights.
Each successive level can expand moral responsibility.
A child first learns that he must not harm those close to him. Then he learns that rules govern behavior within society. Later, he encounters the laws of the state. Eventually, he may come to understand that moral responsibility extends beyond his family, community, and country.
The circle of people whom a person recognizes as possessing moral value can therefore gradually expand.
GOOD AND EVIL AS A PROBLEM OF EVALUATION
Imagine the following situation. Your closest friend, whom you trusted completely, takes a large sum of money from you and gives it to another person. Naturally, you are outraged. To you, your friend has become a bad person.
Then you discover the circumstances. The money was given to someone experiencing an extreme crisis.
Your attitude may change. You may forgive your friend. But imagine that the situation is repeated. This time you desperately need the money yourself, perhaps to solve a serious problem, and your friend once again chooses to help someone else. Your attitude will probably change again.
Yet the person who received the help will regard your friend as a benefactor.
Here we encounter the philosophical problem of the objectivity of good and evil.
From the perspective of the concept developed here, moral evaluation is partly dependent upon the position of the observer.
Nature does not contain labels reading “good” and “evil” in the human sense. Nature operates through interactions among forces, organisms, needs, and instincts.
Moral categories arise within human consciousness and society. They serve as mechanisms for regulating human behavior. Consequently, what one society regards as good may be regarded by another as evil. Moral norms therefore change throughout history.
THE MORAL ABSOLUTE
The maximum manifestation of good or evil cannot necessarily be maintained permanently in exactly the same form. Human nature is dynamic. People change with circumstances.
A person may perform an extraordinary moral act, but he cannot necessarily remain permanently at the highest possible level of moral tension.
In the Gospel, the highest expression of love is presented as self-sacrifice for others:
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” — John 15:13
What could be more valuable than life? Nothing. And how many times can a person give his life? Only once.
This is precisely why self-sacrifice can be understood as an absolute moral act.
A mother may die saving her child. A defender may sacrifice his life for his country. A person may renounce his own interests to save another. Society generally regards such actions as among the highest forms of moral behavior.
Yet precisely because they require the ultimate sacrifice, they cannot become an ordinary permanent state. They are ideals toward which human beings may orient themselves.
MORAL THRESHOLDS OF DIFFERENT SOCIETIES
The moral threshold of a society depends upon the conditions in which that society exists.
It can differ:
from family to family;
from community to community;
from culture to culture;
from state to state;
from one historical period to another.
A person raised in a dysfunctional environment may have difficulty adapting to the norms of a more organized society.
A person raised within an isolated group may transfer its internal rules into an environment where those rules are unacceptable.
Conversely, a person raised under exceptionally strict moral expectations may experience conflict when surrounding circumstances demand behavior that he considers wrong.
This is why socialization is so important. Consciousness does not develop in isolation. It constantly interacts with its environment.
PATHOLOGICAL LYING AND SELF-AFFIRMATION
Pathological lying can also be interpreted as a peculiar experience of freedom.
A person who continually invents stories and deceives others without an obvious practical reason may sometimes be attempting to create a sense of importance that reality does not provide. He constructs an alternative reality in which he occupies a higher position. Why? Because reality does not provide the psychological status he desires.
Consciousness then creates compensation. The person effectively declares: I am who I want to be, even if reality says otherwise.
Such a mechanism can also be connected with the liberation of inner desires. In the real world, a person is limited by circumstances. In the imagined world, he is free.
Lying can therefore function not only as a means of deceiving others but also as a psychological means of liberating the self from an unwanted reality.
THE INSTINCT OF SELF-PRESERVATION AND THE SOCIAL INSTINCT
Every human being possesses individual consciousness while simultaneously belonging to a social organism.
Here two principles interact. The first is individual self-preservation. The second is the preservation of the social group. When individual interests coincide with those of society, relative harmony emerges. But when personal benefit conflicts with the interests of the group, a choice must be made.
A person may understand that an action is beneficial to himself but harmful to others. His consciousness must then determine what to do. If internal moral restraints are strong, he may reject personal gain. If they are weak, he may violate social norms.
This is one of the conditions under which crime emerges. Crime is not merely a violation of written law. At a deeper level, it can represent a collision between individual interest and the system of social restrictions.
CALIGULA AND REDEMPTION
A person who repeatedly acts against the principles of his culture, laws, and moral convictions may experience guilt.
Within our interpretation, it is possible to hypothesize that repeated violations could have created an increasing psychological burden for Caligula.
The more violations a person commits, the greater may become his need to maintain power in order to protect himself from possible consequences.
Redemption can then take distorted forms. A person who has committed a serious wrong may unconsciously seek punishment or circumstances through which an internal conflict can be resolved.
In Caligula’s life, one might speculate about a peculiar sequence of self-destructive behavior. The execution of people close to him could be interpreted as one stage, while the alleged degradation of his sisters could be interpreted as another. His own death might then appear, retrospectively, as the final stage of a destructive process.
Such an interpretation cannot be established as historical fact. It remains a psychological hypothesis. Nevertheless, one detail is particularly striking: Caligula’s treatment of Cassius Chaerea, a commander of the Praetorian Guard.
Caligula reportedly mocked Chaerea’s high-pitched voice and repeatedly humiliated him. Such behavior was extraordinarily dangerous.
Considering the emperor’s pronounced concern with self-preservation, it is difficult not to ask why he would repeatedly provoke a powerful military officer. Could this have been merely cruelty and recklessness? Certainly.
But another possibility can also be considered. Could such behavior have reflected a deeper process of self-destruction?
Perhaps the accumulation of crimes and conflicts gradually weakened the fear of death that had once dominated his personality. Perhaps, consciously or unconsciously, he increasingly placed himself in situations from which there was no safe escape. In the end, his own life became the final price.
This theme is particularly vivid in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
In literature, crime rarely remains without psychological consequences. Even when a person escapes official judgment, an internal court may continue to operate.
Therefore, we may formulate a broader philosophical proposition: Consciousness is the inner judge of the human being.
REWARD AND PUNISHMENT
There is no complete guarantee that a criminal will be punished in a manner precisely corresponding to the severity of his actions. The legal system can punish only within the limits established by law.
Psychological consequences, however, are more complex. A person may pay through fear. He may lose the trust of those close to him, destroy his family, live in constant anticipation of exposure. He may lose the ability to experience inner peace.
Punishment therefore does not necessarily end with imprisonment or execution.
Sometimes a person becomes a prisoner of his own existence.
Yet there is another tragic paradox. If someone has killed one hundred people, the state can ultimately punish him with only one life. The legal system cannot restore all the lives that have been destroyed. Human justice therefore inevitably encounters the limits of punishment.
MORALITY IN PRIMITIVE AND MODERN SOCIETY
In primitive society, the community constituted the primary moral threshold.
If a person committed violence against another group, this was not necessarily perceived as a crime. On the contrary, he might be regarded as a hero. If he brought food or prey to his own group, his actions could be interpreted as an act of care. Weakness could be considered a vice. Cruelty toward outsiders could become a virtue. This demonstrates how strongly moral judgment depends upon social boundaries.
Modern civilization has greatly expanded those boundaries. The concept of moral responsibility can now extend to people whom an individual has never met and who live on the other side of the planet.
Yet exceptions remain. Warfare, self-defense, political ideology, and group identity can dramatically alter the moral interpretation of violence. An act regarded as criminal in one context may be described as heroic in another.
This is why a person isolated from broader society and exposed continuously to a narrow ideological environment may gradually adopt norms that the wider society considers unacceptable.
COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS
Isolated groups can be particularly powerful because an individual begins to feel responsible primarily toward members of his own group. If the group convinces him that the outside world is the enemy, his moral boundaries may gradually be reconstructed. Killing an outsider can cease to be perceived as a crime. It can become “service.”
Collective psychology can therefore both strengthen and destroy moral restraints. Within a group, individuals tend to become similar to one another. It becomes easier to accept the majority opinion. It becomes more difficult to resist collective judgment. Escaping an erroneous collective belief can be extremely difficult.
For this reason, perceptive thinkers throughout history have sometimes withdrawn from society in order to escape its immediate influence.
Withdrawal does not necessarily mean rejection of society. Sometimes it is simply a means of hearing one’s own reason again.
CONSCIOUSNESS AS THE INNER JUDGE
Consciousness can therefore be regarded as an inner court regulating human behavior.
It establishes boundaries, compares intention with norms, evaluates consequences, generates guilt. It can stop a person before an action is performed. In this sense, consciousness functions as a gateway between instinct and action.
Instinct may demand one thing. Social norms may demand another. Reason mediates between them.
This is why a person can desire to perform an action while simultaneously understanding that he should not perform it.
When consciousness is sufficiently developed, self-control emerges. When self-control is weakened, the probability of violating established norms increases.
IS IT POSSIBLE TO INFLUENCE THE SUBCONSCIOUS?
The assertion that correcting human behavior requires direct influence over the subconscious appears insufficient. The subconscious, broadly understood, may be regarded as containing enormous amounts of information, experience, habits, associations, and automatic reactions. Yet intentional behavior is not necessarily determined exclusively by such processes. When a person consciously evaluates an action, information passes through reflection, interpretation, and judgment.
Therefore, within the concept proposed here, primary influence should be directed toward conscious understanding. Without reflection, behavior can easily become an automatic reaction.
FACTORS INFLUENCING CONSCIOUSNESS
Several factors can substantially alter the functioning of consciousness.
1. EXTERNAL STIMULANTS AND INTOXICANTS
Alcohol, psychoactive substances, and other physiological influences can alter a person’s capacity for self-control and judgment. As a result, established behavioral restraints may weaken.
2. STRONG AFFECTIVE STATES
Joy, grief, passion, hatred, fear, and other powerful emotions can temporarily alter a person’s ability to evaluate circumstances rationally.
The stronger the emotional arousal, the more difficult it may become to maintain the usual level of self-control.
3. AN INCOMPLETE LOGICAL CHAIN
A conclusion can be presented in such a way that the mind experiences it as already complete.
For example: “The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours.” Such a statement does not prove victory. Yet it can create a psychological impression of certainty.
When the same idea is repeatedly presented in different forms, an illusion of logical completeness may arise.
4. GUILT
Guilt possesses considerable psychological power. If a person becomes convinced that his failures are the consequence of a previous wrongdoing, his mind may begin searching for a means of atonement. Such a person may become more submissive, obedient, and vulnerable to influence. He seeks to reduce internal tension and may therefore accept the first path toward “purification” offered to him.
5. COLLECTIVE MIND
Within a group, a person may gradually adopt its dominant opinions. The stronger the pressure of the group, the more difficult it becomes to preserve independent judgment. A group can sometimes be easier to control than an isolated individual because its members begin to regulate one another.
6. HYPNOTIC AND PSYCHOLOGICAL INFLUENCE
Various forms of suggestion can alter human behavior. However, influence should not be understood simply as switching consciousness off. More often, it involves altering a person’s ability or willingness to critically evaluate incoming information.
CONSCIOUSNESS IS NOT A CONSTANT
From everything stated above, we can conclude that consciousness cannot be regarded as an absolutely constant quantity. It changes according to circumstances. It is influenced by physical condition, psychological state, social environment, experience, upbringing, fear, joy, grief, power, wealth, and numerous other factors. The same individual may behave very differently under different conditions. Therefore, to understand an action, it is insufficient to study the individual alone. We must also study the environment in which the individual found himself.
This is why the history of Caligula is interesting not merely as the biography of a Roman emperor. It represents a model of interaction between personality and circumstances. A person may possess certain tendencies, but circumstances determine whether those tendencies will have an opportunity to manifest themselves. A prisoner held in isolation may possess enormous aggressive impulses but lack the opportunity to realize them.
Caligula, by contrast, acquired extraordinary power. Many external obstacles disappeared. What remained merely an internal desire in an ordinary person could, in the hands of an emperor, become an actual event.
Power therefore becomes a kind of experiment upon consciousness.
DIFFERENT MORAL THRESHOLDS FORMING CONSCIOUSNESS
The moral threshold of social norms develops through several levels:
FAMILY AND THE CHILD’S ENVIRONMENT
COMMUNITY
COUNTRY
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
Each level introduces additional restrictions. At the same time, each level can expand freedom.
This appears paradoxical. The more rules there are, the less immediate freedom an individual possesses. Yet precisely these rules make coexistence possible.
If a person knows that another person cannot steal his property or harm him with impunity, he acquires greater freedom to act.
Social restrictions therefore simultaneously limit freedom and create it. This is one of the fundamental paradoxes of civilization.
FREEDOM AND CHAINS
Human beings desire freedom. Yet absolute freedom is impossible within society.
If everyone does whatever they wish, the freedom of one person can destroy the freedom of another.
Civilization therefore creates a system of voluntary and compulsory restrictions. A person renounces some natural possibilities in exchange for greater social security.
This is why Rousseau speaks of a person who is born free but finds himself in chains. Yet these chains are not necessarily merely instruments of oppression. Some are foundations of civilization.
The law restricts the murderer but protects his potential victim. Morality restrains the aggressive person but increases security for those around him. Education limits the child while simultaneously giving him the opportunity to become an independent member of society.
Human freedom therefore does not arise from the complete absence of restrictions. It arises from the creation of restrictions that allow people to coexist safely.
THE CALIGULA PHENOMENON
Returning to Caligula, we can see the possible reversal of this process.
In childhood, his freedom was severely constrained by external circumstances. He was forced to suppress himself. He witnessed the destruction of people close to him. He had to conceal his emotions. He had to obey people whom he may have feared or hated.
Then the situation changed radically. He acquired power. External restrictions weakened or disappeared.The internally suppressed elements of his personality consequently acquired an unprecedented opportunity for expression.
Caligula may therefore represent not simply a phenomenon of madness, but a phenomenon in which external freedom expanded faster than internal moral organization.
His story extends far beyond ancient Rome. The same principle can potentially apply to anyone who suddenly acquires wealth, power, fame, influence, or impunity.
Power itself does not necessarily turn a person into a tyrant. It creates an opportunity for previously existing tendencies to manifest themselves.
CONCLUSION
Society creates many of the conditions through which the individual is formed. From childhood, a person learns to suppress immediate impulses and relate his actions to the interests of others.
Through upbringing, a moral threshold develops. At first, it may be limited to the family. Then it expands to the community. Later, it may extend to the state. In the modern world, it can potentially encompass humanity as a whole.
Yet human beings remain biological organisms. Within them continue to operate instincts of self-preservation, aggression, reproduction, possession, status, and security.
Civilization does not eliminate these instincts. It teaches people to regulate them.
This is one of the most important functions of consciousness. If external restraints disappear while internal restraints remain insufficiently developed, previously suppressed desires may acquire the opportunity to become actions.
Thus emerges what we have called the liberated consciousness. A person who acquires wealth may become extravagant. A person who acquires power may become tyrannical. A person who acquires impunity may cease to observe social norms.
But a person possessing a developed internal moral structure can maintain self-control even when external restrictions disappear.
Therefore, society’s primary protection against tyranny does not lie exclusively in laws. It also lies within the individual. The stronger the internal moral threshold, the less external coercion is required. Conversely, the weaker internal control becomes, the more external restrictions society must establish.
From this arises the fundamental problem of free will. If consciousness is formed by society, if moral norms emerge from historical circumstances, and if human behavior depends to a significant degree upon upbringing, environment, heredity, physical condition, and life experience, then to what extent is an individual truly free?
If free will is a transcendental idea extending beyond immediate experience, and if the individual acts to a significant degree under the influence of necessity, another question inevitably follows: Is punishment completely fair when imposed upon a person for a criminal act?
If society itself contributes to the formation of the value system within which an individual develops, and if this system exerts a decisive influence upon consciousness, then punishment of the individual can, in a certain philosophical sense, be regarded as punishment of a part of society itself.
Yet society cannot punish itself as a single subject. Society creates laws, establishes norms and defines crimes and punishments.
Therefore, for the preservation of social order, the practical necessity of holding individuals responsible for violations remains.
But punishment should not be understood merely as retribution. Its purposes can include restoring social balance, protecting potential victims, preventing further harm, and, where possible, changing the behavior of the offender.
The history of Caligula reveals another side of this problem.
If society helps create the individual, an individual who acquires absolute power can, in turn, transform society.
He can destroy institutions, alter political norms, redefine acceptable behavior. He can force others to live according to his own rules.
The interaction between individual and society therefore represents a continuous exchange of influence. Society shapes the individual. The individual shapes society. Society establishes the boundaries of consciousness. Consciousness is capable of challenging or violating those boundaries. And when external boundaries disappear before internal moral culture has sufficiently developed, freedom can turn into arbitrariness.
The “Caligula” phenomenon is therefore not merely the story of one Roman emperor. It is a warning about what may happen when external chains disappear while internal ones have never been adequately formed.
True freedom does not begin when a person is permitted to do everything he wants. True freedom begins when a person becomes capable of deciding for himself what he should not want.



THE FOUNDATION OF THE POLITICAL ICEBERG

“Let every soul be subject to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except that which comes from God; the authorities that exist have been established by God.”
— The Apostle Paul, Epistle to the Romans 13:1

THE SURFACE AND THE DEPTH OF THE POLITICAL ICEBERG

The summit of the political iceberg consists of realities that we can see directly: political parties, movements, leaders, election programs, slogans, ideological declarations, and public disputes. Democratic, socialist, communist, Christian, Green, nationalist, liberal, conservative, and other political forces defend their respective ideas, seeking to persuade voters and, ultimately, obtain political power.
Yet politics, like an iceberg, has not only a visible surface. A much larger part remains hidden beneath the water. If we descend into the depths of political processes, we discover that behind the apparent diversity of parties, slogans, and ideologies operate mechanisms that are far more persistent.
Every political organization consists of people. And people remain human beings regardless of the flag they raise, the ideology they profess, or the political party to which they belong. If the number of its supporters falls to zero, a political organization disappears together with its slogans and institutions.
Political realities may therefore appear extraordinarily diverse while still being influenced by recurring elements of human nature: the desire for security, property, recognition, influence, justice, belonging, power, and superiority.
Political history is not merely a sequence of accidental events. It also reflects different stages in the development of human society.
Each political system emerges within a particular social environment. It is influenced by economic relations, social structure, education, culture, technology, historical experience, and the ability of different groups to organize and defend their interests.
Politics is particularly attractive to human beings because it gives abstract principles an emotional and personal form. A person may place his hopes in a candidate who appears to embody values close to his own. Conversely, he may blame a particular politician for problems that are actually the result of numerous interconnected causes.
Politics therefore becomes an arena for human emotions: hope, fear, admiration, resentment, envy, loyalty, hatred, disappointment, and the desire for revenge.
Because human beings are emotional creatures, political perception naturally tends toward division. People defend some, criticize others, trust some, and regard others as enemies. In sufficiently developed political systems, this tendency may eventually produce two major political camps or coalitions that compete continuously for public support.
But beneath the visible struggle between political parties lies a deeper principle: politics is a struggle among different interests over the distribution of social resources and over the rules according to which society is governed.
ROME AS AN EXAMPLE OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT
When we think of Ancient Rome, we cannot help but admire the power and durability of its civilization. Its army, law, political institutions, engineering, literature, architecture, and culture influenced many generations that followed.
The Romans borrowed extensively from the Greeks and from other peoples. But borrowing achievements is not the same as merely possessing them. A society must have sufficient organizational strength to adopt, preserve, adapt, and develop what it has inherited.
What, then, contributed to the formation of the Roman state?
One important factor was the gradual development of republican institutions. The Latin expression res publica referred broadly to public affairs or the commonwealth. Over time, Rome developed institutions through which different social groups could participate in political life and compete for influence.
The modern political system cannot simply be equated with the Roman Republic. Modern democracy is considerably more complex, incorporating universal suffrage, constitutional government, political parties, mass communication, representative institutions, and extensive systems of legal rights.
Nevertheless, Rome provides an important historical example of how political institutions can develop through prolonged social conflict and compromise.
Democratic institutions cannot simply be transferred from one country to another by decree. Their stable functioning depends upon the existence of social institutions capable of sustaining them.
Democracy, therefore, cannot merely be adopted. In an important sense, a society must develop the conditions that make democratic institutions workable.
To understand this process, we can examine the formation of the Roman Republic.
According to Roman tradition, Rome was founded by Romulus, who became its first king. After a period of monarchy, the last king was expelled, and Roman tradition traditionally places the beginning of the Republic in 509 BC. Modern historians, however, understand the formation of republican institutions as a more gradual and complicated process.
Political authority increasingly came to be exercised through elected magistrates. Among them, the two consuls occupied a central position, possessing extensive civil authority and command over the army.
Yet changing the form of government did not automatically create harmony. From its earliest period, the Republic was characterized by conflict among different social groups.
During the fifth century BC, the struggle between patricians and plebeians became particularly significant. Warfare placed heavy burdens upon poorer citizens, while debt could lead to severe economic dependence.
The plebeians demanded greater protection and political representation, while the patrician elite sought to preserve its privileges.
A fundamental contradiction emerged. Rome needed plebeians as soldiers, yet many of them possessed limited political influence. During periods of external danger, the political elite had stronger incentives to compromise. When the danger diminished, however, internal tensions returned.
Eventually, the conflict reached a critical stage.
According to the traditional account, the plebeians withdrew from Rome in what became known as the First Secession of the Plebs. The crisis threatened the military and political stability of the Republic.
Menenius Agrippa was sent to negotiate with them.
According to Livy's account, Agrippa employed the famous allegory of the human body. The various parts of the body rebelled against the stomach, believing that they worked while the stomach merely enjoyed the fruits of their labor. But when the hands stopped bringing food to the mouth and the mouth stopped receiving it, the entire body weakened.
Through this parable, Agrippa illustrated the interdependence of different parts of society.
Patricians and plebeians could oppose one another, but the complete destruction of either side would threaten the stability of the whole political community.
The conflict eventually contributed to the creation and recognition of the tribunes of the plebs, representatives who were empowered to defend plebeian interests and whose persons enjoyed special legal protection.
This development illustrates a fundamental political principle: a state does not necessarily become stronger when conflict disappears. It can become stronger when conflict is given legitimate institutional forms.
CONFLICT AS A MECHANISM OF DEVELOPMENT
The struggle between different social groups continued even after the establishment of the tribunate. Political institutions rarely eliminate conflict permanently; instead, they provide mechanisms through which conflict can be managed.
The story of Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus illustrates another dimension of Roman political life. According to Livy's account, after being exiled from Rome, Coriolanus joined the Volscians and led an army against his former city.
When Rome faced destruction, Roman women, including Coriolanus's mother and wife, appealed to him. Their intervention ultimately contributed to his decision to withdraw.
The story illustrates an important feature of political life: institutions do not exist independently of human relationships. Political decisions are made by people who simultaneously belong to families, communities, cultures, and social networks.
Another Roman institution reveals a different principle.
During periods of exceptional danger, Rome could appoint a dictator who received extraordinary powers for a limited period. In its traditional republican form, dictatorship was conceived as an emergency institution rather than a permanent system of government.
Here we encounter an important principle of political organization: even a developed republic may temporarily concentrate authority when faced with an extraordinary threat. The decisive question is whether extraordinary power remains limited by time, law, and institutional expectations.
Political systems are therefore not static structures. They change according to circumstances.
A MODEL OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF POLITICAL SOCIETY
We can conditionally describe political development as a sequence of interconnected stages:
Family — the original social institution, in which authority and responsibility are initially concentrated within the household.
Tribe — an association of clans or families requiring broader coordination and leadership.
Autocracy — a political arrangement in which authority becomes concentrated in a supreme ruler or narrow governing center.
Oligarchy — a system in which significant political and economic influence is concentrated among a relatively small number of powerful groups or individuals.
Republic — a system in which political authority is exercised through institutions representing different interests and subject to legal limitations.
Modern democracy — a complex system combining representation, elections, constitutional rights, separation of powers, public accountability, and mechanisms for resolving competing interests.
This sequence should not be understood as a universal or mechanically predetermined law of history. Different civilizations have followed different paths, combined institutions, and sometimes moved backward as well as forward.
It is nevertheless useful as an analytical model.
It is also important to distinguish between democracy and republican government.
In its classical meaning, democracy refers to rule or participation by the people. A republic, by contrast, emphasizes institutions, representation, law, and limitations upon political authority.
Majority rule alone does not guarantee freedom. A majority can oppress a minority just as an individual ruler can oppress his subjects.
A developed political system must therefore combine popular participation with constitutional limitations, protection of minorities, an independent judiciary, property rights, and a space for civil associations.
FROM FAMILY TO STATE
The family represents one of the earliest and most fundamental forms of social organization. Before complex political institutions emerged, human beings lived primarily in relatively small groups in which influence depended upon strength, experience, kinship, reputation, and the ability to provide protection.
With the formation of the family, a new form of responsibility emerged. The head of a household was responsible not only for himself but also for the safety and survival of others.
Several families could unite into a clan, and several clans into a tribe.
As groups became larger, leadership became increasingly important. A leader could coordinate collective action, especially during war, migration, famine, or other forms of danger.
In smaller communities, important decisions could sometimes be made directly by members of the group. Such practices can be regarded as early forms of participatory government.
Historical examples include popular assemblies in ancient Greece, assemblies of free men in medieval Iceland, and traditions of collective decision-making and elected leadership associated with the Zaporizhzhian Sich.
As society grows, however, direct decision-making becomes increasingly difficult. Representation, administration, legal institutions, and specialized forms of political organization become necessary.
Thus the state emerges.
AUTOCRACY AND OLIGARCHY
As tribes expanded and conquered one another, political authority increasingly became centralized. Kings, pharaohs, monarchs, and other supreme rulers appeared in many ancient civilizations.
At relatively early stages of technological development, centralized authority could provide significant organizational advantages. Large irrigation systems, monumental construction, taxation, warfare, and other collective projects required the coordination of large numbers of people.
States expanded their territories, extracted resources, and developed systems of taxation and dependent labor.
But the development of trade and economic specialization gradually created new centers of influence.
Wealthy individuals and groups acquired resources that allowed them to act with a degree of independence from the central authority. As wealth accumulated, these groups increasingly sought political influence and legal guarantees for their property.
This contributed in various historical contexts to the development of oligarchic forms of government.
Oligarchy differs from aristocracy primarily in the basis of elite formation. Aristocracy traditionally derives status from ancestry, hereditary privilege, or noble rank. Oligarchic influence can instead arise from wealth, economic power, political organization, or control over important resources.
Modern political systems likewise demonstrate a close relationship between economics and politics.
Economic groups seek to influence legislation, taxation, regulation, government investment, and other decisions. They may do so directly by participating in politics or indirectly through political organizations, public advocacy, lobbying, campaigns, and other lawful forms of influence.
Politics therefore cannot be completely separated from economics.
THE MIDDLE CLASS AND POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT
As prosperity and economic complexity increase, new groups of influence emerge: professional associations, trade unions, business organizations, community groups, political parties, and social movements.
These groups compete with established centers of power. The process may be conflictual, but conflict can also force political institutions to adapt.
Businesses seek favorable conditions for entrepreneurship. Workers demand higher wages and better working conditions. Trade unions use collective action. Civic organizations seek legislative changes. Political parties attempt to unite the interests of different groups.
When the state provides legal mechanisms through which these interests can be expressed, conflict becomes part of the normal functioning of the political system.
When legitimate channels are absent, however, pressure can accumulate outside the institutional framework.
REVOLUTION AND ITS MECHANISM
When influential social groups have no effective legal means of defending their interests, political conflict may develop into open confrontation.
Individual protests can become more radical when they are repeatedly suppressed. If a movement acquires broad support and the existing political order loses legitimacy, revolutionary conditions may emerge.
We must nevertheless distinguish between social conflict and revolution.
Social conflict can contribute to institutional development when it takes place through legal mechanisms and leads to the expansion of rights or improvement of political institutions.
Revolution, in the sense considered here, involves a radical transformation or destruction of the existing political order and its replacement by a fundamentally different system.
Such transformations can produce both constructive and destructive consequences. Existing institutions may be removed before effective replacements have been created. Economic relationships can be disrupted, property can be redistributed, professional groups can be displaced, and accumulated institutional knowledge can be lost.
Revolutionary movements often promise liberation, justice, equality, and prosperity. But once the existing political structure has been dismantled, another question immediately arises: Who will control those who have acquired power?
This is one of the fundamental dangers of revolutionary politics.
Large masses of people may become instruments in a struggle among organized groups. After a revolution succeeds, the most disciplined and organized faction may acquire disproportionate control over the new political order.
The population that supported the revolution in the hope of improving its life may then discover that political decisions are being made by a new elite.
IDEOLOGY AS AN INSTRUMENT OF MOBILIZATION
A revolutionary movement usually requires an idea capable of uniting large numbers of dissatisfied people.
Such an idea must often be simple enough to communicate widely and powerful enough to create the belief that a fundamentally different future is possible.
The promise of prosperity, justice, equality, or national renewal can become one of the strongest sources of political mobilization.
Slogans arise that possess powerful emotional appeal: demands for power to the people, redistribution of wealth, social equality, national restoration, or the complete destruction of the existing order.
A practical program is often less emotionally attractive than a vision of the future. People may find an idealized image of a better society easier to understand than a complicated system of economic calculations and institutional reforms.
At the same time, revolutionary ideology frequently identifies an enemy.
In communist movements, this enemy was often defined as the bourgeoisie or the class enemy. In National Socialist ideology, ethnic and social groups were assigned the role of enemies of the nation.
The ideological mechanisms differed profoundly, but one recurring pattern can be observed: complex social problems are simplified by attributing them primarily to a particular group.
Thus the scapegoat emerges.
Psychologically, it is easier to explain the complexity of the world through the actions of a specific enemy than to accept the existence of numerous interconnected economic, social, technological, and historical causes.
THE LEADER, THE SYMBOL, AND THE RITUAL
A revolutionary movement often requires a recognizable leader.
The leader becomes a personification of the political idea and a symbol of the struggle. Over time, loyalty to the leader may become almost indistinguishable from loyalty to the movement itself.
An internal hierarchy develops. Ordinary supporters occupy the lower levels, while local organizers and regional leaders coordinate increasingly large groups. At the top stands the central leadership.
Mechanisms of internal discipline arise to preserve unity.
Symbols become particularly important. Colors, flags, emblems, uniforms, gestures, songs, and other visual or ritual elements allow individuals to experience themselves as members of a larger collective.
A symbol can affect a person more powerfully than a lengthy political program because it creates an immediate emotional connection between the individual and the group.
Rituals can reinforce this connection.
A person may make a pledge, accept a symbol, participate in ceremonies, or publicly demonstrate loyalty. Breaking the oath or abandoning the movement may then be perceived not simply as a change of political opinion but as betrayal.
In this way,  a political movement can develop from a collection of people sharing an idea into a highly organized social system.
TEN BASIC PRINCIPLES OF A REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT
We can identify several characteristic features frequently found in revolutionary or highly mobilized political movements:
The belief in the special status and historical importance of ordinary people.
An authoritative doctrine presented as an explanation of social reality.
A promise of future prosperity, justice, equality, or national renewal.
Powerful and emotionally charged symbolism.
Orientation toward mass political support.
Identification of a specific ideological or social enemy.
The emergence of a privileged internal leadership structure.
Intolerance toward competing ideologies.
Elevation of the leader's personality.
Transformation of fallen participants into martyrs and symbols of the movement's righteousness.
These characteristics help explain how certain political movements become capable of mobilizing enormous numbers of people.
The stronger the emotional connection between an individual and the movement, the more difficult it may become for that person to abandon it, even when reality begins to contradict its original promises.
CONFLICT AS THE FOUNDATION OF CIVIL SOCIETY
Society develops through the interaction and conflict of different interests.
The familiar expression “Life is a struggle” does not necessarily imply physical violence. It can also describe the permanent competition among different needs, ambitions, values, and interests.
People differ in their abilities, resources, beliefs, and goals. A completely conflict-free society is therefore unlikely to exist.
We can distinguish several broad forms of internal political conflict:
Civil war — armed confrontation between organized groups within a state.
Riot — a sudden eruption of collective anger that may develop into disorder or violence.
Socio-economic conflict — competition among social and economic groups over rights, resources, wages, taxation, ownership, or political influence.
Ideological conflict — a struggle over the fundamental principles and direction of the political system.
These categories can overlap.
The essential question is not whether conflict exists but how society manages it.
If socio-economic and political conflicts can develop through courts, elections, negotiations, collective bargaining, demonstrations, legislatures, and other legal institutions, conflict can become a mechanism of adaptation.
REVOLUTION AS A STEP BACKWARD
From this perspective, the revolutionary path can sometimes have regressive consequences.
When an existing institutional order is destroyed without an effective replacement, society must reconstruct essential mechanisms of administration, law, property, and political coordination.
Revolution may therefore destroy not only the weaknesses of the previous system but also some of its achievements.
The revolutionary events in Russia in 1917 provide a particularly important historical example for this discussion.
The collapse of the imperial political order was followed by civil war, radical institutional transformation, economic disruption, and ultimately the concentration of political power in the hands of a new centralized regime.
A paradoxical situation emerged: a movement that proclaimed the liberation of human beings from exploitation eventually contributed to the creation of an extremely centralized political system.
This does not mean that every revolution necessarily produces the same outcome. It demonstrates, however, that destroying one form of power does not automatically mean abolishing power itself.
Power tends to fill a vacuum.
If a society lacks numerous independent institutions capable of limiting state authority, a political vacuum can rapidly be filled by another centralized force.
A CRITIQUE OF THE COMMUNIST EXPERIMENT
This problem became particularly acute in the political practice of Bolshevism.
In The State and Revolution, Vladimir Lenin described the state primarily as an instrument of class domination and argued for a transitional revolutionary state capable of suppressing the former ruling classes.
The subsequent history of the Soviet Union demonstrated the dangers that can arise when political authority becomes highly concentrated and independent institutions are unable to restrain it.
Marx, Engels, and Lenin developed theories of social development in which class divisions and relations of production occupied a central position.
From another perspective, however, the existence of different social classes can also be understood as an indication of social and economic differentiation rather than simply as evidence of exploitation.
Those who possess capital can invest in production, technology, and enterprises. The middle class contributes significantly to consumption, entrepreneurship, employment, and economic stability. Workers participate directly in production. Scientists, educators, engineers, artists, and other intellectual professions contribute to the development of knowledge and culture.
Social stratification, therefore, does not automatically mean the destruction of society.
The more fundamental question is whether social mobility exists.
Can people improve their economic position? Can they protect their property? Can they establish businesses? Can they receive education? Can they compete? Can they enter the political system and peacefully challenge existing elites?
The health of a society depends not simply on whether inequality exists but on whether its institutions allow people to change their position and pursue development.
ECONOMICS AND THE PROBLEM OF PRICE
Special attention should be given to Karl Marx's economic theory.
Marx attempted to explain the value of commodities through the labor theory of value and analyzed the internal mechanisms of capitalist production.
Modern economics, however, treats market prices as the result of numerous interacting factors, including supply, demand, scarcity, expectations, competition, production costs, technology, and consumer preferences.
Price is therefore not a fixed natural constant.
It is a dynamic signal.
When demand rises while supply remains limited, prices may increase. When supply exceeds demand, prices may fall. Technological innovation can reduce production costs or make existing resources less valuable. Changes in consumer preferences can create entirely new markets.
The market functions precisely because prices change.
From this perspective, one of the principal difficulties of a centrally planned economy lies in the attempt to replace numerous decentralized economic signals with administrative decisions made by a relatively small number of institutions.
Historical experience demonstrates that such systems can encounter serious problems involving shortages, surpluses, distorted incentives, and inefficient allocation of resources.
The dispute over ownership is therefore simultaneously a dispute over the mechanism through which economic decisions are made.
OLIGARCHY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MIDDLE CLASS
Today, politicians frequently describe oligarchic power as an absolute evil.
The problem, however, deserves a more differentiated analysis.
The emergence of large capital means that substantial economic resources have accumulated within society. Enterprises controlled by wealthy individuals can create employment, pay taxes, invest in production, and support entire economic regions.
This does not mean that oligarchic concentration of power is harmless.
When economic and political influence becomes concentrated in a small number of hands, the risks of corruption, monopolization, regulatory capture, and unequal political influence increase.
The appropriate response, however, need not necessarily be the destruction of capital itself.
The more important objective is to establish rules under which capital must compete, obey the law, pay taxes, and operate within transparent institutional boundaries.
As the middle class develops, it creates additional pressure against excessive concentration of power.
The middle class generally benefits from stable rules, secure property rights, predictable taxation, access to credit, functioning courts, and competitive markets.
For this reason, the development of a broad middle class can become an important foundation for political stability and democratization.
REVOLUTION OR GRADUAL TRANSFORMATION?
When social groups possess legal methods for defending their interests, the incentive for revolutionary transformation tends to decrease.
Economic groups can influence political parties. Trade unions can negotiate and organize strikes. Civic organizations can appeal to courts and legislatures. Journalists can investigate abuses. Voters can replace political representatives.
Through these mechanisms, political systems can transform themselves without destroying their institutional foundations.
A business may support a political campaign and advocate legislative reform. A trade union may organize collective action to obtain higher wages. A social movement may pressure parliament to amend a law.
All these activities involve conflict.
But in a developed political system, conflict occurs within institutions rather than outside them.
The capacity of a state to transform social conflict into lawful political competition is one of the principal characteristics of a developed civil society.
MODERN DEMOCRACY
The modern political system incorporates elements inherited from several historical forms of government.
We can conditionally distinguish two major components.
The republican component includes elected representatives, separation of powers, constitutional limitations, an independent judiciary, and the rule of law.
The democratic component includes participation by citizens through elections, referendums, public debate, and other forms of political expression.
Modern states may also contain mechanisms for extraordinary concentration of executive power during emergencies. Such mechanisms are legitimate only when they remain subject to law, proportionality, oversight, and clear limitations.
Modern democracy is therefore not simply majority rule.
It is a complex mechanism for reconciling competing interests while protecting fundamental rights.
In a developed system, power should not permanently belong to one individual or one group. It should be distributed among institutions capable of limiting and supervising one another.
The political systems of different countries demonstrate different strengths. The United States provides a notable example of institutional separation of powers. Sweden, Finland, and Norway demonstrate highly organized civic and social institutions. Germany and Japan have achieved remarkable levels of technological and industrial development while maintaining complex institutional structures.
No system, however, should be regarded as final. Every political system continues to develop.
UKRAINE AND THE POLITICAL ICEBERG
What situation has developed in Ukraine?
Ukraine is a relatively young independent state whose political institutions continue to evolve.
Within the model proposed here, one important characteristic is the considerable influence of large capital combined with comparatively weaker organization among small and medium-sized economic actors. Trade unions often possess limited influence, civic organizations vary considerably in their capacity, and society can become fragmented along regional, economic, cultural, and political lines.
Fragmentation, however, does not mean the absence of political potential.
An apparently disorganized society can, under particular circumstances, demonstrate enormous political energy. The task of the state is therefore not simply to suppress dissatisfaction but to create lawful mechanisms through which dissatisfaction can be transformed into institutional change.
The problem cannot be solved merely by eliminating wealthy individuals.
If capital leaves a country, investment, enterprises, employment, and tax revenues can leave with it as well.
The more constructive question is therefore: How can a state create rules under which large capital has an incentive to invest domestically while obeying the law and competing fairly with other economic groups?
The familiar saying “Money makes money” expresses a simple economic observation: capital can generate additional capital when conditions for productive investment exist.
A rational state policy should therefore seek not simply to destroy capital but to ensure that capital contributes to the national economy while remaining subject to law and competition.
DEVELOPING THE DOMESTIC MARKET
One possible instrument of economic development is support for domestic production.
When financial institutions provide enterprises with access to reasonably priced credit, businesses may acquire greater opportunities to expand production.
Growing production can create employment, increase the tax base, raise household incomes, and expand domestic demand.
Higher incomes, in turn, strengthen the domestic market.
Yet every such policy affects competing interests.
If domestic production expands, companies dependent on imports may face greater competition. If the state provides targeted support to domestic producers, the balance of interests among economic groups changes.
Economic policy is therefore also political policy.
The outcome is not necessarily determined by who is richest or most numerous.
In a stable institutional system, advantage tends to belong to groups capable of organizing themselves, articulating their interests, and pursuing them through lawful mechanisms.
THE NATIONAL IDEA
Stable development requires more than economic prosperity. It also requires a certain degree of social cohesion.
A nation needs ideas that allow its citizens to perceive their history as meaningful and their future as shared.
This does not require the creation of artificial mythology. On the contrary, a national idea is stronger when it is grounded in genuine history, culture, language, literature, architecture, scientific achievement, and historical memory.
Ukrainian history provides abundant material for such reflection.
Ukrainian Cossackdom is an important component of this history, although its political development was complex and contradictory. Different interpretations of the policies of Bohdan Khmelnytsky and other historical figures make it difficult to construct an entirely unambiguous political mythology around them.
The legacy of Kyivan Rus may therefore represent another important element of Ukrainian historical consciousness.
Yet one historical period should not be placed in absolute opposition to another.
History is better understood as a continuous sequence in which different periods contribute to the formation of later generations.
Kyiv, its princes, architecture, culture, literature, religious traditions, and political heritage can all become sources of historical reflection and national pride.
Young people are particularly important in this process.
The younger generation is often especially receptive to ideas that provide meaning, belonging, and a vision of the future. During periods of political transformation, young people can also become vulnerable to radical ideologies.
The state must therefore invest not only in economic development but also in education, culture, historical knowledge, and the development of independent critical thinking.
DEMOCRACY CANNOT SIMPLY BE IMPOSED
History suggests that democracy cannot be mechanically transferred from one society to another.
Political institutions function effectively only when a social environment exists that can sustain them. If there is no independent judiciary, functioning civic organizations, political competition, free public debate, a developed middle class, and a culture of legality, formal democratic procedures can be captured by narrow interests.
Holding elections is therefore not enough. A functioning democracy requires that the losing candidate accept the result, that the winner remain constrained by law, that courts be independent, that property be protected, and that the opposition retain the right to organize and compete.
Democracy is not merely the moment of voting. It is a permanent process of reconciling competing interests.
POLITICS AS DYNAMICS
Many people perceive political life as a static condition. They imagine that if the “correct” politician comes to power, the “correct” constitution is adopted, and the “correct” political decisions are made, society will finally reach a state of permanent harmony.
But politics cannot be static. Like human society itself, it is a process of continuous movement. New technologies appear. New professions emerge. New economic groups develop. Old industries decline. New forms of communication change political behavior. New generations acquire different expectations. Consequently, a political system that ceases to adapt eventually falls behind the society it governs.
Every country possesses a political system corresponding, to some degree, to the development of its social institutions.
Democracy does not simply fall from heaven. Political rights must be defended and institutionalized. But whenever possible, this struggle should take place through law, political organization, civil society, and peaceful competition.
THE POLITICAL ICEBERG
We can now return to the image of the iceberg. On the surface we see political parties, presidents, parliaments, elections, slogans, scandals, and individual politicians.
Beneath the surface lie:
the economy;
ownership;
social classes;
professional associations;
trade unions;
business groups;
civic organizations;
cultural traditions;
historical memory;
human emotions;
the struggle for security;
the struggle for resources;
the struggle for influence.
This hidden part helps determine the shape of the visible summit. When society changes, its political system changes with it.
An established social group naturally seeks to preserve an order from which it benefits. Its prosperity, influence, and political position depend upon existing institutions. But every social group has its own life cycle: emergence, development, prosperity, transformation, and eventual decline.
New technologies create new industries. New industries create new professions. New professions create new economic interests. New ideas create new political movements.
These new groups eventually encounter older centers of influence, and the resulting competition transforms the social structure.
For this reason, sociology cannot be reduced to eternal formulas and immutable constants. Human society is dynamic. Time creates new circumstances, and new circumstances create new interests.
THE FUTURE OF POLITICAL SOCIETY
Perhaps in the distant future humanity will reach a condition in which the material differences between rich and poor, strong and weak, are significantly reduced. Technological development may eventually make many basic material necessities accessible to almost everyone. Yet absolute equality will probably remain more an ideal than a reality.
Human beings differ in abilities, ambitions, character, preferences, creativity, diligence, and inclinations. Even under relatively equal material conditions, differences between individuals would remain.
Humanity may nevertheless gradually move toward a society in which individual interests are increasingly reconciled with collective interests.
But even in such a society, conflict is unlikely to disappear completely. Its form will simply change.
Today people compete for land, capital, political influence, and material resources. Tomorrow they may compete increasingly for access to knowledge, technology, information, intellectual property, scientific opportunities, and possibilities for self-realization.
The political iceberg will continue to exist even if its external appearance changes. This is why political development cannot be stopped. Every achieved stage becomes the foundation for another.
The family gave rise to broader kinship structures. Clans developed into tribes. Tribes contributed to the emergence of states. States generated competition among elites. Competition among elites contributed, in some historical contexts, to the development of republican institutions. The growth of social groups and political participation eventually contributed to modern democratic systems.
But democracy is not necessarily the final point of history. It is another stage in the continuing attempt to reconcile human interests.
Ukraine, like other societies undergoing profound transformation, will continue along its own historical path. The journey cannot be completely smooth because conflict is an inherent element of social development. The essential task is to prevent conflict from becoming destruction. A developed society is not a society without contradictions. It is a society capable of resolving contradictions without destroying itself.
The political maturity of a state is therefore determined not by the absence of struggle but by its ability to transform struggle into constructive development. Every political system survives only as long as it remains capable of adapting to a changing society.
That is why we must look not only at the summit of the political iceberg, where we see parties, elections, parliaments, and individual politicians, but also at its enormous hidden part: the economy, social structure, institutional framework, human psychology, historical memory, and struggle of interests.
There, beneath the surface, lies the deeper foundation of political society. There power is generated. There its future is formed. And there we must search for explanations of political events that, on the surface, may appear unexpected, chaotic, or contradictory.
A common saying tells us: “Everything has its place and its time.”
Political development also has its place and its time. A society cannot simply skip every condition necessary for the functioning of its institutions. It can accelerate its development, learn from the experience of other countries, correct its mistakes, and adopt successful institutions from abroad. But institutions cannot be separated entirely from the social conditions that sustain them.
The future therefore belongs not to those states that attempt to stop history, but to those capable of understanding its movement and learning to manage conflict without destroying freedom, economic development, or human dignity.
The political iceberg continues to move. The visible summit changes first. But genuine political change often begins in the depths.



CONCLUSION

“All things are full of labor: man cannot express it all; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been will be again, and what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
— Ecclesiastes 1:8–9

Where your search for truth will lead you next, through the thorny labyrinths of life, we do not know. Perhaps you will find answers to some of the questions raised in this book. Perhaps, on the contrary, you will discover even more questions. Yet this is precisely the natural condition of a human being who strives for knowledge. A curious mind never ceases trying to comprehend the meaning of our existence on this planet. And sometimes, instead of becoming clearer, that meaning seems to become increasingly concealed beneath the mist of new mysteries.
Science has reached heights that once seemed unimaginable. Much of what existed only in the pages of science-fiction books a few decades ago has become ordinary reality. Humanity has learned to see what was previously invisible to the human eye, to explore the depths of matter, to observe distant cosmic objects, to create extraordinarily complex technological systems, and to penetrate areas of knowledge that once seemed beyond our reach.
It may therefore seem that there is hardly a corner of nature left into which the searching eye of the researcher has not penetrated. Yet the farther we advance, the more clearly we encounter the paradox of knowledge: every explanation we discover gives birth to new questions. Behind every mystery that is solved, several others appear—deeper, more difficult, and sometimes more mysterious than the original one. Humanity seems to be moving toward a horizon that constantly retreats as we approach it.
And yet humanity refuses to remain confined within the boundaries it has already reached. We constantly attempt to go beyond the limits of immediate experience, to look into places where familiar concepts cease to function. Being itself remains one of the greatest mysteries. We sense its grandeur and, for this reason, tend to seek in it not only rational meaning, but also philosophical and, at times, mystical significance.
Having traveled this contradictory path together with you, we must nevertheless say goodbye and allow you to continue this fascinating journey into the unknown on your own. This book is not the final point of our reflections. Rather, it is one of many temporary stops along the endless road of human thought.
It is precisely this eternal search that gives birth to great people who move humanity forward. Yet this movement does not take place along a smooth and well-paved road. On the contrary, the path of knowledge is winding and difficult. It passes through swamps and marshes, dense forests and high mountains. We make mistakes, stumble, sometimes turn back, reconsider our convictions, and then rise again and continue our ascent.
Human history shows that progress rarely emerges from complete agreement. On the contrary, new ideas almost always encounter resistance from established beliefs. Doubt, criticism, and disagreement are therefore not necessarily obstacles to truth. Sometimes they become its indispensable companions.
Evil, too, is not always obvious. It can put on a mask, acquire a pleasant and attractive appearance, and therefore cease to provoke the same immediate rejection as before. Everything can become an object of exchange, while values preserved for centuries gradually lose their strength and become objects of bargaining. The stubborn abandon their principles, those who desire something obtain what they seek, and society gradually adapts to new rules.
To some extent, such a state of affairs may indeed reduce social tension. But at the same time, it forces us to ask: if everything has a price, what remains priceless? If every conviction can be exchanged for personal gain, where is the boundary between reasonable compromise and the abandonment of oneself?
Human nature is not perfect, and that is precisely what makes it so fascinating. Within every one of us exists an enormous field for development—spiritual, moral, and intellectual. A human being is capable of changing, reconsidering his or her views, learning from mistakes, and rising above the level at which he or she stood yesterday.
We will not be irritated if our arguments seem absurd or insufficiently convincing to you. Every person has the right to his or her own opinion, provided that it has been formed independently and is based upon a sincere desire to understand reality. This book represents merely one point of view and in no way claims to possess absolute or indisputable truth.
We have simply attempted to demonstrate the workings of reason in its practical application: the ability to observe, to doubt, to compare, to draw conclusions, and then to subject those conclusions to critical examination once again.
It is important to defend the point of view in which you sincerely believe. But it is equally important not to turn your conviction into dogma. We should not blindly seek someone else's truth, because every person has his or her own path toward understanding it. We must doubt, wonder, question, and continue persistently striving for truth.
New views and convictions should be formed not only on the basis of confidence in our own correctness, but also on a willingness to test that confidence. Only someone capable of questioning his or her own position has the opportunity to truly strengthen it.
For a human being, preserving individuality means preserving oneself as a personality. In a world where public opinion, material interests, social pressures, and various forms of influence constantly attempt to make human consciousness uniform, the ability to think independently becomes one of the most important forms of freedom.
If, while reading this book, you approached our arguments critically and disagreed with them, then we are worthy opponents. After all, truth is discovered not only through agreement, but also through the encounter of different viewpoints, discussion, argumentation, and mutual concessions.
And what, then, is the power of superiority, you may ask once again?
There is a well-known story from the final years of the life of Immanuel Kant. When a physician came to visit the dying philosopher, he initially could hardly understand what Kant was saying: his voice had become extremely faint and indistinct. The physician was then told that Kant, out of courtesy, could not sit while his guest remained standing. The physician could hardly believe it. He had come to see a seriously ill man who could barely remain on his feet, yet who still felt obliged to show respect to another human being.
According to the traditional account, the physician eventually heard Kant pronounce clearly:
“I have not yet lost my sense of belonging to humanity.”
There it is—the invisible power of human superiority.
True superiority is not power over another person. It is not the ability to force someone into submission, nor wealth, nor physical strength. True superiority lies in the ability to remain human when circumstances make it possible to abandon one's human dignity.
A person may earn society's recognition by surpassing others through useful achievements, scientific discoveries, the struggle for justice, devotion to one's homeland, or acts of courage and compassion. It is here, rather than in the suppression of others, that the true strength of a human being should manifest itself.
Perhaps we have not received a final answer to all the questions we have raised. But perhaps a final answer is not the main purpose of the human search. What matters is the journey itself—the ability to ask questions, to search, to doubt, to make mistakes, to begin again, and to continue moving forward.
A person becomes stronger not when he ceases to doubt, but when he learns to live with doubt and nevertheless continues searching for truth. A person rises above others not when he subjugates them, but when he is capable of overcoming his own weakness, limitations, and fear.
And therefore, we leave you not with a ready-made answer, but with a question that each person must answer independently:
What, precisely, is your personal form of superiority, and what are you prepared to do in order to continue your journey?
Perhaps the answer to this question will become the beginning of your own ascent.



SELECTED LITERATURE

ARISTOTLE
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by W. D. Ross; revised by Lesley Brown. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Aristotle. Politics. Translated by Ernest Barker; revised by R. F. Stalley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
PLATO
Plato. The Republic. Translated by Desmond Lee; revised by Melissa Lane. London: Penguin Classics, 2007.
AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO
Augustine of Hippo. Confessions. Translated by Henry Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Augustine of Hippo. The City of God. Translated by R. W. Dyson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Augustine of Hippo. On Free Choice of the Will. Translated by Thomas Williams. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1993.
CICERO
Cicero. On Duties (De Officiis). Edited and translated by M. T. Griffin and E. M. Atkins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Cicero. On the Republic and On the Laws. Edited and translated by James E. G. Zetzel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Cicero. Tusculan Disputations. Translated by J. E. King. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927.
THE BIBLE
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Washington, DC: National Council of Churches, 2021.
Particularly relevant books: Genesis; Job; Psalms; Proverbs; Ecclesiastes; Matthew; John; Romans; 1 Corinthians; Revelation.
THOMAS MORE
More, Thomas. Utopia. Edited by George M. Logan, Robert M. Adams, and Clarence H. Miller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
PLOTINUS
Plotinus. The Enneads. Translated by Lloyd P. Gerson et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
FRANCIS BACON
Bacon, Francis. The New Organon. Edited by Lisa Jardine and Michael Silverthorne. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Bacon, Francis. The Advancement of Learning. Edited by Michael Kiernan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
JOHN LOCKE
Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Peter H. Nidditch. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975.
Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. Edited by Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
CHRISTIAN WOLFF
Wolff, Christian. Philosophia Rationalis sive Logica. Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1728.
Wolff, Christian. Philosophia Prima sive Ontologia. Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1730.
Wolff, Christian. Cosmologia Generalis. Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1731.
IMMANUEL KANT
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Translated and edited by Mary Gregor and Jens Timmermann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Translated by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Kant, Immanuel. Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (Zum ewigen Frieden). In Practical Philosophy. Translated and edited by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by Graham Parkes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Translated by Ronald Speirs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
NAPOLEON HILL
Hill, Napoleon. Think and Grow Rich. New York: The Ralston Society, 1937.
Hill, Napoleon. The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons. Meriden, CT: The Ralston Society, 1928.
NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB
Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. New York: Random House, 2007.
ADDITIONAL CLASSICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOURCES
Homer. The Iliad. Translated by Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Books, 1990.
Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Books, 1996.
Heraclitus. Fragments. In The Presocratic Philosophers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Marcus Aurelius. Meditations. Translated by Gregory Hays. New York: Modern Library, 2003.
Descartes, Ren;. Meditations on First Philosophy. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1993.
Spinoza, Baruch. Ethics. Translated by Edwin Curley. London: Penguin Classics, 1996.
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Philosophical Essays. Edited and translated by Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1989.
Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Kierkegaard, S;ren. Fear and Trembling. Translated by Alastair Hannay. London: Penguin Classics, 1985.
Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. London: Penguin Classics, 2002.
Jung, C. G. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.