Idividual development as a vector

[Игорь Николаевич]

Кому интересно, моя теория векторного развития индивидуализма в литературе.

Moving through the large volume of written works I first tried to understand the relation of the author to the world around him/her and his/her attempt to express this relation through the canvas of the work. If one prefers the chronological approach to analyzing literary works (though this approach is not ideal since the historical sequence of publications does not always coincide with the development of the internal aspects of the works' content), then in reading of certain books one can assume a peculiar graphical structure, modified by the form of a vector which can be led in different directions. Using this approach, I mean the geometric concept of a vector as a section of a straight line with a set start point and its destination, but with no set end point. Thus one can imagine a force that has a beginning and is ever evolving in a particular direction.

Such a scheme is not an attempt of the graphical imagining of all fiction or philosophical works read in these courses, but only a mental experiment, based on empirical experiences. It should be borne in mind that the same book can be modified not by one but by many several vectors. In addition, the vector diagram is shown schematically only for the purpose of understanding of the contextual direction of a literary work or its main idea. It cannot be applied to any given book and does not pretend to be an objective truth, but only one of many possible subjective approaches for the understanding of a piece of art.


1. Vector from God to man

If one looks from the historical perspective of human development and takes into consideration the first chronological literary monuments of human culture, the presence of the divine, of the Major Force is consistently indicated in them. From beginning attempts to understand the surrounding world to understanding their own development, humans could not imagine their existence not being subordinated to some type of supreme divine will. More than just faith in the divine, the recognition of the presence of higher power played a key role during their forming understanding of the world. In analyzing this vector, I would like to avoid a purely religious discussions of the relationship between God and Man, and focus more on social and moral aspects.

A man perceived the divine as a factor taken for granted, always present (since the creation of the world) and obliging man to submission, or at least recognition of the supreme authority over him. Faith in the divine power can be based not on miracles or other supernatural occurrences, but through an everyday experience accessible to all people as sentient and thinking beings: the formation of their subjective ego, which is the original and necessary condition of any experience or feeling.

The simplest example of this in the way we can never experience the cold or heat outside of ourselves. We can see fire, we can study the chemical process of combustion and decomposing of elements and we can understand the interaction of molecules, but we can never experience the feeling of heat in the fire itself. We can feel it only when we touch a burning item. Hence, the inevitable condition of a feeling is the presence of a subject who is capable of experiencing it on their own skin, through their own sensory receptors. And even after studying the working of skin receptors and the entire nervous system, and understanding these physiological and chemical processes, we would not be able to locate the specific point that gives us ability to feel. The same failure will persecute us in our attempts to analyze our other feelings.

It will prove more challenging if we as subjects try to apply our understanding of physiological and chemical processes to analyze such subjective experiences as love, tenderness, sadness, fear and hope. Using the most precise instruments to capture the signals transmitted by the brain cells, we will fail to find in them anything similar to what we experience in ourselves as joy or sadness. Nobel Prize Winner for Physics Erwin Schrödinger wrote: "... I am amazed that the scientific picture of the real world around me is so incomplete. It gives a lot of factual information ... It can not tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical joy, and it knows nothing about the beauty and ugliness, good and bad, God and eternity."

Nevertheless, despite the subjectivity of our experience, we understand each other, because we are all human beings, all belonging to the world of thinking subjects. In the same way, subjectivity of experience does not preclude its general validity. But this universal validity reveals itself in the mode of "who" and not in the mode of "what". We can assume that since ancient times people imagined that the world of human beings has its own subjective basis, same as the world of material objects. There are millions of objects: stars, planets, oceans, rocks, trees, animals, but they are all an epitome of some common base matter. In the same way one could expect to search for a common base for all human beings, one that encompasses men and women, young and old, different races, rich and poor and so on. All of them have the ability to experience something within themselves: heat and cold, love and compassion, joy and sorrow. In every person's inner life a range of emotional moments takes place, the movements of thoughts, feelings, sensations, intentions, which are open to him but only within the depths of himself. Trying to understand this single subjective basis, man brought forth the inevitable existence of a higher intelligence that imparts humans with the laws of their subjective development.

In Plato's Symposium philosophers attempting to understand such an important aspect of human passion as love talk about the feeling of love as if about a god, and give him such mandatory anthropological features as age, parents, character and habits. Trying to find the truth, the philosophers come to the conclusion, that “love is a spirit, which connects all together”. In Saint Augustine's Confessions, the author many repeatedly proclaims the thrust of this supreme power on him when he writes: "....and what room is there within me, whither my God can come into me?" The allegation on this vector can be seen in modern works of literature as well, most clearly represented by Joseph Brodsky:

Keenly, without blinking, through pallid, stray
clouds, upon the child in the manger, from far away—
from the depth of the universe, from its opposite end—the star
was looking into the cave. And that was the father's stare.


2. Vector from man to God

Historically the vector leading from God to man can be seen as the earliest in the anthropology of human individualism. But would this vector involve some feedback? People turned to the gods since ancient times, in the form of specific religious procedures such as laudatory pleading, penitential prayer of thanksgiving, or simply to attract the deity for administrative purposes as a judge or witness, as clearly seen in Aeschylus Oresteia for instance, where Athena acts as arbitration judge. However, if we ignore the pure religious aspects and focus on the human aspects, we have to accept that this vector is possible only when a human being is willing to accept god not as a supreme subject, but only as an object of his relations. This approach we can clearly see in Dostoevsky's The Grand Inquisitor.

In this text God is not presented, as an omnipotent immaterial substance, that is, the Absolute Personality, but as a simple individual. Moreover, in order to facilitate the dialogue (and it is present in this text in spite of the fact that God does not utter a word), the writer gives the opponent of God – the Grand Inquisitor - vast power and locks the god in a prison cell. Under such conditions, the construction of the vector from man to God is most favorable.

The main contradiction illustrated in this novel is not the obvious one between the church as an institution and god, but the contradiction between the individual choice for freedom and willingness to submit to public rules. Dostoevsky shows god under the condition of subjectivity, the ability to be himself, to have his own "I", to be able to think, speak and make decisions on his own. This "self" is revealed only in relation to himself. In contradiction between material (reason) and spiritual (passion), this quality of "being oneself" can be discovered only from the inside of oneself; it is not contained in the physical, chemical, biological or mathematical properties of objects. No one can say: "I feel inside me a cell" or "I'm worried about this molecule", but everyone can say: "I feel inside me joy, sadness, hurt, faith, doubt." The main idea of the novel is, that god gives man this ability to feel in order for him to be able to draw conclusions and to take responsibility for them.

In this case, a legitimate question arises: Does the idea of God coincide with reason? After all, we use reason to connect individual and partial effects in some type of general laws. Thus scientific reason opens laws based on multiple interactions of elementary particles, chemical elements, different species and organisms, etc. Reason seeks common grounds of all instances of the objective world and tries to submit them to such extremely generalized concepts as "matter" or "energy". The same reason motivates us to look for something in common that unites the inner spiritual life of all people, of which we know from our own experience, and about which we communicate with others.

The claim Grand Inquisitor raises to God is that he gave man freedom rather than give him a comfortable condition in the absolute paradigm of one of three forces: Miracle, Mystery and Authority. According to Dostoevsky, it is the church that took on the responsibility of providing comfort to the simple man, because: "...for never was there anything more unbearable to the human race than personal freedom!" I believe this is the main problem, as indicated by Dostoevsky - the problem of the replacement of human freedom to develop, improve and make decisions with a clearly defined common development paradigm and an explicit common goal for all. Is man able to refuse the "instinctive need of having a worship in common" in favour of individual freedom or is mankind so weak and imperfect that it wants to "lay that freedom at church feet saying: "Enslave, but feed us!"? In the novel this question remains unanswered. I believe this is a question that each person should answer for themselves.


3. Vector from man to outside world

From his appearance and throughout all stages of his anthropological development, man turned to the outside world with the aim of understanding its laws. Knowledge of these objective world laws not only provides man with the ability to survive, but gives him the freedom to change the universe according to his needs. The birth of science symbolized the transition of humans from the stage of survival to the stage of creation. It was science, that promoted awareness of the unity of the physical world and the comprehension of its material foundations.

The first attempts of objective realization of the surrounding world and its laws (vector directed from the center, which is the man in the world) are set out in Lucretius, On the Nature of Things:
All nature, then, as self-sustained, consists
Of twain of things: of bodies and of void
In which they're set, and where they're moved around.

Although Lucretius postulated mortality of the soul, he nevertheless did not deny the existence of god, whether for political or perhaps spiritual reasons. Thus his surprising scientific work still contained the fruit of empirical reasoning.

It was Darwin who took a different approach to the problem of scientific (and therefore objective) view of the surrounding world. He concluded, in regards to the question of the existence and development of the world, "that something might perhaps be made out on this question by patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it".

Unlike many generations of philosophers before him, who saw the world in its immutable static form, Darwin was the first to think about "the mutual affinities of organic beings, on their embryological relations, their geographical distribution, geological succession". Ignoring the idea of divine creation, Darwin created the formula of Natural Selection, albeit with the reservation that "Natural Selection has been the main but not exclusive means of modification".

Darwin deliberately refused to throw light on the reasons for the emergence of life, and certainly did not mention the creationist view of the world. Perhaps he could not resolve this contradiction in his mind as a believer and as a scientist? The concept of biblical teaching proclaims that man was originally a perfect creation, who has fallen from God's grace for disobedience and questioning God's veracity. As a result, all God's creations and all people as well carry in their nature an entropy principle of gradual degradation and destruction. Under consideration of this dogma, the question of every religious individual is: how to combine the presentation of modern natural science teaching of the evolutionary theory and human development with the idea of the first man's perfection and his status as Cod's chosen one?

Darwin's theory has one major thesis - all animals struggle for existence (for food, for females, for habitat) and the more adapted creature gets an advantage. But Darwin says nothing about the transition of species. He still could not describe the mechanism of a possible transition benefit. Simply put, Darwin did not raise the question of how new information is transferred from one species to another. Half a century later genetics were discovered and an attempt was made to cross the theories of evolution and genetics. But some questions remain. In particular, where does the novelty come from? Academician Dmitri Blochinzev believed that evolution through small improvements is hardly possible and only the full renewal of genetic code can cause a new kind of species: "A useful characteristic becomes useful only after reaching a certain degree of perfection. An "unfinished" characteristic not only does not confer any advantage to the organism, but may be also harmful to it".

Interestingly, in his view of the world Darwin does not forget humans as one of the factors that affect change in the organic world. Man, too, changed animals, trying to adjust them "to man's use or fancy". This is one example of the relationship between the human society and the natural world. Man is not just a passive consumer of the world, but also its creator. What Darwin likely missed in his scientific work is the fact of responsibility that arises from this relationship, though he hinted at human egoism, stating that "man selects only for his own good; Nature only for that of the being which she tends". In the later stages of human development, with the emergence of the industrial world, the understanding of this responsibility will become increasingly important as human pressure on nature increases in accordance with Moore's Law (Moore's Law - a doubling of the number of transistors that can be packed on to a computer chip every two years).

From a sociological point of view, Darwin's theory of struggle for existence was evident even in his lifetime as a reflection of human political and economic forces and impact. Thus, the vector from the human to the outside world received another direction - towards human performance results. The editor of the Economist Walter Bagehot drew the return parallel from Darwin's theory of evolution to the economy: "The rough and vulgar structure of English commerce is the secret of its life; for it contains the "propensity to variation", which, in the social as in the animal kingdom, is the principle of progress ". Niall Ferguson, in his recently published book "The Great Degeneration", describes modern society guided by Darwin's principles and says that "the whole thing is an ecosystem in which Darwinian forces are constantly at work, naturally selecting the fittest from the unfit". Ferguson manages to find in the modern economic world six aspects of similarity with the Darwinian evolutional system: "genes" (in the sense that certain features of corporate culture perform the same role as genes in biology), the potential of spontaneous "mutation" (innovations, technologies), competition between individuals, mechanism of natural selection through the market, scope for speciation (sustaining biodiversity) and scope for extinction.

With all the processes of development and human pursuit of new benefits and amenities offered by the technological world, the question still remains: would this emerging technology and increasing demand for energy not contribute to strengthening the conflict between armed ideologies? Will it impact the decision of modern homo economicus to change his moral values? The inability to answer this question today is a limitation, as even modern scientific development reinforces concern for the future of life on the planet, so poetically described by Darwin as "the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications".


4. Vector from outside world to man

Despite its apparent simplicity and consistency, this vector is not very common in literature, especially of ancient times. It is clear that in ancient times people were constantly in contact with the external environment, first in order to survive and then in order to improve their situation and create comfort. However, in all his contact with the outside world man acted as a subject, a consumer seeking to achieve his own goals. That mean the energy (vector) still stemmed from an individual. Under the inverse vector directed from the outside world (nature) to an individual, I perceive a situation where man expressed willingness to be the object, a passive receiver or a receptor of world energy. This situation invites a more poetic or metaphysical point of view and is associated with an attempt by an individual to become part of nature rather than its crown. Some suggestions of this vector could always be found in poetry such as Sappho's, but became fully formed only in the literature of the Romantic era.

Out of all the literary work, the development of this vector is most clearly shown in Rousseau's Reveries. The willingness to approach the outside world implies a certain willingness for isolation from the human world, from the society that Rousseau shows as a forced necessity when he describes his experience in exile, writing that he is "one on the ground, without his brother, without love, without any other - no other companion than itself". Rousseau decides to devote his time in isolation to the study of himself, of his internal ego, and for this purpose he resorts to the help of the natural world. He puts himself in a perhaps idealistic world as a lone traveler on an isolated island, hence creating perfect conditions for the imaging of himself as an object of the surrounding world. He accepts all the exertions and events of this environment with gratitude, and contrasts its pleasures with the human world, which for him appears to be filled with enemies.

Placing himself in the center of this graceful world, the author uses all its positive aspects - picturesque landscapes, beautiful specimens of flora and fauna - for his own reflections, without noticing the negative aspects of life in the wild. The need for daily hard work is, for him, a pleasant pastime rather than monotonous heavy duty routine. Most clearly the vector from the surrounding world to man can be seen in this idealistic but poetic formulation written by Rousseau: "I would make my escape and install myself all alone in a boat, which I would row out into the middle of the lake when it was calm; and there, stretching out full-length in the boat and turning my eyes skyward, I let myself float and drift wherever the water took me ".

Another example of the same receptor vector may be seen in Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground. Although this novel is more suitable for the demonstration of another vibrating vector from man to society and back (which will be exposed later), in the first part of the work moments can be found where the author alludes to the importance of being ready to play the role of the object in the outside world, where our feelings resemble piano-keys that are struck by the nature surrounding us and which often strike each other.

Dostoevsky opposes a passive man to an active man or, as he says, an intelligent man, saying that "...an active man is pre-eminently a limited creature..." and "...a man in the nineteenth century must and morally ought to be pre-eminently a characterless creature and it is only the fool who becomes anything ... ". This voluntary refusal of social activity is for Dostoevsky a prerequisite of absolute self-will. The understanding of oneself as an isolated entity trumps, for him, the understanding of oneself as part of society. Consistent denial of social rules and personal often absurdly negative responses to actions, which can prove harmful yet are done out of free will - that is his understanding of absolute freedom.


5. Vibrate recurrent vectors from one man to many people

This vector express the human attempt to understand the world, to get comprehensive information, to understand man's own place in the world and among others without making a solid long term contact. Man is a subject exploring the world, he is aware of his responsibility for liaison with the world and at the same time willing to consider himself as a receptor of all signals from the outside world for the purpose of analysis and systematization.

In such a construction, vectors lead in both directions, but they are sketched as vibrating lines as long as communication with the outside world is not specified and is perceived intuitively at the physiological level like Pavlov's dogs' reactions. Man tries to establish himself and sends out signals in different directions, receiving an echo response and interpreting it often partially and sometimes entirely incorrectly.

Meditation and exercise in Rousseau's Reveries or partial attempts to define one's position in the social context in Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther can certainly serve as examples of this vector; but I would like to remain with Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Nabokov's Lolita.

Madame Bovary was written in the Era of rising bourgeoisie in France, when all of society acutely raised the question of what will happen to the individual and will the desire to get rich and the power of money replace the moral values of society? This question, to some extent, still remains for the individual. Emma Bovary is similar to Dostoevsky's "underground man" in trying to decide, in her world, her own relationship with her wants and needs.

In this very filmic book Flaubert shows an almost modern story. Emma Bovary is oppressed by her misguiding forces and only wants self-reunification. She receives a vibrating vector with certain information from the outside world, be it her experience at the ball at the château La Vaubyessard or the manipulative and sly delusional statements by Lheureux, but seems to be unable to cope with this information and interprets it incorrectly, resulting in her ending in a desperate hopeless situation and ultimately, suicide. It appears as if the whole world in this book and all its characters are shown through the prism of Emma's understanding, with her needs and wants: hence in the book there are no heroic individuals who could satisfy her delusions and dreams. She misinterprets her pursuit of change as total consumption and at the end becomes an object rather than subject, consumed by many.
One of the main ideas penetrating the entire story of Nabokov's Lolita is the problem of rational perception of the surrounding world, correlation of needs according to the assessment of society, and the ability to adapt. In his diaries Humbert expresses his thoughts about love and how people's attitudes towards this beautiful feeling eventually change. If in the Antic world the relationship between wiser elders and little girls is common, in the Middle Ages, as reflected in "Divine Comedy" by Dante, sexual relations with a 12-year-old nymphet are permissible for adult men and Shakespeare's tragedy of shows us Romeo and Juliet as very young lovers, in modern society such seemingly natural sexual desires as middle-aged Humbert is experiencing towards the very young Lolita are considered pedophilic. This is a contradiction between the social norms accepted in modern society and those stupefying feelings that poor Humbert is unable to contain inside himself. Because of his overwhelming desires, he must to go against society and violate those well established rules.

This rather controversial and ambiguous novel by Nabokov, with a rather elite intended purpose, sometimes complicated by its form, is more a stream of skillfully written, sometimes florid consciousness. It contains literally piling words in every sentence, but they do not interfere: on the contrary, they help to present the whole picture, down to the smallest details: «I left the loud lobby and stood outside, on the white steps, looking at the hundreds of powdered bugs wheeling around the lamps in the soggy black night, full of ripple and stir. All I would do - all I would dare do - would amount to such a trifle ..."

The book shows Humbert as a kind of cynic who despises people as creatures who do not know such bliss as does he. Humbert realizes his weakness, he understands its causes, and bitterly mocks his own self, but still cannot resist completely submitting to his obsessive passion. He has waited for this moment for too long to give up such gift of fate: "... until at last, twenty-four years later, I broke her spell by incarnating her in another". Does the novel describes Humbert's love of Lolita? Or is it simply a presentation of the retrospectives and associations of his fictional desires and not of real life at all? Not for nothing, Humbert begs Lolita to come back to him and promises her a new life, saying in their last meeting «I will create a brand new God and thank him with piercing cries, if you give me that microscopic hope».

With the novel's fatalistic mood, dramatis acts, and sense of hopelessness, Nabokov creates an atmosphere of a psychological love thriller or a surreal game of two actors whose actions in the narrative outline do not always obey logical comprehension and explanation. We can clearly see a conflict between the notions of passion, emotion and feeling with rational behavior and existence in accordance with the rules and regulations of society.


6. Self-centered vector

This vector is seen in writings that support existentialism - a philosophy of an irrational reaction to rationalism which proclaims the dividing of the world into objects and subjects. In accordance with this vector, one determines his status as a state of a subject that perceives the stimuli and changes of the world, but does not consider them in planning his own existence and concentrates only on his own essence, implemented in emotional exertions. This vector is most clearly demonstrated in Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground and Camus' The Outsider.

The protagonist in Dostoevsky's novel suffers from contradictions between his irrational behavior and rationality of the world and even seems to find some kind of delight in his suffering. Trying to justify his irrationality, he even displays the formula of the historical development of civilization through irrational behavior, saying that "..... that is, that man everywhere and at all times, whoever he may be, has preferred to act as he chose and not in the least as his reason and advantage dictated". Trying to implement his inner freedom through the irrationality of own behavior, the underground man is prepared to sacrifice reasonable behavior for the benefit of his individuality. However, Dostoyevsky does not specify the boundary between the need to adhere to social rules and an individual's desire for independence: “And in particular, it may be more advantageous than any advantage, even when it does us obvious harm, and contradicts the soundest conclusions of our reason concerning our advantage--for in any circumstances it preserves for us what is most precious and most important--that is, our personality, our individuality”. Dostoevsky seems to answer this question by indicating the degree of suffering that each individual is able to overcome. The underground man suffers genuinely, he understands the level and causes of his suffering, but he makes no attempts to improve his condition by approaching to the outside world. The vector emanating from the individual turns back to its source. This person seems not to have the willingness to sacrifice himself for others, although his suffering is his moral value, since according to Dostoevsky "suffering is the sole origin of consciousness".

In Camus' The Outsider Meursault, in accordance with his existentialist philosophy, does not seem to have a sense of belonging: neither to himself, nor to the outside world with its laws. Meursault exists in his own world; he does not understand why he is supposed to feel what is expected of him. Meursault is situated in personally created freedom, but this freedom is created at the expense of his sense of belonging and relationship with his family and with others.

It is interesting that in his first drafts Camus titled his novel A Happy Man. Camus seems to formulate his understanding of happiness through existentialist philosophy; that means that a contradiction between the achievement of inner freedom and the struggle for social equality is not a negative experience in an individual's life. The only negative reaction we see in Meursault (where the self-centered vector opens) is in the final chapter when Meursault, waiting for execution in his cell, meets a priest and - for the first time in the entire novel - loses his mental balance and becomes frantic. This is the first point in the novel where Meursault loses his utter sincerity, perhaps because it is the first time he faces a different philosophy, as radical as his own once was and one also aimed at a self-centered direction - the direction of religious dogmatic salvation.

Both protagonists in Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground and in Camus' The Outsider explain their irrational behavior by providing the most rational reasons. They voluntarily choose such a form of existence and justify it, though they may realize that such a lifestyle cannot last and is doomed to a deep conflict (as in the Notes from Underground), or to a possible tragedy (as in The Outsider). Sometimes it seems that both characters are deliberately not shown as living people but only as functioning elements, which act only to demonstrate and justify authors' philosophies.


7. Vector from one man to many people

This vector may have some radical characteristics and can involve mentoring moralistic preaching as no feedback is provided. With increasing comprehension of the surrounding world and gradually moving away from God, man had gained a vast body of knowledge and ideas that sooner or later he was forced to present upon others. In applying this vector, the author is in the middle and is neither subject nor object, but a certain kind of source of wisdom. This vector can be found in Machiavelli's The Prince and Rousseau's Origin of Inequality, but I would like to elaborate on Marx's Communist Manifesto and Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents.

The achievement of Marx (and Engels) is that they discovered socio-economic formations as a set of productive forces and production relations inherent in a particular historical epoch. In his writing, Marx often referenced the teaching of the Hegel philosophy that identified contradictions as leading forces of development. In Marx's philosophy, society is divided into classes, and civilization development is based on confrontation and struggle between classes. The main driving force of progress, according to Marx, is the working class, which is situated in a permanent conflict with the bourgeois class and the capitalists. But in a deeper analysis, this contradiction appears to be a scholastic invention. The weakness in Marx's theory is that the working class depends on the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie depends on the working class. Marx had not been able to foresee a constant enrichment of the working class and the fact that it is beneficial for the bourgeoisie that the working class becomes richer as it is a major purchaser of produced goods.

Marx's teachings, however, proved to be very stable, with history revealing many attempts to put them into practice, the most famous of which was the Revolution in Russia. The result of this revolution, however, was not the liberation of the working class, even within Russia itself, but redistribution of the flow of goods. While prior to the revolution, the entire product produced by the worker was appropriated by the capitalist as the owner of the means of production, after the revolution the entire product produced by the working class of Russia was attributed to the state as a collective owner of the means of production, or rather to the nomenclature, a specific ruling class that emerged after the revolution and which consisted mainly of the highest communist party elite. As a result, such a system of social formation did not prove to be stable and collapsed very quickly. As an economist, Marx was able to develop a solid theory of economic relations, but as a philosopher moving from materialism to idealistic illusions, he could not overcome the challenge of analyzing and predicting society's further development. A good example of this vector is indicated even in the title of his work, which Marx called Manifesto.
Another attempt was made by Sigmund Freud, who also tried to analyze and build a clear picture of the principles on which civilization is based, but whose work is based on his principles of psychoanalytic research. Initially rejecting the principle of the supremacy of a higher divine being (meaning moving from idealist to materialist principles), he argued that man builds his life on the "reality-principle which is to control his development further". Freud, like Marx, approaches from the perspective that the most important principle of human development is suffering, but unlike Marx, he does not socialize suffering, and proceeds from its individual manifestations. "Suffering comes from three quarters: from our own body, which is destined to decay and dissolution, and cannot even dispense with anxiety and pain as danger-signals; from the outer world, which can rage against us with the most powerful and pitiless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations with other men ".

Basing his conclusions on the theory of suffering, Freud formulates three means of support constructions which could help overcome this suffering: powerful diversions of interest, substitutive gratification and intoxicating substances. Freud thus strikingly denies mutual assistance between people, leaving man no choice but to cope alone with the complexities of his life processes. Here I also see a contradiction between the material and the ideal, in terms of the idealization of the human being, who (according to Freud) develops civilization ("culture" in the German version) only through the development of his personal abilities to overcome obstacles. But Freud did not disclose the direction of movement of civilization, saying that "only religion is able to answer the question of the purpose of life. One can hardly go wrong in concluding that the idea of a purpose in life stands and falls with the religious system". And in quite an idealistic statement he notes that "the system of private property has corrupted his (man) nature". At this point Freud repeats one of the dogmas of Christian religion, slipping in his work to a primitive moralizing through which again the vector from one person to many is emphasized.


8. Interrelated network of people

The last vector formed by the end of the 19th century and one that is currently dominant is the vector demonstrating relationships of equal individuals connected in some sort of network. In this network all are equal, and each individual has his own characteristics that are recognized by others. Within literature, this vector can be seen in works with several equal protagonists, each acting sometimes dependently and at other times independently from the actions of others. Included among the better-known works are one of the greatest epics of new European literature is Tolstoy's "War and Peace" (although the author himself referred to his work as rather "wordy rubbish") or Thomas Manns' Buddenbrooks.
I would choose Ibsen's Hedda Gabler as a good example of this vector. Despite the fact that this play has a main protagonist, all the characters are interconnected and have equivalent roles. I believe Ibsen purposefully does not describe the main heroine character, giving only the most general information about her past. Considering this, one should try to understand the nature of Hedda through general circumstances and considerations of action.

In the play there is a clear relationship triangle between Hedda Gabler, George Tesman and Eilert Lövborg. And while Hedda presents a strong and coherent character, and is a medium of some trivial imaginations about dignity and standards of conduct typical for noble class, which can be traced deeply in the past and which were received more under the influence of specific reading rather than through confrontation with the real world, Eilert Lövborg has a more romantic or rather chaotic personality, but is not devoid of talent. The relationships between these two characters illustrate the contradictions between the rational world and passion-driven bonds that often lead to deep confrontations or tragic endings which this work confirms once again, at the same time confirming the very famous expression of one of the founders of modern theatrical play, Anton Chekhov: "If in the first chapter there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second chapter it absolutely must go off ".

The search of a vector presents in different works of literature, and in spite of being an artificial imaginary approach, can nevertheless aid in understanding the meaning of the work, its importance and its characters. Percy Shelley points to two classes of mental action, one of which is imagination, meaning "to color the thoughts with its own light, and composing from them, as from elements, other thoughts, each containing within itself the principle of its own integrity." (Percy Bysshe Shelly, A Defence of Poetry). Trying to specify context and idea, form and content, I perceive vector analysis as one of the possible analytical methods that help me in gaining a better understanding of many literary works.

[nonn]

не в обиду, но есть тоже самое на русском? боюсь, много тонкостей

[Игорь Николаевич]

не в обиду, но есть тоже самое на русском? боюсь, много тонкостей

На русском нет , ибо пишу сразу на английском, а что не могу выразить, на русском. Таким образом получается жуткая смесь. Потом полирую.

Лично для Вас, nonn, краткое содержание: Они жили долго и счастливо и умерли в один день.

[nonn]

не в обиду, но есть тоже самое на русском? боюсь, много тонкостей

На русском нет , ибо пишу сразу на английском, а что не могу выразить, на русском. Таким образом получается жуткая смесь. Потом полирую.

Лично для Вас, nonn, краткое содержание: Они жили долго и счастливо и умерли в один день.

Писатель с читателем или с издателем?

[Игорь Николаевич]

не в обиду, но есть тоже самое на русском? боюсь, много тонкостей

На русском нет , ибо пишу сразу на английском, а что не могу выразить, на русском. Таким образом получается жуткая смесь. Потом полирую.

Лично для Вас, nonn, краткое содержание: Они жили долго и счастливо и умерли в один день.

Писатель с читателем или с издателем?

В зависимости от ориентации.

[nonn]

В зависимости от ориентации.

от направления может? вы же про векторы.

[Игорь Николаевич]

В зависимости от ориентации.

от направления может? вы же про векторы.

Давайте синтезируем: Все зависит от векторной ориентации!

[nonn]

Ну вы высказали вполне себе очевидные вещи, если я правильно понял. Как к художнику приходит ощущение "мира". Для меня всегда были важнее 2 других вектора. К себе и от себя. Те кто подходят под первый тип мне более близки и понятны.

[Игорь Николаевич]

Ну вы высказали вполне себе очевидные вещи, если я правильно понял. Как к художнику приходит ощущение "мира". Для меня всегда были важнее 2 других вектора. К себе и от себя. Те кто подходят под первый тип мне более близки и понятны.

На самом деле векторов конечно же больше. Так же интересно проанализировать как просходит контакт между людьми с разными доминирующими векторами мироощущения. Как, например, происходит контакт между абсолютным эгоцентриком и экстравертом. Физическая парадигма (плюс на минус будет плюс) здесь не подходит. Просто проследить это сложно.

[nonn]

Если мы обсуждаем не просто человека а художника, то это отдельная тема. Если же просто люди двух разных типов, то по моему ощущению, чем более полярны векторы, тем людям проще воспринимать друг друга. Если примитивно, то одни спец в атаке другой в нападении, каждый в своей тарелке, обоим комфортно.

[Игорь Николаевич]

Если мы обсуждаем не просто человека а художника, то это отдельная тема.

Я пытался описать простого человека, как он показан в литературе. Напротив художник, по-моему, это либо обладатель замкнутого вектора, либо экцентрик. Во всяком случае все творческие люди, с которыми я встречался, подпадают под эти категории.

Если же просто люди двух разных типов, то по моему ощущению, чем более полярны векторы, тем людям проще воспринимать друг друга. Если примитивно, то одни спец в атаке другой в нападении, каждый в своей тарелке, обоим комфортно.

Ну это игра в одни ворота. Продуктивности в таком общении, по-моему, не добиться.

[Vlada]

А мне слово вектор не понравилось.
Игорь Николаевич вы же словом вектор направление определили? А у вектора/направление разве нет синонима?

[nonn]

Я пытался описать простого человека, как он показан в литературе. Напротив художник, по-моему, это либо обладатель замкнутого вектора, либо экцентрик. Во всяком случае все творческие люди, с которыми я встречался, подпадают под эти категории.

думаю тут мы имеем одинаковый взгляд, я просто умных слов не знаю, но видимо это то что я назвал к себе и от себя[/quote]

Ну это игра в одни ворота. Продуктивности в таком общении, по-моему, не добиться.

Не согласен. Это же не означает, что один закрывается, а другой его тормошит и тычит, просто обоим удобно отстаивать свою точку зрения в привычной атмосфере. Одни больше слушают, другие больше говорят, говорящий получает не меньше того кто слушает. Язык тела ещё никто не отменял.

[Игорь Николаевич]

А мне слово вектор не понравилось.
Игорь Николаевич вы же словом вектор направление определили? А у вектора/направление разве нет синонима?

Мне жаль, что Вам не нравится слово "вектор". Вектор имеет направление, да. Я просто хотел дать определение какой-то определенной силе, исходящей из человека, то есть имеющей начало, но не имеющий конца. По-моему, слово "вектор" вполне подходит для этой цели.

[Игорь Николаевич]

Не согласен. Это же не означает, что один закрывается, а другой его тормошит и тычит, просто обоим удобно отстаивать свою точку зрения в привычной атмосфере. Одни больше слушают, другие больше говорят, говорящий получает не меньше того кто слушает. Язык тела ещё никто не отменял.

Ну может быть. Я, вообще-то, думаю в другую сторону двигаться. Сейчас думаю мысль об антропологии индивидуализма в историко-географическом аспекте. Если проще, хочу заняться вопросом, почему индивидуализм так сильно развился в средние века в Западной Европе и так мало в России.