The essence of fashion

What kind of monster is there in the world? What kind of wizard and wicked magician, before which seemingly fall all educational efforts, all reasonable arguments?

We have to admit that the fashion was not "suddenly" and not out of nothing. It has always existed( like its antipode - tradition). It is nothing more than the satisfaction of the natural human need for novelty, in changes, just as tradition has always been the satisfaction of the natural need for the sustainability of being, in the recurrence of the way of life, tastes andhabits worked out by the ancestors and passed on to the descendants. Both of these phenomena, for all their differences, are the daughters of one father: an imitative reflex. And daughters with difficult characters: not every tradition can be recognized as reasonable and worthy of preservation for all time and not every fashion - stupid and deserving immediate eradication. The eternal rivalry between them is another example of the law of unity and the struggle of opposites.

But the scale of their influence has changed significantly recently. With subsistence farming, before the onset of the industrial revolution, the dominant position was tradition. Now more and more prevails fashion. Tradition was the pillar of a sedentary society, fashion became the engine of industrial production and its necessary companion.

There was a time when the concept of tradition was combined with the concepts of the people, the nation. The concept of fashion with the aristocracy or with the crowd. Now there is no such rigid division. Fashion has been democratized noticeably. Far to go for examples do not have to. Jeans! Until recently, they were the most common work clothes worn by American shepherds( ie cowboys, which means "cow guy").Now they are worn by presidents, "academicians, and navigators, and carpenters," men and women, elderly and children, in the West and in the East.

Clothing is carrying less and less national-class information, it rarely performs the role of a social questionnaire. A Soviet mechanic, a Swedish worker, wears the same costume as, for example, the Japanese emperor. The habit of meeting clothes begins to lose ground. And very good. Maybe such a standardization will instill in people the custom of treating anyone with pre-emptive attention, like the most honorable citizen and the most famous woman.

Although. .. some hamovatye individuals are inclined to act with a reverse sight: in all inexpensive and inexpensive dressed to assume unworthy kind words of insignificance. That's why the question: "Who are you?", Which we sometimes hear in office cabinets, from shopping counters, is asked not only with cordial interest, but, it happens, with insolent arrogance. Like, who are you to treat politely and benevolently with you.

However, back to our heroine: Her Majesty the Fashion!

Think, it could have acquired such a scope and such universality, if the world industry had not developed to such a giant size that it was able to produce in the limited period of time the same model with millions of copies. And would fashion be widely spread, if it were not so powerful propagandist as, for example, television, cinema, newspapers, magazines?

And who, if not a powerful industry, is interested in a millionth customer? Only large quantities of goods produce the highest profits. So, it is necessary to stir up the desires of customers, to suggest that the possession of this thing gives them some important life advantages. On the knowledge of the mechanisms of human psychology, the most complex work of advertising agencies is being built. Their task - to convince that it is such an

trouser style makes a person elegant, beautiful, confident I am. After a while they will convince you that this style is a sign of wretchedness, conservatism, if by that time the popularity of the model has exhausted itself and the party of other products is on the way.

In our country, many negative phenomena of mass production are smoothed out by planned management of the economy, but can not be completely eliminated. Imagine what would happen to a powerful modern industry working to meet the material needs of our population, if all of us, like grandmothers, wore things for decades, moreover, passing them on to succeeding generations!

Not the fashion itself is terrible, its narcotic effect on the fragile souls is dangerous. Here, try to conduct such research, personally or by the whole class, as you will. Take out of things from closets, from closets, from mezzanine things that until recently were objects of passionate lusts: your brothers, siblings or parents. Arrange them a review parade. You can supplement the exposition with photos from a family album, where your relatives of the older generation are imprinted in the clothes of past years.

Look at the things that were periodically proclaimed the standards of beauty, perfection, were "the most-most."Appreciate: did they cost shed tears, the torment of envy and despair? In the end, all and the differences are: wider - already, longer - shorter, close-fitting - free, oblique - straight, mottled - smooth. .. Marvel at the ability of the human mind to self-deceit: because yesterday the most beautiful and desirable seemed boots at highheel, then - on the low, on the thin - on the broad, with the high boot - with the shortened. What are we so windswept! It's even insulting.

- And why does our industry seek to increase the quantity and variety of quality of goods, if it is all a pursuit of mirages and self-deception? Should he indulge or, on the contrary, restrain?

For a long time, the craving of millions of people for things, for food and drink, which does not exalt the person, but on the contrary - drop it, was explained to us solely by the "remnants of the past" in the minds of people. In recent years, social science has sought to identify the laws of this phenomenon, determined by the contemporary conditions of our being, its not yet resolved contradictions.

"... The existence of commodity-money relations in a socialist society, the necessity to fulfill the trade turnover plan still determines the production of goods, the consumption of which does not contribute to the formation of a comprehensive personality," acknowledges the philosopher N. Mikhailov in his book Socialism and Reasonable Needs for the Individual.

"In this still painful process of struggle between the old and the new, we must realize that, not relying on the all-powerful time, which, they say, all relocate, in a Bolshevik way directly and in principle evaluate all the pros and cons of our moral atmosphere. And to evaluate not with an eye, not superficially, but honestly seek out the social causes that, in the conditions of mature socialism, also generate antipodes of communist morality. The latter are rightly called survivals of capitalism, when they mean their alienity to socialist consciousness. But, using the term "vestiges" in order to explain why they, these antipodes still exist and how they are reproduced, they are attributed only to the ideological influence of the past or hostile actions from abroad. It is unlikely that such an approach can give us complete truth because of a clear violation of the requirements of the dialectical-materialist methodology of cognition and the explanation of phenomena of social reality;because our modern public consciousness thus breaks away from our modern social being. "

Remember, in fact, more recently, you could hear ridicule of this kind: - and even in a hat!. . when they wanted to be caught in an imaginary intelligence."Bourgeois" was called the person who put on the tie.

And then we have to admit that consumer passions are often spurred on and provoked by such ignoble feelings as black envy. They, like two Siamese twins, are inseparable. Getting rid of greed is unthinkable without getting rid of envy of things. Tolstoy, for example, said that a poor man envying a rich man is no better than the latter.

However, all this you in your environment have had the opportunity to observe many times. For example, there are in your class children from high-paying families. They continually amaze their comrades with new, "firm" things that most are unavailable either because of their high cost, or because they are brought from abroad, where not all parents and not every day can ride. Of course, these guys do not act in a comradely way, inducing low-lying feelings in their classmates. But even those who are envious, without being conscious of it, push the possessor of the "deficit" against such anti-collectivist actions.

What for, in the end, your peers are dressed in clothes and shoes, which, sometimes, a lot of good words are not worth it, they hardly get stuck on the body and legs, restrict the movements, require caution and look around, as if not to soil, notbreak such a precious thing? What are all these torments for? Yes just for the sake of this: to see and gasped!

If all of us, adults, teenagers, and very small children, have ceased to experience this humiliating feeling at the sight of any novelty in the hands of others, everything would have changed in the system of human relations. If we also learned to experience unselfish joy from the fact that someone else had something unprecedented, then there would be a moral revolution!. . A revolution whose significance for the entire social economy, whose development also depends on our insatiability, is even impossible to imagine.

- So a communist society will be established, then everyone will be able to get "according to the needs", ie, what and how much they want, and the envy itself will disappear, - think this kind of imagining communism by such a country of magical implementations. All - on the tablecloth-samobranka, on the carpet-plane, on a wonderful stick, which only say: "I want that-that" - and all will be executed in the best and only form.

At all times and at any level of social production, new products will always be produced and exist in less quantity than the number of possible consumers. So, there will always be scarce things and there will always be unsatisfied desires. The author of the already quoted book Socialism and Reasonable Needs for the Individual, philosopher N. Mikhailov, believes that such a situation will be peculiar to the communist society at the higher stage of its development.

- So what should be considered reasonable needs, if everything is so complicated? If natural instincts work against morality and reason?

N.N. Mikhailov believes that in the conditions of a socialist society reasonable needs should be called needs, satisfaction of which:

"a) provides the conditions for human life;B) promotes the all-round and harmonious development of the personality;

c) does not contradict the needs of society and contributes to its progress.

And, on the contrary, unreasonable requirements in the conditions of socialism are queries, the satisfaction of which interferes with the normal functioning and development of the human body, leads to the degradation of the personality, serves as a source of contradictions between the individual or the social group with broader social communities and society as a whole. In this sense unreasonable needs can be called pathological. This is physiological pathology( anti-vital needs in alcohol, smoking, drugs, etc.) and social pathology, manifested in antisocial needs, the satisfaction of which is associated with antisocial actions and actions of the subject. "

It turns out that neither the quantity nor the quality of things can be put in the basis of determining the reasonableness of the household. But one must take into account only how things serve or hinder the human individual to exist and develop physically and spiritually. It immediately starts to build clear positions, which are confused and intermixed when we are addressed to particular examples.

The more things in the house, the more they occupy space, take away the air, the light, so necessary for our body. The more they take the time and energy to care for themselves. Caring for expensive and complex units involves a highly skilled, and therefore expensive, service. If these are things that contribute to the development of physical and intellectual inclinations: sports supplies, costumes, bicycles, etc., or books, pictures, reproductions, various receivers, record players, then they are only reasonable acquisitions when they really correspondpurpose. And they become unreasonable when they are clogged with racks, "walls", when they satiate only the vanity of their owners' pride, contribute to the development and affirmation of man's low passions, and not to his perfection. In this case, one can speak with good reason of pathological and antisocial consumption.

Such a transformation can occur with any creation of fantasy and human hands. The nature of things is such that the person himself, their possessor, makes them reasonable and unreasonable. With such a view, people who consider themselves antipodes: collectors of wealth and their spendthrifts, connoisseurs of ancient and ancient things and reckless fishermen of novelties, may well be in the same row in a row. All manifestations of extreme predilections, which are harmful to a person and his environment, are equally contraindicated to us.

Even alcohol, nicotine, drugs are of double value.

When they are used for medical purposes, they are good, when consumed in everyday life - a great evil. So is any product: sugar and salt, bread and meat, butter and honey, vegetables and fruits. In certain conditions, in a certain amount they are beneficial to the person, in others - to the detriment. Sugar and salt have recently been nicknamed "white killers."But they are not big "killers" than the sun, wind and water. It kills immensity, the measure - it lives. A measure - a personal matter, individual.

In the Far North, for example, food is traditionally based on natural meat and fish. It is products that have high caloric content that help to endure hardships of severe sunless winters and short, cold summer seasons. Try to translate the inhabitants of the tundra and the Arctic into the average European diet: serious illnesses, exhaustion of the body are provided.

In the same way with clothes. During my trip on the Yenisei to Dixon, I learned that blindly following the European manner of dressing led to an increase in colds among locals. Girls who wore beautiful boots and short coats, instead of the usual torbas, boots and fur coats, paid female diseases, some even remained childless.

And excessive consumption of meat by residents of southern cities, especially by representatives of sedentary occupations, leads to a metabolic disorder. There are diseases of all lovers densely eat: obesity, gout, premature sclerosis, early hypertension and other "delights."In our country, about 50% of the population suffers from overweight. There was even such a joke bike: "Our women are concerned about two problems: where to get scarce food and how to get rid of excess weight."

But here too much depends on reasonably differentiated nutrition. In our everyday life it is often not coordinated with natural needs, with the seasons at least. In the cold, it would be possible to eat more caloric food, in heat limited to fish, vegetables, fruits, bread and coarse milk and low-fat milk. I remember that this was the system used by the inhabitants of the Paris region of Viljuif, with whom I happened to meet in 1959. And not the poor Parisians at all.

Even in one family it is possible to develop a food system for its various members. Children - one( even boys and girls need a different diet), people of physical labor - their own, intellectual - too. Old people and patients - a sparing diet, healthy - food stronger. And people of different constitutions need different in quantity and quality of food.

Ask: who will cook so many dishes?

Yes, maybe, and there will not be a big difference in dishes, rather in a set of dishes, products, their volume and frequency of reception.

Apparently, the most reasonable and fair is the energy approach to nutrition and to all consumption in general. How much energy I need to fulfill my purpose and not to upset, but to strengthen my health - this is the maximum that I can afford. How much energy, physical and mental, will require the acquisition and exploitation of this or that thing and how it will compensate for these losses - this will be the criterion for treating it. And in general, to get up from the table with a slight sense of hunger is the most healthy measure in both material and spiritual nutrition. Satiety in any sphere is as unhealthy as forced starvation, violent asceticism.

If you take a higher level of moral attitude to material goods, then you need to give more than you get, all the same: energy, light, heat, attention, comfort and pleasure. Only then will it be both reasonable and diligent. To give a loan from nature, received in advance from past generations and certainly not to "seize" the age of the future, not to consume without looking at those who will come after us. That is, gradually to smooth the gap between the ecological and economic measure of consumption.

- And what about the law of increasing and exalting needs? How can it be combined with such judgments?

"The profound meaning of educational work. .. is to select and educate human needs, to bring them to a moral height that is possible only in a classless society and which alone can induce a person to struggle for further improvement."So thought the wonderful Soviet teacher A. S. Makarenko. And it is useful to remember these thoughts for all of us, adults and teenagers.

Try to identify your daily needs - in food, clothes, work and entertainment, in creativity and communication - and determine what their measure and content are, what are the reasons that awaken them: whether natural or artificial, sufficient or excessive, imitative or amateur, elevating or belittling one's own dignity. Think about what is best: to achieve satisfaction of harmful to your own health and causing unhealthy relationships surrounding needs, spending on them strength, time, energy, or to use their abilities to develop and implement those exalting you and your environment needs.

Practical realization of the internal task - self-improvement in the sphere of consumption - is the most difficult thing. Can, start with a refusal from an unreasonable antisocial and ruinous need for smoking, for example?

But how to be, if it is clear to everyone: who does not know how to protect and preserve one's own health and does not realize his good, where can he be thrifty in relation to other people, to things, even to nature. After all, he himself is the highest creation of nature: "Man is the measure of all things."

- So, we need to invent such a counter calculator that would take into account each calorie consumed and indicate where and on what it can be spent?

- Yes, we never get out of debt. Vaughn in the newspapers we are constantly being reproached for in dependent moods. The current young strive, they say, to their own pension on my mother's papa's neck to sit. And we are kept in school until the age of 17, then another five years are taught. Most young people actually have their own children before they get the opportunity to feed themselves. To whom do you go for help, how not to your relatives?

Recognize the voices of eternal opponents? Very useful in our business audience. They do not let us settle down on one solution. Now they demand the discussion of material relations that can be built in the present young people with their parents, of course, more financially secure than they themselves.

We noticed that the family income represents a fraction, in the numerator of which the sum of the total earnings, in the denominator - the number of household members. It seems that we were wrong when we insisted that a modern family must necessarily have not one but three children. The arithmetic of income seems to be protesting against such an assertion. But accounting here is very cunning, because if the child is alone, then in time, the contents of two parents will be on his shoulders.

- This is the old family, the children were the breadwinners of the elderly. Today they receive a pension from the state. And they feed the newlyweds themselves.

Indeed, the pensioners receive money from the state. But the real provision of this money: food, clothing, fuel, entertainment, care and protection is all achieved by the labors of yesterday's children and current grandchildren. The economic and defense power of the country, the cultural and educational level of society, all its members, regardless of age and personal security, largely depends on the quantity and quality of their labor. In the conditions of modern production, a person by the age of 35 completely reimburses all past expenses for his upbringing and begins to create reserves for future generations.

If the proportion of workers and eaters is broken( albeit well-deserved), naturally, the nature of compensation for past work will be quite different. As the sociologist, Doctor of Historical Sciences IV Bestuzhev-Lada, rightly remarked: you will not feed anyone with money, you will not put anybody in them and you will not warm them with anyone.

So sit by the neck on the neck of elderly parents the only one the more it will not be possible that they will not have a substitution. However, the statistics show, and our personal experience of everyday life confirms: all or all able-bodied people work or study here. Only a few million moms are turned off from social production, but they are busy with responsible business: they are nurturing future citizens. We do not have many open-minded parasites to draw conclusions about the whole generation on their example. Who, then, is meant by those who speak of eternal dependents? The disputants do not use the terms circumspectly. Dependence - this is when the non-working person is on the full provision of the family. And the temporary support that a student or a worker enjoys, which for whatever reason has a low income, is a completely different matter. This is called related help. Such assistance is not only not condemned, but is welcomed by all. Let's consider some kinds and motives of related support.

Young husband and wife are students. Is it necessary to explain especially that parental support in this case is often a harsh necessity. Relatively successful only a bachelor student. A young family can not live on a scholarship. I am sure that many young guys will willingly combine their daytime studies with evening work, if conditions are created for such a combination. But we had a strange rule for a long time: working conditions for evening studies were created, and the student was forbidden to work systematically. Now much is changing for the better, the work of students finds application in different areas. Some construction teams of the city of Dnepropetrovsk, for example, create a fund of material assistance for the families of comrades, build comfortable hostels for newlyweds and kindergartens. Such mutual assistance of students will in due course mitigate the urgency of the issue of helping parents to their adult student children.

There are, of course, many young people who do not need help at all. This is primarily workers in scarce jobs.

At all times and almost all peoples the older generation helped the newlyweds to stand up: to build their own house, to acquire the necessary belongings, working tools, all kinds of animals. The peasants gave their sons the land allotment, the propertied classes - part of the available capital, etc. The dowry for the daughters was prepared ahead of time, for many years. If there was nothing to divide and give, then they divided the roof and bread, the need and labor.

Today we do not prepare a dowry ahead of time and do not give the capital for future "business"."Dowry" and "capital" is the monthly allowance, which young people receive after the wedding from their parents.

The Basic Law of Our Life - The Constitution obliges parents to keep children until their majority, but not in mature years. Here the matter is voluntary. And there should be no complaints. And children are required to support their parents if they have lost their ability to work and can not earn their own or have a pension that is not enough to meet their basic needs. Parental responsibilities are limited to 18 years, and children and sons are not, until the end of life. And this is the deep meaning and supreme justice: children still can not give the greatest value that they received from their parents as a gift: life itself!

However, we imperceptibly crossed the scope of the conversation and invaded another sphere( and chapter) - the legal foundations of the family way of life.

Let's finish this topic with aphorisms, the appeal of which will help us in difficult circumstances:

"A person who thinks only of himself and is looking for all his benefits, can not be happy. You want to live for yourself, live for others. "(Seneca) "A sage is happy, content with a few, but only a fool".(F.Laroshfuko)

"People usually do not so much enjoy what is given to them, how much they grieve over what they are not given."(V.G. Belinsky)