Human needs, natural and artificial

Rubles-pennies, scores, calculations, who cares?

However, the home economy is in no way separable from matters more complex than the primitive calculations of money from pay to pay. The economy is closely related to what we call vital needs, the satisfaction of the most pressing material desires, and the development of high spiritual demands largely depend on them.

"... First of all, people should eat, drink, have a home and dress before being able to engage in politics, science, art, religion, etc.. .." wrote F. Engels( Marx K., Engels F. Soch., Vol. 19, pp. 350).Moreover, without the listed everyday conditions a person can not create a family. So arrogance to domestic needs - either pretense, or frivolity, densely implicated in parasitism, not knowing where and how to grow bread, where things are taken and why money is needed.

However, there is another extreme in people's relations to everyday problems: when only money and things, food, drink and square meters of housing measure all life values, even the dignity of the bridegroom or bride. To find a reasonable, humane and morally justified measure and in this sphere of family life is a task whose solution scientists, thinkers, economists and moralists seek for a long time. Naturally, we will not be able to penetrate into all the complexities of the domestic economy on the limited space of this section of the book. But we need to try to understand the basic mechanisms by which it is managed, and the ways of rational construction of our own small farm.

The joint life of the newlyweds begins with the wedding. At this celebration, the material needs and opportunities of the two families are already evident. That's the bride's relatives feverishly running around the shops, commissions, at the studio in search of some special material for the wedding dress. Ask at such a time the mother of the girl, what she is looking for and what she does not like what lies on the counter or is offered in the atelier.

- This kind of good everyone can have. And we want, that at us it was better, than at neighbors and friends.

Dozens are invited to the restaurant, and in some regions there are hundreds of guests, relatives, friends, acquaintances, who at other times are hardly greeted or not at all known. What for? Some in order to share a family joy with a large number of people, because it is known: the joy of the divided comes, and the sorrow goes down. Others inflate the event to demonstrate their property opportunities, the breadth and breadth of nature( "Let them not think that we feel sorry for our child's money").

It's in town. In the village, their criteria for how to properly and properly celebrate the wedding, and the motive for spending, the scale of the festival is the same: to be, at least, not worse than others and, as a maximum, better.

This, as in a drop of water, reflects a complex range of feelings, desires, desires, guided by family members, when they build their material relationships and ways of meeting them.

Aims and means. As you can see, again we are resting on these fundamental concepts, which, in a purely material sphere, determine our successes and defeats, the welfare of the body and soul, or squandering of all family well-being.

The purpose of the joint farm will be explained by the child: it is required to satisfy hunger, thirst, not to walk barefoot and naked, so that it is warm and comfortable, as cozy and beautiful as possible, in order to raise and rear offspring, gain strength, health forworks of the righteous. The needs, which are listed here, are called vital, that is, vital, from the Latin word "vita"( life).Otherwise they are also called natural. But the ways to satisfy them and the extent of their expansion may be reasonable or unreasonable, artificial and even perverted, caused not by essential needs, but solely by considerations of self-esteem: here this is to "like everyone else", "not worse than others," "better than others".

Hunger. It is satisfied with simple, uncomplicated food, which does not require special tricks with cooking, complex and expensive serving. Appetite is already quite another matter: it requires order, art, diversity. There is also gourmand, ie, a special predilection for food. Here food becomes a cult, all other desires obey it. Sometimes such a predilection turns into a disease - gluttony, with complete disruption of both physical processes and moral attitudes. A kind of drug addiction. There have been cases when whole states were "eaten away".

About drinking the same speech. The natural thirst is easy to satisfy: a hand placed under the stream of a stream, that's "as long as", that's the joy. In the village there is a well, a ladle, a samovar and a cup. The city has a glass and water. Further - a teapot and a welding: whether from home-grown grasses, whether from overseas tea. Or homemade kvass, mors, juice. .. And then everything, as with food. Needs increase, and with them costs: such-and-such tea, coffee, effervescent, colored, prestigious lemonade, cola, tonics. Then unnatural, impregnated with bad examples of people with alcoholic beverages, the most exquisite or, on the contrary, the most-strong, though unclean, poisoning the body, destroying the mind and personality.

Clothing-shoes. And here the same picture: once arisen in order to protect the body from cold, from wounds and scratches, to protect it from wind and sun, and therefore, it is natural, it acquired additional artificial significance with the development of civilization: a sign, a symbol of a person's belonging toa certain tribe-tribe. Over time, it increasingly turned into a kind of visually questionnaire: who is this person, from which country, which nation, is poor or rich, and yet how educated, developed taste, is adherent to general rules or acts on its own. In short, "on clothes meet."And to this day there is such a principle. And there is nothing unnatural here.

But clothing for some people becomes an all-consuming passion, a way of self-affirmation. However, as well as other household items: the houses themselves, their utensils, vehicles, works of art, means of communication, works of art. .. There has been a polysemy of the real world for a long time to this day. And sometimes, instead of occupying the proper place for them, the means of existence - things become the goal.

This trend was fixed with the division of the human community into different clans, groups, classes. The very definitions of "propertied classes" and "have-nots" absorb this basic difference of people, in everything else they often differ from each other. At the same time, the material embodiment of the benefits can be the most diverse and incomparable: from some special cockleshells of the Polynesian savages - to the treasuries of the Great Moguls, which are bursting with gold and precious stones;from the smoky but decorated with fox pelts the plague of a rich Kamchadal - to the magnificent palaces of European lords. And within one tribe, one nation has always had its gradations, its levels of wealth and poverty.

All the peoples gradually established power. Hence the firmly established notion of things as visible signs of social advantage and prosperity, power and power. Such a view for many centuries has not been able to overcome neither prophets, nor philosophers, nor poets, who tirelessly attacked this fortress-fortress, dividing people into warring camps.

Let's remember the reaction of Russian society to the appeal and attempt of Leo Tolstoy to destroy property barriers. What did the Count do? He began to plow, walk in plain linen clothes, sleep on a hard bed, walk barefoot or in boots of his own making, eat simple food. And he assured me that the healthiest way of life - both physically and morally - is the one that the worker works - the peasant. What kind of booch caused this "fad" of the famous writer in the haves! Although millions of Russians lived just like that, no one was worried or shocked. But how can you mix the way of life of different social strata? !This is a real revolution!

Now we know that the writer really advocated a healthy regime and way of life. But after all, the concept of health is also a socially significant category. It is one thing that was extracted and preserved by one's own labor and own efforts, and the other by medical care, by the servant's efforts, by treatment on the water and by other means, again given property superiority. It turns out that a person infected with class prejudices is ready to turn away from everything that is in his favor, just to not be like his fellow who stands on the bottom step of the social ladder.

From this position, it becomes clear the angry concern of the Russian leadership( and even the members of the family of Leo Tolstoy himself, his wife, for example, Sophia Andreevna): if those in the household will live exactly like the poor, then why are all their advantages - all these titles,ranks, money and values? And without them it is unthinkable to assert their authority over those who have always been considered working cattle.

These are the revolutionary consequences of seeing the aristocracy in such an outwardly simple act as the food and clothing of a great man.

Things are insignia. This is their quality, they sometimes still retain, poisoning related, friendly, companionship. And at the same time, things allow us to manifest our professional, artistic fantasy, our desire to improve everyday life, to comfort and beauty.

The historical development of mankind in the sphere of material needs comes from natural, simple, healthy forms to an increasingly complicated, largely artificial. In developed countries, people are moving farther from necessary products and things to surplus and prestigious, "iconic".This happens in direct agreement with the development of man: from a basically biological essence to a social being, for which the laws of society become the basic laws.

This is how the philosophers-enlighteners perceived this evolution of needs: they believed that a person, created by nature in such a way that he can not stop in

's activity, in curiosity, in the pursuit of novelty, satisfying 's natural needs,create themselves completely new needs, or rather, his imagination makes the old needs more refined."Natural needs" are inevitably replaced by needs that we call imaginary or conditional;the latter become just as necessary for our happiness as the first.

Marxist philosophy revealed an inseparable relationship-the dependence of a person's needs on all social development and, above all, on the development of social production. And really, we can get at our disposal only such things, services that people have learned to create. For example, it would be good for our ancestors to feel the need for hot soup, boiled vegetables, if not yet discovered and created fireproof materials, in which it became possible to cook a variety of food. Yes, they probably have not experienced such a need. Rather, it emerged only after the new materials were discovered, the art of making dishes appeared.

It is now difficult to determine what was born before: the need for things or the production of them, which often "provoked" the need. Take for example, such cutting-edge subjects, which for most of us are necessary, like radios, televisions and telephones. They are designed to satisfy our natural aspirations for communication, to receive new information, new impressions, interesting entertainment and entertainment. But who from the present grandparents imagined that they would receive such means of quenching their eternal thirst for novelty? Who appealed to scientists: create for us such devices, without them to us life is not in life?

A few decades ago, access to these benefits of civilization was discovered only by a small number of people. These vehicles were symbols of social prosperity. Now they are ordinary elements of our life. About 90% of families in our country have TVs and even more - radio receivers. The phone lags behind, but probably, it will not take long to wait for maximum telephony of cities, then villages. Or maybe new means of communication. Who knows?

But let's spin back, like a film, the process of the appearance of these completely materialized desires and the complicated ways to meet them.

The inquisitive minds of scientists must first have been imbued with the need to open a way to transfer information over a distance. When obvious success was achieved, it was necessary to create experimental and small-scale production, since for large-scale there were not created prerequisites and conditions: there were no industrial opportunities or market demand.

It was necessary to develop the mining industry, supplying various raw materials and materials, to expand and equip the manufacturing industry with new equipment, and to develop scientific and technical data for all related industries and, naturally, to improve the management level of the multistage production mechanism.

The solution of such complex economic, industrial and scientific problems required a huge number of specialists of different profiles and a rather high level of preparation. Without a secondary education, which would have a multimillion-dollar army of workers, none of the industries could make such a breakthrough. Only on the basis of universal secondary education and the ever-growing special( secondary and higher) will we make progress in any sphere of modern economy.

So, it was also necessary to orient young people to receive special education, to instill in it the need for work in this specialty. Initiate, in fact, the spiritual need for the production of quite material values, which are intended to serve the spiritual needs of millions of our fellow citizens. .. This is the cycle in the nature of our needs and ways of implementing them is very often. And notice how many times a thought is embodied in a thing and, conversely, things stimulate the emergence of a new idea. All that we create and consume, the Marxists call the "reified relations" of man to nature, to other people and to himself.

Based on this belief, we also started talking about the home economy with clarifying the relationship. And here the laws that operate on the country's vast squares and on the tiny springboard of the family housing show themselves similarly. And one of the laws that are in force in our society is the law on the constant elevation of needs, and accordingly the constantly rising production.

- But is it possible to fulfill all fantasies, all dreams and human needs, if they do not have boundaries and measures? Who and how can they regulate them?

In primitive people the regulator of their desires was nature, as well as in animals. She taught her children: do not take more than you need to support life, on another occasion you will not get the necessary. You'll overeat - you can not catch a beast or you can not escape from it. You will starve - the same. You will not stock up food for future use - you will die in time of bad weather and lack of food. All animals are stocky: who pawns under the skin of a fat, who collects good in mink and honeycomb, and who feeds his food, like ants, dolphins. While all the distribution of goods was decided by man's own power, his agility, ingenuity, people lived according to the laws of, so to say, ecological justice and expediency. These laws are fixed in the moral principles that are characteristic of the inhabitants of this region. For example, for the inhabitants of places where nature is generous and fertile, where you can effortlessly get your own food, there was no need to develop special frugality, there was no need to fence and complex economy, create special utensils, build capital buildings. In such regions, the production of things and technical equipment, which are urgently needed in the regions with more severe climatic conditions, developed more slowly. Among the peoples of the northern zones, especially where each piece of land is watered later with the blood of a farmer, the attitude to the earthly fruits was naturally different from that in countries where dates and bananas fell into their mouths. That is why the northerners are more thrifty, resourceful, calculating, but also more grasping, proactive in obtaining means of subsistence.

Relation to material values ​​was also determined by the density of the population, the size of the living space. For example, in the tundra, taiga, desert, in hard-to-reach mountainous areas, in remote villages, where a meeting with a stranger is a happy( or dangerous) rarity, the guest is a sacred person. To him everything: warmth, honor, the best piece, dear gift.

With the advent of cities, there was another installation. Here, as they say, every sneeze does not nazdravstvueshsya and everyone, knocking at your door, you will not please.

You do not have the news to hear conversations about the national peculiarities of everyday life for every people: some nations are distinguished by generous hospitality, others are more stingy. Some willingly ridicule their own stinginess, as, for example, Finns and residents of the city of Gabrovo in Bulgaria ironically sneer at their expense. The traditional attitude to material values ​​affects the whole way of life and can not help but affect the character of the younger generation, even if this generation in schools, books, movies meets completely different attitudes towards this. Often the urban family is ruled by village orders, if its ancestors recently left their former habitat. And the eastern traditions are preserved in families that have long moved to the western republics, etc.

However, if you analyze the most common principles, rooted in the minds and behavior of people of different nations, you can find something and their unifying. Moral commandments, commanding to get their bread with the sweat of their own face, not steal someone else's, not to envy unrighteous wealth, help their neighbor, can be found in many fairy tales, myths, songs of southerners and northerners, inhabitants of the western and eastern hemispheres. Greed, boasting of wealth are the most terrible vices, which are always shamed and punished in fairy tales. The emperor, in the popular view, is always worse, the foolish who knows how, but the poor, although the rich man became the master of the situation for millennia. The able one is the co-author of nature, her agent, he is served by the sun, wind and water, animals and birds, things and cars.

The worker always knows the true value of the product, the goods, how they get to their creators, to what extent the well-being of people depends on them.

The peasant family in Russia, for example, usually referred to food as a sacred activity: there was a solemn ritual, with which the households ate for a meal."Bread is everything to the head", "bread-batshyoshko" - which only gave affectionate titles to the people of the daily bread, good nicknames for the nurses-cows, laying hens. Similarly, the workers treated their home and all utensils: they did not throw anything in vain, they did not break it, they protected it.

However. .. the people confessed the opposite truth: "Man does not live by bread alone".And they did not spare their belly, not that of property, when a common misfortune came. For the sake of freedom, honor and dignity, fidelity to the idea was repeatedly sacrificed to all the wealth accumulated by hard efforts. Numerous examples of this can be found in the history of any people.

In addition to higher spiritual needs, people have always been aware of simple everyday pleasures, which give man-made beauty of work, communication with relatives and friends. And often it turned out that the quenching of natural material needs was dressed in a festive form, becoming a fact of art. For example, the people every game action accompanied by games, celebrations, whether the beginning or completion of sowing, harvesting, haymaking or erecting a new log hut, slaughtering cattle or, on the contrary, buying a burr. Every holiday had its own "material" and "food" incarnation.

It must be admitted that art in general was born and grew on a labor and economic basis. Listen to the songs of your people, they often find a list of field works, talks with pets, with the field and the forest. Look at the national dances, and you will see how much they repeat many working movements and rhythms: on the hunt and on the plowland, behind the spinning wheel and sewing. The first artists, sculptors, architects were unknown builders and decorators of apartment houses and all their utensils.

So the need for spiritual food, in these intangible values ​​is as innate and ineradicable in man as the need to satisfy bodily hunger. And for some time no one shared them, how their creator was undivided and the consumer was a simple worker.

Gradual, ever-increasing division of labor has spread on different sides of the creators and their products, life and art, experience and science. Any production is now divided into a number of processes that hundreds and thousands of sometimes unrelated people do. The undoubted blessing is that with him the collective skill and productivity of labor in all spheres of our life has increased incommensurably. What was beyond the strength of the most efficient craftsman, the artel, factory, factory association became effective. Industrial production has made goods that were once considered luxury goods, generally available. Above we have already given examples with TVs, but you can give examples with any home subject, even with the houses themselves, with apartments, with their equipment, lighting and heating. Such bathrooms, which are now equipped with the most usual city apartments, were not for nobles and boyars, even for the princess Zerbsts, I mean Catherine the Great.

All modern goods, as well as incredibly increased requirements, we are indebted to the development of industrial forms of social production.

In the conditions of the developed economy, naturally, the value of money has increased - this necessary means of commodity exchange. The money was hidden away, concealed the effort spent on the manufacture of a particular product and product. They reduced them to a nominal symbolic sign: so many pieces of such and such a drawing for such and such a thing. These signs and their number can differ sharply depending on the locality, the country, the firm that produced the goods, while the goods themselves will be the same. So it turned out that the most essential thing in a thing - its vital necessity - gradually ceased to be decisive in assessing people. In this way, even more material and spiritual values ​​acquired more and more importance, as their market value.

Money changed the human relations that existed at the time of subsistence farming. With the establishment of their world domination, millions of people began to work not for the sake of creating a certain value that is necessary and important to the creator himself or other people, but in order to get the money signs with which you can meet your needs.

Money has gradually become the main regulator, which fuels appetite or restrains the desire for possession of every kind of property. In the exploiting societies, the presence or absence of money is least connected with the personal labor contribution of a person to the public mosh. On the contrary, the main capital has always been owned by people who can not grow bread, put a house, learn a child, or heals a sick person.

Only the socialist society made its principle of the people's attitude: "Who does not work - does not eat", "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work".This means that our needs can be satisfied, depending on how we work for the common good.

True, under socialism, there is a difference in the nature of labor and how it is rewarded. The criterion here is the publicly recognized public need for this work and the degree of skill of its performer. However, even with equal earnings, the nature of needs and the way they are satisfied are often different in the most decisive way. Here the personality with all its innate and bred properties is manifested.

Let's consider some of the most typical variants of the home economy. Well, first of all the most common, connected with folk traditions. It will not be particularly difficult to reproduce it. All incomes are earned by honest, conscientious work. Its goal is to provide for himself and his family all the necessary things for life and to realize their professional skills. For an extra ruble in such a family does not chase, but they do not refuse a well-deserved prize. To the house, to everything that is valuable in it, are thrifty, but not kneeling. No pursuit of spectacular trinkets, things are preferred long-term, reliable, to serve honestly, like their owners. People from such a house, as a rule, make up a solid backbone of both the work collective and the related clan. They work hard to live with dignity, and live with dignity in order to decorate their lives with work.

It is on them that the well-being and material and moral integrity of any nation rests, they are like the land from which grow bread, simple chamomiles, and various exotic flowers. Until then, as the mass of workers keeps a reasonable and honest attitude, the people have a light ahead, no matter how tight the times are. But if you destroy this fruiting layer, corrupt it with greed, self-interest, a vain pursuit of illusory values, then the entire society is doomed to collapse.

There are other forms of housekeeping, in which complex attitudes to one's own labor and to the fruits of the labor of others are intertwined. This is found in families whose members are preoccupied with the realization primarily of their creative abilities. The house and all the worries connected with it have a subordinate significance: they are only means for implementing great life plans. Accordingly, this goal will be maintained and the household. The case requires abstinence, modesty, even asceticism - please, be ready. Tent for housing, canned food, itchy mosquito, instead of nightingales, - no problem. Similarly, do not confuse the transformation into a fashion suit from a storm for some celebration, public meeting. Do not cause special emotions luxury hotel apartments, cozy rooms in their own apartments and even coffee in bed. Everything is possible and acceptable, since not the most important thing. If only it did not interfere, did not take it from the case.

The third life setting: to live comfortably, at your pleasure. Hence, both work and home conditions will be assessed on this scale. Everything that benefits: convenience, comfort, will be equally important and desirable: whether success in the service, or a beautiful thing, tasty food, an interesting book, a fascinating performance. And, of course, self-restraint, difficulties are perceived as a disaster, experienced hard. You can endure them only in the hope of quick and full compensation: a new appointment, an apartment, a car and other benefits.

The fourth situation: a family whose main objective is to save up more money and expensive things to feel their power and strength, so as not to know the worries about the black day. For this you can make your present needs and desires tie in a tight knot. And even increase the domestic moshnu due to third-party benefits, not always worthy and clean. The work is evaluated solely by "privat", the household - by its contribution or expenditure. About this economy, we can say that it is the most wasteful with perpetual stinginess. Spending years in anticipation of the coming merry generous years. But it is precisely such needs that do not know saturation. In the Russian people about such a passion is usually said: prorva! Whatever you give or receive is not enough. The taste of true human values ​​is lost: love, friendship, care for each other. Everyone is shutting up things and money. They are idols. It is this life-setting that is called philistinism, which can not be certified by the presence of certain things, but only by the attitude towards them. Unfortunately, with the growth of general welfare, this category of people has increased noticeably. However, talk about them - next.

Or maybe the installation is exactly the opposite of this one. All material interests are minimized, and there are no ambitious aspirations. People want to live quietly, modestly, in love, harmony, attention to each other. Both work and economy are perceived as means for such an independent, decent, honest, but somewhat detached existence.

There is a "bohemian" family. Then in the house there will be a noise and a din, a smoke with a yoke, expensive books, ornaments, flowers and pictures, plentiful feasts on holidays and a dry-nurse on weekdays, the most-most spectacular, nothing ordinary like things.

And finally, the family, completely devoid of any one's own view of things and life. Then his position, if only such a word is applicable, becomes fashion, imitation of those who are ahead, who is in sight. And it does not matter how this superiority and advantage is achieved. In this family, both work and home life will shake and fever the eternal pursuit of the next idol. It's fashionable to be a physicist, there will be veins to pull to "join", to become a physicist with obvious abilities, say, to biology, and vice versa. It's fashionable to go to the rubbish, they will pay a lot of money for someone else's refreshments, denying themselves the most necessary. It is fashionable to grow hair - will cease to be sheared, when the addiction changes - they will be bruised. And so in the hecticness will last a lifetime. However, why do we list possible variants of such transformations. It is enough to recall the famous Ellochka-cannibal from the novel Ilf and Petrov "Twelve Chairs" and the image is ready.

In an absolutely pure form, such situations are not so common. Much more often - mixed family types and their vital economic position. Moreover, with careful analysis there is such an impression that there is some age-related pattern in how people conduct their household affairs. Imitation, which is known to be primarily teenage, is most common in families with a small matrimonial experience( "adolescents"), And this is natural: your style has not yet developed, and the style of parents does not want to be repeated. So they try that one, then another version of being.

And bohemian manners - the age-old "disease" of a young family. In the same time, when crepe is fixed both in official affairs and in home life, moods begin to appear that could be called epicurean: people search and find pleasure in everything. Subsequently, gradually shifting towards professional achievements and interests, everyday problems are moving to the third level. When there is a decline in labor energy, more and more like silence, warmth and comfort. And finally, when all earthly passions are tried, experienced, some people, especially the elderly, in things, jewels find a substitute for lively joys and relationships. Not for nothing that avarice in the imagination of artists is strongly associated with old age physical and impoverishment of the soul.

Youth, maturity, etc., are relative concepts, we have already discussed this with you. Now it is important for us to remember that every vegetable has its own time. When the family chases the ghosts of fashion until the end of the days, it means - it never came out of the adolescent state, remained spiritually immature, despite the age of the household. When a family, Just emerged, estimates everything in rubles-kopecks, then the old people agreed, even if the couple is twenty years old on the passport.

The mobility of our natures can significantly affect the nature of the home economy. You have, for example, a useful and worthy habit of a thrifty attitude to the fruits of your own and others' labor - to things and money. However, unnoticed for yourself, thrift develops into skopidomstvo, stinginess. And now the virtuous line "turned" into its opposite - in a serious moral defect. Likewise, the breadth of the soul, unselfishness can turn into thoughtless motivation, which leads to the humiliating position of the eternal debtor.

- Well, then, it is necessary to store for future use the silent virtues - "moderation and accuracy"?

- Moderation is a virtue approved by all connoisseurs of human nature and social order. However, not in the silent understanding of the limitations determined by social opportunities."In the ranks we are small" - this is the true motive for his modesty. And when this gets to the big ranks, he will throw off all modesty, like a worn frock coat, and unfold in full swing.

Genuine moral restraint and moderation presuppose self-restraint of those who have great opportunities to satisfy their needs, but consciously restrict themselves for their own physical health and for the sake of justice, concern for near and distant people. Because it is already known: if you take yourself to excess, then someone will not have the necessary.

Let's repeat, personality, its natural and well-bred settings determine, in the end, whether the home economy will be purposeful or chaotic, wasteful or frugal, skopidomnoy or ascetic, helping a person develop or enslave him in the grip of material worries."I want, I can, should" - what content we put into these concepts, this will be our attitude to incomes and expenditures. As far as our "want" is related to "can" and "should", so we ourselves will be satisfied with how our household is conducted.