Alexander Dolgin-Professor, Head of the Department of Cultural Pragmatics at the Higher School of Economics, Head of the Research Foundation “Cultural Pragmatics”, manager of the Imhonet recommendation service.
Today, the scientist is engaged in research on the problems of happiness and the meaning of life. What is the most valuable thing in a person’s life, what is the basis for a long and happy life? How to learn to live happily? Alexander Dolgin knows the answers to these questions.
– Why do you think a person begins to think about what he has managed to do in life, what he can leave behind?
– A person begins to think at the moment when it seems to him that he has somewhere reached the plateau of his personal career. When it seems to him, when he sees that some part of the game has already been played, he does not see the other game, whether it is played poorly or well – but it is played, and he has implemented a certain program, then he evaluates his resources, his motivation. And if he finds himself facing the loss of a further program, then what should he do?
– At what age does this happen?
– It used to be said that this happens in men at 40 years of age. Now, due to the general increase in the duration of active life by 15-20 years, the question arises – this period is shifted to the designated 10-15 years or not? In economic terms, when there is an imbalance or when potentially interesting achievable goals are not aligned with available resources.
It is clear that as a person grows up, some opportunities disappear: at a certain age, you can not become a ballerina, a professional athlete, it can be difficult to become a mathematician. Many people think that it is impossible to start a new career when the old one has already ended.
– And if you can’t solve this issue? A person wants to change something, but can’t, doesn’t understand what to do?
– This indicates a worldview under-equipped. This is a difficult situation in which a person is dragged by society, and the school, and the education system, which does not teach something very important, including what we are talking about. “What are you going to do? Have you developed a set of values to build on? Do you know what happiness consists of?”
The modern science of happiness, by the way, I am doing a lot of this now, clearly lays it all out on the shelves and highlights: here is what is important for happiness, and here is what is not taught, and in social practices this is not .
There is a colossal zone responsible for personal happiness, a zone of competence, a zone of action, in which the individual is left to his own devices and turns out to be completely unprepared and unarmed. Disarm and is manifested in the confusion that occurs in a person who has achieved everything, or has achieved the maximum possible. He thinks: what else?
And then it turns out: oh, if I had prepared for this, in advance, I would have been able to. But I didn’t prepare, so I can’t do it, it’s not mine, I don’t have any leads or connections here. And going through this set, he sees an excessive number of exceptions and prohibitions, except for some, namely: families.
He thinks something like this: “Well, I have a family, it’s mine! Here I am now self-actualizing!” The most dangerous, by the way, misconception. Dangerous, first of all for others, for family members.
– How important is family support?
“Extremely important.” The science of happiness, which is largely based on empirical research on why people are happy or unhappy, states that interpersonal communication is the most important thing. It is important who you can talk to, communicate with. The main driving force for the formation of a family is not happiness, as it is usually customary to write and think about it, but the avoidance of negative time.
– So what is a family if people do not seek it out of a desire to be happy?
– Family is not something that gives a person peak moments of happiness. She can deliver them, but their absence is not a bad sign for the family, as romantic literature or cinema puts it in our heads.
The fact is that the very presence of time, just the time of being a person, which is socially empty, is disastrous for him and is most difficult to experience. Accordingly, let there be complex communications, not always super-comfortable, but precisely-communications. This is better than “no communication”. And of course, the family is best suited for communication.
The family is a wide field for self-realization, your own activity. Including communication. Man is a social being. There are some microscopic number of people who are so arranged that they can live in a hermitage, and be hermits. But this is an exception, which is possible only due to the fact that they mentally communicate with society and nurture their hermit position through this mental communication.
– So, it is communication that is important for a person?
– Yes, the science of happiness claims, and I think this statement is quite reasonable and correct, that quality interpersonal communication is at the center of everything. And if not high-quality-then at least some. In simple instructions, it sounds like this: in all ways, keep in touch with your friends and acquaintances, try not to lose them . Even if you think that at the moment they are burdening you or have lost their meaning.
– What else is important for a person who makes sense of his life, trying to understand how “qualitatively” he lives?
– Do not reduce your social valence. That is, the number of contacts multiplied by their quality, the integral number of contacts should not decrease. This is completely consistent with human nature, as it is seen through a lot of empirical research by psychologists, sociologists, and happiness specialists. Research has been conducted for the last 40 years, since the 70s.
– That is, a single person can neither be self-sufficient, nor solve the problems that he faces at the moment of searching for himself?
– Maybe, but it’s a rare talent, not everyone will be so lucky. Communication is extremely important, and it has been proven that it is one of the most important things for human happiness. There may be relatives, or they may just be kindred spirits, social companions and companions, that’s who has what.
I would not say that this game should be played on strictly defined grounds, on a single instrument. If I have a violin or a cello instead of a grand piano, and someone has an orchestra, well, let the orchestra play! By the way, socially-top characters-businessmen, politicians, etc. – to a certain extent compensate for the lack of family communication on the universal, maybe less deep, but it is more. That is, they transfer communication to the social layer. Therefore, there are politicians who can be happy not at the family level, but at the level of the community, the region, the people, the world as a whole.
– How to prepare a child for the fact that in life he should not lose communication, should be able and not be afraid to find new areas and opportunities for self-realization?
“They don’t teach it in school.” This should be brought up in the family. Children should be taught how to communicate, how to properly conflict, how to choose a job, how to treat money and much more. And it is also very important that the child lived, and did not live someone else’s life. Parents should create such conditions for him to make his own decisions, make mistakes, and find a way out of the situation. Only then will he be able to live in such a way that he does not end up in a broken trough and does not shed tears about what he did not have time for in life.