Difficult and complex world

Stress, frustration, conflict and crisis are differentiated here. In order to analyze this differentiation, it is necessary to introduce one general idea of ​​the correlation of life worlds. The types of life worlds are theoretically constructed in such a way that between them there are not relations of exclusion, but relations of one-sided inclusion, namely: the 2nd («realistic») and 3rd («value») worlds include the 1st («infantile») ”), and the 4th (“creative”) — 1, 2 and 3rd. The regularities of these worlds continue to operate as part of a difficult and complex world, but under the subordination and control of its own laws, in much the same way and to the same extent that the older parts of the brain are subject to and controlled by new ones. This control is not absolute, and some of the «lower» regularities can become dominant for a while and determine the entire state of the life world. We will call such a temporary shift in the dominant regularity of the life-world «slipping.»

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​The situation of stress is not critical for a subject who is congruent to a difficult and complex world, i.e., who accepts difficulty and complexity as the norm of life, because he does not count on satisfaction in every point of life. However, under certain conditions, stress can give rise to a crisis.

​​​​​​​The first of them consists in slipping for some time from a “creative-volitional” attitude into an infantile one. Then any complexity or difficulty causes a state that can be called a “micro-crisis”. This kind of standing is familiar to many. Against the background of relative well-being in everyday life, sensations of global meaning loss, bitter loneliness, hopelessness of existence arise, old, seemingly long-experienced grievances, “complexes”, disappointments, and fears become aggravated. A microcrisis usually does not have a clear, localized existential source. Consciousness, often with a touch of unhealthy satisfaction, is looking everywhere for evidence of the complete collapse of life and the failure of the individual. In terms of pain, a microcrisis may not be inferior to a crisis, but it usually does not last long, sometimes only a few minutes, in contrast to a crisis, the duration of which is usually calculated in months.

The second condition for the transition of stress into a crisis can be created by prolonged, chronic intense stress. The subject of a difficult and complex world does not consider the existence of satisfaction at every point “here-and-now” to be the norm of life, however, the complete absence of satisfaction at all observable points “there-and-then” makes life as a whole psychologically impossible, meaningless. For although meaning does not coincide with pleasure and can even grow on the soil of suffering, it cannot exist at all without pleasure and satisfaction. The transition of chronic intense stress into a crisis occurs indirectly, through frustrations and conflicts generated by stress.

Such a spiritual path goes through the hero of L. N. Tolstoy in the story “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”. Ivan Ilyich fell ill, at first he was tormented only by physical pain, which deprived his life of «pleasure». Gradually, this stress caused by the disease leads to the inability to do the usual pleasant things — go to work, play screw (that is, in the language of critical situations, leads to frustration). Then the mental suffering of the hero is intensified by doubts about the true value of the motives and principles that guided him: “Is it true that screw and service make up the meaning and happiness of life?” (i.e. there are internal conflicts). And finally, for Ivan Ilyich, the main question becomes the meaning of life and death, the justification or condemnation of his whole life (crisis).

Combined reasons for the transition of stress into a crisis are also possible, when both of the above conditions are met: the life world «weakens» and the stress «intensifies». For example, stress leads to frustration (say, failure in an exam due to excitement), while the stress itself does not disappear, is not replaced by frustration, but is only modulated by it and increases. At the same time, there is a general weakening of creative-volitional activity, leading to the slipping of the subject’s consciousness to the worldview of a «weaker» difficult and simple world (the exam and everything connected with it is perceived as the most important and almost the only content of life). The result of these two counter processes will be a frustration micro-crisis (ie, frustration perceived as a crisis).

In a situation of frustration, the subject is faced with the impossibility of realizing any motive. For a being adapted to a complex and difficult world, this situation is critical, because he has to deal not just with difficulty, but with impossibility. However, it can remain for him only the frustration of one of life’s relationships, or it can, under certain conditions, turn into a crisis, that is, a state experienced as a global defeat of the entire life integrity.

The first of these conditions consists in slipping into the attitude of a realistic life-world. In this case, the phenomenological basis for the emergence of a crisis is the dominance of the “this is always” structure in the mind, the subjective simplification of the life world, and the strong fixation of the subject on a certain activity. The failure of the latter creates a microcrisis. It differs from an infantile microcrisis by the presence of a clearly defined cause, and from a genuine crisis by the fact that the sense of global collapse disappears as soon as the subject manages to get involved in other life relationships.

What are the conditions for the transition of frustration into a crisis within the actually difficult and complex life world without its slipping into the realistic one? Such a transition is all the more likely the more: 1) the greater the significance of the frustrated relationship (i.e., its share in the overall semantic resource of the individual), 2) it is more deeply affected, and 3) it is more strongly intertwined with internal and external connections with other life relationships, so that in as a result of frustration, and they turn out to be internally meaningless and/or objectively unrealizable.

Thus, the loss of a loved one, which, it would seem, mainly affects one life relationship, as a rule, causes a crisis due to all three of the above reasons, but especially because in acute grief, internal connections between the loss and all life relationships visibly appear. At the same time, there is also a tendency to “absorption in the image of the deceased” [5], i.e., to the attention of life as a whole — loss. And then the consolation of the grieving one can be directed against this «slipping» to the inwardly simple world — at holding the consciousness of a person in the real fullness of his life.

So, Plutarch, helping his wife adequately endure the loss of their child, advises her: position with the then, as quite similar to it. After all, it will turn out, dear wife, that we consider the birth of a daughter a misfortune, if we admit that the time before her birth was more prosperous for us, And the intervening two years should not be excluded from memory, but accepted as a past joy and not considered a small blessing a great evil: if fate did not give us what we hoped for, then this should not cancel our gratitude for what was given. … The thought of joyful and in sorrowful circumstances will be a necessary help for those who do not run away from memories of joyful things and do not completely indulge in lamentations about fate. It is not befitting for us to slander our own life like this if a stain has fallen on one of its pages, while all the others remain clean and blameless” [7, p. 540-541].

Distracting from the rhetoric of this consolation, now cutting the ear, but quite adequate to the spirit of its time [2, p. 7], let us pay attention to the fact that in terms of our analysis, such consolation is an attempt to keep consciousness in the chronotope of the “creative” life world: in its time “life-as-a-whole” (allowing to cover the entire volume of life — the idea of ​​fate — and freely move in memory to any “then” without losing the “now”) and the space “the world as complex” (preserving both the general “binding” of life relationships and the individuality of each “page”).

The logic of analysis implemented for frustration is also applicable to the situation of conflict. The conflict acts in a difficult and complex world as an independent critical situation, since it is not just a tense life complexity (it is the “norm” of this world), but the impossibility of resolving the contradictions of life relations.

A feature of the existence of a conflict in a complex and difficult world is that the opposing life relations are encountered here not as pure ideas, principles, meanings, but in the form of activities woven into the general material, sensual fabric of life, each of which is a whole complex of feelings, memories, actions, habits, etc., settled, attached, embodied in external objects (an old armchair, the smell of autumn leaves, a morning cup of coffee). Therefore, the conflict takes place not only in the field of relations between motives and values ​​(as in the easy and complex world), but as if in a dialogue with the outside world, real experience. In a complex and difficult world, there is a time and place for trial and error, trials and returns, delays and compromises, advice and rest. The «difficulty» of the world, on the one hand, significantly complicates the resolution of the conflict, because one has to take into account not only the meanings, but also their growing into the material fabric of the world and life. On the other hand, «difficulty» softens the conflict, preventing it from developing into a crisis.

Such resistance sometimes turns out to be insufficient, and then the conflict turns into a crisis. One of the possibilities of this transition is associated with the slipping of the subject’s worldview into the mode of functioning of the light and complex world. The “here-and-now” structure begins to dominate in the mind, there is a set for a one-time, final, uncompromising resolution of the conflict (“there will be no more time”, “now or never”). In this state, a deep sense of guilt and condemnation of one’s whole life is replaced by willingness to sacrifice and feat to immediately correct and remake all life. Decisions made at such moments are as saturated with pathos as they are unrealistic, but that is precisely why they are valuable: even a relatively mild micro-crisis of values ​​can bring important insights to the individual about the inner truth and the purpose of her life.

This microcrisis can also have an opposite, «extrapunitive» character. Then compensatory fantasies about a “better world” in another place and/or time, sometimes acquiring a pseudo-religious character, can become its symptoms. Neurotics, for example, often complain that they were born at the wrong time. Moral content is often involved in the experience of such a microcrisis, and then the whole world seems to be mired in evil, hopelessly corrupted: “people are evil”, “it is impossible to trust anyone”, etc. Internal conflicts are projected onto relations with the outside world, in which the ultimate cause of suffering is sought. This essentially frees consciousness from the need to resolve the conflict, since it does not exist inside, and the outside world is “incorrigible”. So, leaving the conflict, consciousness paradoxically consoles itself with the crisis, finding justification for itself in the global condemnation of the world.

The second case of the transition of the conflict into a crisis is observed when the consciousness is kept within the framework of the “difficult and complex world”, but such key values ​​are drawn into the conflict, on which the whole idea of ​​life as a whole is based. Before the resolution of this conflict, a person deprived of a single value idea of ​​life, what A.P. Chekhov in «A Boring Story» called «the general idea or god of a living person», finds himself in a state of crisis.

Thus, in a difficult and complex life world, there are various types of critical situations. Stress, frustration and conflict can, under certain conditions, give rise to a crisis or states, which we called microcrises, arising from a temporary weakening of the creative-volitional principle and a slipping of consciousness into a worldview corresponding to an easy and / or simple life world. Coping with microcrises most often consists in returning to a more developed worldview of a difficult and complex world, where the current situation may remain critical, but ceases to be a crisis.