Ideas and Ideals

Abstract

The article analyzes the dynamics of the development of medical models of treatment of deviations from the health norm, discusses the issue of changing ideas about the human health in medicine.  It is shown that as a result of changes in the conceptual understanding of health and the process of its restoration, the principle of achieving a commercially profitable, fast and controlled result is introduced into modern medicine, as a result of that the process of medical treatment is standardized and regulated. But the preservation of object optics of views in the medical industry, as shown in the article, becomes ineffective, moreover, risky in a situation of moving boundaries of the human health norm. To overcome the existing risks, new institutes and practices of ethical examination of health standards are being introduced into medicine. It is shown that the accepted deliberative practices of ethical expertise only introduce a procedure for taking into account the patient’s position regarding the boundaries of their health standards and the limits of medical intervention. At the same time, the patient’s position is considered as something ready, initially given, in other words, the classic “human project” continues to be defended in medicine.

Pandemic COVID-19 affected the crisis in many areas of public life – in the economy, politics, family, consumer relations, and culture. It has become a challenge for social sciences, especially for sociology. If in other areas of social research, the meaningful gaps can still be compensated by speculations, the increase in sociological knowledge without empirical research is simply impossible. But in the face of restriction of full-time communications, the use of a number of methods and techniques is either completely impracticable or requires significant procedural correction. In addition, the need to correct the content of sociological representation of the total and local objects becomes obvious. The way, the society as a whole, its subsystems, institutes and cohorts, face the pandemic, requires reformulating the axiomatics, and hypothesis of sociological research. Within the frames of this article, the author focuses on several themes, which relevance is aggravated with shifts in social life caused by the pandemic. The first theoretical and methodological “lesson” is the need to rethink the paradigmatic ratio of illusion / objectivity of social law, since there is no secret that the objective contamination of the population is in close connection with the intensity of generating the spread of various prejudices in the public consciousness. The second “lesson” affects the disciplinary status of sociology of medicine, the significance of which in the regulation of social functioning has immeasurably increased. In this regard, the perception of people as a population is a kind of demand for the paradigm status in terms of the sociology of medicine. The third “lesson” is associated with the problem of the rationality of social behavior of a person, because the social design of the pandemic stroke seriously shakes confidence in the sanity of a man. The fourth “lesson” is an attempt to bring in methodological character into the suspicion of the scenario nature of the unfolding global pandemic. Any scenario has its own scriptwriter who has something to say about social laws in general and about the nature of human capital in particular

The article presents a philosophical and psychological analysis of the psychodynamics of deceit, as a specific phenomenon determined by personal qualities. The results of the study are presented on the basis of a questionnaire developed by the authors to self-evaluate the admissibility of a lie. Students of both sexes participated (156 people between the age of 17-25). Three groups of subjects were identified, 30 people in each: group 1, with a negative attitude to lies; group 2: people who admit to lying in some cases, and group 3: people who admit to lying in all its manifestations. Personality factors in these groups were compared using the Kattel 16 PF questionnaire. People with different permissibility of lying and falsehood have different psychotypes. People who categorically deny and do not tolerate lies and deceit have high self-control of their behavior, severity and rigidity, while they are internally timid, aloof, tense, overly careful, avoid stress, and have a narrow life perspective. A person who admits falsehood in some cases and situations is conformal, dependent, not always confident in himself, often preoccupied with problems, emotionally unstable, often tense. There is a struggle between conscientiousness and falsehood; provoked by emotional instability and the lack of a “moral core” that does not allow the expression of one’s own opinion. Respondents representing the openly deceitful type reveal emotional balance, flexible intelligence, sociability, good memory and variable creative thinking. In the selected groups, there are different ways of resisting stress. It is shown that the adaptability of people from group 3 is higher than that of people from 1 and 2. The permissibility of lying is positively correlated with resilience to stress, and the inadmissibility of lying is associated with low stress tolerance. It follows from this that falsehood is embedded in the structure of the personality as an adaptive strategy. The authors state that falsehood is an adaptive phenomenon that facilitates survival in society.

The article explores the idea of social progress in the context of the history of human society. The author considers the concept of progress in interrelation with the three revolutions. The first revolution was an agrarian one, which established the dominant religious consciousness and dependence on the divine intervention. Accordingly, the idea of progress as opposed to the perfection of God was not dominant. The world of nature is born, develops, and dies. This approach prevailed for about seven thousand years: from the first civilizations to the XV - XVIII centuries. According to the Judeo-Christian tradition, after the fall, the world fell away from God. This understanding corresponds to the primordial approach and is also opposite to the idea of progress. In the Renaissance, the secularization of consciousness and culture begins. Culture and values are formed on the basis of religious Judeo-Christian values, but a man becomes the bearer and guarantor of these values. The ideas of humanism and worshipping of a human being as the main creator are reflected in philosophy, art, and painting. In accordance with this approach, the idea of progress is born. The idea of progress is fully formed and takes possession of the masses in the age of Enlightenment. During this period, the industrial revolution is taking place. In European culture, the primacy of rationality, machine labor and equality is asserted. But at the same time, the industrial revolution entailed many social crises that are still relevant today. The United States and Europe were gradually able to overcome the challenges of the industrial revolution and create a system of “capitalism with a human face”, while partially imposing their system on other countries where production is cheaper. Therefore, the problems of the so-called “wild capitalism” still take place in the third world countries.

By the middle of the XX century, science became the leading factor in manufacturing. Society is changing from industrial to post-industrial. The article focuses on the problems and opportunities of the modern post-industrial society with all the accumulated baggage of the previous stages of development. Humanity has achieved great technological success, and the scientific and technological revolution has brought material benefits to society. But at the same time, the consumer society creates many problems. What is progress in the context of modern discourse? The answer to this question is the purpose of this article.

A profile on a social network site (SNS) containing the user’s personal information qualifies as both a personal and public space, which raises the problem of delineating, what is private and what is public in this virtual domain. The paper attempts to identify privacy boundaries in the social media environment and the actual ownership of personal information disclosed on users’ profiles. The stated problem is considered through the lens of Communication Privacy Management theory, an influential approach to the study of privacy in the online environment proposed by Sandra Petronio. The terms and concepts of the theory are applied to analyze the peculiarities of privacy management of the user’s personal information on the pages of the social network VKontakte (i.e. in the context of ‘one-to-many’ communication). The peculiarities noted are as follows: the presence of social media administration as a co-owner of the data (i.e. the user is not granted exclusive ownership of their personal information); difficulties with discussing information ownership rules with other social media participants; the presence of such phenomena as ‘online friends’ and ‘the imagined audience’ making it difficult for the user to recognize the composition of their actual audience and set proper privacy boundaries. It is also shown that the social network provides what can only be described as rather vague collective privacy boundaries (if the term privacy is even applicable to the social media environment). All the information shared by the user on the social media profile crosses the personal privacy boundaries and is moved almost uncontrollably to the collective ownership domain. The further theoretical research of privacy management of personal information on social media profiles should aim to critically examine the concept of collective privacy in the digital space and determine the ownership rights of original owners of personal information gone public.

This article is the third and final in a series dealing with the birth of a new political elite in the United States, the minority elite. In previous articles, the mechanism of its appearance was analyzed, as well as its ideology, goals, program and values. The black movement, as the most co-organized of all protest movements, is entering the final phase of its development, being engaged in the placement of its representatives in state and federal governments, political parties and other social institutions. The women’s movement has recently been taken over by ethnic movements, primarily blacks, and has become their vanguard. This article describes new social elevators for the promotion of minority representatives into the corridors of power. The logic of promoting people of their own race, gender and nationality to the highest branches of power began to prevail over other criteria for recruiting personnel. During the 2020 election campaign, a new mechanism for promoting minorities in all branches of government was formed. It is based on numerous violations of local and federal electoral legislation. The mechanism of pressure on the US electoral system is analyzed using the example of the state of Georgia and the activities of politician Stacey Abrams. The article describes Abrams’ strategy to create a network of NGOs that are focused on one mission - to arrange for the political shift of the state in the elections. These organizations circumvented existing laws, making the state of Georgia the record holder for electoral irregularities and lawsuits. The article shows that Abrams’ struggle with the electoral laws of her state is based on the political myth of the voter suppression of minorities. The author identifies a number of common characteristics of the new elite. The minority elite does not show any interest in social reconciliation and overcoming racial conflict, but rather makes efforts to incite the latter, to attract the government to its side and increase its role in establishing “social justice” through racial quotas and infringement of the rights of those social strata that it has appointed bearers of systematic racism in society. As the colored elite increases and the government’s role in resolving racial conflicts grows, the minority movement is gradually condemned, it ceases to be a true grassroots movement and turns into astroturfing.

The article deals with investigation into the conditions of the defection of the national Soviet party-state functionaries to opposition in the USSR (late 1980s – early 1980s) that is an important indicator of the loyalty of the national elites towards the central government.

The analysis is based on comparing two contrastive cases – the Soviet elites of Latvia and those of Kazakhstan in their interactions with the central government as well as local population. Despite seemingly obvious cultural and historical differences, both cases are similar regarding some important aspects such as socio-demographic, economic as well as cultural dynamics in the late Soviet period. In both republics, the proportion of migrants in the whole population as well as in the elites was relatively high. The intensive migration in the post-war period was a result of the rapid industrialization and the Virgin Land campaign in the case of Kazakhstan. The Soviet elites both of Latvia and of Kazakhstan were loyal to the Union center, Russian-speaking and more international than national oriented. Besides, the national movements in both republics were practically nonexistent at the beginning of the perestroika.

Nevertheless, many Latvian national ruling cadres joined the opposition in the late 1980s – early 1991s whereas Kazakh national elites remained mostly loyal to the Union center up to the dissolution of the USSR (Kazakhstan declared its independence only on 16 December 1991, as the last republic to leave the USSR) – although Kazakh national party-state functionaries did not have less reasons to get rid of the tough control from Moscow than national elites of Soviet Latvia.

As the theoretical basis the author applies the R. Collins` state-centered theory of ethnos elaborated in the framework of the Weberian paradigm. The analysis showed that decreasing loyalty of the Latvian national elites in the late 1980s – early 1991s was due to the success of the protest movement in this republic including the violent confrontation with its rivals in January 1991 (“The Barricades”). A broad support of the protest movement striving for the reestablishment of the independence from the Soviet Union was based on anti-immigration ideological alternative to official Soviet internationalism attracting different social and ethnic groups of Latvian population.

A relatively high level of the loyalty of the Kazakh national elites to the central government was caused by the effective suppression of the Kazakh youth riots in December 1986 that triggered the purge of the national ruling cadres in Kazakhstan initiated by Moscow. A relatively low social support of the protest movement in the republic was due to the lack of a broad ideological basis that could create solidarity between different social and ethnic groups that made up the population of Kazakhstan. Besides, the protest of 1986 with Kazakh students as the main participants was perceived by local population in the logic of ethno-territorial conflicts very common in the late Soviet Kazakhstan and evoked therefore not solidarity but fear and anger.

The author considers the foundations of the origin and formation of the axiological content of the spatiotemporal structure of human existence. The object of the research is a human being and culture at the turn of the twentieth and twenty first centuries. The theoretical and methodological foundation combines a number of approaches characteristic of the social humanities: the scientific research program of cultural centrism aimed at understanding the complex subject of social and humanitarian problems and allowing to reveal and describe its unique, individually expressed properties; the relational concept of time and space, according to which the latter exist only in mutual connection with objects and, therefore, in inseparable unity with human being; dialectical model, within the framework of which the universe is an integral organic evolving process, all structural elements of which are dialectically interconnected; the theory of chronotope affirms the immanent unity of time and space. All that has been noted makes it possible, within the framework of the presented study, to interpret space and time as a complexly structured evolving multilevel chronotopological organization immanent to human being. Human existence appears as a temporal component of the chronotopological structure, and the spatial axis of the latter is the locus of human existence and the world around a person. The value content of human space and time arises and receives its development according to their relational essence, due to their inextricable dialectical relationship with human existence. The evolution of space and time is inseparable from the evolution of human being, is an integral component of his existence, which appears as personal, aesthetic and value development, experiencing the world around him, existentially and ethically determined communication with him. Forming and evolving together with a person, time and space not only act as accidents and modes of his being, but become his value-structured life-world, interconnected with the social and cultural spheres.

Тhis article is the second in a series on the birth of a new elite in the United States, called ‘the minority elite’. The previous article hypothesized that what is happening is not so much the replenishment or evolution of the old elite, but the emergence of a new one, grown on the basis of the Affirmative Action Program, the culture of ‘woke capitalism’ and decades of the minority protest. The process of elite change intensified on the wave of protest activity of black minority, primarily ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, in the summer of 2020, which coincided with elections to all branches of government. The new elite need to create their own version of American history and their liberation mission. The ideological paradigm of the black movement includes several social doctrines: ‘The 1619 Project’, critical race theory, Black liberation, theories of white privilege, white supremacy and anti-racism. ‘The 1619 Project’ clearly demonstrates how the new elite understand the past, present and future of the United States and their place in the social structure. This article analyzes the theses of ‘1619’, and also contains the main conclusions of the professional criticism of this project. The goal of the project, according to its authors, is to reframe American history. It places slavery and systematic racism at the very center of US history and thereby denies the foundations on which the ‘American project’ is based. ‘1619’ is considered in the article as a socio-engineering project that includes various programs: curricula for colleges and schools, podcasts for radio, TV shows and films, interviews and speeches in universities, exhibitions, press publications, ideological themes for elections and trainings for organizations and social movements. The unprecedented speed of implementation and the scale of financing of the new version of American history in all spheres of society without its professional assessment indicate that this large-scale action was prepared in advance. The article deals with the fundamental factual errors in the presentation of history, analysis and interpretation of economic data in ‘1619’, including those that were uncritically borrowed from the school ‘New History of Capitalism’. It also addresses the doctrine of anti-racism. The analysis of the project showed a low level of evidence of the revision of history conceived in it. The author shows by the example of ‘1619’ that scientific research is not combined with ideological tasks, since the latter inevitably lead to adjustment to the given answer, a decrease in the level of the applied scientific apparatus and simplification of the conclusions drawn. Criticism of the project was heard only in the academic sphere, but did not get into the media. One of the most serious consequences of the project is the creation of a new mythology, supplanting from the public consciousness a version of American history based on the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and proven historical facts. The black movement, albeit temporarily, managed to impose its own narrative on public opinion and create a rationale for moving into power and receiving new privileges.

Abuse of right is one of the most complex phenomena in legal science, the study of which requires the use of a wide range of methods of cognition, both general scientific and private law. The author of the article makes a generic analysis of the concept “abuse of right”, disclosing the history of its appearance and development. However, special attention is paid to the discussion of scientists about the essence of abuse of right, in which, as in a “multi-layered cake”, more and more narrow subjects of the discussion are layered, but at the same time, they are all permeated with a common goal – to determine the place and role of the phenomenon in the modern legal order. Historically, the first debate arose on the validity of the very concept of abuse of right, caused by a combination of two words that were opposite in meaning: “right” and “abuse”. This discussion has been going on for more than a century and takes place both in Russian civil law and in foreign legal doctrine. There is also no consensus among supporters of the concept of abuse of right: some attribute abuse of right to a variety of lawful behavior, others call it an offense. This problem is currently urgent and complex. Finally, there are disagreements about the branch of abuse of law: is this concept inter-branch in nature or is it exclusively inherent in the civil law branch? As a result of comparing all points of view, the author in each of the above discussions reasonably takes this or that position. As a result, a complete understanding of the phenomenon under study is formed.