For millions of years, evolution has made us prudent, cautious, and accurate. The instinct of self-preservation saved lives and made us winners. But modern civilization has relaxed us. We have lost this feeling that helped to avoid dangers.

“It is better to fear without measure than to trust without measure. Only caution saves from troubles. William Shakespeare

It is believed that being a reckless, insane and risky person is excellent, but it is shameful to be cautious and prudent. But is it right? We began to lose the instinct of self-preservation given to us by nature.

Television and the Internet have changed modern society. In films, the protagonist always gets away with it and wins. It relaxed us and dulled the instinct of self-preservation that had saved us for millions of years. We have become too simple and careless about our lives. We believe that risk is something that can be done daily and nothing terrible will happen. We have ceased to be afraid, we easily risk our lives and are not responsible for our words.

Self-preservation instinct and stupidity

"A sense of security makes a person careless." Alexandr Duma

How do we risk and what stupid things do we do?

We eat junk food, drink excessive amounts of alcohol, smoke, have unprotected sex, get into fights, do not go to the doctor, trust strangers, violate traffic rules while driving, participate in incomprehensible drunkenness, do not follow safety rules at work, do not keep secrets, we borrow large sums without a receipt, quit a good job, put our reputation on the line, well, listen to the advice of smart people, run across the road in front of speeding cars, indulge in bad habits, do not value existing relationships, throw words and promises.

The fair sex, despite its fragility and defenselessness, acts even more stupidly. Girls walk through dark doorways at night, trust unknown guys, drink incomprehensibly what, walk in dubious companies. And then they are subjected to humiliation and violence.

The list of stupid things that we do is endless and everyone has their own weaknesses.

Self-preservation instinct or fear

“Self-preservation is a circle that keeps you afloat and allows you not to part with the body bag for a longer time. Fear is a stone that pulls you to the bottom.” Dmitry Emets

But do not confuse constant fear and self-preservation. Self-preservation allows you to bypass traps and difficulties with minimal losses. Fear undermines the ability to think rationally. Do not be afraid of everything, but be careful.

Self-preservation instinct and success

Better to be safe than sorry later. We make a lot of mistakes, considering them a trifle. But these "mistakes of youth" can completely deprive us of the prospects for a happy and successful life.

The instinct of self-preservation is given to you by nature for a reason. Use foreboding, analyze the situation, think about the consequences, calculate the steps ahead, do not trust everyone in a row, do not take risks for no reason and do not lose your head.

People with a well-developed instinct for self-preservation are much more likely to succeed than their stupid counterparts.

Introduction.

The instinct of self-preservation

Let us understand for ourselves why we tend to experience, suffer, worry and become depressed for no external reasons. The average person rejoices from time to time, but the state of internal tension for him is rather the rule than the exception. Why is that?

The boon of war

Let's turn to the notorious statistics, let's see what periods of human life account for the maximum and minimum number of neuroses, i.e. mental disorders that are not inevitable, are not genetically determined, but are generated (if you follow their definition) by psychological stress. So, a quick question: what do you think, when should there be more neuroses - during the war and other serious social upheavals, or in peacetime? If someone says that during the war, he will be mistaken, and very significantly, but if someone says that in peacetime, he is unlikely to be able to explain his very, admittedly, extravagant answer.

Well, let's clarify the situation. Indeed, paradoxically, during a war (we are not considering a “local military conflict” here, but a full-fledged war - “world” or “patriotic”), when any person has an excess of real stress, the number of neuroses is so small that this a frail number could easily be mistaken for a statistical error. On the other hand, according to dispassionate statistics, the peak of neurosis falls on the tenth or twelfth year after the successful completion of military battles, when all the hardships and hardships are already behind! Marvelous? Quite! The indicated period is quite enough for the wounds inflicted by the war to heal, life to rebuild - a roof over your head appears, new social ties are formed, etc. And what happens? At that very moment, when it seems to only live and live and make good, God knows what begins - the peak of neuroses.

The non-commissioned officer lied to you that I whipped her; she's lying, by God, she's lying! She carved herself!

N. V. Gogol

Self-preservation instinct, hello!

What is the fundamental difference between the two situations under consideration? During the war, a person is in acute stress, his life is constantly in danger and, accordingly, he is busy only in order to survive. In peacetime, the situation changes dramatically: acute stress - during the day with fire, and that life, except perhaps accidents, is not in danger.

Now let's turn to our family tree, which, thanks to the sharp mind of Charles Darwin and the achievements of modern genetics, goes back not even to monkeys, but to the most primitive unicellular - amoebas and other ciliates. The property of all living things is the desire for survival, and the higher the position of a living being in the evolutionary hierarchy, the more clearly this desire manifests itself, receiving the proud name of "self-preservation instinct".

The very fact of the origin of man from the animal kingdom determines that man will never be completely freed from the properties inherent in the animal, and, therefore, we can only talk about whether these properties are present to a greater or lesser extent. - Friedrich Engels

During the war, our instinct for self-preservation, for obvious reasons, is fully activated: bullets over our heads, a loaf of bread for two weeks - "actual" situations. In peacetime, he literally has nothing to do, he turns out to be unemployed! This is where trouble awaits ... Our wonderful compatriot, the brilliant scientist Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov, in his famous book "Reflexes of the Brain" remarks: "The animal lives in a condition of constant hostilities." That is why animals do not experience neuroses (with the exception of those that were arranged for them by Ivan Mikhailovich’s student, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov), since the instinct of self-preservation is constantly busy in them and does not throw out numbers, like in humans.

But we, the unfortunate ones, fought off the “combat actions”, and what to do with our militant self-preservation instinct, we didn’t come up with, didn’t find a case for this dashing guy. He cannot sit idle and in the absence of stress he creates it himself, from which, in fact, neuroses arise.

Grandfather of Russian physiology

Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov is a man who is called "the first scientist who revolutionized the science of the brain and psyche", which is one hundred percent true. It was I.M. Sechenov who discovered and formulated the theory of “inhibitory processes” (almost half a century before Z. Freud!), which allow a person to think, make decisions, turn from a being that perceives influences into an acting being.

Finally, it was I. M. Sechenov who wrote in 1863 the first truly scientific book on human psychology, where he explained human behavior not by ephemeral constructions, but by the actions of the mechanisms of the mental apparatus. The resonance of this work was fantastic! They say that some old woman in Yeniseisk, having learned about the discovery of I.M. Sechenov, dared her peers with the words: “Our scientist Professor Sechenov says that there is no soul, but there are only reflexes.”

The misfortune of security

Well, judge for yourself, what really threatens us? Not our ambitions, not claims, but simply our life with you, for the protection of which this instinct of self-preservation is intended by Mother Nature. Nothing but chance! It is technically impossible to be afraid of randomness, since it is impossible to protect yourself from it; That's why it is an accident, that it always arises unexpectedly. Consequently, no prevention of it is possible, otherwise it is no longer an accident, but a regularity. But there is no such regularity that something specifically threatens us - we have no natural enemies, we are protected from all the misfortunes of nature by scientific and social achievements.

Let's do a thought experiment. Imagine that you categorically refuse to live, go to the nearest intersection and lie down across the road. What will happen next? To begin with, cars will carefully go around you, then, as if from under the ground, a police squad will appear - they will shout, make some noise and define you as a "monkey". Further, if this did not enlighten you and you still continue to refuse to live, they will ask you not to go crazy, first in a good way, then in a bad way, and then you will be sent to a psychiatric hospital. There they will poke you in the fifth point with chlorpromazine, and pour some barely edible, but, by the way, quite nutritious stew into your mouth through a tube with a metal clutch (so that you don’t bite this tube for an hour).

If, even after these efforts of people in white coats, your stamina does not leave you and you continue to demonstrate a desperate unwillingness to live, then after some six months you will be safely transferred to the PNI (psycho-neurological boarding school), where until the very last day of your life the same the most procedures - chlorpromazine and stew. Moreover, I can guarantee you that in this status - a guest of the PNI - thanks to the efforts of doctors and other personnel, you will live no less, but much more than if you remained "free" in this crazy and hectic world.

If I put three padlocks on the barred doors of my dwelling, put firearms, dogs and a policeman in the room and at the same time cheerfully assure me that I am not afraid of anything, then this is right and wrong at the same time. My fear is in padlocks.

Alfred Adler

Surprisingly, they wanted to die, but on you! Yes, social institutions are designed in such a way that we are protected from all possible troubles and misfortunes: medicine, at the very least, protects our health, the state with its social security, legislation, courts, police, etc. charms preserve the rest. There is also prudent science and education that teaches foresight. That is, our self-preservation instinct with you turns out to be completely, absolutely unnecessary! A brave, fighting guy was sent into retirement! Personnel military man in peacetime... Catastrophe! Save who can!

3a that fought…

Let's digress for a moment. Let us think about the intensity of the human instinct for self-preservation. Obviously, it is much larger than that of a worm, but is it much larger than, for example, that of a wildebeest or its eternal enemy - a large predator from the cat family? To understand the full power of the human self-preservation instinct, it is necessary to clearly understand whom this instinct is designed to protect.

Man is a naked, weak, slow creature that will give birth safely only with worthy assistance, has neither horns, nor claws, nor night vision, whose teeth serve only an aesthetic function, and ambitions, with all this, pour over the edge. Here such a "worthy" character is protected by our instinct of self-preservation.

Instinct is not a "basis", not a support of behavior, but a source of energy that feeds behavior. Therefore, it does not predetermine the nature of behavior, but only its strength.

A. A.Ukhtomsky

If we take into account the difficulties that a person had to endure when faced with the ice age and other climatic factors, take into account what natural enemies he had to reduce to complete destruction, and finally realize what heights a person reached in the process of his evolutionary development, then it becomes quite obvious: our instinct for self-preservation is an exceptional thing of its kind! And this thing, be it wrong, this hard worker, this wrestler with the world title, is now out of work! Where is the power to go?!

Our mind has evolved as an adaptive tool, like the fins of a fish or the spades of a mole. But this sometimes happens with evolutionarily developed traits: they wanted the best ... A peacock with its chic tail is a similar example, in fact: its chic tail perfectly fulfills the role of attracting a female, but makes this bird heavy to lift, so the best prey for its natural enemies and hard to come up with! The same thing happened to the human mind.

revolutionary situation

The instinct of self-preservation of a person remained unemployed, and thanks to Karl Marx it is known that there is no worse phenomenon in nature than a socially disadvantaged and unemployed proletariat. Now we hold a grenade in our hand: the pin is pulled out, and there is nowhere to throw it, only if we explode together. The tension inside a person arises exceptional! And this tension is realized by anxiety attacks, specific fears or chronic psycho-emotional stress (the latter is manifested by anxiety, fussiness, sleep disturbances, decreased appetite, etc. troubles).

Let us assume that all these fears are imaginary, but if they have already climbed into the realm of dreams, then it is clear that in real life there is some kind of poison. If a person lives well, then no matter how he pretends that his life is bad, his dreams will be cheerful and light. If a person's life is bad, then, no matter how he pretends to be satisfied innocence, his dreams will be heavy and sad.

M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin

How exactly our anxiety will manifest itself is of no fundamental importance. It is important that inside us is hell, the battle is bloody, and we don’t even dream of peace, because either there is no sleep, or in dreams it’s such that it’s better not to remember on a waking head. What to do with all this? Where to spend all this excess voltage? The war is over, everything is fine, but one thing is bad - there is no enemy! No, but we find, for example, diseases, life's hardships, etc. We begin to fear for our health and, despite the resolutions of doctors to enroll us in the cosmonaut corps, we die in our thoughts every day. We may be afraid that we will not cope with the work and we will be fired.

It seems to us that no one likes us, no one needs us, that the spouse (wife) will change, or leave, or even worse - a cross for life. We are afraid that we will be attacked, robbed, raped, that our apartment will burn down, or that we ourselves will get into a catastrophe (automobile or aviation), that a brick will fall on our heads or an icicle. You can also be afraid that our child will not enter the university, that he will be killed in the army, and outside the army he will definitely become a drug addict. The circle is closed...

In short, the “enemy”, with our abilities and imagination, will not work. Yes, the little head is sick, there is nothing to say! Consciousness cannot bring order to all this chaos, but the instinct of self-preservation craves war, craves blood. As a result, there is a revolutionary situation: "the top can't, the bottom don't want to."

Peaceful military atom

There are an innumerable number of options where you can attach anxiety - one is worse than the other. We don't even realize the problem we're facing! If we understood that the instinct of self-preservation, not busy with business, would become a fabulous source of insane energy, then perhaps we could turn it into a “peaceful atom”, use it for the benefit of our own individual existence – constructively and economically profitable. However, such sensible thoughts do not occur to us, and therefore, from potentially “peaceful” this “atom” becomes “military”.

You don't know your own mind.

Jonathan Swift

There is energy, the consciousness will find a reason for alarm, so you can worry, suffer and bring yourself into a state close to complete insanity. What are we to do with this energy of ours, this unthinkable goodness of ours? We don't have the slightest idea about this. And energy, you know, like water, will always find its way. Guided by our former attitudes - considerations of survival, we will automatically look for all sorts of threats and dangers, even if in fact there are none.

And here is the paradox! It seems that everything is fine with us, everything is thought out, everything is arranged, and there is no reason to panic and sow confusion, but it turns out that just because everything is thought out and arranged, we are anxious! However, in order to understand, see, realize, take note of and work all this, you need to have the ability to think illogically, but you and I are “consistent and logical”. Well, you'll have to pay for that too.

It is impossible to understand this paradox (unless, of course, one is burdened with special knowledge), because it was just for the sake of getting rid of anxiety that we thought through and arranged all this, which we have thought out and arranged. How can it be that it is all this that has ruined us? But it turns out - maybe, and how!

How conscious are we?

Imagine that you have agreed to participate in a scientific experiment whose purpose, according to its organizers, is to train the memory of some third person. Your task is simple: press the switch so that this third person, having made a mistake, receives an electric shock. This subject will certainly be hurt, but all this is necessary for the purposes of the experiment. In the process of work, the force of the electric shock will increase: the first shock will be 15 volts, and the last one, if the experimental person deserves it, will be 450 (a very strong discharge).

So the experiment began. You are sitting at the remote control with knife switches, and behind the glass right in front of you in a kind of electric chair is a certain person who is supposed to train his memory. He gets assignments, completes them, and makes mistakes from time to time. You, under the guidance of the experimenter, press the appropriate switch. At the fifth electric shock (75 volts), the subject begins to groan and moan in pain, and when struck at 150 volts, he begs to stop the experiment. When you press the 180 volt switch, the subject screams that he can't take the pain anymore. Then the unfortunate one will beg for mercy, screaming that his heart is beating and he will die now. A little later, he will simply beat his head against the wall, and then, with a consistent increase in the electric discharge, he will fall from his chair and calm down. However, even now the leader of the experiment will tell you: "He does not give the correct answer, you must press the next switch!".

If the commander-in-chief orders the colonel to go to the corner and stand on his head there, I will do just that in the place of the colonel.

Oliver North

When will you refuse to take further part in the experiment? The psychiatrists, who were asked to answer this question, said that, in their opinion, most of those who would press the switch would stop participating in the experiment immediately after the subject reported severe pain caused by the electric shocks, and only one percent of those responsible for the switch will see the experiment through to the end (this percent – clinical sadists). Alas, they were wrong, the percentage of "clinical sadists" was much higher.

Such an experiment was actually carried out, and Stanley Milgram came up with it. Of course, you understood that the test subjects in this experiment were those who pressed the switches, and not at all the one who was writhing behind the glass allegedly in pain (in fact, this “subject” was a decoy duck - an artist who only pretended that hurt him). The results of these experiments shocked the scientific community, because contrary to expectations, more than 62% of people who pressed the switches continued the experiment to the end (although some required prodding)! What's the matter, you ask?

The answer is quite simple: we are all sure that we will not hurt a person even for some scientific purposes, but if we find ourselves in a situation of pressure from an authority (which is the experimenter here), we still show extreme unconsciousness. Subconscious fear of authority will take over our "respectable" consciousness. And if this experiment were the only one! Social psychologists have conducted hundreds of similar experiments, and everywhere there was the same result: the human consciousness is ready to retreat under the pressure of subconscious fear.

My beast is not affectionate and not gentle

We are used to thinking that we are rational beings, but this is a big exaggeration. Scientific experiments prove that we are only outwardly reasonable, but in fact we are not guided by sound reasoning and conscious attitudes, but by our subconscious, where fears and rude needs reign. Our consciousness is at most 50 or 70 thousand years old, and our subcortex is millions, and the degree of its influence on our behavior is enormous!

Our subconscious mind has been forced to go underground, and the conscious mind, which seems to have taken over, is actually not in control. Our behavior is based on animal instincts, but consciousness pretends that we have long since left the "Stone Age". Of course, we left, but, in essence, we have not changed in anything. We are still animals, only with a very complex computer, which, however, we also did not learn how to use. We do not know how to use our consciousness for our own needs, we serve it with our endless fears and concerns. "The Monkey and Glasses" - this fable is just about us sinners!

Consciousness is a wonderful thing, but if it acts as a puppet, what is the use of it? Unfortunately, in this capacity, it only exacerbates our plight. Well, everything is just like in the song: “It seems that it’s not idlers who could live,” but! .. Fears appear in the subconscious in a natural way, because the instinct of self-preservation, which guards our life, continues to fight for survival. But we don't have to fight for survival! If there is anything we need to fight for, it is for the quality of life. But what can be the quality of life if we have equipped our disturbing subconsciousness with all the strength and power of our consciousness, which contains thousands of reasons for anxiety and fear and is capable of making an elephant out of a fly in no time?!

"Two things are limitless - the universe and human stupidity, but I'm not quite sure about the universe yet."

Albert Einstein

Yes, a beast lives inside us, a wild beast and not distinguished by intellectual merit, its name is the subconscious. The principles that he follows, the tasks that he solves, are primitive and at the same time masterfully twisted. And our consciousness depends on the subconscious, which, as you understand, does not honor it, nor does it give a real status. Our psyche arose and was formed for the implementation of simple biological tasks - the survival of an individual, group, species. But we have to get used to the world, no longer natural, but social, the laws of which are similar to those of nature, exactly the opposite.

The conflict that arises between the purpose of our mental apparatus and the need to live "culturally" leads to all this disgrace. Destined for banal physical survival, our psychological apparatus solves the issues of "humanitarian policy" and "social responsibility"! Of course, the costs arising from such a substitution must be paid by us out of our own pocket. Here we pay with our spiritual well-being. Meanwhile, this wild animal - the subconscious - inherited from our distant ancestors, sits, intimidated, somewhere deep inside us and creates psycho-emotional stress. It is he who, moreover, as an ultimatum, directs our consciousness and causes reactions that cannot be called otherwise than insane.

As a result, we have no choice but to suffer from neurosis, or at least from a state of general neuroticism. Unable to use our own huge forces for our own benefit, we use them to our detriment. We would “take and cancel Mondays”, but we “disappear in vain”, because there is no calendar on our “island”. However, there is a calendar! Thank God, science is already able to provide us with everything we need to correct the current state of affairs. But who knows about it?! Such is the problem, and for those who wish to know, the whole of the following narrative is offered.

The wise man knows his weaknesses too well to admit that he is infallible; and the one who knows a lot realizes how little we know.

Thomas Jefferson

Nature demands the payment of debts

Now let's talk about "higher justice." In this life you have to pay for everything. How many crocodiles do you think survive to adulthood out of a hundred small, barely born crocodiles? No more than three. And how many human cubs out of a hundred survive to their sexually mature state? At least 93! Feel the difference? I think it's quite. And it seems that strong and powerful animals are much more likely to survive than we are, however ...

The human brain is arranged, to put it mildly, painfully. We manage to live in endless discord with ourselves, suffer from a variety of negative experiences, experience a variety of heart anguish and mental anguish. We worry about the little things, we constantly miss the main thing; we are in a state of constant, chronic internal tension, on the one hand, and total, irreparable dissatisfaction, on the other. All this is so obvious that it is even ridiculous to say, and it would be absolutely funny to try to disagree with this statement.

But if we look at the decline of our own culture, which is much more noticeable today, from the point of view of the ethologist and the doctor, then even with the low level of our present knowledge, a number of disorders that are clearly pathological in nature can be noticed.

Konrad Lorenz

Unfortunately, this is all natural. By means of the most varied means we have been able to secure our lives, but as a result of the action of these same means, we have turned our life into incessant and meaningless torment. For life, we paid with the quality of life. However, despite all the logic of the laws prevailing here, I, for my part, do not think that it is necessary to pay debts to Mother Nature in exactly this way and in exactly this amount. It seems to me that it is better to work on your mental apparatus and bring it to a state in which these senseless mental torments would leave us forever. Our labor will be a sure and sufficient wage. But to live in order to be tormented is an excessive payment, and no one needs it. So that we all learn the best way to make the necessary payments, I also eat my books.

Introduction. Instinct of self-preservation Let's understand for ourselves why we tend to experience, suffer, worry and become depressed for no external reasons. The average person rejoices from time to time, but the state of internal tension for him is rather

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