C h a p t e r  I.   L o n g i n g  t o  C h a n g e  P l a c e s

From the book "Transfiguration" by I. Kalinauskas, 2006
Translation by I. Shpigelman, 2006

NOTE: Individuality, personality, and essence are the base School terms that are used to describe the tripartite nature of a man and its relations with the world based on his body, intellect, and psychological and emotional spheres correspondingly.

So what is the matter? We know that the essence represents the relationship of a man and the world as whole to whole, and that this relationship is based on emotional and sensual spheres, or, using the old language, on the soul. We also know that on one hand the development of this part of embodiment may be halted by a major commotion. On the other hand it may be halted by a massive social pressure under the common name: "Are you crazy?" Thus, under the influence of these two factors a large majority of people lose their integrity, their totality. Moreover, certain psychological blockages are built in the area of emotional and sensual spheres.

As well know, impetuous emotional reactions contradict rational conventions on self-regulated behavior. Therefore, majority of the so called adults possess a very ill developed essence and rather well developed personality.

The history of socialization, the history of social man making technology is the history of ongoing fight and ongoing search for rational means of behavior regulation. A powerful and well-understood example is regulation of the need to procreate.

I should remind you that a human being has his reproductive function activated all year around, and of course, it leads to a state of sexual arousal. From the point of view of social regulation, it should not happen. The man cannot correctly structure his social behavior toward satisfaction of his sexual needs when hormones "speak" too loudly. Therefore, from times immemorial, there exist various taboo, prohibitions and rules. And by now, a whole system of psychic mechanisms has been developed, a system that allows the majority of people restrain themselves from falling upon each other in a sudden flush of sexual arousal. This story is well known. A large body of scientific works is dedicated to it, starting with S. Freud.

But there is another, very little discussed, yet as dramatic as the previous one story. This is the story of suppression of total emotional reactions. Such reactions are inherent of babies, and, as a matter of fact, through such reactions a human being acquires the feeling of one's own integrity. There is not practically any information on this story. And what would you do with those children, anyway, who suddenly cries like mad, and then suddenly laugh like mad, without any control over their social behavior? Well, they must be regulated somehow. They must be explained with the help of positive and negative reinforcements (a candy and a belt) that such behavior looks bad, it is unhealthy, that one can go crazy like this. "You are driving me crazy" - a favorite saying of many mothers. It is said automatically, without thinking, without realization that this phrase is the most powerful weapon and the strictest taboo in the psychological and emotional spheres.

If follows naturally, that sooner or later, under stronger or weaker enforcement, the child learns to regulate his emotional impulses. The range of emotional states is converged to a psycho-emotional dominant: it is much easier to control it in this way. And the human being spends most of his life in this dominant. The range is minimized, the volume is minimized. The process of upbringing went well, and we get such a common and convenient creature, that can love a little bit, and can hate a little bit. A little bit of everything, a drop from the faucet. And if the faucet is overturned, then a man turns amok. And if such event coincides with the hormonal rush, at the peak of age of individuality, it results in a vehement love that targets a specific person. If it happens in an older age, the same vehement love may target anything at all. There were not any serious research on this subject, because, as you can realize, the scientists do not have such problems. They are scientists. Why would they study their own inward?

And it is the very problem of a yearning man, who cannot understand why he is so bored of the life that everyone else lives, why it is not enough for him, why he has no interest in it. "Why am I not like others?" Some people are lucky, they are gifted, and they become artists. And the art requires from artists precisely that - to have well developed emotional sphere, well, unless it is conceptual art which dos not requires anything at all.

Others are not so lucky. They do not have any particular talents, and they have to either make regularly scheduled performances at home, or turn into hysterical ladies and neurotic gentlemen. Because they have to let off steam, but there is no massage parlors for psychic relief. Maybe the only sanctioned place for freeing up one's emotions is on the stadium, but lately it have degraded into a true madness.

Nowadays, because of relativity of social values, the lock on the cage of emotional and sensual spheres is weakening. Relativity, diffusion is increasing in the socium, and therefore, all the brakes, all blocking mechanisms are eroding. And house-to-house neurotization of population comes as a result. I would even say - neurotization and hysterization of population, which causes two opposite reactions: poor, convulsive attempts to bang the table with the fist and scream "No!", or glorification of cold intellectuals, that are seemingly Ok. But I must tell you that the latter may be Ok at work, but in their leisure time they belt down the same way as blue collars do.