Anthropological Crisis in the Social Realities of the 21st Century

Abstract

The article examines the modern anthropological crisis in the context of various social phenomena. The author identifies key features of this crisis and reveals its causes. The article, addressing such philosophical concepts as time, space, happiness, motivation, analyzes the theories on the essence of this crisis. The author discusses the issues of self-alienation in an accelerating and polarizing world, of dialectical antagonism, of contradiction between the Self and the Other. The article critically analyzes the modern forms of consumerism, the consumer society, and the liberal worldview. Written in the essay form, the article poses the questions to the reader: How and why does man lose and acquire his meanings? What role do words and silence play in that? Who wins in the existential race “man versus society”? The author argues that a person does not see his absolute, since his expanding outer space narrows the inner space. The stratification of internal and external space (which is advisable to understand as a consequence of the loss of contact with reality) is the cause of lies, violence, and aggression. Liberal form of worldview is interpreted in a dialectical form: as the opposition of slavery, preserving its original vices. The article demonstrates how progress can lead to chaos in social life. Distinguishing three types of personality (directive, democratic, and liberal-permissive), it is concluded that the latter type of personality forms a border between the external and internal world. This kind of gap is the source of growing social and psycho-logical chaos. The concludes with a discussion of the possibility of happiness in modern social conditions.