Basic provisions concerning human nature

What is human nature

What does social anthropology study? Why did the opposition between “nature” and “culture,” considered basic since the time of Claude Lévi-Strauss, no longer work? In what sense do people play themselves all their lives, how do phantom objects help a person in everyday life, and why, from the point of view of animals, are people tapirs? These and other similar questions were touched upon in a recent lecture by Ilya Utekhin, dean and professor of the Faculty of Anthropology at the European University in St. Petersburg, a detailed transcript of which by editors N + 1

offers to its readers.

When talking about human nature, we need to think about what exactly we mean by the word “nature”. Is it the same as in the case when we, for example, say “went to nature”? In this meaning, “nature” is a certain area, an environment untouched by civilization, opposed to it. But it is not the subject of anthropology; at best, a person simply lives in close contact with such nature.

Or perhaps we mean by “nature” some innate, essential properties of man, characteristic of him as a species? But even in this sense, it would, at best, become the subject of study of physical anthropology. I consider myself a social anthropologist, and I would like to explain what the scope of my science is.

Let's start with the fact that human life does not take place in nature. Its habitat is culture. Actually, the culture of certain human groups is the subject of research for a social anthropologist.

What is good for a Russian...

The social anthropologist today is not an armchair scientist, leafing through other people's field notes in the quiet of a library and reflecting on human nature. Most often, he is a field researcher himself who uses the participant observation method. Consequently, he must learn to look at the world through the eyes of the members of the group he is studying, to accept their picture of the world.

This, by the way, is not always easy, given the diversity of cultural practices around the world, because the object of his observation can be, for example, cannibals or headhunters.

But even if we take something less exotic, it turns out that to an external observer from a typologically close society, from our own European civilization, some details of our life, usually not noticed by us, seem absolutely illogical and arbitrary.

I’ll give an example taken from the Quora service, where one American, who married a Russian, described his experience of staying with her in her homeland, in the Russian outback. Here is one of the “oddities” of Russian culture that he noticed, I will quote it in my translation with large abbreviations.

“In Russia you have to take off your shoes as soon as you enter a home. Here in America, I forget about this all the time, because my wife scolds me. But once we were traveling in Russia on a train, in a compartment car. And it turned out that if you leave the compartment to get boiling water, you need to put on your boots. I thought that if I already took them off in the compartment, then it’s like I’m inside the house? And so I go out into the corridor to get to the conductor - I’m still inside, I didn’t go outside - but no, my wife runs after me and screams in Russian, pointing at my bare feet.”

Here, in general, we are talking about differences in the idea of ​​clean and dirty as symbolic cultural categories that cannot be translated into medical or hygienic terms. As anthropologists explain, these categories are associated with ideas about the boundaries of one’s own and another’s, sacred and profane. As Mary Douglas writes in her book Purity and Danger, the category of cleanliness is associated with order.

And in every culture, ideas about what is in order and what is not are different. It goes without saying to us that what is normal in the garbage can under the sink is abnormal elsewhere in the house. But for the dog this is no longer obvious, and he tries to get into the bucket, even though he knows that he will be punished for this. Her instinct pushes her to this - for her it is natural, but for us it is unacceptable. This is where the border between man and animal lies.

It’s not for nothing that I remembered the dog here. A cultural person like you and me has an animal nature and there is something human that is placed on this basis - this can be imagined in the form of natural “hardware”, on which cultural “software”, a set of programs, is installed during socialization.

Anthropologists since the days of Claude Lévi-Strauss and the structuralists have considered this opposition between nature and culture to be a basic, fundamental characteristic of any society. But over the past decade, scientific debate has arisen on this issue. Is it true that one can clearly separate “nature” and “culture”?

When we tell someone to “behave naturally,” we are not telling him to act like a dog. In this context, “naturally” means without showing off, without affectation: “behave like an ordinary well-mannered person.” What does educated mean? Raised by whom and for what?

The whole world is a theater

There is one interesting theory about the naturalness and nature of man, which declares theater and theatricality (in the broad sense) to be the main explanatory principle of human culture. Even though it is not strictly scientific, but rather from the field of art, it is of some interest to us.

This theory was promoted in his rather witty writings by the famous Russian theater figure and playwright of the first half of the 20th century, Nikolai Evreinov. He used a proto-semiotic approach to behavior, and this opened the way for him to the diversity of issues of expression, expressiveness, illusion and deception, aesthetics, style, and cultural stereotypes.

For Evreinov, theater in the narrow sense - with a stage and backstage where spectators come - is just a concentrated expression of the general pattern of human existence. In his opinion, this pattern is literally scattered everywhere, but grasping its essence is not so easy.

For example, he was interested in the issue of credibility on stage. At that time, naturalistic theater was in fashion, and for it it was important how life should be presented so that it would look convincing from the stage. Stanislavsky, preparing for the production of Leo Tolstoy’s “The Power of Darkness” at the Art Theater, tried to include real peasants from the Yaroslavl province in the stage action. But nothing good came of it. As you know, on stage a fake sword looks much more impressive than a real one. It must be transformed according to the principles of the theatre. “Pravda” in the theater is more convincing, more hypnotic than in life.

Then the question arises: what is the truth of life, devoid of theatrical transformation? Can we assume that there is some truth in life, in particular, natural behavior? We already know that it is not reduced to purely animal behavior.

Evreinov discovered for himself that every cultural action reproduces a certain behavioral pattern from a set of similar patterns inherent in this culture. A person learns behavior. Therefore, the behavior of a child who has not yet fully mastered the norms is often perceived by adults as antics. The child makes a game out of everything: he got on all fours, barked and turned into a dog. This is much simpler than “don’t act,” because when adults tell a child “don’t act,” they are essentially calling on him to play a very difficult role, much more difficult than the role of a dog. I quote Evreinov: “What is education if not pedantic training in the role of a secular, compassionate, efficient and cold-blooded person?”

And if naturalness is learned as a role, then our whole life consists of playing this and other roles. Every minute of our life is theater. From here it is one step to the observation: not only individuals in one society, but also cultures differ in the set and content of roles.

Thus, Evreinov notes: “Not only a person of primitive culture, but also of a later one, from everything, from the birth of a child, from his education, from hunting, weddings, wars, from court and punishment, religious rites, funerals, arranges a performance of a theatrical nature due to the inherent mania of transformation to the human spirit."

Natural, but not practical

Thus, life is by no means reduced to purely practical actions, to some natural satisfaction of needs in the simplest and most convenient way. Rather, on the contrary, a person often gives the necessary actions a form that is far from being the most effective, from a practical point of view.

The power of theatricality is manifested in the constant regulation of our lives, which generally does not directly depend on narrowly understood practical benefits. These, in general, are all the rules of decency - and the vagaries of fashion. Everyone plays them. By the way, this regulation concerns not only human behavior, but also the entire subject area surrounding it. The direction of life dictates the style of any object around.

Take the most practical thing - the shape of the roof of the house. If we live in Central Asia, where the sun burns all the time, then it is better to have a flat roof so that you can dry apricots on it at the same time. But here in the North, the snow will push through a flat roof, so they make it a ridge so that the snow falls off on its own.

But the shape of the roof of a traditional Chinese house is based on the idea of ​​spirits. They roll along the roof like a slide, and to prevent them from landing directly in the yard, you need to bend the edges of the roof in the form of a small rounded springboard, and then the spirits will land behind the fence. Also a very practical consideration. Not in the eyes of those who see only superstition and folklore instead of spirits.

In the sphere of folklore, which has little to do with adaptability to life, there are generally unlimited limits for creativity. For example, people of very different cultures see the same spots on the Moon, but interpret them in completely different ways. Moreover, the survival of all these people in no way depends on what exactly they see on the Moon.

It would be simple and very convenient if all the variability of human cultures unfolded precisely within the limits of these possibilities that are not fundamental for survival. But the problem is that we cannot clearly draw a line and say: here is technology and material culture, and here is symbolism and folklore. Here, where is this?

Why does a person need a face?

Or take clothes. What is it for, in a practical sense? Well, it would seem - for protection from cold and rain. But Maximilian Voloshin cites an anecdote that supposedly happened to Charles Darwin during his voyage on the Beagle ship (in fact, this is a wandering European story from ancient times).

So, the Beagle is on Tierra del Fuego, Darwin has gone ashore, and is wrapping himself in a fur coat against the cold. Suddenly he sees a native, almost naked. And he asks: “Aren’t you cold, you’re not covered with anything?” And the native said to him: “But your face isn’t covered, isn’t it cold?” - “No, I’m used to it.” “Well, my face is everywhere,” the native tells him.

And Voloshin notes that, after all, this is not a matter of habit. The same Darwin, returning to a warm room, takes off only his fur coat, and not all his clothes, and does not walk around naked. And if he had taken it off, he would have been not so much cold as ashamed.

But it was not for nothing that Voloshin connected Darwin with this plot, because Darwin has a wonderful book called “The Expression of Emotions in Animals and Humans,” and one of its chapters is devoted to the question of in what situations and how people of different cultures blush from the influx of emotions, such a cross-cultural study. And Darwin writes that people who walk around with a naked torso all the time blush with this entire torso, not just their faces.

And Voloshin concludes that “face” is a culturally specific concept. This is not just some part of the body that is not cold in the cold, but a part of the body that is not ashamed to put outside. That is, for us it is, for example, the hands and the front of the head. And in other cultures, the “face” may be organized differently.

In this regard, Voloshin and Evreinov have an interesting discussion of the problem of nudity on stage. At one time, the famous dancer Aseidor Duncan came to Russia. Her performance was accompanied by a scandal. Not only because Aseidor was a corpulent lady, not like ordinary dancers. She also danced in a loose tunic, under which there was a naked body, not even sprinkled with rice powder, as it was then supposed to be. Newspapers wrote about the debauchery of youth, but more progressive critics published a collection edited by Evreinov, “Nudity on Stage,” and explained that naked and naked are not the same thing. Naked is, say, in a bathhouse or some erotic context. And the naked body on stage is not naked, it is, as it were, enclosed in the spiritual equivalent of clothing, therefore, there is no shame in exhibiting it.

And Evreinov draws the following conclusion about clothing: its origin is not connected with the need to protect oneself from the cold. First of all, clothing satisfies the human need for decoration. Clothing highlights those parts of the body that its owner wants to draw the attention of others. Even the natives, living in a climate that does not require any protection from the cold, decorate certain parts of their bodies.

Thus, clothing initially serves for decoration, and the shame, convenience and inconvenience of having skin are already derivative things, thanks to them a person simply expands the range of his interaction with nature. Consequently, the symbolic aspect of behavior comes first here, more important than issues of adaptation to nature. It is no less important than pragmatics, and cannot be separated from pragmatics.

Make it rain, inexpensive

In general, man plays with nature and makes moves that, from the point of view of an all-knowing being, would be meaningless. A person himself sometimes knows that he is deprived, but cynically takes advantage of it.

Here's my favorite example from the early 90s. There were a lot of cooperatives around then, and one day I saw an advertisement in the newspaper for a cooperative that provided services to agricultural organizations. In particular, it caused rain. And nowhere was it said how he does it. Just pay based on results. That is, we enter into an agreement: if the amount of precipitation turns out to be, say, 10 percent more than it was in the forecast of the Hydrometeorological Center, then you transfer money to us.

As you can imagine, this is a win-win business. Firstly, you don’t need any investments other than advertising and maybe legal registration. Secondly, in general, our weather forecasts, to put it mildly, are not ideal - in half of the cases the terms of the agreement will be fulfilled, in half - they will not be fulfilled.

If you do not know the principles of operation of some technology, then its result for you is indistinguishable from magic. For example, a spark created by friction is the same product of magic as rain caused by the manipulations of a caster.

I will quote Max Weber: “Only we, from the point of view of our current understanding of nature, could divide their manipulations into objectively “correct” and “wrong” in relation to cause-effect relationships and classify the “wrong” ones as irrational, and the corresponding activity as “witchcraft.” The one who performs these actions shares them only according to more or less everyday life.”

That is, relatively speaking, we cut bread every day, and we make it rain every week. At the same time, if you don’t know what causes the result, how cause-and-effect relationships work, it’s easier for you to repeat the entire sequence of actions, copying what once gave a result. Therefore, the most important thing is not to deviate, otherwise “something might not work out.”

The witches come into play

What if we fail? It is quite possible that this is not our ineptitude, but witchcraft. Edward Evans-Pritchard has a classic work on witchcraft among the Zande people. It says that if people try to lure termites out of a termite mound and they don't come out; if the harvest was spoiled by aphids; if someone gets sick or the hunt fails; if the wife does not show erotic passion, then all this is witchcraft. Exceptions are those cases when a taboo was broken or moral rules were not followed, or someone did their job completely ineptly.

It turns out that for the Zande (they live today in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan) to mention witchcraft is like for us to say: someone caught the flu. And although we mean a viral infection, for many of us it is not much more transparent than witchcraft.

From the researcher’s point of view, failures in life have completely understandable, or rather natural, reasons. But the same Evans-Pritchard learned to use another interpretative model, learned to look at the world through the eyes of the Zande people. And for the Zande, there is nothing supernatural in the fact that the hunter is waylaid by witches. He has no respect for them, he is angry: there are probably witches among his neighbors who are jealous of his successes.

Another example: pots were fired, one pot cracked - this happens even though the potter fulfilled all the prohibitions. Before going for clay, he did not have sexual intercourse for several days, but the pot still cracked. And what do you want me to think, why? Or: a boy was walking along the path and tripped on a stump, injured his finger, and suppuration began: this is witchcraft!

Evans-Pritchard tells him: “The witch did not grow a stump on the path, you yourself were inattentive, because so many people passed there.” “Yes,” the boy answers, “but I watched carefully all the time so as not to step on anything like that.” In fact, they look carefully and walk barefoot.

Signs are everywhere

As an explanation for events, in addition to witchcraft and physical causation, we also have a coincidence, an accident. Because our rational premise is that everything has its natural, visible causes, and there is no legitimate place for invisible, supernatural causes in our picture of the world. We may not know all the reasons, but someday they will be discovered, science will explain everything to us. More precisely, there is such a place, but it is relatively marginal - people go to fortune-tellers and magicians, use horoscopes, but they also understand horoscopes as a kind of science. True, there are times when everything really happens by chance. Accidents are unpleasant for order-loving consciousness.

Primitive man and a person of traditional culture proceed from the premise that the cause of everything is an invisible arbitrary force - intent, and natural causation is an appearance that needs to be mentioned.

Three women go to get water, and the crocodile grabs the one in the middle. You will say: the fact that it was a woman caught in the middle is purely an accident, and the fact that the crocodile grabbed the woman is natural, because crocodiles sometimes attack people.

But the native will call such an explanation superficial and absurd, because nothing could have happened. And if it happened, then grabbing the middle of the three women was the obvious intention of the crocodile, because if he did not have such an intention, then he could have grabbed any other. But where does a crocodile, they are shy animals, have such an intention? Compared to the many crocodiles, the number of people they kill is very small. Therefore, if they attack a person, it is unexpected and unnatural. It is necessary to explain where this crocodile received the order to kill: after all, by his nature he usually does not do this.

In some ways, this is similar to the conspiracy theories we are familiar with. Belief in witchcraft does not at all contradict empirical knowledge of causes and effects. When they say that the cause of death was witchcraft, they do not close their eyes to secondary causes that were valid from our point of view. From the entire chain of cause and effect, what is socially relevant is selected. If a person was bitten by a snake and died, then the socially relevant cause was witchcraft - because of it the snake bit, although the victim died from the poison.

It is quite possible for a person of our culture to introduce such additional interpretive layers to natural causation, to read the world and events around us as, for example, signs of divine providence. This is how a modern Christian sees the world; he knows how to talk about it well and testify to his experience. He knows how to see the hand of the Almighty in everything that happened to him.

In defense of homeopathy

It may surprise a person in modern Western civilization how effective symbolic means are, which our science would classify as placebo effects or phantom objects. But in general, our civilization is scientific and consistent in only one part. Ludwig Wittgenstein has an image in his Philosophical Investigations: the central area of ​​the city with new quarters and straight streets, such an ideal grid, which is contrasted with the medieval part with alleys and crooked streets, as was the case in Paris before Baron Haussmann.

Our everyday concepts are sometimes systematic and understandable, as straight as the streets in a neighborhood, and sometimes they are isomorphic to the consciousness of a native who believes in witchcraft. This is how our common sense works - as a cultural system. (Clifford Geertz has an essay called “Common Sense as a Cultural System.”)

Along with evidence-based medicine, based on double-blind testing, we have another, no less effective in many cases. It is especially in demand in cases that evidence-based medicine classifies as psychosomatics, and there are many such complaints. And it’s not without reason that arbidol and strengthening the immune system are an important part of the pharmacy business.

And here I would say a word in defense of homeopathy - and not because the explanation of its effectiveness, which its adherents give, is scientific, but because the experimental effectiveness of the active substance does not exhaust the treatment processes. Healing a person is more than treating an organism or treating a disease; it is a complex cultural action. Both healing and death can equally be dependent on mental causes.

At one time, Marcel Mauss wrote a classic essay about deaths that occur suddenly only because a person knows that he will die, that is, without being sick. And this state, as a rule, coincides with the severance of connections - due to magic or sin - with sacred things, those connections whose presence supports the life of the individual in society. Here a person dies after breaking a taboo by eating forbidden food - the meat of a totem animal. Moss writes about this using Australian, New Zealand, and Polynesian materials.

Symbolic healing and medical anthropology in general is a very fascinating field. In the 1920s, William Rivers wrote about his observations of healing in the Solomon Islands. A local traditional healer treated the woman with abdominal massage, just as a modern European specialist would do. Questions showed that he was treating her for chronic constipation, that is, practically in accordance with the latest achievements of European medicine.

But further questioning revealed the purpose of the treatment: the massage was used to eliminate the octopus that had entered her body, which, according to local beliefs, was the cause of the disease. If the octopus's tentacles reach a person's head, the patient will die. And the massage treatment continued for several days, the octopus was greatly reduced, but had not yet disappeared. And this result was attributed not to mechanical manipulation, but to the forms of spell that accompanied the massage.

Massage therapy itself had been introduced from Polynesia to the Solomon Islands not long before, but in order to explain its effectiveness, it was necessary to come up with a system that would explain to everyone why it works. That is, the octopus is a phantom symbolic object. And people invent such phantom symbolic objects for themselves in large numbers.

Island the day before

My favorite example concerns navigation in traditional societies. Thus, in the Caroline Islands, an auxiliary island is used as a landmark, which no one ever sees. In general, in Micronesia and Polynesia, people swim thousands of miles, so that the shore is not visible. They have no maps or navigational instruments. This is an interesting difference and is described in detail in several works in the 20th century. The most famous and interesting book about this is “Cognition in the Wild” by Edwin Hutchins, dedicated to the social distribution of cognitive processes.

What does a European navigator usually do? He first makes a plan, plots a course, and then moves along this course, and if something goes wrong, then he recalculates the route and acts according to a new plan. In the Caroline Islands people don't do that: they have no plan, they are absolute opportunists.

They outline a goal and know where to sail, but the basis of their orientation is formed by the starry sky, which circles, and in it the same star always rises and then sets from the same place. And they know that first one star rises, then the second: these are the so-called linear constellations, where six or eight stars appear one after another.

Imagine that we are in a huge greenhouse, and the arcs of this greenhouse are these linear constellations, chains of stars, passing in an order well known to us across the sky. The Micronesian navigator has an idea of ​​where they are, even when there are no stars in sight. When he needs to sail to a certain island, he knows in advance at what moment under what star this island is located.

As one of the important parts of this navigation system, a landmark island is used - “that way”. For a long time, Europeans could not understand what it was, and thought that it was a real island, like a saving refuge: if something happened, it was nearby, you could swim there and be saved. It turned out that everything is not so, because although in some cases this island really exists, sometimes it is just a conventional unit that is needed in order to navigate. We know that there is such a landmark, we know the name of this island, and we know where on the route, under what star it stands. But it can only exist in the navigator’s system of representations as a conventional landmark, a phantom object that allows us to more easily navigate reality.

People and their souls

In the 20th century, much research was done into the intelligence of great apes, and attempts were made to teach animals human communication: for example, they tried to “speak” to chimpanzees in sign language or in the language of plastic “token” objects. There was also talk about recognizing the rights of chimpanzees. In Barbet Schroeder's film about the gorilla Koko, it was said that this is a real American gorilla and it has its own culture.

Or take the famous chimpanzee Washoe, who died relatively recently; she lived to a ripe old age (1965-2007). The American couple Alan and Beatrice Garden, who experimented with her at the beginning of her creative career, especially emphasized the fact that Washoe had a cultural transmission of sign language, that she taught the cub several gestures.

These experiments can be viewed differently, but enthusiasts tend to believe that the difference between us and chimpanzees is one of degree, not one of nature. This point of view is becoming increasingly popular, although it contradicts the dominant thesis in European culture that there is an abyss between man and animal.

Let us remember the 18th century and turn to Etienne Condillac, who formulated a non-trivial statement that animals are capable of elementary cognition, ideas and memory, and the difference with man is that man has a language that allows him to reach the heights of thought, and animals who do not use language, are incapable of abstraction, and cannot reason about themselves. Condillac concluded that the soul of an animal and the soul of a person are infinitely different, because the human soul is immortal.

Europeans emphasize exclusivity: man is not just a special animal, he is like God, he is created in the image and likeness of God, so he has overcome his animality. Christianity takes man out of nature: he is not natural in the same way as plants and animals, but was created on the last day of creation, having received the right to give names to animals and dispose of them. At the same time, the world is finite, it is like a stage on which the world unfolds. When nature disappears, only God and souls will remain.

Animals and their souls

If you tell this to the Jivaro Indians living in Peru and Ecuador, they will be very surprised and ask: how do you know that animals do not have the same properties as us? Just because you don't see or understand how they talk? Do you think the moral principle is only characteristic of humans? And the Australian aborigines would be surprised. The Indians of the Amazon generally do not imagine nature as an object opposite to them.

In many societies the boundaries between human and non-human are drawn differently. There, the basic opposition of nature and culture not only doesn’t work, it’s just that the space of this activity, no matter what you call it - society or culture, is not opposed to nature. This mystical view sees deeper than superficial differences. Here all beings, human and non-human, are defined by the same matrix. It turns out that the separation of man from the world of Nature, his opposition to the world of Nature, characteristic of European culture, is a recent achievement and not universal.

There has been a fascinating debate among anthropologists in recent decades. Among them are Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Philippe Descola, whose books have been translated into Russian. But I will now quote Lévi-Strauss (Descola is the heir of Lévi-Strauss in many respects): “In the Greater Antilles, a few years after the discovery of America, while the Spaniards were equipping research commissions to determine whether the natives had a soul, they themselves the natives made do by throwing white prisoners into the water to check, by prolonged observation, whether their corpses were susceptible to rotting.”

That is, Europeans never doubted that the Indians had a body, just as animals do. The body belongs to the realm of the innate and elemental, so they believed that the Indians could be, for example, animals. And the Indians never doubted that Europeans have souls, animals have souls, the ghosts of the dead have souls, and much more. But the Indians assumed that Europeans could be gods, and wanted to check whether their bodies were the same as ordinary people. Thus, in the world of the Indians, all creatures have souls, even those with radically different bodies.

It's all about perspective

Along with rethinking the traditional terms “animism” and “totemism”, Viveiros de Castro, in particular, in the book “Cannibal Metaphysics”, proposes a new term - “perspectivism”. This is the view that the visible form of each animal is a shell, a garment that hides the inner human form accessible to its animal spirits and shamans. The common property of man and animal is humanity, not animality. Once upon a time, during the time of myth, animals were also people, but since then this has become less obvious in the eyes of people. This is the direct opposite of our everyday ideas that under all cultural layers there is an animal foundation.

For an Indian, under normal conditions people see themselves as people and animals as animals, but if usually invisible spirits become visible to people, then this is an indication that the conditions are abnormal: maybe it is an altered state of consciousness, a trance, an illness. But non-humans - a snake, a jaguar, the moon, various mythological creatures - see a person not as a person, but as a tapir. Seeing us as non-humans, they see themselves and their own kind, on the contrary, as people: they have houses, villages, they perceive their behavior as cultural, they perceive their food as human.

Jaguars see fried fish in the worms that swarm in rotten meat, and recognize jewelry or a cultural tool in their bodily attributes - fur, claws. The crest on the bird's head is equivalent to a feather headdress, the beak is a spear, and the claws are knives. Their social system is modeled after humans, they have their own leaders, shamans, exogamous halves, their own rituals, they also have hunting and fishing, initiation rituals, marriage rules. Animals are like people, but in such a specific guise.

This picture contradicts the view of a European, who is accustomed to viewing a variety of cultural traditions against the backdrop of unchanging Nature. It turns out that the Amazonian Indians have a humanity that extends far beyond humans as a species. And in this world there can be different life experiences. The transfer of cultural concepts beyond the boundaries of human society allows us to redefine natural events or objects: what we as humans see as a dirty puddle, tapirs perceive as culture, as a large ceremonial house. So the object also points to the subject who perceives it.

The idea that non-humans have personalities comes to the fore in shamanism: the Indian shaman is able to transcend the bodily boundaries of different species and take the point of view of different species in order to reconcile the relationship between them and humans. That is, the shaman sees them the way they see themselves - as people, and can enter into dialogue with them. At the same time, he can come back and talk about his experience. His task is to maintain the balance of this fragile system, and every individual, every hunter has an ethical responsibility.

Let's say a hunter got a gun instead of a blowpipe and, intoxicated by his power, killed more monkeys than he needed. It is necessary to quickly restore balance through ritual means, because such things do not remain without consequences. If the hunter’s wife was bitten by a snake that evening, then the hunter understands perfectly well from whom the “answer” came to him: from his own relatives, towards whom he acted badly. For him, game is his relatives.

Philippe Descola studied the Achuars, one of the Jivaro groups, and in his book “Beyond Nature and Culture” he explained that the forest for the Achuars is a garden that is cultivated by the spirit of the forest, the garden is not at all wild, but a continuation of their home, it is not some kind of space that needs to be conquered and which is sometimes aesthetically admired, like Europeans do with Nature.

Prepared by Yulia Shtutina

The inner nature of a person determines success in Life. Varnas that define the essence of a person

Each varna has its own duties, knowing our natural class - we become successful by consciously fulfilling our duties, following our own path, in accordance with our nature.

Brahmins, their dharma is to pass knowledge through themselves and thereby bring happiness and joy to Earth. Non-attachment, purity, creating a space of Harmony, compassion. Teach children, expand their consciousness for self-determination, manifestation of their nature.

The dharma of the kshatriyas is to protect the weak, to be decisive, fearless, responsible, purposeful. The highest aspect: this is the protection of virtues. In my opinion, virtues are personified, first of all, by women - to protect them, anyone must become a kshatriya in accordance with their nature.

Vaishya. Their dharma is to create a hospitable atmosphere, maintain harmonious relationships, and absorb and apply knowledge; caring, friendliness, managing your emotions for the benefit of others.

Shudras: service is the highest spiritual principle and the highest law of justice, seriousness, discipline, hard work, clarity.

By the way, according to my observations, class is passed down through the father. I calculate with the astrological chart and check with the qualities. But my statistics here are not so rich, I’m just researching this issue. Although, I think it’s logical)

In general, send applications to determine your nature)))

Author's addition from 12/06/15 23:07:24

To Svetlana’s question: there is a difference between the time of day, and even a difference between each hour - but it depends on the location of the planets in a certain degree, which are constantly changing - constantly forming new combinations. And the pattern of belonging to a caste/varna is made not dependent on the day, but on the specific time of birth in a specific area.

But defining varna is only one step towards defining the karmic task for this life. Like the internal class nature of a person, the karmic task determines the path that a person should follow in this life in order to progress and not suffer. But defining a karmic task is a deeper understanding of the path of life.

Good question, Svetlana! There is, of course, a connection, as can be seen from the previous presentation. But you need to determine a specific case - in the morning hours (as well as for other times of the day) births of various varnas may occur on different days and in different places. I hope my addition was clear

Characteristics of human resources

What resources does a person have? Human life resources are internal (personal) and external. Sometimes in psychology they are called abilities (internal resources) and capabilities (external resources). Both of them help a person to carry out some type of activity: study, work, communication, etc.

Both types are closely related. External resources support internal ones. But at the same time, the more developed the latter, the higher a person’s ability to restore the former in case of their loss. However, if a person never finds a new external source of strength, then the internal reserves will exhaust themselves. You can be strong autonomously only for a limited period of time.

Let's look at both types in more detail.

Internal human resources

This is all that is inherent in a person by nature and has accumulated over the years of life. We can say that this is the inner world of a person.

Here's what applies to internal resources:

• knowledge;
• skills;
• skills;
• experience;
• interests;
• abilities (inclinations);
• character;
• temperament;
• emotional and mental states;
• worldview;
• beliefs;
• values;
• health;
• will;
• mood;
• intelligence;
• positive thinking;
• self-esteem;
• self-control;
• much more.

A person’s internal resources are the potential of the individual and all its characteristics. This is what helps a person develop, overcome difficulties, establish relationships with others, and move towards success and a happy life. If there are many elements and they are highly developed, then a person moves through life quickly and easily. He is distinguished by perseverance, self-control and resistance to stress. They say about such people that they have an inner core. If the basics are few, then a person gives in to difficulties, quickly gets tired, gives up, gives up his goals and desires, and is content with little.

Note! If a person does not have some resource, then you should not expect appropriate behavior from him. For example, if a person does not know how to love (himself, others - it doesn’t matter), then you do not need to expect hugs, kisses, or compliments from him. He was not taught this, such a resource was not invested in him.

External human resources

This is all that supports us from the outside world. Each person has his own set of sources of strength. Typically these include the following elements:

• Friends;
• relatives;
• Colleagues;
• hobby;
• favorite work;
• books;
• material goods and money;
• useful connections;
• the entire social circle;
• social statuses and roles;
• interlocutors on forums;
• neighbours;
• acquaintances from a hobby group;
• etc. and so on.