# Does self-improvement affect the process of changing consciousness?

Юрий Михайлович Низовцев

Why is it impossible to approach the problem of self-improvement in general? This can be explained by the fact that the improvement of a person occurs spontaneously as a result of his conscious actions to change his own surrounding in order to improve this surrounding, which the overwhelming majority of the population does not even think about, and if he tries to do, then, at best, these attempts are reduced to the desire to improve the body.

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Discussing self-improvement without identifying its primary source, without determining the necessary support for the manifestation of this conscious human action, and without determining the reasons for its absence in certain strata of society, is pointless.

The result of similar impersonal approach has been the emergence of a fundamental contradiction regarding self-improvement.

Some thinkers consider self-improvement to be the primary meaning of the human life, while others consider the desire for self-improvement to be nothing more than idiotic.

As an example, it's enough to cite two contrasting views on self-improvement.

The famous writer and philosopher Leo Tolstoy quite seriously asserted that the moving forward is being achieved by the fight against own vices in the course of living communication with people.

Tolstoy was supported in this regard by the modern philosopher Safar Mirzo, who also earnestly proclaimed as an unshakable truth that the ability to self-improvement makes a person an object of respect and admiration.

These statements, although they rely on the best in man, are not only banal, but, judging by the current realities of general degradation, they are completely inadequate.

In contrast to these thinkers, the famous American director David Fincher believes that the one "who strives for harmony is an idiot or seriously ill."

At one time, similar thoughts occurred to Adolf Hitler, who claimed that he "came into this world not to make people better, but to exploit their weaknesses."

These statements of famous personalities, as opposed to opponents, based on the worst in a person, are quite relevant to this day, nevertheless, also completely one-sided.

This short excursion of attempts to determine the phenomenon of self-improvement, in general, so far from its true essence, nevertheless indicates the contradictory nature of the human consciousness, and, therefore, the need to connect the phenomenon of self-improvement with its manifestation in a person due to a change in his consciousness over time - from the predominance of the animal component in it and to a certain pushing back of the last by the altruistic component of consciousness.

The morality of primitive human communities is based on pure egocentrism (an unconscious desire for survival), which even allows cannibalism, while the morality of an altruist, which can only appear in the field of high culture, is based primarily not on a utilitarian basis, but on kindness, friendliness, empathy, compassion, mercy, reaching its maximum expression in people who have largely overcome egocentrism with altruism in their consciousness.

Indeed, the desire for self-improvement appears only with the emergence of civilization in the educated strata of society, but not among many, as a panacea for the routine of life and the possible change of oneself for the better.

In essence, it is impossible to learn, since it is not directly based on dissatisfaction with life in terms of consumption and comfort, but is associated with regret about the imperfection of both oneself and the surrounding reality, and the approach to self-improvement itself occurs without imposition from the outside.

Nevertheless, a certain increase in interest in eliminating their own vices was already manifested among the Stoics, which indicates social progress, which affects the departure from consumer attitude to life, while its local extinction is associated with a return to egocentrism - a sign of the degradation of a particular community with its atomization. One can be replaced by another, demonstrating in fact the impossibility of only one development (bad infinity) or only degradation (the end of everything).

To understand the essence of the phenomenon of self-improvement, inherent only to people, but rather selectively, one must remember that humans are semi-primates, and that they, like all other living beings, are characterized by an inescapable dissatisfaction with the present, provoking an instinctive desire for a safer, more nutritious, pleasant and comfortable existence, which in itself, as a rule, means a slow, but nevertheless increasing complexity and development of living beings themselves within the framework of their communities, ultimately culminating in the emergence of a person who acquires the ability to consciously act, aimed at the purposeful and planned change of own surrounding.

Therefore, alongside an instinctive dissatisfaction with the environment, a person also develops an aspiration to change himself-first indirectly, in conjunction with newly invented technologies, and then directly, through creativity and culture, for the sake of more effectively consuming what the environment can offer, but not only.

Thus, within a civilization, a person sooner or later finds themselves within the cloud of culture, some education, and, consequently, the opportunity to use himself creatively.

Naturally, education, development of abilities, acquisition of certain skills, multifaceted cooperation and good neighborliness automatically improve a person, since the opposite, namely: the struggle with vices, playing sports, etc., can only strengthen his health, but not his spirit, without directly affecting his consciousness, and the ordinary live communication can lead him to the idea of using his neighbor for own good.

In other words, the basic property of all living things - dissatisfaction, which is the source of the phenomenon of self-improvement, and acting in the natural (animal) component of human consciousness, is capable of promoting only an increase in the efficiency of consumption of purely material and pleasant things, but does not influence the change of self- consciousness in the direction of altruism, which, on the contrary, seeks to distance a person from egoism and direct his actions selflessly towards the common good and fairness.

Thus, self-improvement, which is largely the fruit of altruism and falls within the realm of self-awareness, conflicts with the egocentric, animal component of one's consciousness in the form of his dissatisfaction with the material surrounding in the present consumption.

The consequence of this opposition between these two components of the human consciousness, and they may be more or less developed for various reasons, is the division of any society within a civilization into strata, in some of which self-improvement is practically impossible, while in others it manifests itself almost universally, but it can be called, rather, spontaneous, and in some cases this process is realized, but with a various understanding of it.

Therefore, we will designate these strata of society, which we have identified based on a comparison of the levels of both components of consciousness available to their members.

These strata of the so-called people, and, in fact, - the population within a specific state, are represented by a ruling elite with the corresponding by force and legal application; an informal opposition to it; creative individuals in the field of technology, science, art and management; ordinary people (philistines), the spectrum of which is very wide - from the intelligentsia dependent on those in power, to workers in the sphere of production of goods, traders, service workers, small entrepreneurs, pensioners, housewives and other clerks, concerned, as a rule, only with their own well-being.

Throughout nature's existence, the natural selection among living beings is a necessity based on randomness. In the human societies, alongside the natural selection, there is a kind of artificial, or more accurately, the conscious selection of persons capable of solving incoming unexpectedly problems that defy known methods. This selection is driven by necessity, based on an awareness of environmental changes, taking into account one's own needs and interests. This selection entails a societal challenge of innovations as if out of non-being, which could satisfy these needs and interests.

Only the creative persons are capable of accepting this challenge. Therefore, they emerge primarily during revolutions, wars, famines, and other cataclysms, inventing new theories explaining the world order and the course of social development, inventing the atomic bomb, computers, and spaceships.

If we consider this process from the perspective of information consumption and distribution, then only the creative individuals, of whom, as we know, relatively few, are capable of extracting non-obvious knowledge from the information flow. What, then, is the rest of the population, numbering nearly eight billion, capable of? Without information consumption, life itself becomes impossible, as the time of any individual or community, at best, stands still.

The vast majority of the population is forced to consume information only in accordance with their rather limited interests and abilities, which, for example, in scientific activity or art, can be nothing more than the development of creative people's findings in the form of their description, additional justification and implementation, while for the rest these interests are limited, as a rule, to improving their everyday life. Since this population has nothing to do with science or art, they tend to consume their products, which are not always the best.

These philistines are guided mainly by their own reason and experience: preoccupied with themselves and their own well-being, they do not strive for either "high" or "low" goals, limiting themselves to the desire for a trouble-free and well-fed life in which it is desirable to see troubles only on the monitor screen. The philistine does not feel the desire for new things at the expense of their own efforts, achieving a more comfortable state in life from the position of simply acquiring and consuming its benefits.

Therefore, this category of the population has such name, although some public figures call the philistines (inhabitants) a people, apparently because of their overwhelming number in the total population.

Similar "plant" life, to which they quickly get used, partly resembles the existence of animals, which, as is known, are concerned only with the problems of nutrition, reproduction and achievement, preferably, of greater comfort.

Therefore, they resemble a herd of herbivores that grazes calmly, if it is not especially disturbed.

However, due to various natural fluctuations and social shifts, sooner or later the most energetic, quick-witted, somehow educated, communicable, not indifferent in their desire to apply their abilities to one or another, stand out from this inert total mass.

Only a few percent of such stand out from the total mass, which, depending on the degree of dissatisfaction of both components of consciousness and, accordingly, on the ratio of the levels of these components, in each of which the corresponding dissatisfaction may prevail, are distributed among the governing elite, opposition to it and persons with a predominance of the creative potential.

The main component of these percentages in relation to the technological and cultural development of society are creative personalities.

Their interests most of all boil down to attempts to discover new things in different spheres of life - from the invention of various devices and devices to facilitate this life to the discoverers of the laws that govern our world, and the creators of copies of the beautiful that they find in the environment.

The process of the technological development of civilization is provided by this group of personalities, and not by any other groups or relationships. Therefore, the creative people act as the mover of technology, but, again, their creative properties are based on the peculiarities of their consciousness, and not some other forces.

Any motion in society, including turns and upheavals in the social order, especially cardinal ones, occurs only at sufficiently high level of culture, if not of the entire population, then of its leading strata, the main contribution to the achievement of which is made by the group of the creative intellectuals, manifesting itself in that sphere of development of society, which is closest to the inner world of a person, that is, to his self-consciousness.

This group of intellectuals, more interested in the inner world of a person and his communities, tries to penetrate it in different ways, correlating some people with others, comparing a person with nature and society, and also finding out the ability of a person to reflect these relationships in artificial forms.

It is these creative people, to varying degrees, but still, that produce cultural values in various forms, and directly affect the minds and feelings of the population, touching the most sensitive strings of the self-consciousness of each person, due to which both individual and collective self-consciousness is gradually changing: mores are softened, the population's craving for knowledge is growing, the number of intellectually and emotionally developed people is increasing.

However, if we turn to self-improvement among representatives of culture, it turns out that its most outstanding representatives only did with themselves, what they are decomposed themselves

Take 19th-century Parisian bohemia, for example, with its merry and easy behaviour as well as constant drunkenness and scandals, but it nevertheless gave birth to such remarkable phenomenon as impressionism.

And such outstanding Russian poets as Yesenin and Mayakovsky seem to have done nothing but carouse and misbehave. But alongside these excesses, fornication, and even drug use, it turns out they were all immersed in hard and exhausting labor, the delightful results of which are now before us. And the vices inherent in them, as strange as it may seem to many, to a certain extent stimulated their creative work, moving away them from routine.

As for scientists and inventors, they, too, were not known for their good character or love for all peoples.

In particular, the great physicist Landau was perpetually amorous and rather lazy. He somehow didn't reflect on his vices, while the equally great physicist Heisenberg-the author of the uncertainty principle-faithfully served the misanthropic fascist regime and nearly built Hitler an atomic bomb. All the other scientists and inventors were rather indifferent to their own improvement, but even without it, and often in spite of it, they did a lot of things.

From this it appears that the basis for the formation of creative individuals is not abilities, not energy, not an outstanding mind, not sociability, not a love-making and not their vices or talents, but a high degree of dissatisfaction of the animal component of consciousness, which requires separation from the crowd of their inert fellow tribesmen and is realized in the desire to consume more and better not only food or effectively reproduce, but also what comes into the field of vision, at least for more productive use.

Competing with this dissatisfaction of the animal component of consciousness is an equally high degree of dissatisfaction of self-consciousness, which requires a person to abandon selfishness, and circulate the useful that he will be able to identify to everyone.

Similar rivalry forces a person not to limit himself to what he has, but to try to find the new, most effective and useful one that allows the whole community to live better and more interesting, and this community, as he hopes, in turn, will pay tribute to him in the form of recognition and fame, and it will bring him pleasure with what he has done.

But dissatisfaction of the animal component of consciousness dominates, since the activity of these persons manifests itself largely instinctively, without much thought, yet produces the most creatively active individuals of all living beings.

That is, the noted combination of features of these persons' consciousness, regardless of talent or simply ability, invariably draws them to creative activity, although it does not always yield positive results, but creative personalities are precisely that relatively small group of the population that ensures the accelerated development of technological civilization under conditions of the private property relations.

Such creative individuals simply have no time to think about their own improvement. They are constantly immersed in creative pursuits, and if they are deprived of this, or are deprived of it, they think not about self-improvement but become depressed.

Among the philistines, for various reasons-for example, outstanding intelligence and a good memory, strong willpower, sociability, a tendency to the change of places and deceive when it suits their interests, and so on-individuals emerge who, with some education, are capable of acting as leaders of a crowd of fellow tribesmen.

The basis for the formation of such leaders is the highest degree of dissatisfaction of the animal component of consciousness, with its egocentrism, by the surrounding, that demands, whenever possible, domination over a crowd of their inert fellow tribesmen, especially since these dominants understand it perfectly well.

The power will give them the best opportunities to consume the most delicious food, the most attractive women, and provide them with the most comfortable existence, and they believe that all the accompanying troubles, competitors, and so on, can always be dealt with when dissatisfaction with the currently miserable present in terms of consumption is boiling inside and demands an outlet.

Similar egocentrism, combined with acquired power, develops in them a contempt for the common people, whom they essentially consider an object of exploitation for their own benefit. Only secondarily, with rare exceptions, do these elites consider the welfare of the state, and only then when its collapse directly threatens their well-being.

These individuals can be more generally described as follows:

Possessing a sufficient share of quick-wittedness; sociability up to servility; a tendency to deception in the form of distortion of information and dexterity in its presentation; acquired professional skills; as well as on such personality traits as a sufficiently strong will; self-confidence; unscrupulousness, expressed in cunning and treachery, as well as a significant share of irresponsibility, expressed in experiments that seem beneficial to themselves, but clearly harmful to the population, these subjects gain an advantage over the rest - the more inert members of the community in the form of ordinary people, highly moral intellectuals of any kind, and other members of the population who are sluggish or preoccupied with other matters, and who are not able to deftly push aside or slander their opponents, as well as really enjoy the humiliation of the lower ones, and at the same time endure mock from the side of own bosses.

Their personality is significantly reduced, since altruism, that is, kindness, friendliness, empathy, compassion, mercy, expressed in disinterested concern for others, is practically not characteristic of them.

They compensate a lack of mind by involvement of numerous advisers, but, because the decisions ultimately has to be made by them, so far as they, as true creators of own happiness, at first consider them from a position of the personal (corporate), but not the public good with a lurch towards retaining power, gaining a greater degree of their own domination and the acquisition of all sorts of benefits, littering, besides, the leadership of the various managing and economic structures with own mostly incompetent offspring.

From such dexterous, resourceful individuals, who shun no means to escape the crowd, a stratum of society's ruling elite is being formed. This elite, dominated by a passion for power, which, in their minds, offers everything most pleasurable if it is skillfully used.

Therefore, this "elite," as we see it, is not characterized by altruism with its benevolence toward all people.

Such predators are capable only of striving for power and clinging to it without reflecting on their own nature, with which they are quite content.

Therefore, the question of self-improvement does not arise for them. Moreover, they consider self-improvement stupidity, which can be exploited, as and the weakness of philistines.

Therefore, they can only think about self-improvement from the perspective of improving own body's functioning, so they can endlessly enjoy power and other pleasant aspects of life.

However, in addition to creative persons and dominants, the people with a heightened level of self-dissatisfaction, which produces a high degree of altruism, stand out from the public sphere. Therefore, they inevitably pay attention to the injustice of relationships in a society dominated by unworthy people, and they develop a completely natural desire to eliminate social contradictions and bring harmony to society.

Similar opponents of the authorities represent not indifferent intellectuals of all stripes, and a relatively small number of representatives of the rest of the population who have somehow managed to elevate their self-awareness to a level that makes them disgusted by the immoral and self-serving behavior of the ruling elite.

These people cherish the hope of restructuring society toward harmony-that is, equality, brotherhood, and, at the same time, freedom-failing to understand that freedom always opposes equality and justice, undermining any stability. But this hope for a harmonious world order can never vanish from their benevolent consciousness: as true humanists, they are unable to believe that the horrors of our world cannot ultimately translate into the well-being of each individual and all of humanity.

They are convinced that they are right in the struggle for the people's good, but they are not always critical of their ideas, which are mostly utopian. They are ruled by altruism. Therefore, most of all, they care about the good of the people, which, however, they do not really understand, since they unite this disunited and contradictory community into a single whole, presenting this whole as the oppressed, who must defeat the oppressors and rest on this in the goodness of the earthly paradise finally achieved.

In their struggle against the ruling elite, their spirit is strengthened, their will is intensified. That is, in their struggle against the powers that be, they quite often automatically acquire the appearance of perfect gurus, capable of captivating the masses in the struggle for justice without any additional concern for their own self-improvement.

For the most part, they don't bother with self-improvement, as they simply don't have the time to deal with such trivialities compared to, say, a world revolution.

Nevertheless, there are individuals among them who believe that, to more effectively influence the masses, it would be a good idea, for example, to strengthen their own willpower.

An example of this is Rakhmetov, the hero of N. G. Chernyshevsky's novel "What to Do?", who even sleeps on studs to temper his will.

Thus, it turns out that representatives of the aforementioned social strata are either incapable of self-improvement, since, for example, the herbivorous life of the philistines suits them perfectly, or they are not particularly interested in it due to other important matters, with a few exceptions. Incidentally, Leo Tolstoy himself ardently advocated this pursuit only in his old age; before that, he had no time for self-improvement-he spent his time writing quite good novels, in which he usually described individuals who had no desire to improve themselves, but instead did God knows what.

Clearly, self-improvement essentially plays a subordinate, not primary, role, helping to further strengthen health or enhance certain bodily properties. However, it does not change the structure of consciousness or make a person creative, wise, great, or loving everybody and everything. Moreover, it is not the cause, as Leo Tolstoy believed, of "the forward movement of society."

In particular, the attempts of some ordinary people and those in power to improve themselves boil down to strengthening the body and prolonging life, which has found its complete expression in transhumanism, which is a sign of their stupidity and utter decay.

This subordinate importance of self-improvement is confirmed by religious ascetics who intensely torment their bodies, especially monks who have retired to the schema for the sake of self-improvement and, as they believe, drawing closer to God.

Despite all their efforts to suppress their animal nature-that is, their feelings-which they believe will free them from their inclination toward vice, they fail to do so, since suppressing the feelings means suppressing life itself. They forget that the existence of all living things, including humans, is based on the consumption of sensations, to which any reason (spirituality) merely accompanies.

And this means that the main thing in life is not the suppression of sensations, albeit not too pure, but, on the contrary, the desire to make them the most saturated, deep, refined and infinitely diverse, which can give the optimal combination of both components of consciousness of a sufficiently high level and the absence of fear of experiences, at least heavy.

This is what art shows, the best examples of which evoke in us not reasonable assessments and useful considerations, but a sense of involvement in the beautiful, which can only give life in all its manifestations, not becoming like to an artificial intelligence, extremely reasonable.

The change in consciousness itself in relation to the development of altruistic human inclinations, and therefore the qualitative and quantitative increase in people who are more advanced in this regard, occurs rather slowly in accordance with the change in social relations within the framework of civilization, and the self-improvement that occurs in places only indicates this process of change in consciousness, but does not influence it.