Doi: 10. 17516/1997-1370-0640 Socio-Cultural Determinacy of Human Loneliness

(full type of loneliness).
It is noteworthy that young people with 
deviant and addictive behaviour, who have not 
changed and do not want to change the way of 
life that has become habitual, may never prop-
erly engage in normal social life, i.e. they may 
not go through the stages of integration and 
work activity, which play a decisive role at the 
stage of maturity. A situation of this kind is 
usually typical for some young people exposed 
to the influence of subcultures that initiate the 
emergence and maintain the existence of tem-
porary ‘communities’, which are based not on 
the relationship between one’s Self and the 
Significant Other, but the relationship between 
one’s Self and the Other as Myself (inauthentic 
Significant Other). At the same time, all other 
individuals who do not have signs of belonging 
to this subculture are not recognised. Other-
ness and individuality in the subculture are de-
nied by their kind. Falling out of the boundaries 
of a subculture leads to a crisis, a temporary 
loss of meaningfulness, a feeling of alienation 
from the surrounding world and loneliness. 
A similar outcome can be associated with the 
de-actualisation of the subculture in socio-cul-
tural reality, and with its replacement by some 
other subculture. The same and quite obvious 
outcome will appear in the case of young peo-
ple’s involvement in subcultures that turn them 
against other members of society.
Maturity as a critical stage
of development of an individual
Maturity as a period in a person’s life is 
important not only due to its relatively long du-
ration (30-40 years if we follow the concept of 
E. Erickson), but also (again according to E. Er-
ickson) due to the fact that it contains the peak 
of man’s social and creative activities ensuring 
his integration into the social environment and 
closeness with other members of society, i.e. 
his willingness to “merge their identity with 
the identity of others (Erikson, 2000: 252). A 
person at this age ‘learns’ to take care of the 
Other and to be responsible. Undoubtedly, the 
age period can be considered the key one in all 
plans, since the features of the final stage of 
human development – old age characterised by 
summing up the results of all life lived – de-
pend on it. E. Erickson emphasises that “fash-
ionable persistence in exaggerating the depen-
dence of children on adults often hinders from 
us the dependence of the older generation on 
the younger one. A mature person needs to be 
needed, and maturity needs stimulation and 
encouragement from those whom it has giv-

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– 1270 –
Igor A. Belyaev and Maksim N. Lyashchenko. Socio-Cultural Determinacy of Human Loneliness
en birth to and whom it should take care of” 
(Erikson, 2000: 255). In our opinion, the Ger-
man-American psychologist is right about this; 
an individual who has not done anything for 
the people around him, who is accustomed to 
taking care only of himself, at the end of his 
life turns out to be spiritually insolvent, per-
sonally inconsistent and lonely, experiencing 
a feeling of hopelessness and uselessness of 
the past years. He comes to understand the ir-
replaceability of the lost, the impossibility of 
correcting the mistakes made in the past and 
regret about the meaninglessness of the ending 
life. But what does a person who finds himself 
in such a situation really regret? Surely, among 
his regrets is that he did not meet a Significant 
Other for himself on his way. 
However, old age does not mean that lone-
liness is inevitable. On the contrary, many older 
people are closely connected with their family 
members and actively participate in social life, 
as they feel their responsibility for the lives of 
future generations. They acutely feel closeness, 
community with Others. Of course, the level of 
health plays a very important role at this age as 
it influences the ability of carrying out social 
and educational activities.
Further, it makes sense to pay attention to 
the fact that the mature stage of human devel-
opment is critical, transitional and especially 
sensitive to changes in society. For this reason, 
mature people tend to be lonely. It is no coin-
cidence that E. Erickson speaks about the most 
severe age crisis of a person, which occurs at 
the age of about 40 years. It is worth noting, 
however, that all transitional ages are quite 
rightly considered vulnerable human states, 
within which the spiritual and personal compo-
nents of his integrity are unstable and subject 
to transformation. Therefore, loneliness often 
accompanies crises generated by the transition 
of a person from one age to another. Age cri-
ses are caused both by socio-cultural chang-
es in society and by spiritual and psycholog-
ical factors in the formation of a personality. 
These crises also largely depend on the social 
and spiritual age of an individual, i.e. on the 
level of his social and spiritual achievements, 
approving him in value-semantic orientations, 
linking him to certain activities and deepening 
his integration with other individuals. There-
fore, this allows to come up with a pattern: the 
deeper the integration (that is, an increase in 
the level of community) of a person with each 
passed age stage the less he is prone to loneli-
ness, and, therefore, his being is more integral, 
harmonious and full.
It should also be emphasised that the 
stage of maturity is basically the process of 
labour integration, when a person takes root in 
socio-cultural reality through his work. Tak-
ing this circumstance into account allows us 
to understand the reason why people at a giv-
en age are especially vulnerable to loneliness 
and experience it in an acute form. The mid-
dle age, which is maturity, is characterised by 
the borderline position of an individual, when 
much, which until recently was the ‘firm’ 
foundation of his life, sometimes collapses 
overnight, crossing out further life prospects, 
making the plans impossible to fulfill. Thus, 
the connection between the past, present and 
future is interrupted, which contributes to the 
consolidation of a person in ‘timelessness’ 
and uncertainty. Important, really influential 
factors at this stage can become, especially 
within the framework of market relations, the 
deterioration of the general socio-economic 
situation in the country and an increase in the 
unemployment rate, as well as political and 
social revolutions. The latter lead to signifi-
cant system shifts in the structural organisa-
tion of society, a comprehensive restructuring 
of relations between individuals on new so-
cio-economic and socio-cultural foundations. 
Moreover, such transformations have a par-
ticularly strong effect on the unprotected seg-
ments of the population and weak groups (the 
elderly, the disabled, etc.); often they become 
sufficient grounds for the emergence of loneli-
ness among representatives of these strata and 
groups.
When these systemic and structural shifts 
unfold, society is plunged into an anomical 
state, i.e. into a state of value and normative 
crisis (Pokrovskii, Ivanchenko, 2008: 10). At 
the same time, the social system is charac-
terised by a low degree of social ‘cohesion’ 
and the relativity of socio-cultural values and 
norms that have lost the status of universal-

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– 1271 –
Igor A. Belyaev and Maksim N. Lyashchenko. Socio-Cultural Determinacy of Human Loneliness
ity and obligation for individuals with a si-
multaneous loss of their regulatory power, as 
a result of which they cease to be a ‘fetish’ 
(Sorokin, 1992: 168-170). The current state of 
Russian society, the attribute of which is “dis-
orientation of the social functions of culture, 
a shift in priorities and value orientations” 
(Koptseva et al., 2012), is difficult not to rec-
ognise as anomical.
Such systemic and structural shifts are a 
powerful generator of alienation processes in 
society and determine the deformation of the 
former foundations of socio-cultural reality, 
which cease to be something internally jus-
tified for individuals. As a result, we observe 
the spread of loneliness or an increase in the 
level of self-destruction in society due to the 
filling of “social space with deviant values” 
(Pokrovskii, Ivanchenko, 2008: 10).
Based on the foregoing, it makes sense to 
outline three groups of socio-cultural factors 
that contribute to the emergence of loneliness:
‒ microfactors (family, peers, friends, 
etc.);
‒ mesofactors (socio-cultural condi-
tions, social groups, subcultures, etc.);
‒ macrofactors connected with large-
scale social processes and events;