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

Sociolisation as a prerequisite
for preserving and maintaining
the wholeness of community
At the same time, the spiritual-person-
al (cultural) human development takes place 
in various social environments, within the 
framework of communities, in which specific 
communication develops and a spiritual space 
is formed, where he meets a Significant Other 
(his Other). Initially, the individual is includ-
ed in the microenvironment formed by family 
and relatives, then in the macroenvironment – 
society, thereby acquiring participation in the 
entire social world. The essence of each indi-
vidual person, which is the result of the entire 
world history, cannot be separated neither from 
the essence of previous generations, nor from 
the essence of his contemporaries, with whom 
he actually interacts (Marx, 1955: 44-45). In 
other words, from the very birth, circles of con-
nectedness are formed around an individual, 
which, in the course of his growing up, spiritu-
al and personal formation, tend to expand and 
include an increasing number of Significant 
Others (family members, friends, loved one, 
people close in spirit, etc. etc.), i.e. all those the 
individual feels true community with. It must 
be assumed that this is precisely the Meeting 
regulated on the basis of L. Feuerbach’s anthro-
pological principle, according to which man 
cannot exist without man, since people are the 
highest value for each other.
The expansion of the circles of connected-
ness is, in fact, the expansion of the inner world 
of a person himself and the inclusion of an in-
creasing number of Others, becoming domi-
nants of his inner world, together with which 
alone it is possible to gain integrity and feel the 
fullness of being, i.e. to become truly happy. 
Community with the Significant Other, in our 
opinion, expresses the measure of the integ-
rity and wholeness of the person’s being. The 

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– 1268 –
Igor A. Belyaev and Maksim N. Lyashchenko. Socio-Cultural Determinacy of Human Loneliness
more diverse and wider the area of the person’s 
Significant Others, the more complete, holistic 
and harmonious his being. An authentic, truly 
wholesome (Belyaev, 2011: 633-643) is the per-
son who maximally expanded the horizons of 
the Meeting.
An important condition for a person’s 
Meeting with a Significant Other is his explo-
ration of social (socialisation) and cultural (en-
culturation) space. It is widely believed that the 
process of socialisation is aimed mainly at the 
acquisition of socially significant qualities by 
an individual that he needs to become a person. 
In general, this should not be denied. Howev-
er, the process of socialisation, like the process 
of enculturation, carries a deeper and more 
important task: to create from a living organ-
ism an integral and authentic person capable of 
treating humanly everything around him, and, 
most importantly, his own kind (Il’enkov, 1984: 
330-331), rising to the level of value attitude 
towards everyone and everything. K. Marx 
saw this as the main prerequisite for preserv-
ing community between individuals, as well 
as a ‘treatment’ against loneliness and various 
forms of deviation and addiction arising from 
the interaction of individuals (Marx, 1961: 62). 
A lonely person, according to K. Marx, can-
not discern himself in the Other, and therefore, 
cannot find one for himself.
At the initial stages of an individual’s de-
velopment, the dominant role in including him 
into the community is played by family, which 
represents both a community and a social insti-
tution responsible for the first stage of the in-
dividual’s socialisation. It directly depends on 
the type of family and the nature of family rela-
tionships whether the person entering life will 
encounter the experience of loneliness or will 
pass it by, since “without exception, all human 
modes of activity aimed at interaction with 
another person and any other object, a child 
learns from the outside” (Il’enkov, 1984: 331). 
In other words, the child at the initial stages of 
development is completely dependent on Oth-
ers. Therefore, at early age, he is likely to ex-
perience loneliness. An argument confirming 
the correspondence of this statement to the real 
state of affairs can be the fact revealed by Z. 
Freud: the first phobias that children get are the 
phobias of darkness and loneliness (Miiuskev-
ich, 1989: 62). The reason for this is, presum-
ably, in the child’s love and emotional closeness 
to his parents (especially his mother), who are 
Significant Others for him, and therefore to all 
adults who, de facto, personify accessible frag-
ments of existence for him.
Let us note that the successful develop-
ment of a child, the formation of his conscious-
ness, self-awareness and inner world as a whole 
depends on his significance for Others and, 
over time, their significance for him. Loss of 
community at early age, involuntary stay out-
side its limits due to prevailing objective cir-
cumstances in the process of spiritual and per-
sonal development leads children to experience 
loneliness in an acute, painful form. For exam-
ple, children with broken lives, in particular, 
abandoned by their parents at early age. The 
experience of loneliness at early age either sus-
pends the formation of a harmonious spiritual 
and personal integrity of a person, or it can sig-
nificantly deform it, that is, prevent a person in 
the future from fully revealing in himself and 
developing his spiritual and personal potential.
Along with the family, primary social 
groups (classmates, friends, etc.) have a deci-
sive influence on the formation of an integral 
spiritual and personal image of a child, es-
pecially one in adolescence. They can create 
both favourable conditions for the socialisation 
of individuals, as well as unfavourable ones. 
The emergence of the latter is due to a whole 
complex of interrelated factors, which include: 
the erosion of the value foundations of fami-
ly relations, the incompleteness of the family 
or its disintegration, material distress, a pain-
ful spiritual and psychological climate in the 
family, inattention of parents to the problems 
of the child due to the preference of their own 
interests (career, health, entertainment), the 
child’s inability to find a common language 
with peers, lack of community of interests 
with them, and much more. Each of them is a 
microfactor that charts certain paths to loneli-
ness. However, under certain conditions, any 
of these microfactors can develop and acquire 
a macrofactural structure, which will become 
the basis for the person’s experience of loneli-
ness in adolescence.

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– 1269 –
Igor A. Belyaev and Maksim N. Lyashchenko. Socio-Cultural Determinacy of Human Loneliness
G.M. Tikhonov notes the high variabil-
ity of loneliness among young people (Tik-
honov, 2005). This can be explained not only 
by socio-cultural factors, the objective nature 
of which is undeniable, but also by subjec-
tive-personal factors (low self-esteem, social 
immaturity, moral instability, self-doubt, ap-
athy, timidity, sense of meaninglessness, etc.) 
(Tikhonov, 2005). Therefore, young people are 
ranked among weak social groups, very often 
prone to loneliness and vulnerable to social 
shocks and crises that significantly affect the 
spiritual and mental state of a person.
Adolescents and young adults often exhib-
it addictive and deviant behaviour, which can 
be caused by various socio-cultural and per-
sonal factors. In this case, that is, when other 
people lose their significance and value for a 
person, degradation of the personal structures 
of his integrity occurs along with the emer-
gence of various forms of addictive and deviant 
behaviour, which is a direct path to loneliness. 
Quite indicative are the words said by people 
with addictive behaviour cited by Ts.P. Koro-
lenko and T.A. Donskikh in the book “Seven 
Ways to Disaster. Destructive Behaviour in 
the Modern World”. Here is one of examples, 
“I feel embarrassed and even ashamed in front 
of my loved ones, who do not see, do not un-
derstand that I am not the person I used to be. 
Some part of me remains the same, but on the 
whole I have changed, I have become alienated 
and indifferent to the feelings and sufferings of 
my loved ones” (Korolenko, Donskikh, 1991: 
24). Addictive behaviour accompanies the am-
bivalence of a person’s consciousness into a 
proper and real self and a false and unworthy 
Other inside me, diverting me from the Others, 
leading to loneliness. Deviant behaviour is a 
type of orientation at the expense of the Other, 
which ultimately leads to being without Others, 
i.e. loneliness, which can find its extreme form 
expressed in the state of existence in oblivion