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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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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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
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