Dmitry LIKHACHEV

Letter thirty-two
UNDERSTAND ART

So, life is the greatest value that a person has. If you compare life to a precious palace with many halls that stretch in endless enfilades, which are all generously varied and all different from each other, then the most Big hall in this palace, the real “throne room” is the hall in which art reigns. This is a hall of amazing magic. And the first magic he performs happens not only to the owner of the palace himself, but also to everyone invited to the celebration. This is a hall of endless celebrations that make a person’s whole life more interesting, more solemn, more fun, more significant... I don’t know what other epithets to express my admiration for art, for its works, for the role it plays in the life of mankind. And the greatest value that art rewards a person is the value of kindness. Awarded with the gift of understanding art, a person becomes morally better, and therefore happier. Yes, happier! For, awarded through art with the gift of a good understanding of the world, the people around him, the past and the distant, a person makes friends more easily with other people, with other cultures, with other nationalities, it is easier for him to live.

E. A. Maimin in his book for high school students “Art Thinks in Images” (1977) writes: “The discoveries that we make with the help of art are not only lively and impressive, but also good discoveries. Knowledge of reality that comes through art is knowledge warmed by human feeling and sympathy. This is the quality of art that makes it social phenomenon immeasurable moral significance. Gogol wrote about the theater: “This is a pulpit from which you can say a lot of good to the world.” Everything is a source of goodness true art. It is at its very core moral precisely because it evokes in the reader, in the viewer - in everyone who perceives it - empathy and sympathy for people, for all of humanity. Leo Tolstoy spoke about the “unifying principle” of art and attached paramount importance to this quality. Thanks to its figurative form, art in the best possible way introduces a person to humanity: makes him treat other people’s pain and joy with great attention and understanding. It makes this other people's pain and joy to a large extent its own... Art in the deepest sense of the word is human. It comes from a person and leads to a person - to the most alive, the kindest, to the very best in him. It serves unity human souls" Okay, very well said! And a number of thoughts here sound like beautiful aphorisms.

The wealth that understanding works of art gives a person cannot be taken away from a person, and they are everywhere, you just need to see them.

And evil in a person is always associated with a lack of understanding of another person, with a painful feeling of envy, with an even more painful feeling of ill will, with dissatisfaction with one’s position in society, with eternal anger that eats up a person, disappointment in life. An evil person punishes himself with his malice. He plunges himself into darkness first of all.

Art illuminates and at the same time sanctifies human life. And I repeat again: it makes him kinder, and therefore happier.

But understanding works of art is far from easy. You have to learn this - learn for a long time, all your life. For there can be no stop in expanding your understanding of art. There can only be a retreat back into the darkness of misunderstanding. After all, art constantly confronts us with new and new phenomena, and this is the enormous generosity of art. Some doors opened for us in the palace, followed by others.

How to learn to understand art? How to improve this understanding in yourself? What qualities do you need to have for this? I don't undertake to give recipes. I don't want to say anything categorically. But the quality that still seems to me to be the most important in the real understanding of art is sincerity, honesty, and openness to the perception of art.

You should learn to understand art first of all from yourself - from your sincerity.

They often say about someone: he has innate taste. Not at all! If you look closely at those people who can be said to have taste, you will notice that they all have one thing in common: they are honest and sincere in their sensibility. They learned a lot from her.

I have never noticed that taste is inherited.

Taste, I think, is not one of the properties that are transmitted by genes. Although the family cultivates taste and from the family, much depends on its intelligence.

You should not approach a work of art with bias, based on established “opinion,” fashion, the views of your friends, or the views of your enemies. One must be able to remain “one on one” with a work of art.

If in your understanding of works of art you begin to follow fashion, the opinions of others. the desire to appear refined and “refined”, you will drown out the joy that life gives to art, and art to life.

Pretending to understand something you don't understand. you have not deceived others, but yourself. You are trying to convince yourself that you have understood something, and the joy that art gives is immediate, like any joy.

If you like it, tell yourself and others that you like it. Just don’t impose your understanding or, even worse, misunderstanding on others. Do not think that you have absolute taste, nor do you think that you have absolute knowledge. The first is impossible in art, the second is impossible in science. Respect in yourself and in others your attitude towards art and remember the wise rule: there is no arguing about tastes.

Does this mean that we must completely withdraw into ourselves and be satisfied with ourselves, with our attitude towards certain works of art? “I like this, but I don’t like that” - and that’s the point. In no case! In your attitude towards works of art, you should not be complacent; you should strive to understand what you do not understand, and to deepen your understanding of what you have already partially understood. And understanding a work of art is always incomplete. For a true work of art is “inexhaustible” in its riches.

One should not, as I already said, proceed from the opinions of others, but one must listen to the opinions of others and take them into account. If the opinion of others about a work of art is negative, it is mostly not very interesting. Another thing is more interesting: if many people express a positive view. If some artist, some art school thousands understand, then it would be arrogant to say that everyone is wrong and only you are right.

Of course, they don’t argue about tastes, but they develop taste - in themselves and in others. One can strive to understand what others understand, especially if there are many others. Many, many cannot simply be deceivers if they claim that they like something, if a painter or composer, poet or sculptor enjoys enormous and even worldwide recognition. However, there are fashions and there are unjustified non-recognition of the new or alien, infection even with hatred of the “alien”, of the too complex, etc.

The whole question is that you cannot immediately understand the complex without first understanding the simpler. In any understanding - scientific or artistic - one cannot skip over steps. To understand classical music, one must be prepared by knowing the basics of musical art. The same is true in painting or poetry. You cannot master higher mathematics without knowing elementary mathematics.

Sincerity in relation to art is the first condition for understanding it, but the first condition is not everything. To understand art, you also need knowledge. Factual information on the history of art, on the history of the monument and biographical information about its creator help the aesthetic perception of art, leaving it free. They do not force the reader, viewer or listener to a certain assessment or a certain attitude towards a work of art, but, as if “commenting” on it, they facilitate understanding.

Factual information is needed, first of all, so that the perception of a work of art takes place in a historical perspective and is permeated with historicism, since the aesthetic attitude towards a monument is always historical. If we have a modern monument in front of us, then modernity is a certain moment in history, and we must know that the monument was created in our days. If we know that a monument was created in Ancient Egypt, this creates a historical relationship to it and helps its perception. And for a more acute perception ancient egyptian art knowledge will also be required of what era in the history of Ancient Egypt this or that monument was created.

Knowledge opens doors for us, but we must enter them ourselves. And I especially want to emphasize the importance of details. Sometimes the little things allow us to get to the bottom of things. How important it is to know why this or that thing was written or drawn!

Once in the Hermitage there was an exhibition of someone who worked in Russia at the end of the 18th century. -early XIX century decorator and builder of Pavlovsk gardens Pietro Gonzago. His drawings - mainly on architectural subjects - are striking in the beauty of their perspective. He even flaunts his skill, emphasizing all the lines, horizontal in nature, but in drawings converging on the horizon - as it should be when constructing perspective. How many of these horizontal lines does he have? Cornices, roofs.

And everywhere the horizontal lines are made a little thicker than they should be, and some lines go beyond the limits of “necessity”, beyond those that are in nature.

But here’s another amazing thing: Gonzago’s point of view on all these wonderful prospects is always chosen as if from below. Why? After all, the viewer holds the drawing right in front of him. Yes, because these are all sketches of the theater decorator, drawings of the decorator, and in the theater auditorium(in any case, the seats for the most “important” visitors) are below and Gonzago plans his compositions for the viewer sitting in the stalls. You should know it.

Always, in order to understand works of art, you need to know the conditions of creativity, the goals of creativity, the personality of the artist and the era. Art cannot be caught with bare hands. The viewer, listener, readers must be “armed” - armed with knowledge, information. That's why this great importance have introductory articles, commentaries and generally works on art, literature, music. Arm yourself with knowledge!

To be continued

No wonder they say: knowledge is power. But this is not only power in science, it is power in art. Art is inaccessible to the powerless. The weapon of knowledge is a peaceful weapon. If you fully understand folk art and do not look at it as “primitive”, then it can serve as a starting point for understanding all art - as a kind of joy, independent value, independence from various requirements that interfere with the perception of art (such as the requirement of unconditional “similarity” Firstly). Folk art teaches us to understand the conventions of art. Why is this so? Why, after all, does folk art serve as this initial and best teacher? Because the experience of thousands of years is embodied in folk art. The division of people into “cultured” and “uncultured” is often caused by extreme conceit and the city dwellers’ own overestimation. The peasants have their own complex culture, which is expressed not only in amazing folklore (compare at least the traditional Russian peasant song, deep in its content), not only in folk art and folk wooden architecture in the north, but also in complex life, complex peasant rules of politeness, beautiful Russian wedding rites, rites of receiving guests, common family peasant meals, complex labor customs and labor festivities. Customs are created for a reason. They are also the result of centuries of selection for their expediency, and the art of the people is a result of selection for beauty. This does not mean that traditional forms are always the best and should always be followed. We must strive for the new, for artistic discoveries (traditional forms were also discoveries in their time), but the new must be created taking into account the old, traditional, as a result, and not as a cancellation of the old and accumulated. END OF PART ONE

Life is, first of all, breathing. "Soul", "spirit"! And he died - first of all - “stopped breathing.” That's what they thought from time immemorial. “Spirit out!” - it means “died.”

It can be “stuffy” in the house, and “stuffy” in moral life as well. Take a good breath out of all the petty worries, all the bustle of everyday life, get rid of, shake off everything that hinders the movement of thought, that crushes the soul, that does not allow a person to accept life, its values, its beauty.

A person should always think about what is most important for himself and for others, throwing off all empty worries.

We must be open to people, tolerant of people, and look for the best in them first of all. The ability to seek and find the best, simply “good”, “overshadowed beauty” enriches a person spiritually.

To notice beauty in nature, in a village, a city, a street, not to mention in a person, through all the barriers of little things - this means expanding the sphere of life, the sphere of the living space in which a person lives.

I've been looking for this word for a long time - sphere. At first I said to myself: “We need to expand the boundaries of life,” but life has no boundaries! Is not land plot, fenced with borders. Expanding the limits of life is not suitable for expressing my thoughts for the same reason. Expanding the horizons of life is already better, but still something is not right. Maximilian Voloshin has a well-invented word - “okoe”. This is everything that the eye can accommodate, that it can embrace. But even here the limitations of our everyday knowledge interfere. Life cannot be reduced to everyday impressions. We must be able to feel and even notice what is beyond our perception, to have, as it were, a “premonition” of something new that is opening or could be revealed to us. The greatest value in the world is life: someone else’s, one’s own, the life of the animal world and plants, the life of culture, life throughout its entire length - in the past, in the present, and in the future... And life is infinitely deep. We always come across something we haven’t noticed before, something that amazes us with its beauty, unexpected wisdom, and uniqueness.

Letter five

WHAT IS A SENSE OF LIFE

You can define the purpose of your existence in different ways, but there must be a purpose - otherwise there will be not life, but vegetation.

You also need to have principles in life. It’s even good to write them down in a diary, but for the diary to be “real”, it cannot be shown to anyone - write only for yourself.

Every person should have one rule in life, in his goal of life, in his principles of life, in his behavior: he must live his life with dignity, so that he will not be ashamed to remember.

Dignity requires kindness, generosity, the ability not to be a narrow egoist, to be truthful, good friend, finding joy in helping others.

For the sake of the dignity of life, one must be able to give up small pleasures and considerable ones too... Being able to apologize and admit a mistake to others is better than fussing and lying.

When deceiving, a person first of all deceives himself, because he thinks that he has successfully lied, but people understood and, out of delicacy, remained silent.

Letter six

PURPOSE AND SELF-ESTEEM

When a person consciously or intuitively chooses some Goal or life task for himself in life, he at the same time involuntarily gives himself an assessment. By what a person lives for, one can judge his self-esteem - low or high.

If a person sets himself the task of acquiring all the basic material goods, he evaluates himself at the level of these material goods: as the owner of a car of the latest brand, as the owner of a luxurious dacha, as part of his furniture set...

If a person lives to bring good to people, to alleviate their suffering from illness, to give people joy, then he evaluates himself at the level of this humanity. He sets himself a goal worthy of a person.

Only a vital goal allows a person to live his life with dignity and get real joy. Yes, joy! Think: if a person sets himself the task of increasing goodness in life, bringing happiness to people, what failures can befall him?

Help the wrong person who should? But how many people don't need help? If you are a doctor, then perhaps you misdiagnosed the patient? This happens to most the best doctors. But in total, you still helped more than you didn’t help. No one is immune from mistakes. But the most main mistake, fatal mistake - incorrectly chosen the main task in life. Didn't get promoted - disappointing. I didn’t have time to buy a stamp for my collection – it’s a shame. Someone has better furniture than you or a better car - again a disappointment, and what a disappointment!

When setting the goal of a career or acquisition, a person experiences in total much more sorrows than joys, and risks losing everything. And what can a person lose who rejoiced in every way? good deed? It is only important that the good that a person does should be his inner need, come from an intelligent heart, and not just from the head, and should not be a “principle” alone.

Therefore, the main task in life must necessarily be a task broader than just personal; it should not be limited only to one’s own successes and failures. It should be dictated by kindness towards people, love for family, for your city, for your people, for your country, for the whole universe.

Does this mean that a person should live like an ascetic, not take care of himself, not acquire anything and not enjoy a simple promotion? Not at all! A person who does not think about himself at all is an abnormal phenomenon and personally unpleasant to me: there is some kind of breakdown in this, some ostentatious exaggeration of his kindness, unselfishness, significance, in this there is some kind of peculiar contempt for other people , the desire to stand out.

Therefore, I am only talking about the main task in life. And this main life task does not need to be emphasized in the eyes of other people. And you need to dress well (this is respect for others), but not necessarily “better than others.” And you need to compile a library for yourself, but not necessarily larger than your neighbor’s. And it’s good to buy a car for yourself and your family – it’s convenient. Just don’t turn the secondary into the primary, and don’t let the main goal of life exhaust you where it’s not necessary. When you need it is another matter. There we will see who is capable of what.

Letter seven

WHAT UNITES PEOPLE

Floors of care. Caring strengthens relationships between people. It binds families together, binds friendships, binds together fellow villagers, residents of one city, one country.

Trace a person's life.

A person is born, and the first care for him is his mother; gradually (after just a few days) the father’s care for him comes into direct contact with the child (before the birth of the child, care for him already existed, but was to a certain extent “abstract” - the parents were preparing for the birth of the child, dreaming about him).

The feeling of caring for another appears very early, especially in girls. The girl doesn’t speak yet, but she’s already trying to take care of the doll, nursing it. Boys, very small, love to pick mushrooms and fish. Girls also like to pick berries and mushrooms. And they collect not only for themselves, but for the whole family. They take it home and store it for the winter.

Gradually, children become objects of increasingly higher care and themselves begin to show real and broad care - not only about the family, but also about the school where their parents’ care placed them, about their village, city and country...

Caring is expanding and becoming more altruistic. Children pay for caring for themselves by caring for their elderly parents, when they can no longer repay the children’s care. And this concern for the elderly, and then for the memory of deceased parents, seems to merge with concern for historical memory family and homeland as a whole.

If care is directed only at oneself, then an egoist grows up.

Caring brings people together, strengthens the memory of the past and is aimed entirely at the future. This is not the feeling itself - it is a concrete manifestation of the feeling of love, friendship, patriotism. A person must be caring. A carefree or carefree person is most likely a person who is unkind and does not love anyone.

Morality in highest degree characterized by a feeling of compassion. In compassion there is the consciousness of one’s unity with humanity and the world (not only people, nations, but also with animals, plants, nature, etc.). A feeling of compassion (or something close to it) makes us fight for cultural monuments, for their preservation, for nature, individual landscapes, for respect for memory. In compassion there is a consciousness of one’s unity with other people, with a nation, people, country, universe. That is why the forgotten concept of compassion requires its complete revival and development.

A surprisingly correct thought: “A small step for a person, a big step for humanity.”

Thousands of examples can be given of this: it costs nothing for one person to be kind, but it is incredibly difficult for humanity to become kind. It is impossible to correct humanity, it is easy to correct yourself. Feeding a child, walking an old man across the street, giving up a seat on a tram, working well, being polite and courteous... etc., etc. - all this is easy for a person, but incredibly difficult for everyone at once. That's why you need to start with yourself.

§ 2. Human life is the greatest value

Judge! Why is human life the highest value in modern world?

Lee thought about these questions:

What is life?

Why do we live?

What should a person's life be like?

Every person thinks about these questions.

Life is given to a person once. Life is a process of existence, gaining experience, expanding one's horizons. Each person chooses his own path in life.

The meaning (meaning) of life is to work honestly, give people happiness, do good, develop intellectually and spiritually, be decent and a fair man. You need to constantly set a goal, achieve it and move towards new horizons. You need to be self-sufficient, feel comfortable in the present and look positively into the future.

What your life will be depends only on you.

That is why human life is the most valuable thing in the world. After all, there are people who daily have to deal with the consequences of serious illnesses, injuries or congenital defects. But they continue to love their lives and appreciate every moment.

For example, in sports, the fortitude and courage of Paralympic athletes can be examples for ordinary athletes.

Every four years immediately after Olympic Games The Paralympic Games are held, where disabled athletes compete among themselves in various sports. Ukrainian athletes achieve great success in such competitions. In August 2014, the Ukrainian Paralympic football team became the European champion. At the same time, Ukrainian swimmers won the most medals at the European Championships and took first place.

Ukraine Paralympic football team

Read the proverbs. Explain how you understand their meaning.

Living life is not a field to cross.

No one was born wise, but learned.

Where there is life, there is hope.

What people are like, this is how life will be.

Read it.

Defeating the Dragon

Soon the explorers decided to go deeper into the island and explore it. It turned out that in the very center of the island there is high mountain with a deep and dark cave in which a real dragon lives. He became very angry when he saw the uninvited guests, so he immediately chased after them. The piznayki barely escaped. That evening they sat down to discuss what to do next.

We must gather an army and defeat the dragon! - Daredevil exclaimed menacingly.

No! It’s better to wait until the dragon falls asleep, and at night get into the cave and tie him up,” suggested the Sly.

So they fought until the morning. Only Smychok did not take part in the dispute. He wasn't interested. He just sat on the porch and played the violin. A magical melody rushed over the island and woke up the dragon. He had never heard such strange sounds before. The dragon really liked the music, so he changed his mind about kicking out the piznayks. Thus began a friendship between them. The dragon helped the girls collect firewood, plow the land and water the plants. And sometimes he just carried them on his back. For this, the boys treated him to the fruits of the candy tree. But most of all, the dragon loved to listen to Bow playing the violin.

Who threatened the lives of the Piznayks on the island?

Why did the scientists offer different ways to fight the dragon?

Choose adjectives for the word “life”.

Think! What does the statement of the outstanding Italian scientist, artist and thinker Leonardo da Vinci mean: “Remember, life is a gift; and those who do not appreciate it do not deserve this gift.”

Read the poem

Mom's word

I came into the world from my mother’s word,

broke through as if from a bird's egg.

And above me there is a new shell -

and my soul now lives in it.

That is a space egg. I see in him

fiery cracks when the thunder starts playing.

And I will never reach the breach,

which could be my way out.

I’m returning to my native threshold,

I'm building a shelter over myself...

From mother to mother the road -

it's simply called life!

Dmitry Pavlychko

Can a person live without a soul that we cannot see, but feel in our heart?

Why, in your opinion, is the native language so important for every person?

What does the poet compare the birth of a person to?

Count your knowledge

Human life is the highest value. Each person's life is unique and unrepeatable. Life must be protected and respected.

check yourself

1. Why is human life the highest value?

2. How should a person approach his life? Other people's lives?

3. What value does each of you have for Ukraine?

4. How should you live your life?

Consult with your parents and arrange the words and phrases presented in order of their importance in your life. Justify your opinion.

Love, big house, hard work, money, friends, self-confidence, education, health, beautiful appearance, friendly family.

Goals:

Summarize students’ knowledge about the types and functional styles of speech;

Update the skills of linguistic text analysis (task 8 of part B) and part C of the Unified State Examination;

Determine your attitude to moral values, think about vital problems.

Technology:

Personally centered learning;

Equipment: dictionaries, interactive whiteboard, texts, electronic manuals.

The teacher’s opening speech: “Life is the greatest value that a person has,” these are the words of Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev, an amazing person, famous academician, writer, teacher, public figure, famous scientist, defender of culture, who turns 100 this year, our lesson begins.

I. Student’s message about the life of D.S. Likhachev. (On the screen is a portrait of the writer).

You are on the threshold of adulthood. It depends only on you what kind of people you will grow up to be, what path you will choose. Each of us at some point inevitably thinks about the questions: How should I live my life? What is needed for this? Which moral values should prevail in our lives?

II. During the discussion, students come to a consensus that these values ​​can be united around the words: life, love, goodness, friendship, homeland, art, soul, health.

On the screen is the text by D.S. Likhachev “The Value of Kindness.” (Annex 1)

III. I invite the children to choose words based on the content of the text. Three groups are created, words are selected life, goodness, art.

IV. The objectives of the lesson are announced, what activities students must demonstrate, and what tasks must be completed.

Each task in our lesson today will be related to the upcoming very important moment in your life - passing the Unified State Exam.

Group 1 – life

Group 2 – good

Group 3 – art

V.- And we will begin our work by determining the lexical meaning of each word.

Why did you choose these words?

Continue thesis:

Life is…

Good is...

Art is...

(Students are working independently on defining these words)

VI. After discussing and voicing the theses of each group, students compare their definitions with the dictionary entry. S. Ozhegova, V. Dalya. The group “Information Bureau” performs.

VII. Students can easily complete some items comprehensive analysis text: determining the topic, main idea of ​​the text, type of text and functional style of speech. The tasks proposed for the text provide an opportunity to consolidate the skills of the unit in the Unified State Examination. VIII. After studying the text, students discuss and share their thoughts in groups. Then there is a little work on exchanging opinions and problematic issues with other groups. The questions for the short discussion between the groups were formulated as follows:

1. What is the concept of good in the modern world? Today the world has changed, and people often began to do good deeds out of convenience. Is it so?
2. How do you understand the meaning of life? What goals should you set in life, what should you strive for in order to become happy?
3. The rich spiritual world of man shapes art. Do you agree with this?

Students draw their own conclusions from the discussion. (Appendix 2)

IX. We begin to consolidate the skills of linguistic analysis by completing the most difficult tasks in the text for the Unified State Exam, Part B. Each group is given the following tasks:

Find phrases with types of communication in the text coordination, control, adjacency;

Find the NGN with the attributive clause;

Write down the sentences with introductory construction and parse the sentence;

Determine the correct grammatical basis in one of the sentences;

A) a person becomes; B) Art compels; C) A person makes friends more easily.

X. Presentation of the electronic manual.

Egorova Naryya: Together with Tatyana Sergeevna, we created the dictionary “Means of Expression”. When completing tasks, we experience difficulties in identifying visual and expressive means. In order to complete the task correctly, we need to know the definitions of terms. We hope that our scientific product will help us complete task 8 of Part B correctly and quickly.

For students, a basic repetition of the most actively used figures is carried out with reference to the dictionary, and examples are analyzed based on the proposed text. Students find expressive means in the text:

Extended comparison - 2nd sentence;

Epithets - amazing magic;

Lexical repetition – 9, 10 sentences;

Syntactic parallelism – 1, 2, 3 sentences.

XI. Working on an interactive whiteboard.

Task: match the examples with the terms:

XII. Working on an essay-reasoning.

Students are asked to write an essay-reasoning

(Algorithms for determining the problem of the text, types of essay introductions, speech cliches for each stage of the work are projected on the screen)

Using algorithms, groups choose which stage of the essay they will work on:

Group 1 – entry options;

Group 2 – definition and commentary of the problem;

Group 3 – argumentation.

Each group presented their project. Based on the work completed, mutual verification is carried out in groups. Groups should identify successful aspects of the work and also note shortcomings. For this activity, students are guided by the Part C assessment criteria.

XIII. TO homework The teacher offers students a reasoning algorithm:

XIV. Generalization of the lesson, summing up.

Annex 1

Text by D.S. Likhachev “The Value of Kindness”

Life is the greatest value that a person has. (2) If we compare life to a palace with many halls, then the largest hall is the one in which art reigns. (3) This is a hall of amazing magic, endless celebrations that make a person’s life more interesting, more solemn, more significant. (4) But the greatest value that art rewards a person is the value of kindness. (5) From communication with art, a person becomes morally better, and therefore happier. (6) Such a person makes friends more easily with other cultures, with other nationalities, and it is easier for him to live. (7) True art is a source of goodness, because it evokes empathy and compassion for people in the reader and viewer. (8) Art, according to L.N. Tolstoy, makes you treat other people’s pain and joy with great understanding and attention, and in this sense it is humane! (9) It comes from a person and leads to a person - to the most living, kind, best in him. (10) It serves the unity of human souls.

Appendix 2

Student statements

“I don’t understand my friends who claim that you need to live for today and not think about the future. But it seems to me that already at our age, each of us should set ourselves a small, but goal, to which we must go step by step independently. A person who has no goal in life cannot achieve anything for his happiness.” (Everstov Aisen).

“Good must be done according to the call of the heart. But not everyone is able to do good for free. Now many people believe that doing something good for a person must be done for a reward, for some kind of payment. Nevertheless, in life we ​​often become convinced that there are still many good people on earth.” (Atlasova Namina).

“Art undoubtedly influences the spiritual world of a person. And this is connected not only with visiting theaters or exhibitions, but a person himself can create an atmosphere around himself of his creative development and talent. I think that a person who has touched art at least once will never be indifferent to spiritual world another man". (Egorova Naryya).

Solntsev Dar

We present to your attention a review of a research paper based on a quote from Academician Likhachev.

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for creative work
Solntseva Dara Andreevich,
student of 10-1st grade at the Olgino International Gymnasium.
Subject: " The greatest value in the world is life."
D.S. Likhachev

In the work, the student, based on a quote from D.S. Likhachev, explores his work, which, in his opinion, has a special place in Russian literature.
The relevance of the topic under study is justified, goals and objectives are set. The material in the work is presented in compliance with internal logic.
The student showed erudition, reading in the field in question and own attitude to the problem. When performing work, he demonstrated independence, the ability to select and systematize material.
The work deserves a good rating.

Biology and chemistry teacher at the Olgino International Gymnasium
Struzhenkova T.V.

Autobiography.

My name is Solntsev Dar Andreevich, born in 1999. I was born in the city of Miass, Chelyabinsk region. At the age of 7, he moved to St. Petersburg and began studying at the Diplomat School. I studied there from 2nd to 7th grade. In the 8th grade I moved to Olgino MG, and I study there to this day. On this moment I am a 10th grade student and plan to finish 11th grade at this institution. Throughout my life, I had many interests, but by the time I turned 16, most of them had faded, and the other part was not as strong as before. The remaining interests are games (of all kinds, i.e. board, computer, catch-up, hide-and-seek, etc., logical... This list can be continued endlessly. The exceptions are sport games. Exception within the exception - sports card games remain in my interests), cards (as you might already understand, playing cards. In addition to games, I also have a collection of all kinds of decksfrom almost all over the world), as well as technology. Unfortunately, I still haven’t chosen what I’m going to connect my life with, because... I can work in almost any field. But in December an idea came to me that I am going to bring to life. I have already purchased almost everything necessary equipment. I'm going to create a game. What is it about? You'll find out when it comes out.

International Gymnasium "Olgino"

Introduction.

“Inhale - exhale, exhale!” I hear the voice of the gymnastics instructor: “To breathe deeply, you need to exhale well. First of all, learn to exhale and get rid of the “exhaust air.”
Life is, first of all, breathing. "Soul", "spirit"! And he died - first of all - “stopped breathing.” That's what they thought from time immemorial. “Spirit out!” - it means “died”.
It can be “stuffy” in the house, and “stuffy” in moral life as well. Take a good breath out of all the petty worries, all the bustle of everyday life, get rid of, shake off everything that hinders the movement of thought, that crushes the soul, that does not allow a person to accept life, its values, its beauty.
A person should always think about what is most important for himself and for others, throwing off all empty worries.
We must be open to people, tolerant of people, and look for the best in them first of all. The ability to seek and find the best, simply “good”, “overshadowed beauty” enriches a person spiritually.
To notice beauty in nature, in a village, a city, a street, not to mention in a person, through all the barriers of little things - this means expanding the sphere of life, the sphere of the living space in which a person lives.
I've been looking for this word for a long time - sphere. At first I told myself: “We need to expand the boundaries of life,” but life has no boundaries! This is not a plot of land surrounded by a fence - borders. Expanding the limits of life is not suitable for expressing my thoughts for the same reason. Expanding the horizons of life is already better, but still something is not right. Maximilian Voloshin has a well-invented word - “okoyem”. This is everything that the eye can accommodate, that it can embrace. But even here the limitations of our everyday knowledge interfere. Life cannot be reduced to everyday impressions. We must be able to feel and even notice what is beyond our perception, to have, as it were, a “premonition” of something new that is opening or could be revealed to us. The greatest value in the world is life: someone else’s, one’s own, the life of the animal world and plants, the life of culture, life throughout its entire length - in the past, in the present, and in the future... And life is infinitely deep. We always come across something we haven’t noticed before, something that amazes us with its beauty, unexpected wisdom, and uniqueness.”

Before you “Letters about the good and the beautiful”- a book by one of the outstanding scientists of our time, academician Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev. These “letters” are not addressed to anyone in particular, but to all readers. First of all, young people who still have to learn life and walk its difficult paths.
The fact that the author of the letters, Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev, is a man whose name is known on all continents makes this book especially valuable.
After all, only a respected person can give advice. Otherwise, such advice will not be heeded.
And the advice that you can get from reading this book concerns almost all aspects of life.

The book was first published in 1985 and has already become a bibliographic rarity.
This book is translated into many languages.
This is what D.S. Likhachev himself writes in the preface to the Japanese edition, in which he explains why this book was written:
“In my deep conviction, goodness and beauty are the same for all peoples. United - in two senses: truth and beauty are eternal companions, they are united among themselves and the same for all peoples.
Lies are evil for everyone. Sincerity and truthfulness, honesty and selflessness are always good.
In my book “Letters about the Good and the Beautiful,” intended for children, I try to explain with the simplest arguments that following the path of goodness is the most acceptable and only path for a person. It is tested, it is faithful, it is useful - both to the individual and to society as a whole.
In my letters, I do not try to explain what goodness is and why a good person is internally beautiful, lives in harmony with himself, with society and with nature. There can be many explanations, definitions and approaches. I strive for something else - for specific examples, based on the properties of general human nature.
I do not subordinate the concept of goodness and the accompanying concept of human beauty to any worldview. My examples are not ideological, because I want to explain them to children even before they begin to subordinate themselves to any specific ideological principles.
Children love traditions very much, they are proud of their home, their family, as well as their village. But they readily understand not only their own, but also other people’s traditions, other people’s worldviews, and they grasp what all people have in common.
I will be happy if the reader, no matter what age he belongs to (it happens that adults also read children's books), finds in my letters at least part of what he can agree with.
Agreement between people different peoples“This is the most precious and now most necessary thing for humanity.”

Chapter I.

What is life?

For many centuries, philosophers and scientists from all over the world wondered about the meaning of life, but never came to a common opinion. Even the very concept of the word “life” differed. What does “life” mean these days?

Available big number definitions of the concept “life”, reflecting different approaches. From the entire accumulation of approaches to the definition of the word “life,” three main ones can be distinguished. According to the first approach, life is determined by the carrier of its properties (for example, protein). According to the second, life is considered as a set of specific physical- chemical processes. And finally, the third approach is to determine the minimum possible set of mandatory properties, without which no life is possible.Life can be defined as active, going with expenditure received from outsideenergy, maintenance and self-reproduction of molecular structures.

Russian scientist M.V. Volkenstein came up with a new definition of the concept of the word life: “Living bodies that exist on Earth are open, self-regulating and self-reproducing systems built from biopolymers - proteins and nucleic acids.” According to the views of one of the founders of thanatology, M. Bisha, life is a set of phenomena that resist death.

From the point of view of the second law of thermodynamics, life is a process, or a system, the vector of development of which is opposite in direction to the rest, “non-living” objects of the universe, and is aimed at reducing its own entropy. V. N. Parmon gave the following definition: “Life is a phase-separated form of existence of functioning autocatalysts that are capable of chemical mutations and have undergone a fairly long evolution due to natural selection.”. According to Ozanger and Morowitz: “Life is a property of matter leading to the conjugate circulation of bioelements in the aquatic environment, driven ultimately by the energy of solar radiation along the path of increasing complexity.” There are also cybernetic definitions of life. According to A. A. Lyapunov’s definition, life is “a highly stable state of matter that uses information encoded by the states of individual molecules to develop conservation reactions.” There is also a physiological definition of life, given in 1929 by A.F. Samoilov, which, unfortunately, was not fully explored by the great scientist. So, let's present it in full.

"Life is a vicious circle of reflex activity." A break in this circle anywhere (a “coma” state) means a sharp limitation of the parameters of life or even the absence of life. Now we can somewhat expand this concept and indicate the reasons on which this “vicious circle” depends. Namely: the state of the external environment, the “power of will” of the individual, the internal vegetative principles of the body, not subject to the “power of will”.

Chapter II.

Life in the Earth.

Now that we have at least the slightest idea about the concept of the word “life,” let’s figure out how it arose. There are many theories on this issue, among which the most famous are:

• Theory of spontaneous (spontaneous) generation;
• The theory of creationism (or creation);
• Steady State Theory;
• Panspermia theory;
• Theory biochemical evolution(theory of A.I. Oparin).

Let's take a closer look at each of their theories. So, the theory of spontaneous generationlife was very widespread in the Ancient world - in Babylon, China, Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece.Scientists Ancient world and medieval Europe believed that living beings constantly arise from inanimate matter: from dirt - worms, from mud - frogs, from morning dew - fireflies, etc.For the first time, the Italian scientist Francesco Redi decided to experimentally test the theory. He stuffed several pieces of meat into the jars, while covering some of the jars with cloth. Fly larvae appeared in meat that was not covered with cloth, while no larvae appeared in sealed jars. Thus, F. Redi was able to prove that fly larvae appear from eggs laid by flies on its surface, and not from rotting meat.After some time withThe debate about the possibility of spontaneous generation of life became active again in connection with the discovery of microorganisms. If complex living things cannot spontaneously generate, perhaps microorganisms can?In this regard, in 1859, the French Academy announced the award of a prize to the one who would finally decide the question of the possibility or impossibility of the spontaneous generation of life. This prize was received in 1862 by the famous French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur. He boiled the broth in a glass flask with an S-shaped neck. Air, and therefore " life force", could penetrate the flask, but the dust, and with it the microorganisms present in the air, settled in the lower leg of the S-shaped tube, and the broth in the flask remained sterile. However, as soon as the neck of the flask was broken or the lower leg of the S-shaped tube was rinsed with sterile broth, the broth began to quickly become cloudy - microorganisms appeared in it.Thus, thanks to the work of Louis Pasteur, the theory of spontaneous generation was recognized as untenable and in scientific world the theory of biogenesis was established, a brief formulation of which is« all living things come from living things».

The theory of creationism is quite simple - it assumes that all living organisms were created by some supernatural being(god, super-civilization, etc.).The theory of creationism is still widespread today, not only in religious circles, but also in scientific circles. It is usually used to explain the most complex issues of biochemical and biological evolution that currently have no solution. Acts of periodic “creation” also explain the absence of clear transitional links from one type of animal
to another. It must be emphasized that the philosophical dispute about the primacy of consciousness (supermind, deity) or matter cannot be resolved in principle, however, since an attempt to explain any difficulties of modern biochemistry and evolutionary theory fundamentally incomprehensible supernatural acts of creation takes these questions beyond scientific research, the theory of creationism cannot be classified as scientific theories origin of life on Earth.

The theories of steady state and panspermia represent complementary elements of a single picture of the world, the essence of which is as follows: the universe exists forever and life exists in it forever (stationary state). Life is transferred from planet to planet by “seeds of life” traveling in outer space, which can be part of comets and meteorites (panspermia). However, the steady state theory, which assumes an infinitely long existence of the universe, does not agree with the data of modern astrophysics, according to which the universe arose relatively recently (about 16 billion years ago) through a primary explosion.

It is obvious that both theories (panspermia and the stationary state) do not offer an explanation at all for the mechanism of the primary origin of life, transferring it to other planets or pushing it back in time to infinity.

The most widespread and recognized in the scientific world is the theory of biochemical evolution, proposed in 1924 by the Soviet biochemist Academician A.I. Oparin (in 1936 he outlined it in detail in his book “The Emergence of Life”).

The essence of this theory is that biological evolution - i.e. The appearance, development and complication of various forms of living organisms was preceded by chemical evolution - a long period in the history of the Earth associated with the emergence, complication and improvement of the interaction between elementary units, the “building blocks” of which all living things are composed - organic molecules.

Chapter III.

The meaning of life.

Each of us has wondered more than once how he ended up on this planet. On the one hand, everything is simple and clear - a person was born. And so it is with each of us. We were born, and this is the answer to the question of how we came here. But on the other hand, the question remained unanswered, and the question seems to turn into the question why - “why did I find myself on this planet?” "What brought me here?" "What is my purpose for being here?" "What did I want to do?"

On the last question, we move on to another topic that everyone argues about - the meaning of life. "What is my meaning in life?" The key word is "mine". After all, each of us determines the meaning of life in our own way. For some, the meaning of life will be to eat well. For another - to make a dream come true. Can a dream be called the meaning of life?

Another question that is difficult to answer is the following: “Is there a meaning to human life?” One, big and thick meaning, one for everyone. The reason why man arose as a species. The reason why the universe created us. He needs something from us, but we still don’t understand what it is.

Let's summarize. Meaning of life- This a problem related to determining the ultimate goal of existence, the purpose of humanity, man as a biological species, and also man as separate creation, one of the basic ideological concepts, which is of great importance for the formation of the spiritual and moral image of an individual.

The question of the meaning of life can also be understood as a subjective assessment of the life lived and the correspondence of the achieved results to the original intentions, as a person’s understanding of the content and direction of his life, his place in the world, as the problem of a person’s influence on the surrounding reality and a person’s setting goals that go beyond the scope of his life . In this case, it is necessary to find an answer to the questions:

• “What are the values ​​of life?”
• “What is the purpose of life?”
• “Why (what) should I live?”

The question of the meaning of life is one of the most common problems in philosophy, theology and fiction, where it is considered mainly from the point of view of determining what the most worthy meaning of life for a person is.

Ideas about the meaning of life are formed in the process of people’s lives, excuse the toftology, and depend on the results of their activities. In favorable conditions, a person can see the meaning of his life in achieving happiness and prosperity; in a hostile environment of existence, life may lose its value and meaning for him.

People have asked, continue to ask, and will continue to ask questions about the meaning of life. They come up with new hypotheses, philosophical, theological and religious explanations that are always in disagreement. Science is able to answer, with a certain degree of probability, specific questions like “How exactly ...?”, “Under what conditions ...?”, “What will happen if ...?”, while questions like “What (is) the goal (meaning of life?" remain within the framework of philosophy and theology.

Chapter IV.

Consciousness.

When a person is born, he is a helpless lump. In infancy, he relies on instincts, then creatures like him teach him communication and accepted behavior. The man grows up and begins to think about the meaning of life. The man gains consciousness. Simply put, consciousness can be called a set of chemical processes occurring in our brain. And if we dig deeper into this issue, we will notice that for some reason only people have consciousness. And, what is most interesting, if a little man is raised by some other type of living being, then he will remain living on instincts. There will be no consciousness. Only a physical shell that looks like us, but behaves like an animal.

The term “consciousness”, almost like all the topics we talked about, is difficult to define, but we can highlight the following formulation - “consciousness isthe state of an individual’s mental life, expressed in the experience of events outside world and the life of the individual himself, as well as in the account of these events." Consciousness can include thoughts, perceptions, imagination and self-awareness, and so on. In different time it can act as a type of mental state, as a way of perception, as a way of relating to others. It can be described as a point of view, as "I". Many philosophers view consciousness as the most important thing in the world. On the other hand, many scholars tend to regard the word as too vague in meaning to be used.

It would be more correct to say that now we are talking about self-awareness. About how a person knows himself. Why is it that when we look in the mirror, we realize that it is us? What if it’s not us, but them? No, it's still us. And how do we understand this? Self-awareness. Just as for consciousness, there are no clear, fully formed scientific theories in the world about how exactly to determine the presence of self-awareness. In particular, there is still no way for an individual to prove that he has self-awareness.

Self-awareness is not an initial given, inherent in man, but a product of development. However, the beginnings of consciousness of identity appear already in an infant, when he begins to distinguish between sensations caused by external objects and sensations caused by his own body, the consciousness of “I” - from about three years old, when the child begins to correctly use personal pronouns.

Stages of development of self-awareness:

• The discovery of the “I” occurs at the age of 1 year.
• By the age of two or three, a person begins to separate the result of his actions from the actions of others and clearly recognizes himself as a doer.
• By the age of seven, the ability to evaluate oneself (self-esteem) is formed.
• Adolescence and adolescence is a stage of active self-knowledge, searching for oneself and one’s own style. The period of formation of social and moral assessments is coming to an end.

The formation of self-awareness is influenced by:

• Evaluations of others and status in the peer group.
• The relationship between “I am real” and “I am ideal.”
• Assessing the results of your activities.

At the same time, consciousness makes it clear that we are unique.

Chapter V

Uniqueness.

Uniqueness can be called uniqueness in another way. That is, if something is called unique, it means that something exists only in a single copy. He has no copies. And this term applies to both inanimate creatures and living beings. Animals can be used as an example. It seems that the species are similar to each other, but each individual is somehow different from each other. And this difference can be either congenital (coloring) or acquired (scar). Moreover, there are an infinite number of examples of how one individual differs from another. And all thanks to the fact that the universe does not create two identical copies. Therefore, we must strive to keep life safe and sound, both human and animal life. Of course, even though a person is an omnivorous creature, he should think about the fact that he should slightly limit his diet in order to avoid the extinction of some animal species.

Just like animals, people also have their differences from each other.Uniqueness is not, of course, some kind of absolute; it does not have complete and final completeness, which is the condition for its constant movement, change, development, but at the same time it is the most stable basis, and as a special case - an invariant and one of the foundations (the other basis is society) of a person’s personal structure, changing and at the same time unchanged throughout his life, hiding under a multitude shells, the most tender, most mysterious part of it is the soul.

To understand the significance unique features individuals in the life of society, let us answer the question: what would society be like if it suddenly happened that, for some reason, all the people in it would be alike, with stamped brains, thoughts, feelings, abilities? Let us imagine mentally that all the people of a given society were somehow artificially mixed into a homogeneous mass of the physical and spiritual, from which the hand of an omnipotent experimenter, dividing this mass exactly in half into female and male parts, made everyone of the same type and equal to each other in everything. Could this double sameness form a normal society?This is not limited to external differences only. All thanks to consciousness.

Consciousness allows us to differ not only in external signs, but also in behavior. In the same situations different people will behave differently, excuse the tautology. But even despite the strong differences in our psyche, several types of aggregates can be distinguishedmental properties of a person. I'm talking about temperament.

Chapter VI.

Temperament.

Temperament ohm is a connectionindividual personality characteristics associated with dynamic rather than substantive aspects of activity. Temperament is also one of the components of the basis of development character . From a physiological point of view, it is duetype of higher nervous activity person. The following depend on a person’s temperament:

• rate of occurrence mental processes(for example, speed of perception, speed of thinking);
• plasticity and stability of mental phenomena, ease of their change and switching;
• pace and rhythm of activity;
• intensity of mental processes (for example, activity of the will);
• the focus of mental activity on certain objects (extraversion or introversion).

People with pronounced traits of a certain temperament are quite rare; usually people have mixed temperament in various combinations. But the predominance of traits of any type of temperament makes it possible to classify a person’s temperament as one or another type. Here is one of the classifications of temperament types:

Phlegmatic - unhurried, unperturbed, has stable aspirations and mood, outwardly stingy in the manifestation of emotions and feelings. He shows perseverance and perseverance in his work, remaining calm and balanced. He is productive at work, compensating for his slowness with diligence.

Choleric is fast, impetuous, but completely unbalanced, with sharply changing moods with emotional outbursts, quickly exhausted. He does not have a balance of nervous processes, this sharply distinguishes him from a sanguine person. A choleric person has a tremendous capacity for work, however, when he gets carried away, he carelessly wastes his strength and quickly becomes exhausted.

A sanguine person is a lively, hot-tempered, active person, with frequent changes of impressions, with a quick reaction to all the events happening around him, who quite easily comes to terms with his failures and troubles. Usually a sanguine person has expressive facial expressions. He is very productive at work when he is interested; if the work is not interesting, he treats it indifferently and becomes bored.

Melancholic - prone to constantly experiencing various events, he reacts sharply to external factors. Their asthenic he often cannot restrain his experiences by force of will; he is highly impressionable and emotionally vulnerable.

Chapter VII.

The price of life.

Each of us is unique. - some are good, some are bad; some are beautiful, some are crooked; someone is smart, and someone is stupid... This list of differences can be continued endlessly, but that’s the whole point - thanks to the infinite number of components, we can get an infinite number of combinations. And, as stated earlier, each combination is created only once.Human life is priceless. Is it so? Attempts to determine the value of human life in money at first glance seem inhumane. However, the absence of such assessments leads to even greater social and moral problems. How much should relatives of those killed in combat or as a result of terrorist attacks be paid? How much would you mind spending to reduce deaths from road traffic accidents, fires and accidents? The idea that human life is priceless often turns into its being free: relatives of the victims receive almost nothing, and projects that could reduce the mortality rate are considered too expensive. The state and society prefer to spend money on other important purposes. But what is ultimately more important than our own lives?

How to estimate how much life is worth? We can assume that the cost of living is equal to " human capital”, equal, in turn, to the added value that a person produces throughout his life. Using this approach, we can come to the conclusion that the cost of living of the average Russian is only about $100,000. In addition, from this theory it follows that the life of one billionaire is worth as much as the life of all the inhabitants of a small city combined.

However, such an approach may seem not only offensive, but also superficial from the point of view economic science. A person is not only what he produces. We do not live to work, but work to live. Professional activity- this is only a small component of life, therefore the cost of living should be much higher than “human capital”.

To find out how much we ourselves value our lives, another, more valid methodology was developed. In the last 20-30 years, economists different countries conducted dozens of studies trying to estimate the so-called “cost of an average life.” This methodology is based on the analysis of real decisions in which people weigh the cost of their lives. The cost of life can be calculated by knowing, for example, how much more expensive safer cars are compared to ordinary cars, or how much higher wage for those who work in hazardous industries.

Estimating the cost of an average life requires very good microeconomic data, so it is not surprising that the vast majority of work has been carried out in the United States. The results of studies of the American labor market show a relatively small range of estimates: from $4 million to $9 million (in prices 2000) in one life . Similar estimates are obtained when analyzing decisions about purchasing cars, installing fire-fighting equipment, purchasing real estate taking into account the environmental situation, etc. The reliability of these estimates is so high that the US government uses cost-of-living methodology when making decisions about investment projects in important areas - security environment, healthcare, transport safety.

Conducting such studies in Russia is not yet possible. However, you can try to estimate the cost of living of a Russian using American data. An analysis of the average cost of living for various samples of Americans (see the aforementioned work by Kip Viscusi and Joseph Aldi) shows that the income elasticity of the cost of living is only ½, rather than unity (as would be expected under “human capital” theory). Translated into everyday language, this means that the cost of living of those who earn 1% more is only 0.5% higher, and when income increases 4 times, the cost of living only doubles (you need to raise 4 to the power of 0.5, that is, take Square root from 4). It turns out that the cost of living of a Russian is approximately 3 times lower than that of an American (3 is the square root of the ratio of GDP per capita in Russia and the USA in 2004 .). That is, it ranges from $1.3 million to $3 million.. Consequently, the demands of the relatives of the people who died at the Dubrovka Theater Center cannot be considered excessive. And the amount of insurance payments to the relatives of military personnel participating in hostilities turns out to be an order of magnitude or two lower than the fair amount.

One can, of course, argue that Russia is not the United States and extrapolation of American data is not entirely legitimate. Then let's try to compare the obtained estimates with studies concerning less developed countries? For obvious reasons, calculating the cost of average life for developing countries is very difficult. Reliable estimates are obtained for India only. The lowest estimate of the cost of living for an Indian is $1 million. Considering that India lags behind Russia in terms of GDP per capita by four times, then extrapolation of Indian data allows one to estimate the life of a Russian at $2 million or more. This figure, as we see, fits into the range of $1.3-3 million that we previously received.

Why is it so difficult to compare Russia with developed countries? Let's take the statistics of road traffic accidents (RTAs) as an example. In Russia, more than 30,000 people die on the roads every year, and in Sweden - less than 600 people. At the same time, there are only three times fewer cars in Sweden than in Russia. To reduce mortality in road accidents, not so much expenditure is needed. Even in a very prosperous situation road safety Britain still has the opportunity to reduce its death rate by spending about $150,000 per life saved. In Russia, reducing mortality would be much cheaper.

The main thing, however, is not that our lives are valued extremely low by the state, but that we often do not value our lives ourselves. This is evidenced by the everyday habits of our drivers: they do not like to fasten seat belts, they drive drunk, they drive oncoming lane. When you don’t value your own life, you have the same disdain for someone else’s: the average Russian driver does not consider it his duty to give way to pedestrians and ambulances rushing to respond to a call.

The list of evidence that we do not value our lives can be continued indefinitely: smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, neglect of fire safety rules.

Chapter VIII.

Saving life.

Life on Earth is a great miracle. So far, humanity does not know any places in the universe where life could exist other than Earth. Now it is becoming absolutely clear that the functioning of the biosphere, the concept of which was developed at one time by V.I. Vernadsky, is based on the position that the biosphere on Earth exists precisely thanks to the enormous diversity of living beings, from the simplest to the most complex, including - person. Human impact on nature, on the environment, on the biosphere will increase all the time, and our main task is to understand the meaning of this phenomenon and do so to reduce this negative impact. WITH The modern biosphere has several degrees of protection:

The 1st degree of protection is its stepwise, hierarchical organization, from simple to complex. If you look at the organization of the biosphere from the point of view of modern science, it can be imagined in the form of a pyramid, at the base of which lie the simplest organisms that easily adapt to environmental changes; and this peak is completed by a person who has the strongest influence on the biosphere, either turning it into the sphere of reason - into the noosphere, or finally leading it to degradation.
The 2nd degree of protection of the biosphere is the extraordinary diversity of living organisms and their ability to adapt to a wide variety of environmental conditions.
The lower floors of this “biosphere pyramid” are composed of millions and millions various types. The higher up the pyramid, the fewer and fewer species there are. And this decrease in biodiversity and simplification of the hierarchy of the biosphere leads to the fact that its upper parts, especially humans, are the most vulnerable and most easily injured.To preserve life, a clear balance of temperature, oxygen and other factors is necessary. If the Earth were just a couple of grains closer to the Sun, then all the water on earth would evaporate, oxygen would disappear and there would be deserts. If the Earth were a little further from the Sun, it would turn into a lifeless block of ice. In addition, the earth's atmosphere constantly protects us from various cosmic radiation and gases. Yes, yes, radiation! There are many different types of radiation in open space that can kill all living things. Solar radiation, alpha, beta, gamma particles. All this in large doses kills a person. Therefore, the astronauts, when entering open space wear special protective suits. And all inhabitants of the earth are protected from these radiations by the earth’s atmosphere.But the earth's atmosphere is not eternal. Every year it becomes thinner and thinner. Various magnetic storms are reaching the earth more and more often. You've probably heard about these from weather forecasts.And the atmosphere is drying up because of our fault. Cars, factories, environmental pollution, deforestation. All this affects our atmosphere negatively.

Conclusion.

Claiming that " The greatest value in the world is life: someone else’s, one’s own, the life of the animal world and plants, the life of culture, life throughout its entire length - in the past, in the present, and in the future." D.S. Likhachev was absolutely right. Combinations of living things There are an infinite number of creatures, but they meet only once. A person must try to do everything in his power to preserve this diversity of life and not destroy our planet.

List of used literature.

DI. Likhachev "Letters about the good and the beautiful"

- A.I. Oparin “The Emergence of Life”

Journals, diaries and notes of Francesco Redi

Journals, diaries and notes of Louis Pasteur

V.N. Bolshakov " Preservation of the Earth's biodiversity as the most important problem of the 21st century»