Passionarity has one important property. What is passionarity and who is a passionary. What does this term mean

Passionate personality

AT last years in a variety of places you can hear the word "passionary". Number of bold projects that seem controversial common sense, is constantly increasing. Increasingly, you can meet people who can take on non-commercial, but good, correct and really interesting things, who say something strange about the path, purpose and talent ...

It's intriguing and infectious. What is it - "passionary spirit"? The concept of passionarity was once proposed by Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov. This term comes from "passio" - passion.

Passionarity is the ability and desire to change the environment, the violation of inertia, the potential for progress and activity, the internal desire for activity aimed at the realization of a super-important, distant, irrational goal.

A passionate person is a person, a person of an "energy-abundant" type, risky, active, enthusiastic to the point of obsession, who is able to make sacrifices in order to achieve what he considers valuable.

A passionary cannot live in peace with everyday worries without an alluring and captivating goal - he is a hero and will not stand up for the price. Moreover, he can sacrifice not only himself and his interests, but also others. “Excesses” are possible, when passionarity gets out of control of expediency and turns from a creative force into a destructive one.

The degrees of passionarity can be different, but in order for it to be visible in history, many passionaries are needed. In other words, this is not only an individual trait, but also a population one. People with this trait, in favorable conditions, perform actions that in total change the inertia of tradition and create something new - for example, they initiate new ethnic groups. Therefore, there is the concept of "social passionarity".

Whether passionarity is inherited is not yet clear, but it is known that it is contagious. Ordinary people who are close to the epicenter begin to behave like passionate people. At the same time, if a person moves away at a certain distance, then he again behaves as usual. This phenomenon is called "passionary induction" and is actively used. In military affairs, for example, when several passionaries, by their example, set fire to and raise an entire army.

The role of passionaries in initiating and developing transitions and breakthroughs is enormous, but their number in the general human mass is negligible. They are doomed, they perish uncontrollably and burn.

The main social mass is formed by people of a harmonious type (those in whom the desire for self-preservation and the impulse of passionarity are balanced) - not overactive, reproducing offspring, who multiply material values ​​according to existing patterns, improve the quality of life, accommodating.

And in the phases of regression and stagnation, the majority are represented by “subpassionaries” - people with a lack of energy (with negative passionarity) - they are inert, devoid of imagination, incapable of creation, but they know how to serve for money, create and maintain rules that protect them from threats to personal comfort, "spectators of circus performances and recipients of bread", those who preach life for themselves, insanely indifferent and calm ...

According to the law formulated by Gumilyov, the total "work" performed by the people (ethnos) is in direct proportion to the "passionate tension". There are various degrees and stages of passionary tension. There are only seven of them: the first - the phase of recovery - the growth of passionary tension; acromatic phase - stabilization of the voltage level at the highest level; fracture phase - the beginning of a decrease in passionary tension; then the inertial phase - the inexorable reduction of tension, the strengthening of social institutions and state power, the accumulation of cultural and material values; the phase of obscuration (even degradation) - an increase in the number of subpassionaries and a fall in passionarity below the zero level; regeneration phase - restoration of passionarity for a short time due to the surviving passionaries on the periphery of the system; relic phase - setting the passionary voltage at the lowest level and vegetation.

However, we must not forget that the result of the growth of passionarity of society may be a war or a revolution.

There are ideas about the possibility of creating "passionary reactors" - generators of social energy, where passionarity can grow and be maintained without becoming dangerous.

So far, the concept of passionarity has not been accepted by any scientific community, although no one has experimented. But it might be interesting. "Passionary reactors" that work in a certain social environment and transform into society - one could try.

But, perhaps, everything is already happening - an infrastructure is being built that attracts passionaries. Communities, business incubators, networks, like-minded movements, clubs - these are all social and energy clusters. This is not a "reactor" yet, but already a way of accumulating energy, including through induction - infection. This is where the feeling of the most “passionate spirit” comes from, which is concentrated in certain places.

Time will tell if something revolutionary comes out of this after a while or if it will just be a gradual transformation.

More than is required only for personal and species self-preservation, and to give out this energy in the form of purposeful work to modify their environment. They judge the increased passionarity of a person by the characteristics of his behavior and psyche.

Passionaries are people of a new warehouse in the population and break the established way of life, because of which they come into conflict with society. They are organized into groups consortia), those, in turn, become the nuclei of new ethnic groups, usually formed 130-160 years after the “shock”, and put forward ideologies that become their dominants.

In the context [ clarify] the definition is used in the meaning of "entrepreneurial, active and risky people who strive to complete the task, overcoming the fear of death."

Sources

There are or external references in this article or section, but the sources of individual statements remain unclear due to the lack of footnotes. Statements not , may be questioned and removed. You can improve the article by adding more precise references to the sources.

• Gumilyov L. N. Ethnogenesis and biosphere of the Earth. - St. Petersburg. : Crystal, 2001. - ISBN 5-306-00157-2.
• Michurin V. A.. - M., 1993.

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An excerpt characterizing Passionaries

On the same evening, Pierre went to the Rostovs to fulfill his assignment. Natasha was in bed, the count was in the club, and Pierre, having handed over the letters to Sonya, went to Marya Dmitrievna, who was interested in finding out how Prince Andrei received the news. Ten minutes later Sonya came in to Marya Dmitrievna.
“Natasha certainly wants to see Count Pyotr Kirillovich,” she said.
- Yes, how can I bring him to her? It’s not tidied up there,” said Marya Dmitrievna.
“No, she got dressed and went out into the living room,” said Sonya.
Marya Dmitrievna only shrugged her shoulders.
- When this Countess arrives, she completely exhausted me. Look, don’t tell her everything, ”she turned to Pierre. - And scolding her spirit is not enough, so pitiful, so pitiful!
Natasha, emaciated, with a pale and stern face (not at all ashamed as Pierre expected her), stood in the middle of the living room. When Pierre appeared at the door, she hurried, obviously undecided whether to approach him or wait for him.
Pierre hastily approached her. He thought that she, as always, would give him a hand; but, coming close to him, she stopped, breathing heavily and dropping her hands lifelessly, in exactly the same position in which she went out into the middle of the hall to sing, but with a completely different expression.
“Pyotr Kirilych,” she began to say quickly, “Prince Bolkonsky was your friend, he is your friend,” she corrected herself (it seemed to her that everything had just happened, and that now everything is different). - He told me then to turn to you ...
Pierre sniffed silently, looking at her. He still reproached her in his soul and tried to despise her; but now he felt so sorry for her that there was no room for reproach in his soul.
"He's here now, tell him... to just... forgive me." She stopped and began to breathe even faster, but did not cry.
“Yes ... I will tell him,” Pierre said, but ... “He did not know what to say.

Passionaries, Harmonics, Subpassionaries
All people have passionarity, but in different doses. Passionarity manifests itself in different qualities in lust for power, pride, vanity, envy. Passionarity leaves no room for inaction and indifference.
Wikipedia says "Passionarians - in the passionary theory of ethnogenesis, people who have the innate ability to absorb more energy from the external environment than is required only for personal and species self-preservation, and give out this energy in the form of purposeful work to modify their environment. They judge increased passionarity of this or that person according to the characteristics of his behavior and psyche.
The term was introduced by L. N. Gumilyov to explain the collective processes that caused the resettlement and power-creation of the nomadic Turkic-speaking peoples. The idea has been developed, especially among Asian authors. For example, R. Rahmanaliev in his work "The Empire of the Turks".
In older historical schools, the reasons for the processes of the beginning of migrations were sought in purely material processes - crop failure, loss of livestock (famine), attacks by more militant neighbors. Gumilyov and his followers "add" to these indisputable facts a certain spiritual "readiness" of a large part of the ethnic group for fundamental changes, in particular, for parting with their native places. Precisely the presence a large number of such "charged" for change passionaries is the last straw that overflows the cup. But their number must be large enough, since the leader-innovator must be supported. Otherwise, he will end his life as an outcast.
Over time, the term, contrary to the primary interpretation, began to be used in a cultural context. This contradicts the idea of ​​Gumilyov, who divided the process into several stages according to the level of "passionarity", initially growing and involving other peoples in the process, and then decreasing, which leads to the creation of a state and settled way of life. A further decline in "passionarity" led to a gradual "erosion" of the mass of aggressors, often to their acceptance of foreign cultural values, religion, and even language. Cases of complete assimilation with the conquered have been recorded, as, for example, in China.
The flourishing of cultures is characteristic of the beginning of the period of decline of "internal intensity" and mainly among the conquered peoples. This phenomenon of development arises "under the auspices" of the invaders, but on their own national soil. The achievement of the initial "passionaries" is the areas necessary for the existence of the state - accounting (finance and taxation), office work, law enforcement agencies, postal communications. This is how the system of post "pits" came to Eastern Europe - permanent stations with interchangeable horses located at a distance of a day's equestrian crossing, serving primarily state "coachmen". We also note the reasonable preservation by the invaders of the local self-government system, and often the ruling elite.
The idea of ​​"passionaries" - inventors and creators is a later one and does not have sufficient confirmation. Passionaries easily adapt and borrow innovations from the conquered peoples, but they themselves do not succeed in them. For example, the Mongols, who had no experience in creating siege machines (in the East Slavic annals of "vices") captured them from the Chinese and entrusted maintenance and operation to Chinese masters.
In fact, passionaries are individuals of an energy-surplus, active social type. The antipode of a passionary is a subpassionary, an individual of an energy-deficient type. According to Podolinsky, a passionary is the most active subject of a social movement of a productive type - inventors, discoverers, creators who contribute to the accumulation and transformation of energy and the rationalization of life. Such passionaries are opposed to energy wasters, money-grubbers of a parasitic type.
Passionaries are people of a new warehouse in the population and break the established way of life, because of which they come into conflict with society. They organize themselves into groups (consortia), which, in turn, become the nuclei of new ethnic groups, usually formed 130-160 years after the “shock”, and put forward ideologies that become their dominants.
In the context, the definition is used in the meaning of "entrepreneurial, active and risky people who strive to complete the task, overcoming the fear of death."
L. N. Gumilyov in his books develops the provisions of the unique theory of passionarity: "Passionarity as a measure of activity and resistance.
For the purposes of our analysis, it is advisable to confine ourselves to dividing into two groups that have different signs. The first is a set of needs that ensure the self-preservation of the individual and the species - "needs of need"; the second - motives of a different kind, due to which the intellectual assimilation of the unknown and the complication of the internal organization take place - the "need for growth", what F. M. Dostoevsky described in The Brothers Karamazov as the "need for knowledge", because "the secret of human existence is not only to live, but in what to live for”, and at the same time “to settle down by all means worldwide”, because a person needs a community of ideals.
To reveal the goals and meaning of life, it is necessary to take into account the amount of "egoism" in each person.
The formation of goals and meanings is always associated with the presence in some individuals of an irresistible inner desire for purposeful activity, always associated with a change in the environment, social or natural, and the achievement of the intended goal, often illusory or destructive for the subject himself, seems to him more valuable than even his own life. Such a phenomenon, which is certainly rare, is a deviation from the species norm of behavior, because the described impulse is in opposition to the instinct of self-preservation and, therefore, has the opposite sign. It can be associated with both increased abilities (talent) and average ones, and this shows its independence among other impulses of behavior described in psychology. This feature has never been described or analyzed anywhere so far. However, it is he who underlies the anti-egoistic ethics, where the interests of the collective, even if misunderstood, prevail over the thirst for life and concern for their own offspring.
Passionarity is a passion, any strong desire, without animal instincts. Animal instincts stimulate selfish ethics and whims, which are symptoms of a loose psyche, as well as mental illness. Passionarity, of course, is a deviation from the species norm, but by no means a pathological phenomenon.
F. ENGELS ON THE ROLE OF HUMAN PASSIONS
Engels vividly describes the power of human passions and their role in history: "...civilization has done such things to which the ancient tribal society has not grown even to the remotest degree. But it did them, setting in motion the basest motives and passions of people and developing them to the detriment of all their other inclinations. Low greed has been the driving force of civilization from its first day to this day; wealth, once more wealth and thrice wealth, the wealth not of society, but of this particular miserable individual, was its only defining goal. In the depths of this society, science developed more and more and periods of the highest flowering of art were repeated, only because without this all the achievements of our time in the field of wealth accumulation would be impossible.
This thought permeates the fabric of Engels' work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. He points out that it was the "greedy desire for wealth" that led to the emergence of antagonistic classes. Speaking about the fall of the tribal system in society (in a society where functioning ethnic groups are, in our opinion, in a phase of homeostasis), Engels wrote: “The power of this primitive community must be broken, and it was broken. But it was broken under such influences that directly appear to us as a decline, a fall into sin compared with the high moral level of the old tribal society.
- vulgar greed, rude passion for pleasure, dirty stinginess, selfish desire to plunder the common property - are the recipients of the new civilized class society; the most vile means - theft, violence, deceit, treason - undermine the old classless tribal society and lead it to destruction.
This is how Engels viewed the progressive development of mankind. Greed is an emotion rooted in the subconscious, a function of higher nervous activity, lying on the verge of psychology and physiology. Equivalent emotions are greed, passion for pleasure, stinginess, self-interest, mentioned by Engels, as well as lust for power, ambition, envy, vanity. From the philistine positions, these are "bad feelings", but from the philosophical - "bad" or "good" there can only be motives for actions, moreover, conscious and freely chosen, and emotions can only be "pleasant" or "unpleasant", and then it depends on what they generate deeds. And actions can be and are very different, including those that are objectively useful for the team. For example, vanity makes the artist seek the approval of the audience and thus improve his talent. Lust for power stimulates activity politicians sometimes necessary for government decisions. Greed leads to the accumulation of material values, and so on. After all, all these feelings are modes of passionarity, characteristic of almost all people, but in extremely different doses. Passionarity can manifest itself in a variety of character traits, giving rise to exploits and crimes, creation, good and evil with equal ease, but leaving no room for inaction and calm indifference.
Hegel expressed himself just as categorically in his lectures on the philosophy of history: “We affirm that nothing in general was carried out without the interest of those who participated in their activity, and since we call interest passion, since individuality, pushing into the background all other interests and goals that this individuality also has and can have, wholly devotes himself to the subject, concentrates all his forces and needs on this goal - then we must generally say that nothing great in the world is accomplished without passion.
In the cited description of the sociopsychological mechanism, despite all its colorfulness, there is an important defect. Hegel reduces passion to "interest", and under this word in the 19th century. the desire to acquire material goods was understood, which precludes the possibility of self-sacrifice. And it is no coincidence that some followers of Hegel began to exclude sincerity and selfless sacrifice for the sake of the object of their passion from the motives of the behavior of historical figures. Such a vulgarization, which unfortunately has become a common misconception, stems from the vagueness of the German philosopher's formulation.
Yes, ideas are lights in the night, beckoning to new and new achievements, and not chains that fetter movement and creativity. Respect for predecessors consists in continuing their feat, and not forgetting what they did and why. Passionary is not understood even by his "friends" and neighbors.
So, passionarity is the ability and desire to change the environment, or, translating into the language of physics, to violate the inertia of the state of aggregation of the environment. The impulse of passionarity is so strong that the carriers of this sign - passionaries cannot force themselves to calculate the consequences of their actions. This is a very important circumstance indicating that passionarity
- an attribute not of consciousness, but of the subconscious, an important feature, expressed in the specifics of the constitution of nervous activity. The degrees of passionarity are different, but in order for it to have visible and recorded manifestations in history, it is necessary that there be many passionaries, i.e. This is not only an individual trait, but also a population one.
The internal pressure of passionarity is stronger than the instinct of self-preservation, and respect for the laws, brought up in it by culture and custom.
The passionary is extremely vain and envious, but these qualities are only manifestations of passionarity. This means that it is not individual passionaries who do great things, but the general mood that can be called the level of passionary tension.
Passionaries serve as a center of attraction for a large number of people, using their push energy and wasting the momentum received.
Passionate tension
Passionaries, on the other hand, are characterized by devoting themselves to one or another goal, sometimes pursued throughout their lives. This makes it possible to characterize this or that era in the aspect of passionarity.
PASSIONARY INDUCTION
Passionarity has an important property: it is contagious. This means that people who are harmonious (and to an even greater extent, impulsive), being in close proximity to passionaries, begin to behave as if they were passionate. But as soon as a sufficient distance separates them from the passionaries, they acquire their natural psycho-ethnic behavioral appearance. Passionary induction manifests itself everywhere. This well-known phenomenon is explained by the passionary induction and resonance noted by us. And they make it possible to understand the significance of organic passionaries, who are the "seed" for those whom passionarity has infected. Without the first ones, the second ones crumble apart as soon as the generator of passionary induction has disappeared and the inertia of resonance has dried up. And this usually happens very quickly.
WAYS TO LOSE PASSIONARITY
Passionaries are doomed. Correctly!
So, passionarity is not just "bad inclinations", but an important hereditary trait that brings new combinations to life. ethnic substrates transforming them into new super-ethnic systems. Now we know where to look for its cause: ecology and the conscious activity of individual people disappear. There remains a wide area of ​​the subconscious, but not individual, but collective, and the duration of the action of the inertia of the passionary impulse is calculated in centuries. Consequently, passionarity is a biological trait, and the initial impetus that breaks the inertia of rest is the appearance of a generation that includes a certain number of passionate individuals. By the very fact of their existence, they violate the familiar environment, because they cannot live with everyday worries, without a goal that captivates them. The need to resist the environment forces them to unite and act in accordance; this is how a primary consortium arises, quickly acquiring certain social forms, prompted by the level of social development of a given era. The activity generated by passionary tension, under favorable circumstances, puts this consortium in the most advantageous position, while scattered passionaries, not only in antiquity, "were either expelled from the tribes or simply killed." The situation is approximately the same in a class society. This was noted by Pushkin, writing: "... mediocrity alone is within our reach and is not strange ..." ("Eugene Onegin", Chapter Eight, IX).
INDIVIDUALS HARMONIOUS
When passionarity gets out of control of reasonable expediency and turns from a creative force into a destructive one. Then harmonious individuals turn out to be the saviors of their ethnic groups, but also to a certain limit.
The people of this warehouse are an extremely important element. They moderate flashes of passionarity, multiply material values ​​according to already created samples. They may well do without passionaries until an external enemy appears.
It must be remembered that increased vulnerability does not always contribute to prosperity.
"DEGENERATES", "TRAMPS", "TRAMPS-SOLDIERS";
Finally, ethnic groups almost always include a category of people with "negative" passionarity. In other words, their actions are controlled by impulses, the vector of which is opposite to the passionary tension.
Such consequences and, accordingly, a change in the ideal are given by the loss of passionary tension by the system. The slogan "life for yourself" is an easy way to black death.
Passionarity of an individual is associated with any abilities: high, small, medium; it does not depend on external influences, being a feature of the human constitution; it has nothing to do with ethical standards, equally easily giving rise to feats and crimes, creativity and destruction, good and evil, excluding only indifference; and it does not make a person a "hero" leading the "crowd", because the majority of passionaries are precisely in the composition of the "crowd", determining its potency and degree of activity at one time or another. The group of subpassionaries in history is most colorfully represented by "tramps" and professional mercenary senates (landsknechts). They do not change or preserve it, but exist at its expense. Due to their mobility, they often play an important role in the destinies of ethnic groups, making conquests and coups together with passionaries. But if passionaries can prove themselves without subpassionaries, then those without passionaries are nothing. They are capable of begging or robbery, the victims of which are carriers of zero passionarity, i.e. the bulk of the population. But in this case, the "tramps" are doomed: they are hunted down and destroyed. However, they appear in every generation.
GRADATIONS OF PASSIONARITY
Typical passionaries, but by no means "heroes" and not "leaders" are: A miserly knight obsessed with greed; Don Juan, striving for love victories for the sake of victories; Salieri killing Mozart out of envy; Aleko, out of jealousy, stabbed Zemfira. Pushkin’s passionaries and leaders, although not heroes, are Mazepa and Pugachev (very far from historical prototypes), and Grinev and Masha Mironova, who risk their lives for the sake of duty, are heroes, but not passionaries. An example of a passionary and a hero, although a king, but not a "leader" is Charles XII, "a lover of swearing glory - throwing a crown for a helmet", i.e. sacrificing the interests of his country to his vanity. The latter is opposed by Peter I - a harmonious personality, fulfilling his duty to Russia, much stronger than Charles XII, following his own whims. So - in the interpretation of Pushkin, and this is close to reality, because, with the exception of personal traits: excitability, childish cruelty, etc., Peter was like his father, i.e. was a man of his time and continued one of the lines of the Russian cultural tradition - rapprochement with Europe, which arose at the beginning of the 17th century. under Mikhail Fedorovich. But at the same time, Peter was surrounded by passionaries, for example, Menshikov, Romodanovsky, Kikin, but they were neither leaders nor heroes. Neither according to Pushkin, nor in reality. Therefore, the comparison of passionaries with leaders is a speculation, the purpose of which is to reduce the description of one of the behavioral signs to a banal, long discarded theory.
And no less absurd is another, the opposite point of view, which reduces all the motives of the actions of the most different people to the desire to obtain benefits, and the latter means only money and equivalent values. This vulgar position of the subpassionary layman is often passed off as materialism, with which it actually has nothing in common. The layman, as a rule, is devoid of imagination.
He cannot and does not want to imagine that there are people who are not like him, driven by other ideals and not striving for other goals than money. The concept of immediate benefit has never been precisely formulated, because then its absurdity would become obvious, but as a matter of course it appears in reasoning on any occasion and even in scientific constructions, which is why it requires attention.
Passionarity decay
FLASH AND ASH
Now we can say that the "starting moment" of ethnogenesis is the sudden appearance of a self-population of a certain number of passionaries and subpassionaries; lifting phase - a rapid increase in the number of passionate individuals as a result of either reproduction or incorporation; akmatic phase - the maximum number of passionaries; the breaking phase is a sharp decrease in their number and their displacement by subpassionaries: the inertial phase is a slow decrease in the number of passionar individuals; the phase of obscuration is the almost complete replacement of passionaries by subpassionaries, who, due to the peculiarities of their warehouse, either destroy the entire ethnos, or do not have time to destroy it before the invasion of foreigners from outside. In the second case, a relic remains, consisting of harmonious individuals and included in the biocenosis of the region inhabited by it as the upper, final link.
This intra-ethnic evolution was carried out by all ethnic groups, which we consider primitive only because their unrecorded history is drowning in the mists of time. But we observe the same picture in history, and this is especially clearly seen in sub-ethnic entities, for example, in the Siberian Cossacks.
How to explain the discrepancy between the "flourishing" of the passionate and the creative?
PASSIONARITY IS WEAK. BUT EFFECTIVE
The creative burning of Gogol and Dostoevsky, the voluntary asceticism of Newton, the fractures of Vrubel and Mussorgsky are also examples of the manifestation of passionarity, for the feat of science or art requires sacrifice, like the feat of "direct action". In the processes of ethnogenesis, scientists and artists also play an important role, although a different one than the figures of political history. They give their ethnos a specific coloring and thus either distinguish it from others or contribute to interethnic communication, due to which superethnic wholes and cultures arise. Passionaries, although of lesser intensity, include the nameless builders of Gothic cathedrals, ancient Russian architects, writers of fairy tales, etc., who chose these difficult professions out of inner attraction. It is clear that they also include talented chroniclers who fall into this section according to the classification we have adopted.
Let us pay attention to the relatively weak, but creative degrees of passionary tension of the system. There are two of them: one is on the rise to the "overheating" of the system, which we will call the "acmatic phase", and the second is in the break, marking the transition to the phase, which we called the "inertial". Figuratively speaking, both points of interest to us are the inflections of the growth curve (plus or minus) of the passionarity of the ethnic system, and even with a decline to a complete loss of tension, it is still far away. With a relatively low level of passionarity, the stereotype of behavior and the social imperative of a person are not such as to imperceptibly push him to voluntary death for the sake of his own chosen ideal or even illusory goal. But the passionary tension present in the ethnos of this period is enough to strive for this goal and at least slightly change the reality surrounding it. Here, if a person has the appropriate abilities, he indulges in science or art in order to convince and charm his contemporaries.
Poems, paintings, theatrical performances - all this affects the perceiving people and changes them, and we do not raise the question here: for better or for worse? If these abilities are absent, a person accumulates wealth, makes a career, etc. Historical epochs, where this level of passionarity dominates, are considered as the flourishing of culture, but they are always followed by one of two possible cruel periods: either with the rise of passionarity, the already described “overheating” occurs, or with its slow decline, a decline occurs.
We have shown that a person of even greater passionary tension cannot do anything if he does not find a response from his fellow tribesmen. Namely, art is a tool for the appropriate mood; it makes hearts beat in unison. And therefore it can be argued that Dante and Michelangelo did no less than Caesar Borgia and Machiavelli for the integration of the Italian ethnos. And it was not for nothing that the Hellenes honored Homer and Hesiod along with Lycurgus and Solok, and the ancient Persians even preferred Zarathustra to Darius I Hystaspa. While passionarity permeates the ethnos in different doses, there is development, which is expressed in creative achievements; but since there cannot be a poet without a reader, a scientist without a teacher and students, a prophet without a flock, and a commander without officers and soldiers, the mechanism of development lies not in these or those persons, but in the systemic integrity of an ethnos that has one degree or another passionary tension.
Subpassionaries are people who live without purpose and meaning.
Subpassionaries
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Subpassionaries - in the passionary theory of ethnogenesis, people who, due to their inability to absorb from environment sufficient amount of energy cannot fully adapt to the environment. Subpassionarity (lack of energy) is manifested in the inability to restrain instinctive desires, in antisocial behavior, parasitism, and insufficient care for offspring. People of this type are well known in all eras and are found in almost all ethnic groups. They are called tramps, tramps, homeless people, etc. They usually accumulate in major cities where there is an opportunity to live without working, but parasitizing, and have fun. Such a concentration of subpassionaries leads to a huge increase in alcoholism, situational crime, drug addiction, and natural unrest. All these are consequences of the main feature of subpassionaries - the inability to control their desires, even if their satisfaction is to the detriment of themselves and others.
Harmonious individuals (harmonics) - individuals whose passionary impulse is equal in magnitude to the impulse of the self-preservation instinct. (V. Ermolaev. Dictionary concepts and terms of ethnogenesis, 1989).
Passionarity is an attribute not of consciousness but of the subconscious. The instinct of self-preservation is absent - an anti-instinct, unbridled selfishness, but an attraction to truth and beauty. Attractiveness is an analogue of a passionary. Poets, truth-seekers, people with an irrepressible thirst for activity. Border guards. Pushkin was a passionary, Alexander the Great, The irrationality of behavior and not reason - he put glory above expediency. Passionarity is the ability to change the environment and circumstances, people burning with passion. The lifting phase is desperate, ready for the ideal of victory. victims for the sake of Attractiveness is analogous to passionarity, but they have more reasonable egoism.
Attractiveness - (from lat. attrahere - “attract”) - attractiveness, basically the natural state of something that does not cause irritation, but rather alluring, causing some kind of attraction, sympathy. Attractiveness - an attraction to the abstract values ​​​​of truth, beauty and justice. The property of a person to arouse sympathy and trust among other people

sustainable evolving systems;

hierarchical structures.

Ethnic systems, in general, not are the following units:

although they may be.

ethnic systems

The following types of ethnic systems are distinguished, in order of decreasing the level of the ethnic hierarchy: superethnos, ethnos, subethnos, convixia and consortia. The ethnic system is the result of the evolution of an ethnic unit of a lower order or the degradation of a higher system; it is contained in the higher level system and includes the lower level systems.

Superethnos The largest ethnic system. Consists of ethnic groups. The stereotype of behavior common to the entire superethnos is worldview of its members and defines their attitudes to the fundamental questions of life. Examples: Russian, European, Roman, Muslim superethnoi. Ethnos An ethnic system of a lower order, usually colloquially referred to as a people. Members of an ethnic group are united by a common stereotype of behavior that has a certain connection with the landscape (place of development of the ethnic group), and, as a rule, includes religion, language, political and economic structure. This stereotype of behavior is usually called the national character. sub-ethnos, convixia and consortium parts of an ethnic group, usually rigidly tied to a certain landscape and connected by a common life or fate. Examples: Pomors, Old Believers, Cossacks.

Ethnic systems of a higher order usually last longer than systems of a lower one. In particular, a consortium may not outlive its founders.

Forms of ethnic contacts

They are not terms and an object of study of PTE, although Lev Gumilyov introduced them into the scientific circulation of sociology [ ]

Symbiosis- a combination of ethnic groups, in which each occupies its own ecological niche, its own landscape, while fully preserving its national identity. In symbiosis, ethnic groups interact and enrich each other. It is the optimal form of contact, which increases the life opportunities of each of the peoples.

Ethnic anti-systems

It is not a term and an object of study of PTE, although Lev Gumilyov introduced this term into the scientific circulation of philosophy [ ]

L. N. Gumilyov also proposed a more subtle classification on the basis of passionarity, including its nine levels.

Level	Name	Explanation	Description
6	sacrificial	highest level	man is willing to sacrifice his own life without hesitation. Examples of such personalities are Jan Hus, Joan of Arc, Archpriest Avvakum, Ivan Susanin
5			a person is quite ready to risk his life for the sake of achieving complete superiority, but he is incapable of going to certain death. These are Patriarch Nikon, Joseph Stalin and others.
4	superheat level / akmatic phase / transient		The same as 5, but on a smaller scale - striving for the ideal of success. Examples are Leonardo da Vinci, A. S. Griboyedov, S. Yu. Witte, Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander Suvorov.
3	break phase		the desire for the ideal of knowledge and beauty and below (what L. N. Gumilyov called “passionarity is weak, but effective”). Here you don’t have to go far for examples - these are all major scientists, artists, writers, musicians, etc.
2	seeking fortune at the risk of one's life		This is a seeker of happiness, a catcher of fortune, a colonial soldier, a desperate traveler who is still able to risk his life.
1			passionaries striving for improvement without risk to life
0	common man	zero level	a quiet person, fully adapted to the surrounding landscape. Quantitatively, it prevails in almost all phases of ethnogenesis (except for obscuration (the time of the final loss of passionarity)), but it is only in inertia and homeostasis that it determines the behavior of the ethnos.
-1	subpassionaries		still capable of some action, adaptation to the landscape
-2	subpassionaries		incapable of action, change. Gradually, with their mutual extermination and the pressure of external causes, either the death of the ethnic group occurs, or the harmonists (the inhabitants) take their toll.

L. N. Gumilyov repeatedly drew attention to the fact that passionarity does not correlate in any way with the abilities of the individual, and called passionaries - "people of long will." There can be a smart layman and a rather stupid "scientist", a strong-willed subpassionary and a weak-willed "altar", as well as vice versa; these are neither mutually exclusive nor presupposing each other. Also, passionarity does not determine such an important part of the psychotype as temperament: it only, apparently, creates a reaction norm for this trait, and a specific manifestation is determined by external conditions.

Passionate pushes

From time to time, mass mutations occur that increase the level of passionarity (passionary shocks). They last no longer than a few years, affect a narrow (up to 200 km) territory located along the geodesic line and stretching for several thousand kilometers. The features of their course indicate their conditionality by extraterrestrial processes. The mutational nature of the passionary push clearly follows from the fact that passionary populations do not appear on the surface of the Earth randomly, but simultaneously in places remote from each other, which are located in each such kurtosis on a territory that has the contours of an extended narrow strip and the geometry of a geodesic line, or a stretched thread. on a globe lying in a plane passing through the center of the earth. Perhaps from time to time a beam of hard radiation from a solar prominence hits the earth.

Passionary tremors described by L. N. Gumilyov (map legend):

I (XVIII century BC).

1. Egyptians -2 (Upper Egypt). The collapse of the Old Kingdom. Hyksos conquest of Egypt in the 17th century. New Kingdom. Capital at Thebes (1580) Change of religion. Cult of Osiris. Stop building the pyramids. Aggression in Numibia and Asia.
2. Hyksos (Jordan. Northern Arabia).
3. Hittites (Eastern Anatolia). The formation of the Hittites from several Hatto-Khurit tribes. Rise of Hattusa. Expansion into Asia Minor. Capture of Babylon.

II (XI century BC).

1. Zhou (Northern China: Shaanxi). Conquest of the Shang Yin Empire by the Zhou principality. The emergence of the cult of Heaven. An end to human sacrifice. Expansion of the range to the sea in the east, the Yangtze in the south, the desert in the north.
2. (?) Scythians (Central Asia).

III (VIII century BC).

1. Romans (central Italy). The appearance on the site of a diverse Italian (Latin-Sabino-Etruscan) population of the Roman community-army. The subsequent settlement in central Italy, the conquest of Italy, which ended with the formation of the Republic in 510 BC. e. Change of cult, organization of troops and political system. The emergence of the Latin alphabet.
2. Samnites (Italy).
3. Equy (Italy).
4. (?) Gauls (southern France).
5. Hellenes (middle Greece). The decline of the Achaean Cretan-Mycenaean culture in the 11th-9th centuries. BC e. Forgetting writing. The formation of the Dorian states of the Peloponnese (VIII century). Greek colonization of the Mediterranean. The emergence of the Greek alphabet. Reorganization of the pantheon of gods. Legislation. police lifestyle,
6. Cilicians (Asia Minor).
7. Persians (Persia). Education of the Medes and Persians. Deioces and Achaemen - the founders of the dynasties. Mussel expansion. Partition of Assyria. The rise of Persia on the site of Elam, which ended with the creation of the Achaemenid kingdom in the Middle East. Religion change. The cult of fire. Magi.

IV (III century BC).

1. Sarmatians (Kazakhstan). Invasion of European Scythia. Extermination of the Scythians. The appearance of heavy cavalry of the knightly type. Conquest of Iran by the Parthians. The emergence of estates.
2. Kushans - Sogdians (Central Asia).
3. Huns (southern Mongolia). Formation of the Xiongnu tribal union. Encounter with China.
4. Goguryeo (southern Manchuria, North Korea). The rise and fall of the ancient Korean state of Joseon (III-II centuries BC). The formation of tribal unions on the site of the mixed Tungus-Manchu-Korean-Chinese population, which later grew into the first Korean states of Koguryo, Silla, Paekche.

V (I century).

1. Goths (southern Sweden). Resettlement ready from Baltic Sea to the Black (II century). Wide borrowing of ancient culture, which ended with the adoption of Christianity. Creation of the Gothic Empire in Eastern Europe.
2. Slavs. Wide distribution from the Carpathians to the Baltic, Mediterranean and Black Seas.
3. Dacians (modern Romania).
4. Christians (Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine). The emergence of Christian communities. Break with Judaism. The formation of the institution of the church. Expansion beyond the Roman Empire.
5. Judea -2 (Judea). Renewal of the cult and worldview. The emergence of the Talmud. War with Rome. Widespread emigration outside of Judea.
6. Aksumites (Abyssinia). Rise of Aksum. Wide expansion to Arabia, Nubia, access to the Red Sea. Later (IV century) the adoption of Christianity.

VI (VI century).

1. Muslim Arabs (Central Arabia). Unification of the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula. Religion change. Islam. Expansion to Spain and the Pamirs.
2. Rajputs (Indus Valley). The fall of the Gupta empire. Destruction of the Buddhist community in India. The complication of the caste system with political fragmentation. Creation of the religious philosophy of Vedanta. Trinity monotheism: Brahma, Shiva, Vishnu.
3. Bots (southern Tibet). Monarchical coup with administrative and political reliance on Buddhists. Expansion into Central Asia and China.
4. Chinese -2 (northern China: Shaanxi, Shandong). In place of the almost extinct population of northern China, two new ethnic groups appeared: the Sino-Turkic (Tabgachi) and the medieval Chinese, which grew out of the Guanlong group. The Tabgachis created the Tang Empire by uniting all of China and Central Asia. Spread of Buddhism, Indian and Turkic customs. Opposition of Chinese chauvinists. The death of a dynasty.
5. Koreans. War for hegemony between the kingdoms of Silla, Baekje, Goguryeo. Resistance to Tang aggression. Unification of Korea under Silla. Assimilation of Confucian morality, intensive spread of Buddhism. Formation of a single language.
6. Yamato (Japanese). Taika coup. The emergence of a central state headed by a monarch. Acceptance of Confucian morality as state ethics. Wide spread of Buddhism. Expansion to the north. Termination of the construction of mounds.

A graph depicting the dependence of the passionarity of an ethnic system on the time of its existence. The abscissa shows the time in years, where the starting point of the curve corresponds to the moment of the passionary push that caused the appearance of the ethnos.
The ordinate shows the passionary tension of the ethnic system in three scales:
1) in qualitative characteristics from the level P2 (inability to satisfy desires) to the level P6 (sacrifice);
2) in the scale "the number of sub-ethnoi (subsystems of an ethnos) indexes n + 1, n + 3, etc., where n is the number of sub-ethnoi in the ethnos that is not affected by the shock and is in homeostasis;
3) in the scale "frequency of events in ethnic history".
This curve is a generalization of 40 individual ethnogenesis curves constructed for various superethnoi that arose as a result of various shocks.

VII (VIII century).

1. Spaniards (Asturias). Beginning of the Reconquista. The formation of the kingdoms: Asturias, Navarre, Leon and the counties of Portugal on the basis of a mixture of Spanish-Romans, Goths, Alans, Lusitanians, etc.
2. Saxons. The split of the empire of Charlemagne into national-feudal states. Reflection of Vikings, Arabs, Hungarians and Slavs. The split of Christianity into orthodox and papist branches.
3. Scandinavians (southern Norway, northern Denmark). The beginning of the Viking movement. The emergence of poetry and runic writing [ ] . Pushing the Lapps into the tundra.

VIII (XI century).

1. Mongols (Mongolia). The emergence of "people of long will." Unification of tribes into people-army. Creation of legislation - Yasa and writing. Expansion of the ulus from the Yellow to the Black Sea.
2. Jurchen (Manchuria). Formation of the Jin empire of the semi-Chinese type. Aggression to the south. conquest of northern China.
3. Samurai in Japan. After that, Japan illustrates the interference of the PT of the 7th and 11th centuries and, ultimately, the transition of Japanese ethnogenesis from the Yamato lineage to the Samurai lineage. For example, the Meiji revolution and the removal of the samurai from power is a sign of the breakdown of the samurai ethnogenesis.

IX (XIII century)

1. Lithuania. Creation of rigid princely power. Expansion of the ON from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Acceptance of Christianity. Merger with Poland.
2. Great Russians. disappearance Ancient Russia, captured by Lithuania (except Novgorod). The rise of the Moscow principality. The growth of the service class. Wide miscegenation of the Slavic, Turkic and Ugric population of Eastern Europe.
3. Ottoman Turks (west of Asia Minor). Consolidation by the Ottoman beylik of the active Muslim population of the Middle East, captive Slavic children (Janissaries) and sea vagrants of the Mediterranean (fleet). military sultanate. Ottoman Porta. The conquest of the Balkans, Western Asia and North Africa to Morocco.
4. Ethiopians (Amhara, Shoa in Ethiopia). Disappearance of Ancient Aksum. Revolution of the Solomons. Expansion of Ethiopian Orthodoxy. Rise and expansion of the kingdom of Abyssinia in East Africa.

In addition, in Gumilyov's writings, references to other shocks are scattered, for some reason not summarized by the author in a general table. These include the passionary push in Latin America who gave rise to the Aztecs, Incas and some other Indian ethnic groups; shock in South Africa at the end of the 18th century, which gave rise to the Zulu ethnos, etc. There are also mentions of shocks, which the author himself referred to as hypothetical, being not sure whether to connect some historical events such as the rise of the Almoravids or Ireland's resistance to conquest.

Fifth century, PT along the line Ireland-Wales-West Africa (Wales' resistance to the Norman conquest and the capture of Wales at the breaking stage)

Due to the huge rise in activity of China, Japan, Iran, Iraq, etc. etc. in the XIX-XX centuries. the issue of the tenth passionary push, which occurred at the end of the 18th century, is discussed. Some (the hypothesis belongs to V. A. Michurin) draw it along the line Japan - the Middle East, others (the hypothesis put forward by M. Khokhlov) - along a vertical line passing through the Caucasus. If we do not forget that the push has definitely passed through the territory of the Zulus, then the meridional character of South Africa-Grozny-Orienburg and the time of the middle of the 17th century will be more correct. According to V. A. Penezhin, there are two separate meridial drive impulses. Asian time is viewed - the middle of the 16th century and the line Manchuria - China - Vietnam - Kampuchea - Singapore - Malaysia (The capture of China by the Manchus, the beginning of the widespread spread of Islam in Indonesia)

Ethnogenesis

Initial conditions

The beginning of ethnogenesis is the formation of certain territory stable and capable of expanding the population with a stereotype of behavior different from those around them. For such an event, the following conditions must be met:

• the location of the territory on the line of passionary push or a powerful genetic drift of passionarity to the place where ethnogenesis began,
• a combination of two or more landscapes in an area,
• the presence of two or more ethnic groups in the territory.

Leakage

A typical ethnogenesis consists of the following stages:

Term	Name	Notes
0 years (start)	Push or drifting	As a rule, it is not reflected in history.
0-150 years	Incubation period	The growth of passion. Reflected only in myths.
150-450 years	Climb	The rapid growth of passionarity. Accompanied by heavy fighting and slow expansion of territory.
450-600 years	Akmatic phase, or overheat	Passionarity fluctuations around the maximum, exceeding the optimal level. Rapid increase in power.
600-750 years	Breakdown	A sharp decline in passionarity. Civil wars, the split of an ethnic unit.
750-1000 years	Inertial phase	Slow decline in passionarity at a level near the optimum. General prosperity.
1000-1150 years	obscuration	Passionarity decline below the normal level. Decline and degradation.
1150-1500 years	Memorial	Preservation of only the memory of the life of the ethnic group.
1150 years - indefinitely	Homeostasis	Existence in equilibrium with the environment.

Interaction of ethnic groups

The ways in which ethnic groups interact are determined by their level of passionarity, complementarity(relationship to each other at the level of emotions) and size. These methods include symbiosis, xenia and chimera.

Criticism of the passionary theory of ethnogenesis

Yanov points out that Gumilyov emphasizes the priority of the nation (ethnos) over the individual: “An ethnos as a system is immeasurably grander than a person”, is an opponent of cultural contacts between ethnic groups, and freedom for Gumilev is identical to anarchy: “An ethnos can ... in a collision with another ethnos form a chimera and to enter the “band of freedom” (in which) a behavioral syndrome arises, accompanied by the need to destroy nature and culture ... ”.

Theories of "chimeras", "anti-Semitism"

According to L.N. Gumilyov,

...exogamy, which is by no means related to "social conditions" and lies on a different plane, turns out to be a real destructive factor in contact at the superethnic level. And even in those rare cases when a new ethnic group appears in the contact zone, it absorbs, that is, destroys both of the former ones.

This statement is criticized by Y. Bromley and V. A. Shnirelman.

V. Shnirelman also accuses Gumilyov of anti-Semitism:

Although examples of "chimeric formations" are scattered throughout the text ... he chose only one plot related to the so-called "Khazar episode". However, due to its obvious anti-Semitic orientation, its publication had to be postponed, and the author devoted a good half of his later special monograph on the history of Ancient Russia to this subject.

• "Byzantism and Slavism" (Leontiev)
• "Russia and Europe" (Danilevsky)
• "The Decline of Europe" (Spengler)
• "Comprehension of history" (Toynbee)
• "Noosphere" (Vernadsky)

Notes

1. Gumilyov L. N.// Great Russian Encyclopedia, v.8 M., 2007, p.155.

   G.'s views, which went far beyond the traditional. scientific ideas, cause disputes and heated discussions among historians, ethnologists, etc.

2. Gumilyov Lev Nikolaevich in the encyclopedia " Around the World": "In the last years of the existence of the USSR, when Gumilyov's doctrine of ethnogenesis first became the object of public discussion, a paradoxical atmosphere developed around it. ... All scientists noted that despite the global nature of the theory and its apparent solidity (Gumilyov stated that his hypothesis is the result of a generalization of the history of more than 40 ethnic groups), it contains a lot of assumptions that have not been confirmed by actual data.

The word "passionarity" is derived from the adjective "passionary". Translated from the Latin "passio" - passion, which is precisely the driving force of a passionate person.

What does a passionate person mean?

Such a person is called a "passionary". This is a hero by nature, whom nothing can stop on the way to fulfilling his mission. A simple lifestyle does not appeal to him. Suffering, hardship, deprivation - this is his element.

For him, there is no concept of the price of the result, he will spare nothing and no one for the sake of the goal, even himself. He receives a lot of energy from the environment, and in combination with his own energy, he is able to literally move mountains and change the world.

A passionary can have even minimal abilities, can be tall and low, ugly and beautiful - absolutely anyone, but always caring and energetic.

A passionate person can act both in the name of good and in the name of evil, there are no criteria, except that for the sake of the goal he will not give up anything. The philosopher Immanuel Kant, the navigator and discoverer of America Christopher Columbus, the famous physicist Isaac Newton, the commander and emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, the key figure of Russian history Peter I, the national heroine of France Joan of Arc, the great scientist Mikhail Lomonosov, as well as Adolf Gitler.

Passionarity according to Gumilyov

The appearance of the word "passionarity" in science is associated with the name of the historian Lev Gumilyov, who described it in the middle of the 20th century. The Russian historian considered passionarity as an energy that is directly related to the theory of ethnogenesis, i.e. with the theory of the development of peoples. Gumilyov's "passionary theory of ethnogenesis" includes 7 stages in the development of the people's passionarity from "rise to the" relic phase ", when the historical activity of the ethnos is completely absent. The historian believed that passionaries appear as a result of mutations that occur in connection with cosmic radiation.

According to Gumilyov, passionarity can be represented as a scale, at one end of which are passionaries, and at the other - subpassionaries, i.e. people who are their complete opposite: absolutely indifferent to any manifestations of life, living to satisfy their instinctive needs, vagabonds, drunkards, criminals.

In the middle of the scale between passionaries and subpassionaries are harmonic personalities - harmonics, which are the majority. Their desire for accomplishment and the instinct of self-preservation are in equal proportion. It is on the ratio of passionaries and subpassionaries of each ethnic group that the future of the people and the course of history depend.

Passionarity is transmitted genetically, and not necessarily from generation to generation.

Passionarity is contagious, often impulsive people who are surrounded by passionaries begin to act in the same way as they do.