Alexander Dolgin: To find happiness, you need to communicate with people more often

Alexander Dolgin is a professor, head of the Department of Pragmatics of Culture at the Higher School of Economics, head of the Pragmatics of Culture Research Foundation, and manager of the Imhonet recommendation service.

Today the scientist is engaged in research on the problems of happiness and the meaning of life. What is the most valuable thing in human life, what is the basis for a long and happy life? How to learn to live happily? Alexander Dolgin knows the answers to these questions.

– Why do you think a person begins to think about what he has managed to do in life, what he can leave behind?

– A person begins to think at the moment when it seems to him that he has somewhere reached the plateau of his personal career. When it seems to him, when he sees that some part of the game has already been played, he does not see another game, whether it was played badly or well – but it has been played, and he has implemented some program, then he evaluates his resources, his motivation. And if he is faced with the loss of a further program, what should he do?

– At what age does this happen?

– It used to be said that in men it happens at the age of 40. Now, due to the general increase in active life expectancy by 15-20 years, the question arises – is this period shifted by the indicated 10-15 years or not? If we speak in economic terms, then when there is an imbalance or when potentially interesting achievable goals do not match with available resources.

It is clear that as a person grows up, some opportunities fall away: at a certain age it is impossible to become a ballerina, a professional athlete, it may be difficult to become a mathematician. Many people think that it is impossible to start a new career when the old one is over.

– And if it is not possible to solve this question? A person wants to change something, but can’t, doesn’t understand what to do?

– This indicates a lack of world outlook. This is a difficult situation into which a person is dragged by society, school, and the education system, which does not teach something very important, including what we are talking about. “What are you going to do? Have you developed a set of values that you’re going to build on? Do you know what happiness consists of?”.

The modern science of happiness, which, by the way, I am studying a lot now, clearly puts it all on a shelf and distinguishes: here is what is important for happiness, and here is what is not taught, and it is not present in social practices.

There is a colossal zone responsible for personal happiness, a zone of competence, a zone of action, in which the individual is thrown at will and finds himself completely unprepared and unarmed. This disarmament manifests itself in the confusion that arises in a person who has achieved everything, or has achieved as much as possible. He thinks: what else is there?

And then it turns out: eh, if I had prepared for this in advance, I could have done it. But I didn’t prepare for it, so I can’t do it, it’s not mine, I don’t have any leads or connections here. And going through this set, he sees an excessive number of exceptions and prohibitions, except for some, namely family.

He thinks something like this: “Well, I have a family, it’s mine! This is where I am going to self-actualize!” This is the most dangerous misconception, by the way. Dangerous, first of all, for those around you, for family members.

– How important is family support?

– Extremely important. The science of happiness, which relies heavily on empirical research about why people are happy or unhappy, says that the most important thing is interpersonal communication. It matters who you can talk to, socialize with. The main driving incentive to form a family is not happiness, as it is usually written and thought about, but avoiding negative time.

– So what is a family if people are not seeking it out of a desire to be happy?

– Family is not something that delivers peak moments of happiness to a person. It may deliver them, but their absence is not a bad sign for a family, as romantic literature or the movie industry has hammered into our heads.

The point is that the mere presence of time, simply the time of a person’s being, which is socially empty, is disastrous for him and most difficult to experience. Accordingly, let there be complex communications, not always super-comfortable, but communications. This is better than “no communication”. And of course, the family is the best place for communication.

Family is a wide field for self-realization, for your own activity. Including communicative. Man is a social being. There are some microscopic number of people who are so organized that they can live in a hermitage and be hermits. But this is an exception, which is possible only due to the fact that they mentally communicate with the society and nurture their hermit position through this mental communication.

– So it is communication that is important for human beings?

– Yes, the science of happiness states, and I think this statement is quite reasonable and correct, that quality interpersonal communications are at the center of everything. And if not quality communications, then at least some. In simple precepts it sounds like this: keep in touch with your friends and acquaintances by all means, try not to lose them. Even if it seems to you that at the moment they burden you or have lost their meaning.

– What else is important for a person who is reflecting on his life, trying to understand how “qualitatively” he lives?

– Do not reduce your social valence. That is, the number of contacts multiplied by their quality, the integral number of contacts should not decrease. This is entirely consistent with human nature as seen through the many empirical studies by psychologists, sociologists, and happiness specialists. The research has been going on for the last 40 years, since the 70’s.

– So a lonely person can neither be self-sufficient nor solve the problems he or she encounters when searching for self?

– Maybe, but it’s a rare talent, not everyone will be so lucky. Communication is extremely important, it has been proven to be one of the most important things for human happiness. There can be relatives, or just soul mates, social comrades and companions, it’s who has what.

I would not say that this game should be played on strictly defined grounds, on one instrument. If I have not a piano, but a violin or a cello, and someone else has an orchestra, let the orchestra play! By the way, socially top characters – businessmen, politicians, etc. – to a certain extent compensate for the deficit of family communication with universal communication, maybe less deep, but there is more of it. That is, they transfer communication to the social layer. Therefore, there are politicians who can be happy not at the level of the family, but at the level of the compatriot, region, nation, the world as a whole.

– How to prepare a child for the fact that in life he should not lose communication, should be able and not afraid to find new spheres and opportunities for self-realization?

– This is not taught at school. It should be brought up in the family. Children should be taught how to communicate, how to have a proper conflict, how to choose a job, how to treat money and many other things. And it is also very important that the child lived, not lived someone else’s life. Parents should create such conditions for him to make his own decisions, make mistakes, find a way out of the situation. Only then will he be able to live in such a way that he will not end up at a broken trough and will not shed tears about the fact that he did not have time for something in life.