Destructive Tension (On the 90th Anniversary of the Birth of A.S. Akhiezer)

This article discusses the phenomenon of destructive tension. This concept is new for domestic and world humanitarian science. Thanks to the works of A. Akhiezer and his followers, the concept of “constructive tension” is widely known. This concept is intended to represent any culture as a dual opposition, the two poles of which demonstrate its desirable and undesirable state, and the vector of tension, stretched from undesirable to desirable, means socio-cultural constructiveness, ensuring the integrity and identity of culture. Socio-cultural mechanisms - inversion and mediation -support the constructive tension of culture and its progressive development. No less important for culture is its destructive tension, indicating a crisis of constructiveness, the growth of disorganization of culture and society, the threats of catastrophic processes. The indicator of the socio-cultural crisis is the clash and struggle between the mechanisms of constructive tension, that is, between inversion and mediation, which are mutually exclusive. They are joined by mechanisms of a destructive nature - eristic and “splitting of meanings,” which are further development of mechanisms of constructive tension in adverse conditions. The destructive tension of culture manifests itself in the contradictory interaction of binary and ternary structures, which are incompatible in principle. Dialogue between them is impossible; as a result of their interaction, the birth of a new socio-cultural result is impossible. The destructive tension of culture is an omen of the decline, destruction and the death of civilization. The reduce of the level of tension leads to the fall of destructiveness and the return of culture to the channel of constructive tension. Another possibility of overcoming destructiveness is transcendental tension, that is a kind of departure of the subject of culture from the dilemma of its constructiveness and destructiveness.

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