The Culture of Crisis and the Modern City

The article is devoted to the problem of the crisis consciousness of modern man. The author aims to form a relevant reflection on social processes from the position of strategies of activity in a crisis, transitive, dynamic society. In this regard, the method of critical analysis is used for rethinking the firm ideas established in science and for identifying the prerequisites for the formation of a crisis culture in society. The study examines the concepts of social risk, catastrophic future prediction, analyzes situations of threats from society development. Conclusions are drawn about the formation of a "culture of crisis" in modern society. Crisis, both real and imaginary, its forecasting, calculation of its risks became a way of social and political systems' existence. The idea of crisis as a way of regulating human activity and generating a change in the social paradigm gives reason to talk about it as a specific cultural phenomenon, since it is in culture that the system of historically developing supra-biological programs of human activity (behavior, communication), ensuring the reproduction and change of social life, is determined. The main factor in the formation of the "culture of crisis" is urbanism as modern man's way of life which creates conditions for the birth of psychological or mental crisis characterized by a state of fear, anxiety, irrationality of thinking. Psychological crisis is easily controlled: it can be provoked, aggravated, the way out of it can be blocked; this factor becomes a condition for the development of the "crisis industry", offering a wide range of means to combat the growing anxiety. Crisis mongering and experiencing are a social tool that can not only set the apathetic masses in motion, but also extract financial income from their state; in this connection, the tendency of a purposeful immersion of a person into this state through culture (media, art, architecture, etc.) is observed. Fear, elevated to the rank of culture and justified by scientific research, inhibits critical thinking, reason dissolves in the panic of the people horrified by the future. The absurdity of such a state creates an ideal situation for governance: the masses are ready to accept any paradigm just to get rid of this fear. Thus, the idea of the crisis as a way of regulating human activity gives reason to spaek about it as a specific phenomenon of urban culture.

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