Consumption leaves no time for anything, and in particular, no time to realise the instinct of cognition. Instinctively conditioned cognitive abilities, inherent in all children and suppressed in most adults, remain unused and lead to increased discontent, aggression and disunity. Vyacheslav Rybakov reflects on how to overcome the consumer economy and who can become the saviour of humanity. The article was prepared specially for the Valdai Club roundtable titled “Homo Perplexus: How to Stop Fearing and Learn to Love Change”, which took place on June 17, 2025 in St. Petersburg.
Social harmony is, of course, not a utopia, but an ideal. The ideal, as we know, is unattainable, but, unlike utopia (utopia is a purely rational construct), it provides emotional guidelines and defines the goals of activity. Different people have different ideas regarding what constitutes an ideal, of course, but there is always something similar, something in common. In particular, such ideas about social harmony have as their main components an increase in justice and a decrease in aggression.
For at least a century and a half, the belief prevailed that scientific and technological progress would help achieve these goals. This hope has become part of the flesh and blood of many cultures. Therefore, when we are faced with something that is happening the other way around, there is a not entirely conscious, but obvious frustration.
Second, even the good provided by the life sciences, as a rule, turn out to be labour-intensive, complex and, therefore, so fabulously expensive that most people cannot afford it. Million-dollar medicines are a social absurdity. Thus, the wonderful achievements of science do not reduce, but increase inequality and, consequently, the level of what is perceived as injustice.
The list of such consequences of progress and the changes it causes can be quite long, but all of these are symptoms, rather than the disease itself. These are consequences of one main, but deep-seated cause.
The biological sciences have irrefutably proven what we have long understood at the everyday level: the performance of an instinctively conditioned action gives a living being a feeling of peace, contentment, serenity, and the long-term inability to perform such an action increases aggressiveness, discontent, and destroys cognitive abilities.
Among the basic instincts of living beings, including humans, is the orientation instinct, which in humans has grown into the instinct of cognition.
It is not for nothing that in practice we see that in a large majority of cases, successful scientists are among the most unpretentious, the most good-natured and tactful people.
However, the modern economy is based on the constant growth of consumption, to the point where meaningless consumerism has become an end in itself. It compels everyone - both those who orchestrate consumption and ordinary consumers - to pursue it to the exclusion of all other things. Literally forcing people to consume more than they actually need is now the main task of management. Those who lag behind in consumption begin to feel infringed, inferior, and their aggressiveness increases due to resentment towards the world and dissatisfaction with themselves.
It is obvious that as soon as the vector of the existing economy changes, as soon as most people become as unmercenary as, say, Academician Sakharov, it will simply collapse.
I risk formulating the main contradiction of the post-industrial world: between the cognitive instinct of man and his economy, which is based on the constant growth of consumption.
He who proves able to develop and offer the world an economic model that would be able to maintain efficiency without degenerating into a command-administrative-distributive model (i.e., totally deficient), but also without the need for an endless, insufferable intensification of production-consumption (i.e., would not transform a person into a crazed consumer, suffocating from an endless and senseless run for unnecessary things), will become the saviour of humanity.
Of course, I would very much like such a model to be developed in Russia. Our culture still has traditions that could contribute to enthusiasm in this area.
