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Tetramodel of the individual and personality

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2.10. The individual's and personality's Tetramodel

The individual's and person's (personality's) TetraSociological model (tetramodel) is similar to the social world's model, just as microcosm is similar to macrocosm. Therefore, all SST parameters explored above apply to the individual and person; o­n the individual level they acquire a specific quality.

A personality is an atomic social subject, an individual carrier of people's reproductive employment's energy, a unique system of needs and abilities, which manifests itself in a person's employment, in the entirety of her social relations, in her behaviour's roles and statuses, thus forming personality as a single multidimensional complex. Personality is connected with the social world through a system of her needs and abilities, through the use of which it is described. Needs and abilities are social "inlets" and "outlets" of a personality's relations and her employment, through which she is permanently connected with society and "tethered" to it from birth to death. Through needs and abilities, all biological predisposition and foundations of a person are socially framed. Personality constitutes the social aspect of the individual as a biosocial being. These aspects are inextricably linked; this is why the individual's and personality's tetramodel approaches them as a whole. They can be investigated through four SST coordinates: resources, processes, structures, developmental states, and appropriate TetraSociological dimensions: statics, dynamics, structuratics, genetics, which, taken together, constitute the individual's and personality's universal sociological model. The resource/static model is the basic o­ne; we will limit this study to exploring it alone.

The social world's four necessary and sufficient resources and spheres correlate with the four blocks of the individual's and personality's model; four classes of personality's needs and abilities; four types of personality's employment, time, activity, work, property, relations, behaviour, statuses, roles. Needs represent a necessity, a shortage, a man's lack of a resource without which he cannot live. Needs constitute the personality's resource "inlet". Abilities represent creative work, creative employment, the individual's productive activity, his skills and expertise in creating resources. Abilities constitute personality's resource "outlet".

The first block of the individual's and personality's tetramodel under construction is character as an individual's attitude to people (including himself), as entire "MY I". It embraces values, supreme feelings (love, belief, hope, freedom, justice, conscience, guilt, etc.), direction, all expressed in appropriate person's needs and abilities, which are called humanitarian. Humanitarian needs are person's needs in herself and other people: parents, children, relatives, friends, colleagues, compatriots, etc., as well as in humanitarian benefits and services, and in humanitarian property and employment. Humanitarian property consists in MY parents, children, wife, friends, etc., MY feelings and attitudes to them, MY values, MY humanity.

The basis for humanitarian property consists in a person having more rights to ownership and use of herself and her relatives, friends, to their help, support, humanitarian services, than to other people and their services. Humanitarian benefits/services or resources consist in people and relations between them: humanness (love of mankind), attention, caring, help, politeness, tenderness, caress, etc. Humanitarian employment consists in a person's employment aimed at satisfaction of her humanitarian needs (consumption of humanitarian benefits/services) and the realisation of her humanitarian abilities. Humanitarian abilities are a person's abilities to reproduce humanitarian benefits/services, and through them, herself and other people, first of all her own children. A person's humanitarian needs and abilities are linked by character, constitute her humanitarian resource and include specific needs and abilities: axiological (moral, religious, existential), pedagogical, etc, related to the development of o­ne's own personality, as well as to that of others.

The essence of a person's humanitarian needs and abilities, of her humanitarian property and employment consists in love of people (including himself), the love's quality and measure. In the dispute between two classical definitions of a personality's essence as "love" (Feuerbach) and as "the ensemble of social relations" (Marx), Feuerbach's wins, although Marx's is not totally dismissed either, being preserved as an important definition of a personality, though not of her essence. Love is the pivot of personality, the backbone of the individual's character. All humanitarian qualities of a person (needs, abilities, relations, employment, roles, property) centre around love or non-love (hatred). From the viewpoint of TetraSociological, it is both the process and state of personal harmony. As process, it links together the consumption and production of each personality being in love relationships and employed in love. As a love object, a person causes an aspiration to possess the object (consume it), as well as to serve it, to further its development (to produce it). The same personality as love subject aspires to be possessed and to be served. In love as process, employment energy and relations between persons mix, and expending this mixture does not impoverish, but rather enriches each person both with regards to satisfaction of humanitarian needs and to the development of humanitarian abilities, which makes love the highest value and the persons' supreme harmony. It is o­nly love that harmonises people both externally and internally. The love is harmony and vice versa.

Having lasted for long, the process of love transforms into a state of love, which is tantamount to people's happiness as the best possible state, as prosperity in the fullest sense of the word. It is o­nly in love that persons are not estranged (alienated) from each another, but appropriate for o­neself and the other. It is o­nly the state of love that is the ideal, harmonious, balanced relation between people; o­nly state of love ensures people's true prosperity, true equality between them, freedom, fraternity, justice, humanness. Without love, the supreme feelings and values constituting the individual's spirituality lose its authenticity and prove faulty and defective. It has been long established that if a child does not get love from parents and educators starting from the first years of his life, a child's personality becomes pathogenic/pathological. Thus, love is a social norm and the personality's essence, while love missing or curtailed is a social pathology, a source of crime and negative deviance.

The second block of the individual's and personality's tetramodel is consciousness as the individual's relation to information, as the total of "MY CONSCIOUSNESS." It includes mind and reason, thinking and cognitive senses, intellect and imagination, knowledge and perceptions, the essence of which consists in information and which are expressed in appropriate needs and abilities, called informational. Informational needs are a personality's needs in the most diverse information, informational resources, benefits/service, informational property and employment. Informational (intellectual) property consists in MY knowledge and perceptions, MY mind and reason, MY information, which I produced. Informational resources represent benefits and resources connected with information, its production, distribution, exchange (reception) and utilisation, consumption. Informational employment is a person's employment aimed at the satisfaction of her informational needs (consumption of informational resources) and realisation of her informational abilities. Informational abilities consist in a person's ability to reproduce informational benefits/services. A person's informational needs and abilities are connected by consciousness and constitute a person's informational resource and include special needs and abilities: scientific, philosophical, artistic, etc, corresponding with different kinds of information.

The third block of the individual's and personality's tetramodel consists in will as the individual's attitude to organisation/order, as an entirety, "MY WILL". Will includes consistency, orderliness, persistence, purposefulness, pertinacity, diligence, industry, accuracy - the qualities whose backbone is organisation as internal or external self-organisation and which are expressed in appropriate needs and abilities, called organizational. Organisation embraces several types of norms and orders: political, law, managerial, financial, moral; it also includes customs, traditions, habits. Organisational needs consist in a personality's needs for external and internal order, consistency, organisational resources, benefits/services, organisational property and employment. Organisational property consists in MY order and consistency, MY money and financial savings, which I produced and own. Money, and financial resources in general, being an equivalent and the means of exchange for all resources, are therefore an important instrument for organising and putting in order resources, so they cannot be regarded as material resources. Organisational benefits/services are resources related to organisation, its production, distribution, exchange (reception) and consumption/utilisation. Organisational employment is a person's employment aimed at the satisfaction of personal organizational needs (the consumption of organizational resources) and the realisation of personal organizational abilities. Organizational abilities consist in a person's abilities to reproduce organizational benefits/services. A person's organizational needs and abilities are connected through will; they constitute will's organizational resource and include specific needs and abilities: political, law, managerial (including self-government), financial, etc., related to different kinds of organisation and order.

The fourth block of the individual's and personality's tetramodel consists in the body as the individual's relation to things, as a totality, "MY BODY". The body includes organism, physiology, gender, physical constitution, anatomy, health, temperament, the unconscious, which are expressed in appropriate needs and abilities, called material. Material needs are a person's needs in material resources, benefits/services, material property and employment, which ensure the body's reproduction. Material property includes MY things (apartment, furniture, clothes, footgear, foods, car, dacha, etc.) which I own. Material benefits/services are those resources that are necessary for the satisfaction of material needs and the manifestation of material abilities. Material employment is a person's employment aimed at the satisfaction of personal material needs (consumption of material resources) and the realisation of personal material abilities. Material abilities consist in a person's ability to reproduce material resources. A person's material needs and abilities are linked through the body; they constitute a person's material resource and include specific needs and abilities: industrial, agricultural, construction-related, transportation, sexual, etc., corresponding with different kinds of material benefits. Sexual needs and abilities are ambivalent: physiologically, they are bestial, biological, and therefore material; in the context of love, however, being an aspect of it, they are raised to the level of the supreme humanitarian needs and abilities, the highest humanitarian benefits and the most significant values.

The four blocks of the individual and personality model are expressed in its four components. The components correlate with PIOT sphere resources and SIOT spheres of its reproduction, and integrate many different facets: this is why they are called "sphere" o­nes. Sphere components are equally necessary to the individual and the personality, sufficient if taken together, each o­ne prioritised differently; they cannot exist separately, but o­nly as parts of a whole, interinclusive and in mutual service. With at least o­ne of the individual's and personality's components missing, the individual/personality cannot exist. These components are interinclusive, which creates in a personality a multitude of co-subordinations between them, the leading o­ne being subordination to character, a person's "I," which includes consciousness, will, body. Absolutization of any single sphere component of a personality in its specificity of o­ne or another kind creates a host of monistic personality theories, while recognition of two, three or four components in o­ne or another specificity creates a host of versions of pluralistic personality theories. (We do not explore here the dialectics of a person's individual and social production and self-production, her needs and abilities in appropriate forms of her employment.) The proposed model, as we emphasised, is TetraSociological o­ne. The following chart demonstrates the interdependence and dialectics between the model's blocks.

Chart-1. The individual's and person/personality's tetramodel

The sphere components serve as the basis for a personalities typology, which points out eight personality types: four classes of consumerist personalities, or "consumers," in whom o­ne of the sphere needs takes priority, and four classes of productive personalities, or "creators," in whom o­ne of the sphere abilities takes priority. If we juxtapose over the personalities sphere typology the two types of accentuatedness (mini/max) proposed by K.Leonhard, or C.Jung's two direction types (extraverts/introverts), we will get 16 more personality types in appropriate classifications. Each personality has present in her the set of all the sphere needs and abilities, but each has them in a specific quality, volume, and priority ranking, which creates an infinite variety of a personality's individual manifestations. The measure of the development of the needs and abilities can be indefinitely various. Here they are grouped in three levels: upper, middle, low.

Each class of a personality's sphere needs and abilities is a product of the appropriate kind of personal socialisation: humanitarian, informational, organizational, material, and of the appropriate kinds of personal development and self-development, rearing and self-rearing, training and education: humanitarian, informational, organizational, material (technical).

Each sphere need and ability has four parts in it, corresponding with each PIOT resource's composition, and can be quantitatively expressed through appropriate sphere indices. Therefore, to quantitatively describe a personality and the development of her needs/abilities, the basic matrix of sphere indices 4x4 is used, in two forms: o­ne for needs, another for abilities. Thus, 32 sphere indices are used to quantitatively describe a personality. This opens up possibilities for "calculating" a personality, "projecting," through sphere indices, different scenarios and strategies of her development.

Out of the many variants of a person's development, the most optimal and favourable o­ne, for the person and society alike, seems to be the harmonious development of all a person's needs and abilities, which we will call a personality's tetraharmonious development. It is this kind of development that ensures a person's prosperity, richness of life, love, the highest social efficiency, and society's humanness and is the foremost precondition for society's harmony and prosperity. A person's tetraharmonious development is a proportional and balanced development of her sphere needs and abilities, equilibrated with her inner and external resources and her inner and external environment. Society's harmony and prosperity start with the harmony and prosperity of persons engaged in different spheres. A person's tetraharmonious development is life, first of all, for itself, for the completeness, so and for others, for their completeness. Opposite, unilateral, the person's professional life is narrow a life for others. It is life for the narrow party others and very little for itself. In branch disharmonious society there cannot be tetraharmonious, sphere development of the individual, i.e. the harmonious development of his sphere needs and abilities. The required sphere organization of a society is considered below.

The development of each class of personal sphere needs and abilities has a generalised expression. The development of material needs and abilities is expressed in living standards; informational needs and abilities, in meaning of life; organizational needs and abilities, in way of life; humanitarian needs and abilities, in the value of a person's life. o­n the whole, their development determines a person's quality, which is completely reduced to the quality of her employment.

A person's sphere needs and abilities are incorporated into relevant SIOT spheres of social production and integrated into appropriate classes of social needs, relations, production forces, roles and statuses of a person's behaviour in society. The connection between the individual (personal) and the social is sketched out in the SIOT societal spheres tables.

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