Vital Capacity And Human Securityas Conceptual Categories

Analysis of “vital capacity” concept

The concept of “vital capacity” has been known in the scientific literature since 1975, but it is relatively new, since the consideration of vital capacity today has gone beyond the limits of existential psychology and its semantic coloring has fundamental differences. The English term “hardiness” does not have an accurate translation into Russian; as an alternative synonym, other scientists proposed the concept of “vital capacity”. At the same time, the understanding of vital capacity is characterized by pluralism in both foreign and domestic studies. In most scientific works, vital capacity is interpreted as an integral property of the personality, which allows us to develop the most effective coping strategies and overcome the effects of stress, the occurrence of which is associated with difficult life circumstances.

The concept of resilience is close enough to the concept of “adaptability”. However, the latter to a greater extent reflects the adaptability of a person, which does not exclude the general passivity of the adaptation process. Vital capacity, on the contrary, means endurance, which implies the presence of a certain personal resource to overcome any difficulties of life. Depending on the parallel of consideration, vital capacity may include adaptation, self-determination and self-development, the implementation of a person’s life mission. In other words, the concept of vital capacity is more meaningful in cognitive and sociocultural contexts than “adaptation”. This is not only knowledge about oneself, one's capabilities and resources (the cognitive component), but also the person’s ability to overcome various difficult life circumstances, taking into account the characteristics of the interaction environment (sociocultural component).

According to Muddy, vital capacity includes three interconnected attitudes that determine the interaction of a person with the social environment - involvement, control, challenge. Vital capacity means that a person has “ontological anxiety” - a kind of fear of being, which allows you to make decisions in favor of the future (Mitrofanova, 2018). Vital capacity is defined in two ways - as a state and as a process. In the first case, it represents a special adaptive quality of a person that correlates with aspects of endurance, psychological stability, and social “toughening”. In the second case, we are talking about the result of the impact of the summarized biological and social qualities of development, and the impact of the social environment has a dominant position. In this context, vital capacity should be understood as an internal resource that determines a person’s ability to develop values, develop skills, form a system of principles and attitudes of a positive attitude, which together is a factor in improving the quality of life.

At the same time, vital capacity is a rather flexible quality, a source of additional growth and development, the individual components of which can be transformed. Vital capacity reflects the subjectivity of a person, the ability to build a unique life trajectory and independent social functioning, which means that it affects his personal safety.

Analysis of “human security” concept

The concept of “human security” is quite debatable, has broad conceptual boundaries and can be considered in any research vein, since its content is actually unregulated, and the terminological framework is blurred. The complexity of the concept lies in the confusion of its scientific interpretation with socio-political interpretations. The first definition of human security was given in a 1994 UN Human Development Report. The concept of human security represents a fundamentally new approach to security: the security of each individual is the guarantor of the security of all mankind, therefore, the quality of human life is the basis of social well-being. Human security is differentiated from concepts based on risk-based knowledge, concepts of social security (Social security), concepts of national security (National security). The cognitive component of human security can be described as “I know that I have equal opportunities to develop my potential” and “I know that I am protected from risks and threats of a various nature”.

The sociocultural content of the concept of human security today is associated with all kinds of scholastic disputes. In fact, there are two global areas of human security - “freedom from fear” and “freedom from hardship”.

The first direction, implemented in the political strategies of Canada and Norway, involves the implementation of activities to protect individuals from military conflicts and violence, organizing assistance in emergency situations, preventing social conflicts at various levels, and peacekeeping. In other words, the aim is to protect the population from genocide and the threats of civil war.

The second direction - “freedom from hardship” - reflects the socio-political position of Japan and involves the prevention of violence, poverty, environmental degradation, ensuring equal opportunities and access of all categories of the population to knowledge. In this case, we are talking about the possibilities of participation of the population in diverse activities in order to improve the quality of life.

Despite the fundamental differences in these areas of human security, the general idea is human development, combining well-being, welfare, human dignity. The essence of human security is close to human development, but is not comparable with this concept, since they have an expressed connection. So, according to Busumtwi-Sam J., human security is a condition of human development, and the latter will contribute to human security. In other words, it is difficult to achieve human development when the minimum or basic conditions for human security are not created.

Human security is not reducible only to the level of a certain individual, but involves the implementation of influences at different levels:

• personal security - human protection;

• community security - preservation of the traditional culture and ethnic component in the context of the living environment / region / ethnic group;

• state security - ensuring the implementation by a person of civil rights and freedoms.

Thus, the sociocultural component of human security involves exposure at all levels - from the individual to the state, and from everyday security, protection of emergencies to expanding the space of social and personal development of a person, the implementation of civil and human rights and freedoms. The above answers the question of what level of human security is the most important - individual, national, global. Since human security is “the sum of each person’s security”, it is necessary to influence the individual’s ability to security, to bet on the development of human vital capacity, which is a condition for the formation of unique adaptive coping strategies and a factor in overcoming stressful situations.