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In media vita
We are used to thinking of life as movement from point A to point B. As something linear, manageable, optimizable. But what if we are almost never at the beginning or the end?
What if a person and society exist inside processes of breakdown and recovery, not on the other side of them? What connects physiology, psyche, social crises, and existential turmoil? And can we speak of growth where, on the surface, there is destruction? Here the binary view of the world helps to hold opposites together.
Phagocytosis in society 🔴
In a retelling of Denis Semenikhin's words, the preparation of Soviet Olympic athletes could be described as a “method of partial destruction.”
The athletes were 🔝
Catabolism is a necessary condition of metabolism. Without breakdown there is no renewal; without tension there is no adaptation.
A question arises: is there something similar within society and the state if we consider them as a whole organism?
Of course.
Phagocytosis on the streets of cities — right now 🔴. Social immunity, rough, painful, imperfect, yet working.
“The sheriff, twisting a finger at his temple,
set up patrols, but the unthinkable is inside” 🎵— Oxxxymiron, HPL
This is not for those “patients” who only want to eliminate stress and live a calm, even life (I. Yalom, “When Nietzsche Wept”).
This is not about individual comfort. It is about the collective Shadow.
About partial self-destruction as a condition for further growth — just like in training: destruction → recovery → supercompensation 💪🔝
The key question here is not destruction itself, but whether recovery follows it.
In media vita
In media vita means in the very middle of life.
“From point A to point B a pale youth set out with burning eyes.
On the road he got a little plump, drank away his armor, married a laundress” 🎶— Oxxxymiron, Неваляшка
That is every second person here…
Human, all too human: a feast during the plague and love during cholera.
Life does not pause because of a crisis — it flows through it.
Headlong, as usual, only now without the inseparable and the boon companions…
Snow in glittering flakes hides the dirty Neva,
And people — squirrels in wheels,
Fleeing from freedom, rush to their “beloved bridge.”And then — as if the whole dream manifests in reality,
And meaning can be seen there on the shore.
Instead of a conclusion
Destruction is not evil in itself. It becomes evil where recovery does not follow. Neither a person nor a society lives “outside the crisis.” We are almost always inside it — in media vita.
The question is not how to avoid breakdown, but whether there is recovery after it, and whether meaning appears that makes it worth continuing to move.
Questions about this article
01Can destruction become a condition for growth in a personal or social crisis?
Yes, when breakdown is part of a cycle of destruction, recovery, and supercompensation. Without recovery destruction becomes evil, while continued movement requires meaning for both a person and a society.
02Why can life not be reduced to a journey from point A to point B?
People and societies nearly always live inside unfinished processes: a crisis does not suspend life but becomes the medium through which it continues.