Experience: cultural borders and aspects

The article aims to consider different aspects of experience, understood as an integral complex of images, meanings, emotions, mental acts and moods, as a qualitatively defined life interval (Vyacheslav B. Melas). The approach implemented in the article differs from the psychological one, where the emphasis is mostly on emotions and the current situation.The author appeals to the ideas and cultural situations characteristic of the last century and a half in European culture. The article emphasizes the actual human status of the experience, which is expressed in the possibility of reflexive appeal both to the memory of the experience and to the current state. The ‘experience interval’ is considered as capable of becoming typified, repeated, reproduced in different cultural conditions and situations. The article notes a number of stable cultural and psychological characteristics of the experience, which make it possible to distinguish: 1. Permissible and unacceptable experiences; 2. Mandatory experiences; 3. Hidden and explicit experiences;4. The presence of a fashion for experiences. The conclusions emphasize that experiences serve as a basis for assessing the socio-cultural qualities of a person, they act as regulators and organizers of behavior, create powerful ideological and emotional lines in culture, form the sphere of time and entertainment. However, outside of their objectified status and external regulation, they are nothing but self-valuable and constitute the most important sphere of individual consciousness, carrying out the ‘connection of times’ of personal existence. At the end of the article, the author emphasizes importance of cultivating such a type of experience (‘will to joy’) is emphasized.