The Crisis of Self-Understanding of Society in the Situation of Modern Development

The article addresses the issue of how people’s ability to understand social change lags behind the speed of its unfolding in the modern era, amid unprecedented technological innovations. A crisis of self-understanding must be acknowledged. This refers to societies’ loss of the ability to develop and maintain self-concepts that can function to ensure the homeostasis of the social system. This refers to the loss of people’s ability to develop and maintain such ideas about themselves that can function in order to ensure the homeostasis of the social system. The problem of the fundamental necessity and possibility of understanding social processes has been raised before (F. Hayek, K. Popper, postmodernists), however, their decisions were subordinated to the political conjuncture. The danger of misunderstanding oneself is exacerbated by the fact that this misunderstanding itself remains misunderstood, and the lack of clear, explicit interpretations of what is happening does not cause significant concern about the potential consequences. The idea of a “narrative” is often used as a substitute for theoretical understanding of social processes, but this indicates a significant lack of resources.