Consciousness is a way of perceiving the world around a person. The word itself indicates the process of comprehending the knowledge inherent in the surrounding world, and doubling it through thinking. How are human consciousness and activity related? To answer the question, we will gradually analyze these terms.
Nature of consciousness
The term itself contains a hint about the essence of the process.
The reality of the surrounding world is chaotic at first glance, based on the order defined by the logic of nature. The internal law, according to which the order and sequence of phenomena of the external world is determined.
Man as a part of nature has a feature that gives him the right to carry out activities that transform the world around him. This ability is thinking. Consciousness and human activity have a transformative effect on the world.
It is the objective assimilation of reality that gives the right to speak of conscious activity. Consciousness is a process of thinking, as a result of which the knowledge inherent in the nature of the real world is reflected in human thinking.
Conscious activity
A person, carrying out activities, has a specific goal and subject. The goal is the result of the activity that a person receives as a result of the transformation of the world. Otherwise, its activity and consciousness values lose their meaning.
All stages of human activity are associated with the awareness of the process:
- setting goals and objectives of the activity;
- application of knowledge, skills in the labor process;
- assessment of performance.
These successive stages of activity show how consciousness and activity are related in the process of transforming reality.
Developmental activities
By consciously carrying out activities, a person thereby sets the horizons of his development. Since the activity itself is a developing environment for the formation of personality.
Considering activity and consciousness as interrelated processes, scientists developed the doctrine of activity as leading at each of the age stages of a person:
- Gaming. In the process, the child receives and develops knowledge about the world.
- Training. In the process, the student acquires knowledge about the main areas of human activity.
- Labor. This form is the basis of self-realization of a person as a person.
Against the background of this teaching, it is clearly shown how the consciousness and activity of a person are connected at each of the age stages of life.
Personality and work
The general goal of conscious work is the satisfaction of personal needs. They may be different. The well-known scheme - Maslow's pyramid of needs - reports on the presence of four levels of needs:
- Physiological needs. Entry-level human needs. which allows the existence of nature.
- The need for security. Meets the goals of human self-preservation.
- The need for membership in a social group. Corresponds to the nature of man as a social being.
- The need for respect, recognition and expression. This is the level of need of a developed personality.
All needs, to varying degrees, are the motivating principle of human activity. The degree depends on the culture of a person’s moral level.
If a person is focused only on material needs, a consumer type of culture is formed and activity is determined by it. Consciousness, personality fully find their element at the highest level of need, in the process of full expression.
How are consciousness and activity, personal self-realization connected in the process of labor activity? It is in the process of production of socially significant activity that a person fully realizes his potential.
She receives recognition, respect for the result of work demanded by society, and in this she fully demonstrates her goal and purpose.
At the level of solving the problem of physiological satisfaction of needs and safety needs, a person provides only his individual being. And only being a person demanded by society, a person satisfies his conscious need for what he brought into the development of society.