Page 545

[Alexandr Korol]

adaptation is there in itself, not only in the physical body of the person, but also in the psyche. Seriously. That is, a person only experiences stress when they have been used to something for a very long time and it is taken away from them, then their psyche goes, i.e. they feel bad.
If you were born and lived all your life in a room that was one foot by one foot, you would not know that it was bad and uncomfortable. Because it would be your habitual environment, and if you were taken out of it after 15 or 20 years, you would not be able to live in freedom for a very long time – a year, maybe more – because you were used to living in a box. When a person lives and imagines in a certain state and it’s taken away from him, it’s a very big blow to the psyche. He wants the old conditions, but they are not there. He can’t adapt to new con- ditions immediately because they are new to him. It takes months and years to adapt, and the process involves mental and physical pain. That’s very interest- ing.
Going back to the question of illusions, it’s just curious that some of your par- ents, not all of them, we’re all of different ages, but many of your parents imagine and remember the Soviet Union, and that’s a completely different system. A very different software. Different, you could say, owners and even users. It is as if they were not even them at first. On one hand they were connected, and on the other hand it was as if someone else was living in them, in their bodies, like a ghost. First they were in the Spirit of the USSR, then they were in the Spirit of the 90s, and then they were in the Spirit of the 2000s and before the pandemic. And that’s a completely different time. And now it’s still different. Do you real- ise how much of this world-building and destruction your parents witnessed? What a blow to the psyche. And what do we see now? Everybody is somehow living normally. When you look at this adaptability of people, it is fascinating to see how survival instincts and adaptation work and how everyone gets used to it. It’s as if an anthill is destroyed and everyone scatters and gets stressed, and then a new anthill is built. Another one is destroyed and there are no more things to build an anthill out of. They started building anthills out of other materials. It’s stressful at first, but then you get used to it. This is about the expression “get used to”. This habituation is a very interesting thing. Because it is both your enemy and your friend, a natural force given to a person, thanks to which, in necessary situations, such as unfortunate situations, it saves your life and your