The modest charm of the norm

On one of the dating sites there is an advertisement for a girl from Nizhny Tagil: “A smart, attractive, self-sufficient, sexy girl wants to meet a smart, handsome, decent, self-sufficient young man for a serious relationship.” Very subtle: the girl is attractive, and the young man must be handsome (i.e., beauty is not required, let there be at least minimal charm); the girl is sexy, and the man needs a decent one (logical). But the rest is the same: the smart one needs the smart one (of course, the stupid one will be annoying), and both are self-sufficient (however, if they are so self-sufficient, it is unclear whether they really need each other).

And anyway, what exactly did the girl mean? Maybe self-sufficient is a modern euphemism for having no material problems? This is probably partly true, but not only. The girl probably wanted to say that she is not only financially completely independent, but also psychologically balanced, and capable of fulfillment in her work, that she has friends and hobbies. In general, she does not need a young man as a vest, not as a straw for a drowning man, she does not plan to cling to him like a bulldog and hang all her problems on him. But she herself is not ready to sacrifice herself, save her from poverty or alcohol addiction, and generally wander around burning huts.

Of course, the word self-sufficient is not only used in marriage advertisements. They say, for example, a self-sufficient child, that is, one who does not need to be constantly entertained. He sits for a long time, draws, plays with toys. In general, this word is very fashionable now. The Internet is full of discussions about what a self-sufficient person is. It’s not that it was completely new, but previously it was used infrequently and was completely bookish. (By the way, here I am writing, and Word emphasizes the word self-sufficient to me : it doesn’t know such a word.) Moreover, it usually did not refer to a specific person. Here are typical examples: In the literature of classicism and the Enlightenment, a special type of aphoristic thinking was developed, that is, thinking in separate rounded and self-sufficient thoughts, by their very design independent of the context [M.M. Bakhtin. Problems of Dostoevsky's poetics (1963)]; Humanistic anthropology, which recognized man as a self-sufficient being, was a natural reaction against the suppression of man in the traditional Christian consciousness [ON THE. Berdyaev. The Problem of Man (1936)]. Now all that remains of the former bookishness is a slight pretense of profundity.

Until recently, dictionaries interpreted the word self-sufficient as “the same as self-sufficient.” Here the history of the word self-sufficient intersects with another history. I'm talking about the difficult fate of the verb dovlet. It meant “to be sufficient” (cf. his evil is sufficient for every day, i.e. “his care is enough for every day”; hence topical). Actually, to dominate is the root of what is enough. However, in modern Russian it has taken hold in a completely different meaning - “to suppress, to gravitate”, which arose in consonance with the words pressure, to suppress. Wed. The monument dominates the square, One thought dominates it... Back in the middle of the last century, dictionaries recognized this meaning (although it still remains somewhat vulgar). This caused protests from purists. Academician V.V. Vinogradov responded with a note in which he traced the semantic fluctuations of the verb to dominate right back to the end of the 17th century. A remarkable document has been preserved - a letter from the writer Fyodor Gladkov addressed to the President of the USSR Academy of Sciences A.N. Nesmeyanov, containing polemics with V.V. Vinogradov (it was published in the comments to the works of Vinogradov). Its ending is wonderful: “I have no doubt at all that the culture of language is no less dear to you than to writers. And I think that you will not be indifferent to this signal from the writer. Perhaps you will have a moment to request a proof or layout of this ill-fated word and see how it is interpreted in the exemplary Dictionary of the Academy of Sciences, as opposed to historical linguistics and common sense” (1952).

As the old meaning of the verb dovlet’ was forgotten, the book adjective self-sufficient also lost its internal form . Accordingly, its synonym self-sufficient received an advantage. By the end of the last century, it became preferred, and once it came into mass use, it acquired a new meaning. It’s impossible to say: a self-sufficient child; A self-sufficient girl meets a self-sufficient man...

The fashion for the word self-sufficient is quite understandable. Recently, the Russian language has become much more favorable than before to look at the simple compliance of a person with a mental norm. This was especially evident in the emergence of new meanings for the words adequate and sane. The word adequate is now extremely actively used in relation to a person. At the same time, it is not indicated what this person is adequate for. Simply - adequate, i.e. without cockroaches in the head, without unexpected and strange manifestations, without complexes, overvalued or fixed ideas. And most importantly, it is understood that all this is good. Sanity is also a good quality in a person. In the legal sense , sanity presupposes that a person is aware of his actions, so he can be judged for them. However, in everyday life this word is not at all associated with crimes: sane means reasonably intelligent, capable of understanding what is being said to him. He is a very adequate person and absolutely sane - this is now perhaps the highest possible praise. And behind it stands some completely new idea of ​​life. Let us remember “An Ordinary Miracle” by Schwartz: - You're crazy? - What are you saying, on the contrary! I'm so normal that I surprise myself. Of course, this phrase is spoken by the main villain - the Minister-Administrator, and it is impossible to imagine that it was uttered by another hero of the play.