Людям понемногу наскучивает "биологическое" удовольствие, они начинают употреблять...

People gradually get bored with "biological" pleasure, they begin to use it as soon as possible in order to maintain their interest in life, as an antidepressant. (Or, perhaps, in modern "ecologically unnatural" conditions, it simply never turns out to be complete: instead of an integral program, there are partial drives that do not add up to a successful behavioral act). People maintain this interest in life in a vague sense that life is potentially valuable, but this potential lies outside hedonism and individual experience in general, because inside this experience, as in Bradbury's story about paradise, it is boring and meaningless to desire new local subjective pleasures. People would need a fairy tale, myth, faith, but the self-deception of such things becomes more and more obvious over time, and there remains only art that tells fairy tales in order to problematize why they are needed, what people in their hearts want, and what would give them "fulfillment of desires". The only unexplored depth remains this "depth of the soul." Only her intelligence gives genuine experiences, and, moreover, promises liberation, improvement, movement towards some new, potentially better, state. Only here you can stand on the border of a living, deep secret. At first, these are simple things, thrillers and horrors that help to master typical and strong impulses. Then it becomes boring, and instead of the typical, an individualized and varied "long tail" appears, in which everyone finds something that helps to live with their own internal contradictions. Resolving your own internal contradictions is one of the few remaining activities that, in principle, cannot get bored. And now we see people who are more and more ready to look themselves in the eyes, more and more internally integrated, not needing oblivion, neurosis, self-deception, less and less dependent on evaluations, vanity, condemnation, more and more “internally honest” and, accordingly, " internally fearless ", less and less vulnerable to manipulation, able to withstand contradiction without simplifying, _abstaining_, able to hover over contradiction, ready for uncertainty, but not needing it instead of hoping for synthesis and solution.
The Strugatskys, trying to look into the future, came, as I understand it, to the conclusion that the future belongs to non-people and therefore cannot be seen with human eyes. I would like to think that the future lies with synthesis, and that what seems "inhuman" is not so far from us. So I see these .. uh .. _ cold Swedish girls_, delightfully sincerely indifferent to the impression made, full of the power of even, fearless vision. Those who are able to calmly hang in doubt, value uncertainty no less than confidence (which always risks being a little hasty) .. Not knowing a ready-made solution, not really listening to cultural prescriptions, not understanding stereotypes. When it is precisely in the capacity for doubt and ignorance that calm human dignity is manifested. Plus the associated almost frightening indifference to the "Bernov" "games" so widespread in the original culture, flirting and so-called "human weaknesses": a little benevolent bewilderment, almost misunderstanding, passing by. What is sometimes called the erosion of social roles is their complication, their transition from prescribed, culturally sanctioned decisions to an infinitely long tail of individual selection for each situation.