The pandemic influenced various aspects of social reality and made our future rather uncertain. The specificity of any epidemic is dissimilar with such national troubles as a war or natural disaster, because a disease does not unite people, but separates them. This is typical for the pandemics of the past that occurred repeatedly in human history, starting with the Athenian epidemic of 430 BC. A paradoxical situation arises now, during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. On the one hand, all citizens may be actually or potentially under control approved and legalised by the new ideology of “protection.” On the other hand, the essence of social control and means of administration change significantly, as the management itself begins to be administered by PC software. This software is not fully controlled by the political elites and governments. In these strange ideologically-determined conditions, the nature of moral, political and social responsibility is changing and there is a redistribution of rights and obligations. By degrees, moral and interpersonal relationships in a community give way to relationships that are completely determined and regulated from without the community.

The problem under investigation directly relates to a radically new social situation – the possibility to immediately get any information, which has drastically changed the process of education. This situation has superimposed some previous tendencies, particularly the simplification of tasks and diminishing of challenging conditions of education from the very beginning, which leads to diminishing the joy of learning and efforts to overcome difficulties. The trend towards early specialization plays the same role, because in reality it usually only leads to the exclusion of some subjects. Special attention is given to the distinction between information and knowledge. The crucial difference is between “obtaining knowledge” and “being informed”. Generally speaking, in the first case, a person has to construct an integrated picture of the fragment of reality with different links and relationships between parts of this picture. In the second case, the bits of information are added to something already known without endeavor to continue any further work to understand the subject on a deeper level. In relation to the process of comprehension, this means that in the first case we move from the surface level to the deeper one, while in the second case we are left on the surface level. Short-term memory is used instead of long-term memory. Also, the changed ratio between oral and written communication is analyzed. Due to the habitual practice of communication using electronic devices, the predominantly oral verbal dialogues are replaced with written ones. Therefore, the connection between actors of communication becomes 1) stretched and more muddled due to the mediation of written text, and 2) much narrower, because it lacks additional hints usual for oral communication. The integral result of such education expresses itself in a certain quality of personality that can be described as “the acquired dystrophy of the sense of incomprehension.” It has extremely significant negative consequences related to the formation of a free personality, for social life, and for genuine professional education.

The article discusses the preliminary results of the forced transition to entire online learning in the higher education system in the context of the general growth trend of the corresponding form of education in various universities around the world. The ideology defining this trend is considered. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the reality of a sharp increase in the level of control of both teachers and students by the creators of training platforms, as well as the possible consequences of this situation. It is shown that universities in different countries are seeking suitable forms of supplementing regular education with remote ones. The overall trend is a steady growth in online learning with significant variations across countries (examples include the United States, Australia, Germany, and China). It is obvious that national education systems differ significantly from each other, and with certain general trend towards online learning, each educational system is looking for its own, most suitable for the national culture, forms of education. It is also necessary to understand how online learning can be integrated into existing system without harm. At the moment, this is not clear either on the content level or methodological one. The article analyzes the temporary and long-term problems associated with the transition to distant education. The problem of technical support is probably the easiest to be solved. More serious and requiring new technologies is the problem of changing the nature of communication, which requires quite different efforts of both teachers and students if compare with the usual ones. Working on the platforms that are intended to radically change the educational environment under the slogans of ensuring an individual educational trajectory, in fact leads to the opposite. The author dwells on the problem of possible widespread replacement of conventional courses with recorded ones and, especially, the ideology of transition to online learning in the format of virtual reality, which allows the creators to exercise full control over the individual. The problem of monitoring of educational activities is discussed, which already in the current conditions makes it possible to record any actions and states of all participants in the process. The article is a reaction to the beginning of the process of widespread introduction of online technologies, and this approach, according to the author, allows to observe vividly the most painful aspects of the new situation (like the first impression of a meeting with the unknown).

Happiness is a universal category that describes processes of human existence. Getting education, acquiring knowledge is an important process of personal and civic development. The research problem posed in the article: is it possible to feel happiness and pleasure during the process of learning? The authors analyze this problem from the theoretical positions of philosophy, axiology, and sociology of culture. Overview of the theories and techniques of happiness reveals the methodical helplessness and invalidity of Humanities in relation to the research of happiness as a natural right of a man. The authors believe that the formulation and justification of the category of “feeling”, and its introduction into the scientific terminology of social studies and Humanities are in demand in modern scientific practice. Modern pedagogical practice, which is limited by standards and instructions, is far from being a happy process of acquiring knowledge and self-disclosure by a student and a teacher. It does not only involve the release of feelings, but also poses threat to the social order by violating the social position of the status of the “teacher – student” interaction, “freezing” the meanings of the process of social inheritance due to the requirements of conformity with performance indicators, thus transferring the educational process from the domain of culture onto the plane of market relations. Value of knowledge is included into the axiological system of society and does not need to be evaluated. To realize the value potential of knowledge means to create conditions for happy interaction of the main participants of this process – the carriers of the “teacher” and “pupil” statuses, but not to control the amount of this process. Knowledge may have terminal and instrumental meanings, but its main purpose is to serve the formation of personality, and not to serve the existence and needs of controllers.