Abstract

This article substantiates an integrated understanding of the subject's self-defense in situations of extreme violence. This understanding is presented as a necessary component of the methodological complex for researching society and the processes of reformatting the modern world. The concept of "extreme violence" is considered a form of contradiction and a clash of potential answers to basic questions regarding the existential nature of human existence, the social purpose of certain communities, state formations, and their socio-political structures. Such clashes lead to a struggle among social subjects for the dominance of their worldviews. When the global order collapses, the weakest usually suffer the most. In the face of conflicting claims and interests, it becomes difficult to split blame and find a reasonable compromise. Self-defense, as an activity of a subject within the social environment, is associated with threats stemming from a range of large-scale crisis and pre-crisis situations that endanger the existence and normal functioning of social groups and individuals. These situations are precipitated by processes such as globalization, terrorism, warfare, environmental disasters, pandemics, post-industrial modernization, and the development of information technologies and artificial intelligence. The threatening nature of these situations arises from accompanying processes of individualization and fragmentation across all spheres of society, including the fragmentation of each individual's socio-political behavior. These mentioned processes are further complicated by the evolving political reality of modern society and the difficulties individuals face in adapting to a rapidly and continuously changing social reality. This reality often disintegrates into numerous autonomous spheres that invade an individual's inner world, influencing values, ethics, attitudes toward politics and state events, and transforming the perception of social reality. Under such conditions, ensuring a stable human life can only be achieved through constant practices of identifying and understanding threats, coupled with developing methods and programs to influence these threats with the aim of avoiding, eliminating, or neutralizing them through social self-defense.