The Dialogue of cultures and political stability in the Post- Communist world

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Скачать бесплатно! Научная работа на тему The Dialogue of cultures and political stability in the Post- Communist world. Аудитория: ученые, педагоги, деятели науки, работники образования, студенты (18-50). Minsk, Belarus. Research paper. Agreement.

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Опубликовано в библиотеке: 2014-04-29
Источник: "БЕЛАРУСЬ В МИРЕ" No.004 12-01-97

The peculiarity of historical development of the con temporary world on the threshold of the third millennium is most frequently depicted in dramatic features. The range of visions of the future of humankind is extremely wide: starting from attempts to outline unseen horizons of the technological progress and ending with eschatological revelations of the "end of history".

Apparently, the modern civilisation is indeed on the verge of events which urgently need to be profoundly and adequately realised and deeply analysed. As never before, it has become clear that the social theory is traditionally lagging behind an extraordinarily dynamic reality.

In this context, of particular interest is the phenomenon which at the beginning of the 20th century was defined by the Spanish thinker Jose Ortega Y Gasset through the notion "revolt of the masses". In other words, here we are dealing with the problem of the peculiarity of historical development, increasingly affected by the influence of ethnic groups, nations and states that until a while ago had been practically excluded from taking an active part in the world's processes or, at least, had concrete and predetermined roles.

The Loss of Traditional Values: The Down Side of Globalisation?

One can highlight two major events of the 20th century, which dramatically changed the structure of the modern world: The collapse of the colonial system, followed by the Third World countries' transition to a new stage of the development; and the Communist bloc's fading away from the historic scene, followed by the emergence on the territory of the former Soviet Union of another political unity-the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Alongside with the peculiarity and in certain aspects essential difference between these processes, their ultimate objective was the political, national, religious self-determination-all what necessarily accompanies the formation of every state. In this situation, in contrast to the rigid patterns of historical determinism, the factual state of individual and social consciousness turns to be a determinative factor contributing to mobilisation of the society, groups and individuals in particular, as active participants in the modern social evolution.

It could not be overlooked, however, that the above mentioned processes of self-determination are unfolding in a situation essentially different from that of the Europe of the 17th-19th centuries, when the rise of national self- consciousness and building of nation-states started their history. The world of the end of the 20th century experiences the impact of widening globalisation tendencies in all dimensions of social life whereas traditional values which were perceived as main regulators of human's behaviour are being more and more neglected and increasingly loosing their importance. We have to accept to a greater extent the fact that the stage of culture development defined by F. Nietzsche as "overthrow of all values" causes the modern dynamics of social changes at the national and international level to present a great deal of danger-it turns out to be less controllable in accordance with the appropriate fundamental forms of social stability and social control.

The danger of new Utopian ideals for post-Soviet states resides in the fact that we set all our hopes upon automatic functioning of the market economy and perceive it alone as the way of overcoming the crisis of our society.

We realise completely certain risk while stating such assertion relating to the system of management which is still experiencing a great deal of influence resulting from a prolonged period of total state domination. Acknowledging the existence of certain organic links between market economy and democratic principles of efficient organisation of public life. But it is impermissible not to take into account the fact that the perceived as the pattern to follow, the world of western democracies is presently experiencing an intensive re-evaluation of traditional values of the liberal society. Whereas the ideologists of the Enlightenment interpreted society with predominating market economy as a highly effective manufacturing system having correlative cultural and ethic norms, such thinkers of the 19th century as A. Smith, G. W. F. Hegel and A. Tocqueville began to express their concern about the market principles that may represent a considerable threat to political and cultural basis of liberalism. Thus, Tocqueville assumed that society based on market economy is deprived of inner logic of its own stabilisation and in order not to let the individualism of economic life transform itself into destructive egoism, norms of everyday political, cultural and religious life should be retained and spread widely in the society to favour the neutralisation of dangerous tendencies.

It is generally known that concerning North American democracy, Tocqueville observed the probability of such counteraction to such tendencies in citizen's participation in public affairs, decentralisation of government structures, energetic activity of public associations and clubs, creation of non-commercial civil foundations and, finally, intensified activity of Protestant communities.

In contrast to such paradigms of organising public life in western democracies, which functioned more or less effectively until the middle of the 20th century, the political culture of present-day capitalism is marked by vanishing of traditions that provided certain moral integration of its citizens and stability of its social development. In the course of time, semantic and reference values suffered a great deal of dramatic erosion, relativisation and pluralisation, thus appearing to be less and less relevant in representing the integrative basis for political order. Post-traditional culture is characterised by the deepening autonomy, substitution of meaningful values of human behaviour for consuming of ersatz-sense, as well as susceptibility to the influence of stereotypes of standardised mass consciousness.

"Groundlessness" of the consciousness of this kind, and its moral disorientation make this extremely sensitive and susceptible to both manipulation in accordance with evenly levelled and deprived of personal individuality models of mass behaviour, and to radical, neo-conservative by nature reactions.

Arising tensions between generations and sexes, aggravating ideological, ethnic and religious conflicts present unavoidable form of reaction to globalisation processes. Alongside with this, they are accompanied by clearly determined symptoms of "cultural entropy", loss of traditional identity by national cultures: "The picture of homogeneous, national, ethnic or limited in other ways culture finds itself as having been surmounted. It does not correspond to the reality any more:

being the survival of prevailing earlier conception of culture, it now tends to contribute to delusion and to a certain extent presents even danger."1

This opinion of W. Welsch, a well-known German specialist in the field of cultural research, sums up all today's disputes on the problem of the nature of modern culture. Entering in polemics with one of the forefathers of traditional culture theory, I. G. Herder, W. Welsch, in connection with this, directs his attention to the emphasis on peculiar and own in opposition to outward and alien that is characteristic of this concept of culture. In this perilous for the contemporary society tendency towards isolationism and counteraction to alien, W. Welsch, following C. Levi-Strauss, finds prerequisites that could lead even to racism2. Having left without answer the question about the justification of the psychoanalytical interpretation of hostility towards alien as a projection of hat- red towards something in oneself to the outside-for we usually deny in the alien something that we failed to eject from ourselves-we cannot but acknowledge the potential danger for domestic policies and international stability that arises out of the conscience, deprived of the abi-lity to be receptive to arguments and reasoning of essentially different semantic systems of co-ordinates.

The Danger on the Way to Self-Determination

How is the independent state able to meet adequately the challenge that is set by its sovereign status?

First of all, by the means of achieving a common national concord among its citizens. The pluralistic nature of Belarusian nation, which experienced over centuries due to the peculiarity of its geopolitical position the impact of divergent cultural traditions, is a potential source of power and creative energy necessary for the society.

At the same time, there exists considerable risk of self- determination strategy yielding to strengthening forces of separatism, opposition, seizure of alien, cultivating of ideological, ethnic and religious claims, assurance in self-exclusiveness and authenticity. In this way culture which is empowered by richness of its diversity is being submitted to unified schemes of world outlook, ceases to serve as a foundation providing for vitality of the nation.

The danger of this kind is furthermore real for every process that is taking place on the scene of post-Soviet countries because the formation of values and attitudes of consciousness has been taking place for a long time in the regime of radical opposition to everything what is used nowadays. Autonomous, closed, absolutely sure in self-sufficiency, such consciousness rejects the arguments of the others, fails to control its own inner constant readiness to confrontation on any minor reason. Dialogue that is much needed for political stability and social peace is replaced by numerous monologues, unrelated to one another in terms of meaning, and bringing about the danger of devastating social conflicts. History provides many examples when such consciousness was quite successfully used by politicians for achieving their own goals, either unintentionally or purposefully, and for satisfying their political ambitions. In both cases the consequences could be hazardous and often paid for with an unreasonably high price. The John Donne's question "For whom the bell tolls?" is perceived by the individual and public consciousness as extremely abstract only until the potential danger develops into a real crisis. Karabakh, Trans-Dniestr, Chechnya, Georgia, Tajikistan... Too often attempts at settling political and ethnic conflicts led to disastrous consequences. We cannot ignore the lessons of the others.

In every single case, however, the possibility of a conflict or counteraction, open to many hazards of political destabilisation, is provided by the state of consciousness of those many individuals who are ready to stand up for the "right cause" and uphold all those principles that are clear to them, but not perceived by others for some reasons in a proper way. Misunderstanding, repulsion, hatred, aggression, so easily occurring under the influence of a great diversity of factors in inter-personal relations, and which are easily provoked in the modern society under transformation processes of unseen intensity, are leading us to a dangerous borderline where there is a great risk of violence becoming a commonplace reality of our life.

In this situation, extremely important for the survival strategy for the society under a complex process of transformation are well-thought policies in the sphere of education. It is common knowledge that vital capacity and stability of any social system is maintained through the consciousness and morality of its citizens who are able and ready to identify social ideals as meaningful for their own behaviour.

Among many reasons that led to the collapse of our former system is the long-cultivated inefficient and lifeless ideology. Its relative success was achieved primarily through enormous efforts on keeping the society isolated and restricted in its values, as well as through the system of total ideological control over the individual and mass consciousness. The widespread self-confident opinion that there are easy solutions to the complex social problems is obviously rooted in a dangerously common lack of professionalism in the humanities and social knowledge.

Even more dangerous are attempts at using this quite specific in terms of quality theoretical potential, which had already revealed its impotence in providing for the functioning of an objectively more stable political system, in dealing with radically changed and more complicated circumstances of the social evolution. The challenge posed by these circumstances demands a fundamentally different state of our conscience and, correspondingly, more adequate level of social knowledge, a level which, unfortunately, we have not attained yet.

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© Anatoli Mikhailov, Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus () Источник: "БЕЛАРУСЬ В МИРЕ" No.004 12-01-97

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