ВЫЗОВЫ И ПЕРСПЕКТИВЫ ЦИВИЛИЗАЦИИ: СТАНЕТ ЛИ ЭВОЛЮЦИЯ НА ЗЕМЛЕ КОСМИЧЕСКИ ЗНАЧИМОЙ?, "Вопросы философии"

Abstract

From time immemorial, the relative sustainability of human communities (from primitive tribes to nations, social classes or world confessions) has been provided by the image of a common enemy. Inter-group conflicts have been abridging in-group violence and with it, have been setting the vector for the creation of life's meanings. Yet, the current level of technological development completed by blurring lines both between war and non-war technologies and between the conditions of peace and war has made this psychological inertia suicidal. So the problem of life's meanings is becoming the nucleus of the 21st century global problems: Will the human mind prove ready to develop strategic meanings beyond religious or quasi-religious ideologies which are always built on the "them-us" mental matrix? Insights of great philosophers and prophets, as well as some crucial episodes in political history and special socio-psychological experiments have demonstrated that besides the image of a common enemy, both human solidarity and strategic meanings can be built on the image of a common cause (not aimed at an enemy agent), although the experience of assimilating this kind of construct by the mass consciousness is scanty. Instead, historical evidence is abundant showing that after long periods without real or potential wars, life's meanings "hang up" and the masses feel nostalgia for new demons. Actually, we observe an intensification of this trend in many regions of our planet accompanied by a growing instability in global geopolitics. An international educational program designed to develop cosmopolitan worldviews free from group-versus-group attachments is suggested in the paper.