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ФИЛОСОФСКИЕ НАУКИ
УДК 323.2
MODERN SOCIETY AND THE PHENOMEN OF SECURITY
S.N. SOKOLOVA
Polessky State University, Pinsk, the Republic of Belarus
Introduction. Nowadays a variability of social relations imbalance in the economy has been studied extensively, but not their role in the social, political and cultural spheres of social life. Systemic vision of social reality proves that the security area is not an exception, and it is supposed to develop new directions and investigation of phenomena security. The interest in phenomena security is caused by the following reasons:
I. The possibility of identifying dialectics of social and political subjects and its influence on public life. The security area is quite an effective mechanism for regulating social conflicts, crises that can prevent sustained progress.
II. The necessity to overcome absolutization of state influence on the security area. The security area is not mono-subjective, which does not exclude the possibility of attracting a wide range of organizations, agencies, and in a democratic society it objectively suggests an extensive system of broad public and state influence on the society.
III. The integration of national security systems into regional and international systems (integrated security). Dynamic actions in the security area allow any subject to implement positive interaction, to be able to communicate in the society and on the international arena.
IV. The objective dependence among the democratic political system, the way of involving public organizations and citizens in the regulation of the security area. In this case, citizens and society are partners of the authorities in the decision making process, ranging from the issues of social development to marginal security.
V. The objective necessity to develop a system of state regulation of security as a modern sociopolitical institution. Any modern state is creating and developing security institutions (Security Councils, special services, anti-terrorism committees, expert committees) to ensure effective regulating impact of socio-political subjects on the security area.
VI. The lack of satisfaction of modern society in effective security. The global financial and economic crisis has demonstrated an objective relationship between social well-being of citizens, the quality of state regulation and the need to achieve sustainable security.
Phenomen security addresses the question: what is security and how much is this phenomenon cognoscible? Taking this question as a starting methodological premise, it is important to emphasize that such perspective of a problem has different aspects of manifestations in the social area. Herewith the author clearly understands that there is a need for detailed study of hermeneutics security to identify fundamental differences in semantic points, with those modern specialists who have previously studied security as a phenomenon in a variety of forms. No doubt, that those risks and threats, that appear outside the society, are also of great interest to researchers, but as practice shows, they were previously studied by scientists, and scientists keep thinking of them so that to work out the measures to resist destructive processes and negative phenomena.
The main part. In scientific literature the concept of «security» is generally understood in different ways: security is a lack of hazards, security is a certain activity to ensure or to prevent some dangers, threats, and security is a recognized need, interest and value. These definitions can be summed up and lead to a common denominator: anthropological instrumentalism, meaning that security has always been associated with some historical practice of ensuring human life and physical existence. But such a definition of security does not fully reveal the gist of the phenomenon. Despite the fact that the category of «security» has recently entered the vocabulary of science and society, it still has an ambiguous interpretation of values.
The idea of security is considered in the context of social relationships, social needs, interests, defining the nature of political process, and afterwards such understanding has found appropriate development, «in the two main concepts of security: national and public» [1, p. 199].
But in fact, there are much more of such concepts being considered by modern science (public, political, spiritual security, not to mention those special cases, such as food, demographic, ecological, biological, political, and other types of security). In fact, any evidence of security is directly related to the nature of dangerous environmental changes and the formation of unstable human perception of the world. It looks like the idea of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, «where danger appears as danger, there security comes», which means «to rescue, save, liberate, protect, shelter, defend» [2, p. 225].
That is, if there was no danger in the world, then there would be no problems with security. Security in this way represents a specific, well-defined result of specific activities (to neutralize, prevent threats and protection), which allows formulating two approaches to understand the nature of security: security as a manifestation of the objective nature of living systems to maintain their integrity on the basis of self-regulation with the environment through sustainable or unsustainable interaction and state; security as a subjective natural protective reaction or activity to create a specific environment for their survival. Thereby, we can say that security is a qualitative systematic feature of organic life, which not only ensures the survival of various organisms, but also contributes to their development (under certain conditions has to contribute to it) [3, p. 7].
The main purpose of any of these structural levels of living is its own survival at the expense of creating a «niche», i.e. the existence of secure environment, secure world, which allows developing and improving, to reviving and updating constantly.
In its evolution the mankind has created special elements for self-preservation and development:
• elements of culture (language, writing, religion, art, science, ethics, law);
• elements of sociality (social hierarchy, various forms of associations and relationships);
• elements of politics (state, government, law enforcement agencies, fiscal authorities);
• elements of economy (manufacturing, finance, market) [4, p. 112-115].
The state had been the dominant element lately (before the process of globalization) which united all the elements into one piece, being the main subject of self-preservation, and development of this or that system [5, p.13-14].
Modern notions of security are quite diversified and range from its identification with some «generic concept» to the recognition by symbiosis of «environmental, economic, and any other security that confronts the system of threats to the man and society from different types of danger» [6, p. 8].
Understanding security as a state of protection is currently widespread and accepted by many researchers as a conceptual foundation of conducted theoretical studies, although they often differ in the definition of security, the nature of threats, and the direction of protected interests [7, p. 31-32].
But such a compromised approach cannot fully satisfy the author of the article. The matter is that the recognition of the definition enforced by the law is not only explained by the legal status, but also by a number of specific historical reasons. As a result, the traditional understanding of security as a state of protection has changed its form though, but has remained dominant not only in the current research, but also in the practice of security.
At the same time the limited understanding of the traditional perception of security in the last decade has induced many scientists not only to look for new approaches, but also to rethink critically the existing views, even if they have received legislative recognition. According to many modern researchers, security awareness does not reflect the essence of the phenomenon for a variety of reasons, which is adequately represented in the work of N.N. Rybalkin [8, p. 9-11].
Firstly, in the opinion of some authors, the identification of protection with security is the result of a methodological approach in which social and political processes are not considered theoretically, but only politically, and above all, in the confrontation between two ideologies [9, p. 72-73].
This «state enforcement» security awareness came from a well-defined geopolitical model, assuming the global interaction of sovereign states as they pursue only their own interests, i.e. «Public security» is an out-of-date approach that has already expressed its inconsistency [10, p. 10]. It is necessary to have a more modern approach to solve the problems related to the effectiveness of the security area, i.e. integrated security.
Secondly, the researchers draw attention to the identification of security with protection. Antidemocratic domestic policy can be traced objectively out of prevailing «protective» deviation, which is
threatening, as the authorities may without difficulty replace the emphasis from the «watchdog» of national interests to the implementation of their own corporate needs, latent group interests that could possibly be presented by the author of this article as marginal security.
Marginal security is directly related to the crime situation (corruption, alcoholism, drug addiction, smoking, arms and human trafficking, human organs trafficking, cybercrime,) and other aggressive, violent phenomena in the society.
Marginal security is, above all, connected with corporate interests, with manifestation of social and political instability associated with media space, religious demagoguery, confessional differences, extremism, racism, financial, economic and political crises, and local military conflicts. For example, there are various groups that assassinate progressive politicians, law enforcement officers and, as a result of these destructive actions, the marginalized part of society, especially, criminal young people, commit different kinds of crime. Using radical extremist slogans, being on an illegal or semi-legal status, this marginalized part of society can't find an acceptable social «niche». As practice shows, after committing their aggressive actions and destructive tasks, gangs are neutralized by the militia (police) and other special units. These destructive, criminal actions of «criminal beau monde» should be investigated. We must not forget that the purpose of the existence of «criminal beau monde» is the search for an acceptable, secure and comfortable for them environment.
To survive in such a situation, law-abiding man, and civil society need to realize marginal security which can withstand criminal groups, 'criminal beau monde', i.e. a specific, effectively working mechanism being able to guarantee secure world.
The structural interpretation of Phenomena security looks like «Russian matrioshka»:1) secure world; 2) integrated security; 3) marginal security; 4) public security; 5) state security; 6) security of man.
Today it is important for science to form a structural and functional approach: specific scientific disciplines, revealing the processes and phenomena, characterizing the concept, which is called security.
It's obvious, that this phenomenon must be properly studied by representatives of various scientific fields. As a result of active search for answers to the above mentioned question, it's getting clear that there are different social subjects who are interested in the security area, which allows us to add, concretize, but not to separate and oppose the independence of this sphere, in addition to the traditional areas of social life.
The desire for creativity, cooperation, harmony and complementarities of various spheres of social life must become a norm of existence and socio-cultural cooperation between nations and spread to the field of security. In this regard, we should consider the following: «At the turn of the XXI century, this new dilemma of modernity is beginning to materialize into the necessity to mobilize the resources for international cooperation, for further improvement of global strategy to fight against international terrorism, for the development and use of new forms and means to protect the rights and freedoms of citizens, for strengthening the democratic foundations of society» [11, p. 104]. Security, in this case, is identified with immutability of the existing political structures [12, p. 103-104].
In the context of this perception of reality and the dynamics of change in politics, it is necessary to offer a scientific category, more fully revealing, according to the author, the state of political model and the nature of public security.
Political singularity characterizes an unstable state of the political system, which can be seen at the initial stage of its formation, when the activity of political subjects are constantly increasing, and a destructive impact on the development of social relations is becoming regular, destructive and repetitive, which reduces the efficiency of the security sector. Moreover, a consistent implementation of the idea of security leads to isolation and, consequently, to a «fall out» of the system of international relations, therefore erected in the past the «Iron Curtain» prevented a socio-cultural interaction of civilizations, transformed the secure world. That is why; we can't but agree with the American scientist Samuel Huntington: «The future of the world and civilization depends on the understanding and cooperation between politicians, spiritual and intellectual leaders of the major civilizations of the world» [13, pp. 527].
Conclusion. Thirdly, according to the experience of international military and strategic cooperation, security cannot be reduced only to protection. Secure world is a theoretical model allowing to realize sound development that facilitates cooperation between nations, which, in general, does not always guarantee full protection (no dangers, threats), because social space changes dynamically, it is contradictory and multidimensional.
Fourthly, the restriction of the definition of security to the vital interests of society and state, demonstrates the peculiarity but not the generality of the definition, whereupon the legislated definition cannot be considered as a concept of security that reveals the essence of the phenomenon. Apparently, the researchers' awareness of theoretical failure to identify the concept of security with the concept of protection has led to the emergence of a large number of alternatives, including sufficiently strong, scientific definitions. Setting aside essential characteristics of security, considered by researchers, for example, national, state, public, personal security, ecological, informational security, biological security, and the existing concepts can be roughly summarized in the following main groups of definitions.
1. Security is understood as the absence of danger. The basis of this understanding is the etymological consideration of the «security» concept [13, p. 18]. One of the sources of security identification with the absence of danger is the «The Russian language Dictionary» by S.I. Ozhegov, where security is defined as «an out-of- danger state» [14, c. 174].
Developing this idea, some researchers consider security as an absence of dangers and threats. The identification of security with the absence of danger is a good reason for critical objections of the researchers who think that it is almost impossible to find a situation where a person is safe and sound [15, p. 13-15].
Security as a phenomenon cannot exist without danger. Moreover, a person starts to exist only with the appearance of danger. The presence of danger does not exclude, but rather includes security, which is a reaction to danger. If there is no interaction of security with certain danger or there is its interaction with imaginary danger, it can lead to serious deformation and turning security into a self-sufficient system but often to its disadvantage. In addition, the reduction of security to the absence of danger actually leads to the denial of development, self-improvement, which, from the point of view of the system functioning, can be considered as danger.
2. Security is regarded as a characteristic feature of the system, as the existence of any system presupposes its protection from damaging impacts. Furthermore, all systems (elementary particles, atoms, molecules, macrocosm and cosmos) oppose their destruction. Interacting with the external world, man cognizes and recognizes dangers that threaten his existence, and takes measures to prevent or reduce them [16, p. 139].
3. Security, which is more often understood as a purposeful activity of specialists working in the sphere of security. There exist a number of less common, but more original definitions of security where «security» is defined as follows: a certain relationship, the subjects of which are the source of threat and the object of vulnerability; a set of factors that ensure the viability of the state and favorable environment for its development; the state's ability to withstand the use of force as well as the threat of using force. In conclusion, I'd like to say that modern concepts of security demonstrate an extreme diversity, patchiness and ambiguity of this complicated phenomenon, which is not always identical to the disclosure of its essence.
Phenomena security or security awareness theory illustrates and confirms the fact that the problem of understanding the essence of security and, accordingly, its conceptual definition still remains unsolved in modern science.
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MODERN SOCIETY AND THE PHENOMEN OF SECURITY
S.N. SOKOLOVA
Summary
The article deals with the theory of security understanding, and its relevance to modern society. The authors propose to investigate the controversial interpretation of values and conceptual definition of security and also show a multidimensional eclecticism of social being and prospects of social space intellectual development. This article examines the theory of security awareness, sophisticated eclecticism of multidimensional social existence and specificity of the security sector.
© Соколова С.Н.
Поступила в редакцию 14 мая 2014г.
