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12Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 3 (2009 2) 361-366
УДК 140.8
Russian Self-Management Idea Origin and Globalization as a Form of the World Society Governing
Vladimir N. Ozeredenko*
Siberian Federal University, 79 Svobodny, Krasnoyarsk, 660041 Russia 1
Received 14.08.2009, received in revised form 21.08.2009, accepted 28.08.2009
Russian political system reforming is closely connected to the social transformations, being typical for the modern world society, and which are the consequences of globalization processes. Along with natural globalization, which supposes a lawful striving for humanity integration, we have become witnesses of artificial globalization, which is dangerous for societies' socio-cultural identity. That is why the salvation of the modern educational system problems supposes taking into consideration traditions, being typical for the Russian society.
In order to understand and to solve the given problem, we need to address the historical roots of Russian consciousness formation, within which our society's self-identification took place. Russia takes an exclusive position among the most important world civilizations. Its main peculiarity is in the following: in our country the triad - tradition-culture-civilization - does not make up an integral and smoothly running system, which also determines the general type of society. Both eastern and western civilizations use ideological means in order to blur over and to conceal their incongruity to their traditions and, moreover, their culture. However, in both cases the symbolic depth of experience is not opposed and does not confront with the material world, created by the civilization.
Keywords: form of government; the world society; self-management; social transformations; and social evolution.
Point
Globalization, as a naturally appeared socio-cultural phenomenon, is the result of various unplanned and hardly predicted transformations and changes in technical, economical, political and socio-cultural spheres. Globalization, as an enforced (artificial) process, includes in itself an element of direct or hidden (planned) violence, i.e. an attempt to enforce by means of bribery, deception, persuasion and indoctrination of these or those values, world outlook, economical, political notions and corresponding decisions.
* Corresponding author E-mail address: [email protected]
1 © Siberian Federal University. All rights reserved
Being artificially created and subordinated to subjective arbitrary interests, globalization can serve and serves as an instrument of dominating position achievement in the structure of international relations, of universalization of one of the systems of values and of a model of development.
Historical past knowledge is very important in order to confirm, among other things, that globalization is not only an objective process. Besides, it is also generated by subjective factors, and by the purpose pursuing man's activity.
There is some anxiety that the possibilities of globalization can be used and are used by these or those social forces, but not in the interests of humanity and social justice. Exactly that is why we are inclined to consider globalization processes as dubious ones: natural and enforced globalization.
Overstated aspirations are typical for an emancipating person of the global world, and that is why they are called overstated, as far as everybody's aspirations cannot be satisfied without exceptions. Apparently, the person, who has decided to make this principle be the centre of his life strategies, must refuse from such qualities as social responsibility, collective identity, and civil duty. Moreover, he is directly interested in weakening of social regulations and norms, which provide socially approved behavior.
Besides, one of the necessary conditions of global person's existence is rigid population segregation into two unequal parts: «the elected minority» and «the rejected majority». Such a world order strategy is destabilizing and destructive by its essence. Industrial equipment dismantlement and fundamental science collapse can be explained and understood in the light of the given logic.
In anthropological sense, globalism means de-socialization, de-culturing and disintegration of people. On one hand, it contributes to creation of the wandering Diaspora of «citizens of the world», - unprincipled outcasts, who have chopped off their roots and do not know any cultural, moral and other inner limitations. On the other hand, globalization processes cause degradation of «the rejected majority», which is methodically deprived of the possibility to get their education and so on.
Example
Today's experience is connected to the striving of one country or groups of countries to
use globalization as an instrument of the world supremacy project realization, to the attempt to use informational technologies, transnational capital and etc. in order to make the planet be the zone of these or those «national interests». All this testifies that globalization processes are ambivalent. And the possibility of their fulfillment not according, but despite of survival purposes, and human historical perspectives proceed from concrete historical and existing at present time conditions of cultural and civilizational growth. And they are such that allow suggesting with quite a high degree of probability that the vectors of cultural and civilizational evolution do not at all coincide with each other and their correlations vary in quite a wide range of distinctions, defining the most important qualitative characteristics of the society.
Russian political system reforming is closely connected to the social transformations, being typical for the modern world society, and which are the consequences of globalization processes. Along with natural globalization, which supposes a lawful striving for humanity integration, we have become witnesses of artificial globalization, which is dangerous for societies' socio-cultural identity. That is why the salvation of the modern educational system problems supposes taking into consideration traditions, being typical for the Russian society.
Informational process presupposes a globalization process analysis, which shows that at present time there is a whole row of problems. As the main global problems there are singled out the following ones: firstly, those of planetary character; secondly, the ones, which threaten the whole humanity either with death, or with serious regress of further development; thirdly, those, which demand an urgent salvation by the efforts of the whole world society.
Becoming a nature-forming factor, civilization accelerates the processes so much,
that society's adaptation possibilities can fail to assimilate the speed of all these changes. The natural course of evolution of all the self-developing and self-organizing processes is reflected by an exponential function. During last decades, social evolution has been experiencing radical metamorphoses, transferring most social relations from material into the non-material sphere - in which basis there lies the informational resource, which substitutes by itself raw and power resources - the basis of previous stages of civilization development.
Our historical consciousness is damaged so strongly that it leads to heavy, organic deformations of the present. We can observe the conflict of even several generations: grandfathers, fathers, children, grandchildren do not speak common language while discussing the questions of good and evil, belief and disbelief, capitalism and socialism, globalism and nationalism, patriotism and liberalism, the East and the West, private property and social intolerance.
In order to understand and to solve the given problem, we need to address the historical roots of Russian consciousness formation, wherein our society's self-identification took place. Russia takes an exclusive position among the most important world civilizations. Its main peculiarity is in the following: in our country the triad -tradition-culture-civilization - does not make up an integral and smoothly running system, which also determines the general type of society. Both eastern and western civilizations use ideological means in order to blur over and to conceal their incongruity to their traditions and, moreover, to their culture. However, in both cases, the symbolic depth of experience is not opposed and does not confront with the material world, created by the civilization.
There were known to be two main impediments for economical life of other peoples: their mentality (way of thinking, collective
psychology, and spiritual life intensity) and very hard, inclement climatic conditions on the territory, being not suitable for life. The abounding territory became attractive for the neighboring countries only after the Russian towns, roads and systems of communication having been built, and the basis of agriculture, industry, trade, and science-intensive production having been created. After all that, Russian vast territories became an object of geopolitical disagreements, bargaining, military aggression, quiet expansion, and diplomatic subterfuges [1, p. 19].
This is precisely the fact, which is not as a rule taken into consideration, when the question of Russian power system reforming is being raised. And that is why it is important to differentiate the institutional and the functional content of civilization and culture integrity, while considering the peculiarities of self-management system functioning, and on the whole we cannot sacrifice for it the dialectics of singular and general, the dialectics of structure and function. Aristotle suggests a special method of deviation in order to research the form of government. At present time this method is very topical and not only in political science. It is used for amplitudes dynamic researching of system possible deviations from some standard, from a steady condition with allowance for possibility of system self-returning to its normal functioning, of coming back to this steady condition by its own forces, of deviation expenditures overcoming, costs compensation, and decompensation avoiding.
The specifics of the Russian society's historical consciousness is realized in the following aspects: the Byzantine religious tradition of historical life perception; Russian people's historical uniqueness, starting from Peter I and in combination with Western-European culture elements; theoretical attitude towards history, which has been formed into a separate historical science; imperial historical self-consciousness,
which was given birth to during the Napoleon France I opposition [2, p. 25-26].
A lot of myths have been created about Russia in the result of somebody's uttered opinions, having been taken and perceived as a fruit of one's deep analysis. In most cases it has been connected to the fact that «in our country, philosophy and its existence are too much dependent upon the acrobatics of bureaucratic mind» [3]. But nothing appears just for fun, for no particular reason, though, as it is known, philosophical thinking succeeds the mythological one. We are to take it into consideration in the process of all-the-country management structures reforming.
In the course of his cosmological approach to philosophy functions consideration, N. O. Losskij wrote in «The History of Russian Philosophy», chapter «Russian Philosophy Typical Features», that in opposition to special sciences, i.e. sciences researching some parts and aspects of the world, philosophy bears the stamp of the characters and the interests of those various peoples, who have gone in for it. That is why we may speak about national peculiarities of German, French, English, American and Russian philosophy [4]. For example, «Russian civilization, so as Russian culture as well, presents by itself a «rhizoma». We are speaking about such a lot of various phenomena, which do not subordinate to any integrity and are characterized by heterogeneity, equality of rights, mutual disruptiveness and interconnection, and spontaneous changeability and autonomy. Thereat, rhizoma disruptiveness is considered to be «insignificant»; its heterogeneity explains the gaps, but do not exclude the interconnection of equal parts; the interconnection does not reject its autonomy and equality of rights, and its changeability does not lead to integrity, but enlarges the gaps and enforces the autonomy of integrity elements» [5, p. 250253]. Russia's being on the border between the East and the West, actually, generates its specific
«rhizomability», which cannot be reduced to one common denominator, neither to European, nor to Asian one [6, p. 8].
In the process of Russian social institutions reforming, it is important to bear in mind, that at various times history disproved the vain attempts «to copy» Russian culture and ideology according to the western pattern, and every time these attempt turned out to be a failure and caused enormous misery to Russian people. The matter is in the following: native and western cultures are incompatible and crucially different, as far as they belong to different types of societies. Having made this conclusion, we are to see once again that the difference between collectivistic and individual types of societies is actual, productive and well-substantiated, and we comprehend the need of studying of the Russian society as a collectivistic one.
Nevertheless, while forming the modern self-management system in Russia, it is important to keep in mind that during the last decades the following values of Russian spiritual culture have been damaged:
• communal consciousness has been damaged by means of implantation of the unlimited cult of individualism;
• substitution of Russian culture traditional priority of productive labour in favour of the motherland for serving an unknown country on the principle of mercantilism and consumption;
• substitution of social interests authority for personal ones, of Russian humanity for Cosmo-political pan-humanity;
• substitution offriendship and brotherhood of Russian peoples for ethnic strife;
• substitution of patriotism and love of country for serving an unknown country or a «world» government.
In order to understand the influence of globalization over the Russians, we need to
consider as well the fact that «all the characteristic features of Russian people prove that they are not able to blend harmoniously with the modern consumptive civilization and mass culture. The Russian man cannot be wholly inspired by the ideals of enrichment and consumption, which are the stimulus to the modern civilization.» [7]
We can state that the most valuable and fruitful ideas of the leading Russian thinkers are contained in the doctrine of collegiality. One of the foundation stones of «the Russian cosmism» is known to be the conception of a symphonic person, which is based precisely on the notion of collegiality, having been developed as «one of the most important theoretical considerations of Russian ancient philosophy. Collegiality is understood as «a feature of an overall connection of social phenomena. It deciphers the human word as some mosaic ...» [8, p. 274], which pieces are individuals, communities and social phenomena. And only being taken all together (thereat, not just mechanically, but in a certain order) «these phenomena make up a mosaic panel, which discloses the creative perfection of the Creator.» [9]
Collegiality means the combination of freedom and integrity of many people on the basis of their common love to one and the same absolute values. This idea has been clear to be used for salvation of many difficult problems of social life. The principal of collegiality means that neither the patriarch, having the supreme power, nor the spiritualty, nor even the oecumenical council is the absolute carrier of the truth. Collegial state, in its turn, fails to overrule spiritual power and, thereat, not to whittle away the rules of law, not to break the meaning of moral, ethic, ideological, religious and other norms, to abolish the latest,
not to damage the institutional harmony of collectivistic society.
The people, who have taken upon themselves the solicitude of spirituality, who do care about the other-worldly, the ideal and the perfect, - cannot fail to possess an utopian consciousness, which now helps them to survive in most difficult times, then plays the mischief to them. Utopism and its accompanying romanticism, credulity to word-mongering made Russian thinkers search the truth of life either in the future (the western utopias of communism and democratic paradise) or in the past (the Slavophilic utopias of returning to the Russian pleasant original pre-Peter I existence). The ideas of theanthropism and of collegiality cannot be realized up to their final limit, but they are not at all fully speculative inventions of the philosophizing dreamer, but quite acting factors for the national spiritual integration [10].
Example
Thus, Russian political system reforming presupposes an analysis of the following crucial moments. Firstly, the necessity of Russian nationhood origin consideration and, besides, self-management peculiarities demand to proceed from the fact that the idea of at-oneness with the universe takes a most important place in the Russian scientific and philosophical system of opinions and allows considering the world and its objective laws as an indivisible whole. The alternative approach, having been substantiated in the works of Russian cosmism followers, fulfils the methodological and world outlook functions, thus restoring the connection within the system of social and philosophical knowledge, what is crucial for development of new management systems in the conditions of globalization.
References
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- 365 -
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3. V. N. Porus. Philosophical Congress Must Prevent Russian Philosophy Decay / V. N. Porus // Vestnik RFO. - 2004. - №2.
4. N. O. Losskij. The History of Russian Philosophy / N. O. Losskij. - Moscow: Sovetskij pisatel', 1991.
5. Zh. Deljoz, F. Gvattari. Rhizoma. Introduction. / Zh. Deljoz, F. Gvattari // KorneviWe OB. The Book of Neoclassic Esthetics. Moscow, 1998.
6. I. V. Kondakov. «Beyond» Europe» / I. V. Kondakov // Voprosy filosofii - 2002. - №6.
7. V. Aksjuchic. Russian Character Apologia / V. Aksjuchic // Nezavisimaja gazeta. - 2000. - June, 27.
8. N. M. Churinov. Perfection and Freedom / N. M. Churinov. - Krasnojarsk, 2001.
9. The same.
10. A.A. Korol'kov. Spiritual Meaning of Russian Culture. -St. Petersburg: The Publishing House of RSPU named after A.I. Herzen, 2006. - P. 246.
