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5The Beacon: A New Journal for Studying Ideologies in the Multibillion World
Lyudmila A. Lysenko1
Lyudmila A. Lysenko,
PhD (Biology), Leading Scientific Researcher of the Karelian Scientific Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences,
Editor-in-Chief of The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions, Russia
Людмила Александровна Лысенко,
Кандидатъ бюлогическихъ наукъ,
ведущм научный сотрудникъ Карельскаго научнаго центра РАН,
главный редакторъ журнала The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions (Росая)
Article No / Номеръ статьи: 010100000
For citation (Chicago style) / Для цитировашя (стиль «Чикаго»):
Lysenko, Lyudmila A. 2018. "The Beacon: A new journal for studying ideologies in the multibillion world." The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions 1, 010100000.
Versions in different languages available online: English only.
1 Please send the correspondence to e-mail: l-lysenko@yandex.ru.
Permanent URL links to the article: HANDLE: 20.500.12656/thebeacon.1.010100000
http://thebeacon.ru/pdf/Vol.%201.%20Issue%201.%20010100000%20ENG.pdf
Received in the original form: 15 April 2018 Review cycles: 1
1st review cycle ready: 18 May 2018 Review outcome: 3 of 3 positive Decision: To publish as is Accepted: 20 May 2018 Published online: 4 June 2018
HEADLINE. Why should we have a new international scientific journal The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions?
РЕЗЮМЕ
Людмила Александровна Лысенко. The Beacon: новый журналъ для изучемя идеологй въ мультпмплл'ардномь мпрп>. Въ стать- приводятся основныя причины, побудившая международную группу ученыхъ приступить къ публикацИ новаго журнала The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions. Подчеркивается, что въ современномъ мр-Ь съ восьмимиллiарднымъ населеыемъ идеологичесмя средства управлеНя населеыемъ претерп-Ьли существенный
ABSTRACT
Lyudmila Lysenko. The Beacon: A New Journal for Studying Ideologies in the Multibillion World. The main reasons that led an international team of scholars to publishing journal The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions, are discussed in the article. It is emphasised that in the modern world with eight billion people of population, the ideological means of managing the population, are ultimately changed in comparison with the beginning of the twentieth century and the earlier times. Therefore, the scholars all over the world have to have a venue for discussing the current ideological instruments and apparatuses, as well as their historical evolution. The Beacon journal is concerned with these tasks.
Key words: ideology, social management, social control, international journal, Earth's population, evolution of human, history of human society, cultural studies
измЪнеыя по сравненю съ началомъ ХХ в-Ька, а также бол-Ье ранними историческими перiодами. Поэтому ученые из раз-ныхъ уголковъ мiра должны имЬть возможность обсуждать современные идеологичесме инструменты и аппараты, а также ихъ историческую эволюцю. Журналъ The Beacon мо-жетъ стать мЬстомъ такого обсужденiя.
Ключевым слова: идеолопя, соцiальный менеджментъ, сощальный контроль, международный журналъ, населенiе Земли, эволющя человЬка
THE MULTIBILLION WORLD REALITY
We are all used to believe that the contemporary world has to be free of ideologies and ideological influence. What makes us to think so? The worldwide spread of the concept of "global democracy," a dark side of globalisation, along with the digi-talisation of the younger generations, compels us to re-consider the very notion of ideology, its intrinsic value. In our times, the term "ideology" became a patch to the fabric of politics and international relations, fabric very much tattered and torn during the last three decades since the dissolution of Soviet Union, declared end of the Cold war and the new stage of delineating Europe (Bailey and Gayle 2003, 12, 14, 43; Gershon 2010, 288; Jaffe 2008, 517-518). Some credulous souls believed that the deconstruction of Berlin Wall, would proclaim the end of the era of ideologies (see, e.g.: Armstrong 1993; Fuentes 1991; Harrison 2011). This did not happen. The concept of ideological action transformed to a scarecrow to fright masses around the world. After the sad connotations this word received in Fascist and Nazi worldview, after the grim truth to which this word brought people during Stalin's era in Soviet Union, it is unsurprising. To be sure, Mussolini and Goebbels made their essential contribution in broad despising the term "ideology" in our time (Lemmons 1994, 63, 78; Richardson 2010, 177). It is not a plausible pretext, however, to refuse studying ideologies and ideological influence, especially taking into account that the border of the second and third decade of the new Millennium, demonstrated the rise and spread of a great deal of ideologies to the desperately confused human society.
To name but several instances, terrorist ideologies are blossoming in the heart of Europe and not somewhere "there," in the Muslim countries that the Europeans made obscure and dim themselves.
Most of US politicians, in particular of the Democratic party, declare that the American international politics is void of ideology; but we face a contrary and incontestable fact that all the coloured revolutions of 1990s-2010s were and are caused by the direct US influence. That influence, along with the economic levers and stimuli, includes a clearly detectable ideological part, the dissemination of the "highest" and "utmost" ideal of global democracy across every corner of the world.
In Russia, there are the following sections in the Constitution of Russian Federation (in
all the editions since 1993 till the last one, of 2014) that read:
1) In Russian Federation the ideological pluralism is accepted;
2) No ideology can be made as official or obligatory.2
In fact, the court practice in Russia demonstrates that an ideology in favour of the state power, always occupies an advantageous position, while the ideological narratives of the political opposition receive the lowest credit of trust. In addition, the legally declared absence of the official ideology in Russia, together with the destruction of the Russian classical educational system taking place since 1999 hitherto, results in public educating3 politically and socially amorphous mass, the youth that is not interested in the public life at all, and, therefore, can be easily manipulated. The equality of ideologies, declared legally in the modern Russian law, does not prevent definite political and social actors from using ideologies preferred by them as their powerful instruments of social management, control and transformation.
The anti-European ideology widely accepted in Russia, is reflected by different flavours of Russophobia blooming in the governments of some European states, not only of those around the Russian border, but sometimes of the farthest - let us recall the Skripals' case of the 4 March, that seems to become an itching wound in British-Russian relations for the years to come. In addition, in all Western Europe, a call for equality and liberalism transformed to an ideology depriving the Europeans of their own rights in favour of the migrants' rights.
US trade wars with China lead both parties to ideological control over masses, individuals and business entities (Marchant and Wang 2018, 1-3; Rasmus 2018, 350-352; Sachs 2018, 145-150; Zhang 2018, 68, 72). The Chinese threat in USA and American threat in mainland China, are ideological bubbles that do not seem to have any reasonable volume limits. They are still swelling and growing, with the media discourse in USA and China being given the respective carte blanche instructions of the governments (Mitchener and Yan 2014, 147-148; Shobert 2018, 8-10). Hong Kong protests will not in the least give rise to a new Asian "democracy" independent of the mainland China.4
Everything is witnessing that for many years to come, we shall see yet increasing and strengthening ideologies fables and ideological influence in every part of the world, with no exceptions. If a downfall of the era of ideologies ever be, we shall not observe it soon, in any case.
Everybody is still playing ideological games, and it is highly confusing to believe that ideology is a social phenomenon of "developing" countries, be they of the "third" or "fourth" world. The very idea of the "four worlds" - whichever worlds, to be sure - is an ideology itself, created by the European and US elitist political thinkers of the second half of the
2 The Constitution of Russian Federation. Division 1. Chapter 1. Article 13.
3 At primary, secondary and higher school levels.
4 Despite what the majority of scholars think. See, e.g.: Chang (2015); Ping and Kin-Ming (2014); Veg (2016); Wong (2015).
twentieth century, as a number of researchers convincingly proved (Hall 2003, 255; Madhavan and Thomas 1993, 117, 120; Manuel and Posluns 1974, 34; Castells 2000, 102). With the advent of mass media and Internet, ideology cannot be restricted to a definite part of human society (Beauville 2011; DeNardis 2009; Moyer 2010). It cannot be stored in an obscure box and drowned somewhere in the ocean. The attempts to create ideological influence by cutting-off or restricting the use of the Internet connections, such as in China (Chi 2012, 390, 392) or Russia (Barrera 2017, 5; Ristolainen 2017, 121, 126; Sherstobitov et al. 2018, 165-166), are very likely to fail.
We have to clearly understand that the world with eight-billion population cannot be treated and managed in the same way as it was done at the beginning of the twentieth century, when it numbered just one billion, and the population growth rate will only increase in the future. Such huge numbers are incredible not just for researchers, but also for governments, political elites, social architects, economic and financial transnational corporations, that is for those actors who directly influence the political and social processes around the world. It is not unexpected, therefore, that ideology and ideological apparatuses are widely used in the modern multibillion world. These apparatuses may be found in every place where the virtual communications are established. With the borders of the states and nations being erased by the omnipresence of Internet and social media, GSM connections and satellite phones, the Earth's population is transforming not to the set of individuals but to the unified humanity. In 1900 newspapers were as well the main instruments of social management as sources of information. The major London papers were issued thrice a day, but the real rate of ideology spread was much less due to the time they had to spend on border control and on crossing the oceans. Today we are basically not limited by any time delays and impediments. The most powerful computers and the networks with largest bandwidths and lowest ping times allow to disseminate any pieces of information in microseconds. Ideologies may be distributed with an eye blink rate.
In The Beacon: Journal for Studying ideologies and Mental Dimensions, we are headed towards investigating these processes, and are convinced that the researchers of different cultures, nations and backgrounds, who are interested in the fate of humanity and homo sapiens, will join our efforts. Quoting Dr Wolfgang Sassin, a renowned German political thinker and social reformer, whom I would like to express my earnest gratitude and appreciation to, for his direct and immediate participation in The Beacon launch,
In order to really interest concerned individuals focussing on the most challenging issue of our times, namely to deal with the mass phenomenon of 8+ billion people, confronted with each other via "virtual realities," the need and the possibility to bridge language barriers, is an essential feature of The Beacons approach... Our point is not to preach, however, Beacons were established to keep ships and their crew from hitting what stabilised the basis of "Lighthouses." The Beacon hints at a consolidated beam of light, as the word is literally translated... And even not the light itself is what we need, but it is the information carried by a "controlled beam" that helps sailors to orient themselves in unknown waters. The basis of ships are waters. To communicate about vital differences, not to eradicate them, is what is needed in times of mindless mixing of different cir-
cumstances and experiences.5
THE BEACON: AN URGENT NEED IN A LIGHTHOUSE
If we abstract ourselves from the exact definitions of ideology everybody is aware of, in The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions we look forward to studying what makes a word an effective social force, what transforms a word into an action - it is in this word-action junction that any ideology's core can be found. The Beacon journal is devoted to studying theoretical and practical aspects of transforming an ideological narrative, fable or parable into social action. In the modern world, we are losing the ability to hear and listen to each other. Any colloquy transforms to a soliloquy, and that is one of the worst effects of cultural and economic globalisation. The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions is by no means the only journal for dealing with ideology. To mention several others, there are such venues as the British Journal of Poiitical Ideologies; and Politics, Reiigion and Ideology; German Rechtgeschichte; Zeitschrift für Staats- und Europawissenschaften; and Politische Vierteljahresschrift; Italian Scienza e Politica - Per Una Storia Delle Dottrine; Romanian Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies; finally, Russian Gosudarstvo, Religiia, Tserkov' v Rossi/' i za Rubezhom. This list is definitely growing, since every year new scientific journals emerge. However, we hope to stand out in our utmost devotion to a non-ideological approach to studying ideologies. Our task is to create a place for the discussions on the Second Enlightenment we so urgently need in our days, a deliberate interdisciplinary and cross-cultural dialogue.
The main epistemic square that shall be in the focus of The Beacon, is as follows:
Science
Society
Po litics
Culture
Any academic researchers and practitioners are invited to the collaboration that may -
From an unpublished contribution of Dr-Ing Sassin.
5
or believe that they may - advance studying ideology and ideologies to a new stage of analysing their theoretical, practical and methodological aspects. On journal pages, we plan to discuss secular, scientific as well as religious ideologies (in case of religion, ideology approaches homiletics). Any ideology contains a systematic narration for a large throng, with producing the collective conscious WE. Studying religious ideologies as Church instruments, may facilitate a successful interconfessional and interreligious interaction in the modern globalised world. Studying secular ideologies might assist us in our analysis of political, social, legal initiatives and manifestations that involve speeches, public narratives, media discourses as major instruments.
The similarity between ideology and homiletics does not lie only in the sphere of Church affairs. According to Dr-Ing Wolfgang Sassin, homiletics is the art of forming a conscious WE from an otherwise uncorrelated throng controlling it thereby.6 This is a very essence of ideology. In order to achieve this, a religious, political, social, economic, business etc. force uses simple and more complex parables and allegories that can be understood by individuals with widely different interests and capabilities. Panem et circenses already served this purpose both in ancient Greece and ancient Rome. The art of ideological narration has been exceedingly refined since the times of St John Chrysostom, from Edmund Burke via Edward Bernays (the father of Public Relations) and Thomas Edward Lawrence to Mahatma Gandhi, Mao, Archbishop John of Shanghai and particularly so with the advent of modern mass media.7
The research in the scope of ideology additionally includes philosophy of language, investigating literature and arts, media and social discourses. Any study of any form of ideology, will be encouraged in The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions, political, social, artistic, literary, legal, business, economic, financial, media and so on. Therefore, to investigate the specifics of ideological theory and practice, is a goal for a wide group of authors. Among them, we would greet any researcher that deals with theology, sociology, political studies, philosophy, linguistics, literature, culture and art studies, law, history, employees of commercial companies and legal practitioners, workers of non-profit organisations and social workers, and authors of social projects.
Not the last factor that advances The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions of the pool of journals on ideologies, is the sincere commitment of the Editorial Board to the tolerance to different languages, cultures and independent researchers. In a number of journals, independent researchers and thinkers without a current affiliation, are not given the full scope of rights. We are heading towards eliminating any possible discrimination. All authors shall have equal rights to publish in The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions regardless of their racial, national, sexual and other identification, age, religious beliefs, citizenship, political and other preferences, the presence or absence of their academic affiliation. Similarly, the authors who are well known
6 From an unpublished contribution of Dr-Ing Sassin.
7 Ibid.
in the scientific community and/or have academic degrees from well-known universities, are not given priority. The only factors affecting the acceptance of a material for publishing in The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions, are its highest quality and scientific value.
The main scope of the journal is comprised of the following topics:
■ ideological apparatus of the state and different social forces;
■ ideology in political platforms;
■ different "-isms";
■ all types of propaganda, including media propaganda;
■ ideological formation of "invented" cultural traditions;
■ ideological side of the most urgent global humanity issues, including health crises, climate, energy, and overpopulation;
■ role of religions and atheism in social administration;
■ ideology in science - technology - society triangle, ideological construction of scientific knowledge.
The list of topics above is open because of the incessant development of ideologies and the appearance of new problems connected with ideology, in the modern world.
THE STEPS TOWARDS OUR FUTURE AUTHORS
The steps necessary for maintaining the policy of equality of the authors, include the widest possible range of languages. With English being regarded a preferable tongue for discussions (Disputamus section of the journal) and compulsory for a contribution title, authors' names, abstract, key words, extended summary, references and author information, no language used for core text, is given priority. Since the researchers of any nations, confessions and religions as well as atheist and materialist thinkers are welcome, we propose the widest variety of languages for publication.
Ideology and ideologies are ultimately closely connected with the language. Therefore, the material can be written in any language of the world, modern or archaic. We use this unique approach, dissimilar with other journals on ideologies, to give prospective authors the opportunity to reflect characteristics of different ideologies, religions, media discourses and speech of historical eras as accurately as possible, and to describe the sources as authentic as possible, if an author has such a wish. The presence of an Extended summary in English, containing nearly 500 words, for each article will help the readers, who may not be fluent in the language in which the article is written, to get acquainted with its content. It is obvious that, if an author discusses an Old French literature, sometimes it may be easier to do using French, not English, or if he or she considers a Russian media discourse, it is probably wise
to accomplish in Russian.
The selected grammatical, spelling and syntactic features of the language in which a paper is presented, should be consistent throughout the text, i.e. if, for example, an author writes about medieval English homiletics in Middle English of the North-Western dialect, he or she should use this dialect throughout the text. Or if the material is written in Ancient Greek, the author should not switch to modern Greek in any part of the text.
The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions pursues, among others, a target to preserve Russian homiletic traditions. Thus, if an author sends a material in Russian, we strongly recommend the usage of Peter the Great (pre-revolutionary) civil spelling of the 18th - early 20th centuries (with the letters i, solid sign, yat, theta, izhitsa, with or without the letter ё). E.g., И завидуютъ онЪ государевой женЪ...; Товарищъ, вЪрь: взойдётъ она, звезда плЪнительнаго счастья. The future authors may get acquainted with the features of Russian traditional spelling in the sources: 1) Lomonosov, Mikhail V. 1755. Russian grammar. St. Petersburg; or 2) Grot, Jacob K. 1894. Russian spelling. 11th ed. St. Petersburg. In case of any troubles, the editorial staff will help the authors with the translation from modern Russian into traditional Russian free of charge. Why are we sticking to traditional Russian spelling written in Russian? The Russian Emperor Nikolay I was deliberating on an idea to cancel Peter the Great's spelling and transform it to the Russian orthography that is in use now. In a reply to the question of the Emperor "why people should torment themselves with such difficult spelling," the renowned Russian philologist Nikolay Ivanovich Grech said: "Your Majesty, Peter the Great's spelling must be preserved for us to be literate."
One of the goals of publishing The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions, is to revert the dialogue to its pristine form. We have to remember, a colloquy should not be altered to a soliloquy. For making the communication of the authors easier and more successful, we offer the Disputamus section, that in Latin means "we dispute with each other." In this section, an author may write his (her) reply or commentary to the articles published in the previous issues. We consider such a venue for the scientific discussions and debates, as a place of hearing each other, a think tank for the mutual solving a problem we would like to solve.
EDITORIAL POLICY AND PUBLICATION ETHICS
As another steps towards the policy of equality and free, unprejudiced and unbiased exchange of our thoughts, we are offering the following Editorial policy and publication ethics to which the members of the Editorial Board, Editorial Council, authors, and readers of The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions (henceforth The Beacon) shall adhere.
1. Accedence to the Rules. The submission of a material to The Beacon journal (materials are accepted only electronically via the official e-mail of the Editorial office)
automatically infers and entails the absolute and unconditional consent of an author (authors) to abide by all the terms stated herein.
2. General provisions. The Editorial Board of The Beacon journal is dedicated to the strict observance of publishing ethics by the authors, editors and reviewers, and takes all possible measures against its violation. Ethical standards of The Beacon journal are in a full accordance with the principles of the international Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The main guidelines on the COPE standards can be found in the website of the organisation https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Guidelines.
3. Licensing. The Beacon is an open access journal. All published materials can be further used and freely distributed by the authors and readers of the journal, provided that the reference to The Beacon journal as original source is clearly indicated (The Beacon). The author and the journal both retain the copyright to the text. The author may use the published text in the chapters in individual or collective monographs, in personal websites, blogs or other Internet venues, provided that a clear and unequivocal statement is given that the text was originally published in The Beacon journal. The authors are to inform the Editorial Board about any cases of potential conflict of interests. Licensing the materials published is made under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License.
4. Originality of materials. It is presumed that the works sent to The Beacon journal, are original and have not been previously published by the authors anywhere. The texts under consideration and/or review in other periodicals, may not be submitted to The Beacon. The responsibility for this action is laid entirely upon the author.
5. Confidentiality. Before publishing, materials sent to the journal The Beacon, are considered confidential and not subject to any discussion and/or disclosure to any parties other than reviewers, members of the Editorial Board and Editorial Council of The Beacon. The works sent to reviewers by the Editorial Board are completely anonymised, and any passages contained in the text that allow to know the authorship are replaced by identical but anonymous ones. The texts sent to The Beacon are used only in discussions of the materials by the members of the Editorial Board, and/or Editorial Council, and/or groups of reviewers, as well as in the publication of these texts and their publication preparation in The Beacon, and are not used in any form, any context, and under any circumstances outside these processes.
6. Malpractice statement. An author of the text sent to the Editorial Board of The Beacon journal guarantees that the text does not contain any incorrect borrowings, and all quotations provided properly state their authorship. The sources of all borrowed materials (e.g. quotations, diagrams, charts, maps, photographs, drawings, figures etc.) should be specified explicitly. The Editorial Board of The Beacon journal is making every possible effort to preserve and protect the copyright understood as the legal and ethical rights of all the authors. A prospective author is responsible for obtaining all necessary rights to copy and use the materials provided in the text of his (her) paper. In case of claims about plagiarism (incorrect borrowings without stating the
authorship), the Editorial Board of The Beacon holds a special meeting dedicated to the discussion of the situation in question, taking into account the explanations of all the parties concerned. In case of a proved plagiarism, the paper is retracted and the author is restricted from any further publications in The Beacon.
7. Financial conditions of publication. The publication is completely free of charge for all the authors. No royalties are paid upon publishing. The inclusion of any illustrative materials (figures etc.) whether black-white or coloured, is also free of charge.
8. Authors' opinions. The opinions of the authors expressed in the texts are the authors' personal views and may not coincide with the views of the Editorial Board. This notwithstanding, the editorial policy aims at creating the wide variety of viewpoints.
9. Text preparation for the publication. If a material is approved for publication in the journal The Beacon, editors can introduce a number of changes to the text, including scientific editing, language correction, and in the case of texts in Russian the translation into traditional (Peter the Great's) spelling. The author in question is provided with the final version of the text (proofs) for his/her approval before publication.
10. Editor-in-Chief's role. The Editor-in-Chief is the utmost guarantor of the implementation of these provisions and other ethical rules of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). She provides an objective and indifferent review process and selection of materials for publication. In case of conflicting and controversial situations, the Editor-in-Chief makes necessary final decisions.
THE REVIEW PROCESS
To implement the policy of equality, all materials received by the Editorial Board undergo a rigorous double-blind peer review process (an author does not know the reviewers and the reviewers do not know the author).
At first, a material sent to The Beacon journal, is evaluated by the Editorial Board. A decision to submit it for reviewing or reject at the initial stage is based on the following criteria:
1) compliance of the text with the journal's profile;
2) correspondence of the title with the content of the paper;
3) correctness of the citation style and references provided.
If the Editorial Board decides to submit the article for review, the anonymised version of the text is sent to three reviewers chosen from the Editorial Board, Editorial Council or other group of experts on the topic of the paper. These experts are normally recommended by the members of the Editorial Board and Editorial Council.
The Beacon journal applies the principles of double-blind peer review (the review process
is anonymous for all the parties). If there are at least two positive reviews, the Editorial Board decides to publish the text a) as is; b) after minor corrections; or c) after significant revisions. After improving the text has been accomplished (if necessary), the material is sent for review once again. The decision of the Editorial Board and the opinions of reviewers are submitted to the author(s).
The overall procedure of initial evaluation, reviewing and making a final or interim decision on the submitted material takes about three-four months. We always try to make a grounded decision and inform the author(s) as soon as possible.
The main criteria of selecting an article for the publication:
a) novelty;
b) importance of the contribution of the author's ('s) hypotheses and concepts in science;
c) independence and originality of the work;
d) logic and consistency of the presentation of ideas and conclusions;
e) depth of understanding the problem;
f) good level of language proficiency;
g) compliance of the literature quoted with the main logic of the work.
ARTICLE DENOTATION
In The Beacon, we use the article identifiers instead of the ordinary go-through page numbers. That gives an opportunity to publish each article immediately after it has received positive reviews and has been approved for the publication by the Editorial Board of The Beacon.
The structure of an article identifier is the following:
Article ID = AABBCDDEE, e.g. 020310104.
Number of the issue within the volume (two-digit)
Number of the article Within the issue (two-digit)
Code of the article type
Code of the language In which the article is written
Code of the main article's Scope of knowledge
A paper identifier looks like a nine-digit number, e.g. 020310104, and should be used along with the volume number. For instance, for the article you are currently reading, it should look like: The Beacon 1, 010100000.
List of article types:
0: an Editorial article or note;
1: an Original Article;
2: a Book review;
3: a Review Article;
4: a Letter to an Editor;
7: an announcement about a scientific event.
List of languages:
00: English;
01: Russian;
02: German;
03: Chinese simplified;
04: Chinese traditional;
05: Spanish;
06: Portuguese;
07: Arabic;
08: Italian;
09: French;
10: Korean;
11: Polish;
12: Slovak;
13: Czech;
14: Ukrainian;
the other language codes are available upon request.
For the key contributions sent to The Beacon, we shall use the multilingual approach. A version of an article is written in a main language and may be supplemented by several translations. By such a measure, we intend to support the cross-cultural dialogue and involvement of readers and authors from different civilisations, cultures and languages, to the pivotal discussions offered on pages of The Beacon. We regard this a unique feature of our journal.
List of main article's scope of knowledge codes, is also available upon request.
In the example above (Article ID = 020310104), the identifier should be understood in such a way: the article is published in issue no. 02; it occupies position no. 03 within the issue; the article is an original article (1); it is written in Russian (01); and its topic is defined as primarily belonging to the role of religion in societal development (04) as the scope of knowledge. In the text, we quote a source published in The Beacon, like this (Lysenko 2018), or if we would like to refer to an exact page, "(Lysenko 2018, 4)." However, as you may see, within the paper, page numbers are given in the Article ID-page number format, that is 010100000-1, 010100000-2, ...
Article ID system gives great flexibility in that we may publish a contribution immediately after (and if) it has been given positive reviews and approved for publishing by the Editorial Board. That provides an author with considerable advantage.
THE FIRST ISSUE OF THE BEACON
With the current issue of The Beacon, we are launching the journal. The two core contributions of this issue are written by Dr-Ing Wolfgang Sassin (Austria). In the first article, he is discussing the transformation of societal consciousness, while in the second he is propounding an explanation of the reasons of such a transformation. The latter is illustrated by geometric argumentation. On its basis, Dr Sassin expounds the importance of multidimensional approach to understanding social and scientific transformational processes and its ideological nature. Both of the papers are written in German, and the
translations into several languages, are provided as supplementary files available in the journal website http://thebeacon.ru.
The discussion is continued by Judith Byrne (Ireland), Natalia Moiseeva (Italy) and Konstantin Sharov (Russia) who are applying Dr Sassin's methodology of understanding the conscious WE, to their research of nations and nationalities. Finally, Lady Cecily Grey from the United Kingdom is offering her reflections on the just published monograph, Sassin, Wolfgang, Donskikh, Oleg, Gnes, Alexandre, Komissarov, Sergey, and Depei Liu. 2018. Evolutionary Environments. Homo Sapiens - an Endangered Species? Innsbruck: Studia Universitätsverlag (Sassin et al. 2018). In the book, the authors formulated the major concepts that directly or implicitly led to the very idea of The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions.
I sincerely hope that the future contributors all around the world may join our project, to advance understanding the ideology, society, human being, consciousness and Universe, to a new unbiased, unprejudiced and enlightened level.
Funding. This work did not receive any specific financing from any governmental, public, commercial, non-profit, community-based organisations or any other source.
Conflicts of interest. None declared.
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EXTENDED SUMMARY
Lysenko, Lyudmila. The Beacon: A New Journal for Studying Ideologies.
In the paper, a necessity in a new journal devoted to studying ideology and ideologies in
the modern multibillion world, is discussed.
An idea is advanced that, despite we are all used to believe that the contemporary world has to be free of ideologies and ideological influence, everything is witnessing that for many years to come, we shall see yet increasing and strengthening ideologies fables and ideological influence in every part of the world, with no exceptions. If a downfall of the era of ideologies ever be, we shall not observe it soon.
We have to clearly understand that the world with eight-billion population cannot be treated and managed in the same way as it was done at the beginning of the twentieth century, when it numbered just one billion, and the population growth rate will only increase in the future. Such huge numbers are incredible not just for researchers, but also for governments, political elites, social architects, economic and financial transnational corporations, that is for those actors who directly influence the political and social processes around the world. It is not unexpected, therefore, that ideology and ideological apparatuses are widely used in the modern multibillion world. These apparatuses may be found in every place where the virtual communications are established. With the borders of the states and nations being erased by the omnipresence of Internet and social media, GSM connections and satellite phones, the Earth's population is transforming not to the set of individuals but to the unified humanity. In 1900 newspapers were as well the main instruments of social management as sources of information. The major London papers were issued thrice a day, but the real rate of ideology spread was much less due to the time they had to spend on border control and on crossing the oceans. Today we are basically not limited by any time delays and impediments. The most powerful computers and the networks with largest bandwidths and lowest ping times allow to disseminate any pieces of information in microseconds. Ideologies may be distributed with an eye blink rate.
In such a situation, there is an urgent need in a new venue for dialogue between academic scholars, men of cloth, and practitioners (politicians, lawyers, business representatives, etc.). Any study of any form of ideology, will be encouraged in The Beacon, political, social, artistic, literary, legal, business, economic, financial, media and so on. Therefore, to investigate the specifics of ideological theory and practice, is a goal for a
wide group of authors. Among them, we would greet any researcher that deals with theology, sociology, political studies, philosophy, linguistics, literature, culture and art studies, law, history, employees of commercial companies and legal practitioners, workers of non-profit organisations and social workers, and authors of social projects.
In The Beacon, we are headed towards investigating the most urgent ideological processes of our time, and are convinced that the researchers of different cultures, nations and backgrounds, who are interested in the fate of humanity and homo sapiens, will join our efforts.
Author / ABTopt
Lyudmila Lysenko, PhD (Biology), is a Russian biologist, ecologist, theologian and public figure, a Leading Scientific Researcher of the Karelian Scientific Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She is the Editor-in-Chief of The Beacon. Lyudmila is the author of 2 monographs, 3 chapters in monographs, 2 textbook, more than 70 articles in periodicals. In 2004 she defended her PhD dissertation in Biochemistry on the topic "The influence of some environmental factors on intracellular proteolysis in hydrobionts." Dr Lysenko is committed and directly involved in the formation of civil society in Russia.
Lyudmila A. Lysenko,
PhD,
Leading Scientific Researcher, Karelian Scientific Centre of Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Biology, Pushkinskaya st 11, Petrozavodsk 185910, Russia
© Lyudmila A. Lysenko
Licensee The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions
Licensing the materials published is made according to Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence
