PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS OF THE GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT

[viktar r]

Modern globalization opens new options for learning of the nature, while making us reconsider the achievements of the past and future. Colossal man-caused enhancements, rapid growth of industry and communications – in other words, everything we thought to be a simple and clear example of progress is presently under the shadow of pressing criticism. Evidently, this is due to the absolutely new situation we have faced at the verge of the millennium.

 

 

 

Threatened exhaustion of the natural resources and environmental problems undoubtedly serve the most essential aspects of the modern objective reality. While acknowledging the utmost importance of the experience accumulated in crisis situations management, we are exposed to searching for new approaches in events analysis. Could a scientist of the Renaissance epoch have had a view into our world, he could have been rather astonished to find out that we face any problems at all in the modern host of natural sciences. Now we know that the cognition process is contradictory in itself, but at that starting time of the wonderful and mysterious road of progress, having been persuaded of the world evolution due to scientific thinking, many people got a sense of coming into the new “Golden Era”. Maybe, the time passed is not enough for us to idealize our position.

 

 

 

The problems of ecology bring us into the new reality, kind of pushing us to a new level of development, a level that makes the global aspect of the occurring events to be of top importance, a level that would logically contribute to the evolution of the mankind (the influencing factor not for one, two or three hundred years to come, but rather for many thousands of years). No doubt, we have faced the crisis of some classical pattern of mentality. In addition to other aspects, this is due to unfeasibility of modern tendencies being extrapolated into the future. Even a person of the most powerful imagination would agree that our era of 5-year doubling scope of knowledge (and speeding up, as referenced constantly by competent sources) might not last forever. Regardless of our assurance in the technological progress to cope easily with this crisis (as it used to be earlier¹), the real life makes us be more attentive to the trivial details.

 

 

 

Nowadays, when analysts are never confused to declare the highest level of social progress, we often come to thinking that no objective criteria for the progress assessment still exist. This is the first point in our history that the information scope skyrocketed to make us rather bewildered when attempting to generalize the information, apart from any other emotions. When being plunged more and more deeply into the essence of the surrounding world, constantly discovering new shades of well-known events, we are sometimes convinced of probability of the most substantial scientific theories. And whatever arguments we advance to prove our point of view, we are stuck in this situation of uncertainty, awaiting for some new technological breakthroughs that will undoubtedly change the situation. The boundless ocean of the modern knowledge still makes us forget sometimes that the objective reality, irrespective of our interpretation, trends to develop at one of the two possible options.

 

 

 

When looking back at the unavailing efforts of human development prediction for at least half a century ahead, modern generations trend to consider the creative activity of this kind to be a mere waste of time. Moreover, strict adherence to principle in this matter seems to be useless. (Evidently, why should we waste our efforts?) This became just a thing of the past: then the world was full of mysteries and secrets, and the man could allow beautiful utopias to enrich his life, but now, when “everything to invent has been invented”, what is the use of such meditations? The world is imperfect, and it will remain as such forever. Maybe, now that we managed to split the atom and overpass the gravity due to our skyrocketed consciousness, the highest level of perfection has been finally reached? Maybe, when reaching the Homo ludens status and assessing the knowledge to be the highest value, the man, in a certain sense, has nothing more to aspire? We understand absolutely our actions, we are aware of oncoming obstacles and try to overpass them (when else can we strive for?). Unfortunately, we can not apprehend the natural surrounding the same way as before. Something that could make our ancestors delighted can not be striking in the context of the modern problems. Now that our abilities have become almost unlimited, when we penetrated the deepest corners of our consciousness and came down to settle to far planets (the distance is the only problem that remains), the environmental problem may easily serve the legendary pit that Thales fell down to when he walked outdoors to contemplate the stars.

 

 

 

Past generations’ naïve overview of the never-ending progress, representing robots and automated devices to be the initial section of the “food chain” (for extractive and manufacturing industries), should be substantially revised nowadays. The scientific creation process should not be treated uniform or even senseless any more. Irrational consumption and various specifics of production benefit to new, unexpected factors of wellbeing. In these conditions we are exposed to thinking of the question: why does the quantity of equipment manufactured come to the quality of use?

 

 

 

When trying to answer this and many similar questions, we sometimes come to a paradox conclusion that, for the time being, our major objective is not limited to some fundamental discoveries, but is to focus on the outspoken thought of several investigators of the past, in particular, that the modern civilization has reached the level when the production growth is feasible in almost all branches of economy without any extra resources and energy being involved, rather due to progressingly economizing the same². Even considering all evident achievements, failure to make clear perspectives may not any more benefit to any abstract meditations. Nowadays, when the scientific picture of the world as the common system has been actually formed, this “argumentation” opens a new side of the quality problem.

 

 

 

The technological progress impacts our life immensely. Apparently, we are unable to perceive the rules of the technological development; however, it is clear that the open-view representation of our expectations related to this phenomenon is now getting into shape. The reality is that in future we shall have to abandon our “traditional” power resources. When analyzing more closely, this is the exact definition of the metamorphose we are going to experience. No matter how liberated the modern consciousness is, it is rather difficult for us to imagine such a crucial turndown of the history. However, questions arising from such interpretation of the civilization progress can be easily taken for new philosophical (or eternal) problems. Does the modern level of development meet absolutely our needs? Would our epoch be called the times of lost opportunities in some 100 years (the way we call sometimes the previous century)? No matter how much we are compelled to discuss the inconceivable complexity of the modern world, the “description” is acknowledged to be not the only way. The biased nature of analysis, express biliousness may serve another method for the objective reality perception.

 

 

 

Any enthusiastic speeches in respect of the elevations reached might be more pertinent after 500 years, when it finally becomes clear whether we proceed with our “fly-up” or steadily go down through some conventions and reservations of any kind. There is no surprise in our brilliant attitude towards our own achievements; unfortunately, our self-persuasions mean nothing for the reality. Evidently, the modern man possesses enormous abilities, and, when looking at the crucial bend (as we think about it) of various technologies to power saving and efficient use of resources, our consciousness seems to be all right as well. But what if this deems insufficient? The surrounding world is contradictory, no doubt. The law of unity and struggle of opposites is irreproachable, but now we are in such a difficult situation that it would be expedient to define clearly and differentiate the unity and the struggle of these opposites. The environmental crisis (if exists), what is it caused by? Opposites in nature trend to harmony. The life development from unicellular organisms to modern human being serves a vivid illustration of opposites interaction. The intellectual development can not be defined the same way. One should be found most eccentric to explain the economic situation aggravation (globally) by an integral part of some specific theory. In our era of enlightenment, when no change in the nature is known to us to happen all of a sudden, prerequisites for our further development may be of top interest.

 

 

 

The man’s mind is arranged in such a way to notice well-known things first of all. Maybe, some answers to the modern paradoxes are reasoned by the fact that for the 5000 year of our “conscientious” history (from the times the first civilizations became known to us due to myths and legends) we have never experienced anything similar to globalization. Any similarity can be found at the dawn of life, when prokaryotes were defeated by eukaryotes. (The matter is that approx. fifteen hundred million years ago the Earth was found to be inhabited by prokaryotes, bacteria which excrete oxygen as a product of their vital functioning (such gas being vitally dangerous for them). As a result, they died out and were replaced by eukaryotes, other primitive organisms which, in their turn, possessed oxygen breathing capacity). Some “tips” could be found in the late neolith, when the only representative of the fauna, our late ancestor, made 2 crucial steps to predetermine the history. This concern the progress from collecting to farming and from hunting to cattle-breeding, in other words, from insouciant appropriation of ready-made natural products to certain degree of “culture”. The similarity is obvious. If throwing out the needless skepticism, we are now facing a similar bifurcation. Can we treat our situation as the 3^rd step forward, comparing to the two previous ones? Is it reasonable to compare our modern technological triumph (as we think it to be) with as much as a new environment-friendly step of development? Obviously, we shall never have the answer until we carry on considering the globalization problem to be something extraordinary.

 

 

 

Do these thoughts make any sense? Is there any reason for a man with his life generally not exceeding 100 years to pay attention to some global paradoxes? These questions, making an illusion of definite subject for discussion, actually constitute en excellent opportunity of waiving the answer to the problem of further social development for the nearest one hundred years or so. Evidently, any prediction based on more or less economical consumption of the rest natural resources will anyway be short-lived. It is also evident that in the nearest future we are coming closer to a new mega-tendency – recycling. If summarizing the above meditations to a certain extent, in this context the most practical question is whether the man at the modern level of conscience is able to “choose” the time for such tendency to realize.

 

 

 

Due to plain reason, it is difficult for us to look back at our own epoch through the eyes of future generations. Possibly, in some 40,000 years the H.S. history will be divided into 2 periods – before and after the ecological crisis, and the fateful millennium when the humankind have been consuming tremendously the resources that had been accumulating for millions of years would be treated a certain point of singularity between the 2 absolutely different epochs. There is absolutely no doubt that the world will be different afterwards, and this would be expressed, first of all, through our attitude towards natural resources. When traveling through cause-effect relations at a vicious circle, one can speak ironically about the development perspectives as much as he can; however, owing to our experience, any realizable problem can be solved.

 

 

 

If there is something that the modern man is sure of, he is sure of being free from illusions. This “argument” predetermines answers to many questions, yet this fact hardly makes things easier. Now that the line between the reality and fantasy seems to erase, it’s hard to imagine that the technological progress is developing just in one way, predetermined by natural laws. If, considering modern tendencies, we proceed from the idea that the technological progress in its perfection cannot cause any problems, the psychological aspect of our actions comes forward.

 

 

 

Complexity, contradictory features, inconceivable diversity are the fundamental conditions that determine the modern man’s world outlook. The attempt to disclaim some of them will be paradoxical. The technological progress does change the environment greatly, and it’s even impossible to say what the man will be like in 100 years (in the light of the recent achievements in biology and medicine). Yet, it is not a reason for absolute unpredictability. The first step to simplification will be in the awareness of the fact that the solution of ecological problem (even if there is one) lies in something more accessible, not whether we can invent the “perpetual motion machine” or not.

 

 

 

We are not talking about the universal solution of such a large-scale problem. The issue is that we are unable to obtain, with all modern power, at least “positive balance” in the situation development. May it be in the hundredths of percent (or even in the thousandths of percent), failure to gain the required balance shatters the myth of the man’s “incredible” achievements. Various researches express the idea that the technological progress develops independently from the man’s will, and that the ecological crisis (actually, it is a different subject) is possibly the only obstacle in our way when we will have to reveal some specific qualities.

 

 

 

Such abstract reasoning is neither better nor worse than the others. Probably, this nuance will be as important for the descendants as the signs of secondary treatment on the tools of the ancient man for the modern archaeologists. In current conditions, the absence of at least an approximate idea of such an aspect for progressive motion can be considered a substantial imperfection of the natural science.

 

 

 

Now that our world outlook is firmly based on the laws of nature, it can be asserted that the absence of prospects in any issue is, first of all, imperfection of the point of view taken. May it be in thousand years but we will have to change our attitude to the environment. It is obvious that the background for this step should be built these days too. The skeptic attitude to the reality assumes that it is not happening now.

 

 

 

It is hard to say to what extent the word “solution” can be applied in this context (obviously, several years of optimism on the way of global obstacles overcoming will not satisfy us, besides we will have to consider the conditions that we know nothing about), nevertheless, among the large diversity of all possible definitions we can rightfully call our epoch the time of unsolvable problems solving (should we enumerate the things that used to seem absurd). The hypothesis that there are natural laws that we disregard will definitely change the modern world outlook.

 

 

 

The definite answers to some questions are beyond our comprehension but existing contradictions are surely a part of the objective reality. What is struggle and what is unity of opposites? If cyclicity, sinuosity of the civilization development, is the basis for everything, then in what cycle phase or on what wave side are we now? If we currently experience general growth with our “side effects”, can the ecological crisis be the triumph of the human mind? And what if we, without any excess tension, proceed with the idea that the situation is fundamentally opposite? Different assessments, in some sense, are the basic background for further research. There is another contentious argument subject to discussion – evidence. When we drive a car, we do not care about the diversity of reference systems (the Earth motion around the Sun, the Earth rotation on its axis, etc). There is only desire and basic driving skills (the skills that can be acquired even by a child). As a matter of fact, control of major vital functions is “pushed” into the unconscious area in human organism. Linear analogs are out of place here, but the contrast with social development mechanism is so great that there appears unintentional doubt how natural is the existing environmental contradictoriness.

 

 

 

Imbalance of the technological progress pace and social development serves the basis of all misunderstandings in the modern society. Our future well-being will depend, to a great extent, on whether we can influence this ratio. Supposing there is harmony in the objective reality and we know nothing about its scope now, the thoughts of development prospects in any initial state are no longer waste of time.

 

 

 

If there is an imperfection in the objective reality, how will the situation change if this imperfection is eliminated? How will, for example, the society develop if opposites begin supplementing each other (considering that we are in the “opposite sector” now)? Such philosophic problems, no doubt, extend the consciousness limits. It is possible to “calculate” the algorithm for any problem solving in this new space.

 

 

 

The fact that “the way of continuous compromises” does not ensure the expected effect (in general), now leads to the conclusion that we are to cognize the infinite environmental diversity. Probably, there, “beyond the sky line”, the idea of compromise as a method of society development will change. This is the case when the definite answers to many questions do not really matter. The absence of background and its sudden appearance, transition from one state to another is the essence of the “mathematical model” for the ideal solution of ecological problem in the worst conditions.

 

 

 

We can only guess what our faraway ancestor would have thought if he had seen a car or computer. It’s hard to say at first sight what new conditions we can talk about in this case. The answer depends to a great extent on the question wording, though. Considering all evident conditions, let us try to imagine how society will develop if some problems disappear completely from the social scene. For example, “what chances” will ecological problem have if its solution becomes beneficial from the economic point of view? Purposeful search of original approaches to the problem of human and environmental interaction in the current conditions seems to be a part of endless road. The attempt to overcome this stereotype will be the first step in the specified direction.

 

 

 

Just like you can not step into the same river twice, you can never understand everything right and act wrong. First of all, let us remember how often there were such difficult situations in the history of natural science. How “impregnable” the ancient scholastic arguments seemed in due time: “the object falls down because its place is in the center of the Earth”, “iron is forgeable because this is its essence”, “water follows the piston because the nature is afraid of emptiness”. In what caves would we sit now if we have not tried to disprove such “axioms”? (By the way, as history has shown, new “ecologic niche” turned out to be more capacious, more comfortable. Now gathering and hunting is only a hobby). In the infinite environmental diversity it sometimes seems possible to find proof for any theory. Nevertheless, there are conditions which can be hardly called nonstandard even if you really want it.

 

 

 

We will have to disclose our potential completely, reach maximum possible self-actualization in the new coordinate system. Continuous economic growth in new conditions (well-being basis, as this word is currently understood) will probably be the most difficult “technical” problem for the future generations. It is not likely that at the current development level of exact sciences we make mistakes in any mathematical calculations. At the same time, it is enough to determine the center of gravity incorrectly to make the problem solving impossible in some issues. “General” attempts of existing situation analysis, if one can say so, contradict scientific approach because in this case we have no idea of possible solutions range.

 

 

 

Is it really as unusual as it may seem at first sight? In some sense, we already determined the border lines of the real world. Absolute zero, perfect gas, light speed are the values that the mankind is destined to strive for over the whole period of its history, but never overcome them. (For example, it is impossible to invent ultraperfect gas because, for a start, it is impossible to understand what it is. It may be that all great achievements of the modern natural science are associated with such values). Our attempts to make out anything similar to that in social development would result in more accurate direction.

 

 

 

The essence of the modern World is still in the natural laws. The leading idea of this point of view is that the connection between different aspects of the modern life is of absolute character. Nature, society, technological progress..., different interaction aspects of these components in general and specific characteristics of each separately, definitely hold answers to all questions. There is something missing in our well-composed theories.

 

 

 

It is often hard to find contact points with the real life when being philosophical. In this case, the nuance that specific basis of the present state of things is not physics, mathematics or other “stubborn facts” but what, in certain circles, is called “the art of persuasion” (blah-blah in its essence) that deserves attention. Here we speak about economics³. It should be specified that the basic complication now is not in the lack of technologies but in no possibility of their application where appropriate. This obstacle overcoming will reveal us unlimited possibilities.

 

 

 

No need to be a philosopher to see the seasons change and make proper conclusions. Dialectics of nature and society development – is it always the same? It is hard to imagine that the modern equipment will be considered primitive some day, as well as that the modern man’s world outlook is predetermined by the lack of options. The question “Where does the flow of events lead?” has always taken a special place in the man’s mind, and it may be now that we are close to its answer as never before.

 

 

 

The prospect as far as it may be does not change the essence of contradictions. It can be asserted that the different development paces of the technological progress and society is, first of all, the consequence of - though it is abstract - but yet a mistake in judgments about the nature of things. The progress logic, from a wheel to computer, persistently leads to the conclusion that this problem does not rise above the problem range on the endless way of cognition.

 

 

 

 

 

REFERENCES

¹ Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Willam W. Behrens III “The Limits to Growth” (1972).

 

² E. Von Weizsacker, A. B. Lovins, L. H. Lovins “Factor Four: Doubling Wealth-Halving Resource Use”. The New Report to the Club of Rome (1997).

 

³ Donald N. McCloskey “The Rhetoric of Economics” Madison, University of Wisconsin Press (1985).