The Institute of Universology of New York

Peculiarities of modern mankind's development

Global Problems of Civilization

Let’s study the problems that our civilization faces today:

It is possible to single out 7 levels of problems in modern civilization.

1. Crisis of goals of human development
2. Crisis of values of human development
3. Unevenness of socio-economic development
4. Crisis of general culture and education
5. Crisis in science
6. Demographical crisis
7. Ecological crisis

Ecological crisis: The depletion of natural resources, overload of the biosphere with industrial waste

The UN conference on environmental issues in 1992 stated that due to the human activities the living organism of the planet lost the state of equilibrium and will not be able to return to its previous condition. The planet faced the global ecological crisis. The nature appeared under threat of complete degradation. It is manifested in the following:

- We are approaching a global energy resource crisis. The discovered resources of petrol will be sufficient only for 40 years, gas resources – for 200 years. Hopes to get supplies using relatively cheap energy from hydropower stations are little as a lot of rivers are already overloaded with dams, and it is a very expensive practice requiring flooding of vast territories of fertile lands. Hopes for controlled thermonuclear fusion and receiving energy from it were not justified. The amount of energy consumed in the last hundred years increased by 15 times, and according to the forecast a lot of deposits on the Earth will be already depleted in the first part of the 21^st century.

- The pollution of the World Ocean. Every year dozens of millions of tons of petrol are spilled in it and cover vast territories with oil film and prevent the absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Wastes containing pesticides, heavy metals, radioactive substances and thousands of other toxic elements are disposed into the water. The radioactivity of the world ocean has doubled in the last decades.

- Fresh surface and ground waters are poisoned. In 1994 in Russia alone 60 km³ of sewage were deposited, and normatively purified water made only 2.6 km³. About 75 % of river waters are not suitable for drinking. 1200 centers of polluted ground waters were discovered. The allowed amounts of polluting elements in them exceed in tens and thousands of times. The river network has actually been turned into a natural sewage system.

- Soil pollution. In 1994 the pollution of soil in Moscow exceeded the allowed maximum in 46 times and in many industrial regions in 300 times.

- Particularly dangerous are radioactive wastes. Only one example is enough – disposal of radioactive wastes in Chelyabinsk region by Production Association “Mayak”.

- The Earth biosphere is in danger. Thousands of species are dying every year. Species composition in the Red Sea decreased by one third in 20 years. Every year the territory occupied by forests decreases by the area equal to Switzerland.

- The ozone layer is seriously damaged. According to measurements taken in 1991-92 it became two times thinner above the territory of Antarctic. The preventive properties from hard radiation weakened. That already led to the deaths of thousands of people.

- Problems with the atmosphere. In the last 150 years human activities led to the decrease of oxygen and rise of carbon dioxide. Today the amount of oxygen constitutes 21%, and the critical level for a human being is 17 %.

- The climate of the planet is changing. Carbon dioxide detains heat radiation of the Earth, and sedimentation of dust, especially in the area of glaciers, enhances the absorption of sun radiation. Due to the melting of glaciers the level of the world Ocean has risen up to 15 cm in the last 100 years, which lead to the flooding of a lot of areas. The process continues, and in fact 90% of the world’s population lives in coastal areas.

Thus, humanity is on the verge of self-destruction that may be caused by the ecological disaster. People do not realize that its source lies in our spiritually deprived civilization guided by the constant desire to fulfill infinitely growing and in general excessive material needs by plundering nature.

The true cause of the crisis is the distortion of the aim of humankind development, lack of understanding of human’s place in nature, and as a consequence the distortion of structure of needs.

On the level of an individual it is manifested in health problems, nutrition, and welfare. Do not live to eat (consume), but eat to live. Materiality is the basis for spiritual growth.

Thereby, the way out from the crisis and the possibility to overcome life-threatening pollution of the environment and the depletion of recourses lie in reducing the consumption of natural resources and optimization of human’s needs.

Humankind health crisis, demographic crisis, epidemics

Mass diseases, epidemics, AIDS, alcoholism, drug addiction and their continuous growth are “the headache” of our time and they take their source in human’s distorted relationships with the world.

Modern medicine is helpless and cannot manage these problems.

Doctor of Medicine V.A. Vorontsov said: “It’s not a secret that official medicine has long ago reached the limit when it becomes obvious that former methodological fundamentals of public health care can allow neither to raise the average life expectancy, nor to reduce child mortality.”

And the founder of the cosmic medicine Doctor I.P. Neumyvakin proved it by saying: “It is already no doubt that the development of more effective drugs, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and others has no future.”

We need new ideas, new health theory built upon modern achievements in science for further progress in medicine. Researches made by Kaznacheyeva and Anokhina prove that it is the brain that plays the most important role in securing people’s health. In its structure there is a system connection between personal qualities and world-views and psycho-regulatory processes in the whole body.

That is why health control should start with higher aspects of existence – purpose of life (as the transformative creative work in the world on the basis of the unity with it), knowledge and observance of the universal laws of development on all levels of vital activity.

“Human nature cares a lot about its laws, and severely punishes for their violation…” – these are Professor I.A. Arshavsky’s words.

Civilization health crisis led to demographic crisis. It appeared that people could no longer give birth to healthy children: unhealthy parents can never have healthy descendants. The following parameters along with parents’ health can be included in the number of factors influencing birth rates:

• Loss of traditional family values, woman rejection from the family, man losing his role of the head of the family.
• The whole complex of interrelated destructive phenomena of the so-called "sexual revolution", particularly the spread of liberal views on sexuality resulting in divorce, all sorts of perversions, STDs, premarital sexual relations, sexual corruption of children and youth by the programs on "sex education."
• Implanting “mass culture” that nurtures personal interests of the individual opposite to the interests of the family, society and state.
• Promotion of limitless sex, violence, lust.
• Infertility of spouses. Several years ago mainly women were responsible for infertility, now statistics says that men are more often guilty of it than women.
• Loneliness. Lack of experience in the relationships with the opposite sex. Those people may be lonely who are not needed by others.

Therefore this crisis on the personal level is expressed in the break of harmonious relationships between a man and a woman, interpersonal relationships in the family, with relatives, friends and so on (fears, complexes, attachments). Purity and beauty of interpersonal relationships.

To eliminate the existing distortions of male and female principles in the relationships it is advisable to build partnership on the basis of the program “The Art of Being Together” developed by the International Scientific School of Universology. This will allow to overcome crisis, create beauty in the relationships between a man and a woman, solve family problems, create healthy moral-psychological climate, which will stimulate the birth of healthy, in all respects, children.

Crisis of science: Intensification of technocratic tendencies, irresponsible use of the intellectual potential of humanity.

We believe that nowadays science is up to the mark and find the proof in rapid scientific and technological advance. But is it actually true? And why then are we facing a deep ecological crisis on the planet?

Without shadow of a doubt science has given us a lot: chemical technologies, microelectronics, building industry, audio-visual systems, computers which actually improved our everyday life, upgraded our comfort, made it possible to connect with any part of the planet. But along with that it led to the environmental degradation, separation and spiritual devastation of people, to a mass development of lethal weapons. Further progress of applied science threatens the very existence of the humankind.

Therefore, scientific and technological progress is now perceived as an illusion, and the achievements of civilization are questioned. We approached a dangerous point – we start to acquire dangerous knowledge. Some of this knowledge brought us to the creation of nuclear weapons and the use of ‘peaceful’ atomic energy. The former led to the danger of destroying the humankind and the planet, the latter is leading to a global environmental catastrophe. Along with that, the development of chemical industry threatens vegetable and animal kingdoms with poisoning.

Not less dangerous to people is the idea of human cloning.

What is that? It is the creation of a person with the qualities required by those with power, but without a soul. Moreover, he/she won’t have any experience of world culture, high value orientations, and elevated targets of development. The clone will be capable of anything fulfilling masters’ desires.

Creation of advanced technocratic technologies leads to people’s increasing isolation, alienating them from each other, stimulates tension and shortening of evolutionary tendencies in the development of world culture. Why does it happen? Where are the roots? The roots can actually be found in the system of education.

Education in any society is determined by main characteristics of this society. As far as rationalism and mental attitude to the world had long remained a fundamental characteristic of the society, the system of education was based on rationalism and couldn’t surpass its limits.

Rational method of learning was logical for the preceding period and it may be assumed that rationality is a fundamental characteristic of the corresponding type of culture of the society. The use of rationalism stimulated the evolving of a worldview which leaves people no secrets.

However, by the end of the twentieth century, this ideology led the humankind to a crisis – crisis of stereotypical thinking and scientific paradigms, crisis of rational model of cognition. In pursuit of the intellectual power, we appeared on the brink of self-destruction. We have forgotten the principles of unity with the world and do not realize our mission of co-creation with other kingdoms of nature on the way to cosmic evolution.

It is becoming obvious that science needs to adopt moral, ethical and aesthetic categories typical of ancient traditions of humanity in the experience of unity with nature and the cosmos - the need to create a holistic view of the world with the knowledge of modern science. The way to a new understanding of nature, human beings and society lies in the synthesis of wisdom of ancient civilizations, humanitarian and natural sciences.

Problems on the personal level: problems of self-realization and self-actualization (personal development, a person is striving to become an individuality). A person puts his own experience into general terms that is why so many opinions, concepts and theories emerge.

Thus, in order to change the dominance of rational knowledge over the irrational, to bridge the gap between theory and practice, to eliminate the immorality of research, cloning and artificial intelligence, it is important to form cause-systemic vision and sensory-logical thinking and worldview.