The mystery of development: An unenchanted future

Abstract

The article examines the actual problems of civilizational development and the mechanisms for the emergence of a new world. The process of civilizational development is complex, dynamic, and multivariate. The consumer society, which dominates the world today, is often considered as the only possible perspective of modern civilization, and its ideals and values are presented as a role model. It is assumed that the value attitudes of this kind of society have a number of advantages over all other social and cultural types of organization of social life and offer endless opportunities for economic development for those regions that accept them. The problems that arise in the course of implementing the consumer society’s value attitudes are becoming more and more obvious today. The only question is, are these problems transient difficulties in the transformation of this type of society in order to triumph on a global scale, or do they indicate its historical limitations and by no means the unconditional continuity of its value orientations? The latter issue is all the more important for societies where this type of organization of socio-economic and cultural life is not organic and where other prospects for the development of civilization are possible. In the conditions of global instability, we can observe arising connections and interactions that establish some kind of new integrity. Here, from a methodological point of view, it is important to define the positions from which we can consider this integrity. The mechanism itself and the motives for choosing a new one, the role of the clash of cultures in this action, the conflict of values, the emergence and rooting of new life meanings merit attention. Therefore, it is important to identify some general development trends to understand how our future is born and what history will choose this time.