Signs of modern culture: dynamism, eclecticism, ambiguity, mosaicism, diversity of the overall picture, polycentricity, a break in its structure and the integral hierarchy of the organization of its space. The development of information technologies, the approval of the media form public opinion and public mood. Mass media reflect the external, consumerist, soulless life, create certain ideas about the world, form the destruction of traditionally valued qualities, and provide the effect of suggestion.

The main trends in the development of modern culture

The 20th century has ended… The century of the triumph of science and human intellect, the century of paradoxes and upheavals. He summed up a certain result of the development of world culture. In this century, culture broke the bonds of regional or national isolation and became international. World art culture integrates the cultural values ​​of almost all nations.

A characteristic phenomenon for the 20th century was a noticeable weakening of those social mechanisms on which people's lives relied in many respects in past centuries. First of all - the mechanisms of continuity in culture.

A separate individual strives to become independent, independent of cultural traditions, customs, established rules of etiquette, behavior, communication. At the same time, internal freedom is increasingly being replaced by external freedom, the independence of the spirit - by the independence of the body, which gradually leads to a decrease in spirituality, the level of culture.

AT modern philosophy and aesthetics, there are quite a lot of reasons explaining these processes. This is the accelerated progress of all aspects of material life, technology, the industrial sphere, as a result of which a person did not have time to develop spiritually at the same pace. Consequently, he became superficial, in a hurry somewhere, having neither the time nor the strength to stop, peer, realize, spiritually master the phenomena and facts of reality.

In other cases, technology was reproached with its naked rationalism, technocratic thinking, which does not recognize anything but open pragmatism. Those who were in power were also reproached with the levers of social control, because they often do not have the proper culture themselves, do not have the opportunity to correctly assess its meaning, save on culture, thereby stimulating degeneration and degradation.

It is probable that all these parallel developing processes have a common root - the weakening of ties between generations in culture. As a result, spiritual culture suffered, and consequently, a person suffered, because he was depreciated as an individual, his life, nature, and environment were depreciated.

What happens to art in the 20th century? You should not proceed from the naive idea that art "suddenly became bad, decaying, base." It can never become such without changing its essence, since in all epochs it expresses the desire for the spiritual development of man and fights for humanity to carry through all the vicissitudes of history its main achievement - spirituality. And today art does not die, it is in search of new forms, a new language - in order to find a way to express new spiritual processes that reflect the modern era.

The main points of change were the recognition of the world as a single interconnected whole, but each element of which has its own qualitative specifics, as well as the recognition of the need for global scientific modeling of human development in all its aspects - environmental, economic, social, cultural. Awareness of the crisis of industrial-consumer civilization in the 50-70s. 20th century was accompanied by a statement of the fact that humanity is entering a fundamentally new, post-industrial stage of its development. “Post-industrial society, D. Bell argued, is not a projection or an extrapolation of development trends already existing in the West, but a new principle of the socio-technical organization of life, as original as the industrial system ... replacing the agrarian one.”

Since the last quarter of the 20th century, after the invention of the microprocessor and the personal computer, a new situation has gradually been created, enabling multivariate development, legitimizing the right to differences, recognizing and based on the “multiculturalism” of the world. The free movement and production of information and information services, unlimited access to information and its use for rapid scientific, technological and social progress, for scientific innovation, the development of knowledge, the solution of environmental and demographic problems have led to the establishment of the concept of "information society" among modern researchers, the existence which is considered as a transitional stage for the birth of some fundamentally new culture, which does not yet have any other designation, except as "post-industrial".

The essence of the new contemporary culture associated with changes in the role of a person in society and his ideas about himself. Peculiarities intellectual development modernity since the 70s and 80s. 20th century denoted by the term "postmodernism", emphasizing its break with modernist, new European culture. The positivism, rationality, belief in linear progress and the existence of absolute truth, the belief in the possibility of achieving an ideal social organization and universal happiness, characteristic of modernism, are replaced by the recognition of the impossibility of creating universal schemes and comprehensive theories, the rejection of claims to mastering objective and positive universal knowledge. Now attention is riveted to the particulars of the diverse world, and not to universal laws.

In modern consciousness, living, changeable nature does not fit into the framework of artificial structures. Any structuring is perceived as violence against life and is not considered true knowledge. Moreover, knowledge itself cannot be objective, since it is a product of the struggle of various ideological systems for the "power of interpretations", for the "appointment" of truths. The consequence of power relations is the formation of a dominant, but not the only possible style of thinking.

The main new European idea of ​​the human person as some kind of real-life reality does not withstand the complexity and inconsistency of the postmodern world. The emphasis is shifted from reality to the idea of ​​this reality, dissolving in "... mathematics, which no longer describes the behavior of elementary particles, but our knowledge of this behavior" (Heisenberg), from the concept of personality to the idea of ​​a person about himself, to that , “who does he represent himself”, with what social, ethnic, age group identifies himself. If the new European culture is a search for some real original meanings, now the idea that a person himself endows this world with meanings dominates. He is their only bearer, appointing or canceling truth and falsehood at his own discretion and independently determining himself and his place in the world. And since the world is available to a person only in the form of a narrative, a story about him (narrative), then the personality itself is a story about itself, acquiring the character of convention. Therefore, there is no fundamental difference between observed and virtual reality. Increasingly, the idea appears that the achievements of science do not draw us an increasingly reliable picture of the world, but are only one of the possible expressions of the world in a language accessible to us. Only elements that are described mathematically are perceived as the only true ones.

With the rejection of the desire to impose meaning and order on any phenomenon, culture itself turns from a sphere of due and ideal into a mosaic of various sections of a person’s relationship with the environment. The field of view narrows, fragments, attention moves from regularities to particulars and details. Rationalism, which "disenchanted" the world, paradoxically connects with the world of illusions, volatility, impermanence, religions and myths. The human consciousness contains the most diverse ideas and elements of reality that do not fit together.

Important changes have affected the place of man in the social and economic spheres. The innovative nature of the economy has led to the fact that the main factor in socio-economic development is the intellectual and creative capabilities of a person who creates new realities. Only Difficult person can solve complex problems. His life is less and less determined by systems external to his personality, he becomes more and more free. The one-dimensional "economic" man of the industrial age, focused on the satisfaction of material needs, gives way to a "rich individuality", a creative personality with a variety of opportunities for self-expression. Such a “human revolution” leads to the creation of a new world in which a person is driven not by hoarding and consumer instincts, but by the desire for self-realization and self-affirmation in creativity, the measure of wealth is not material wealth, but free time to create your own unique personality.

In this world, the basis of production becomes scientific knowledge, the bearer of which - man - is not only a productive force, but also the goal cultural development.

Gradually, another sign of industrial-consumer culture is being squeezed out - instead of striving for dominance over nature, humanity sets the goals of harmonious coexistence with it, using the base of a new technological mode of production based on high technology, the core of which will be the greening of production based on zero waste, informatics , microelectronics, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, non-traditional energy. In the information society, this is also connected with a change in the nature of labor as a way of man's influence on the "substance of nature". Creative work in the field of science, culture, computer science in many respects, as it were, excludes nature from labor activity. D. Bell noted that in a pre-industrial society, people's life was a direct game between man and nature, in an industrial society, a machine stands between man and nature, an artificial industrial environment is created, in a post-industrial society, human life is concentrated in the field of interhuman relations, the work of intellectuals - ziruetsya.

Globalization of the economy in modern world does not lead to the unification and standardization of all mankind, it is combined with the diverse processes of localization and regionalization of human life, striving to preserve the diversity of the modern world as a condition for its comprehensive development. In the conditions of the global economy and the World Wide Web, the creative achievements of all mankind are at the disposal of a person, wherever he is.

Access to information, to knowledge is the defining basis for familiarization with the universal culture. But the creation of a single common system values, a single way of thinking and attitude to reality does not occur, since each culture from the world's wealth masters what is close to it, corresponding to its level of development and spiritual mood. For example, there is no sustainable reproduction of science in Asian countries, despite the borrowing of scientific institutions, since the natural scientific outlook on life does not correspond to traditional culture and even the internal structure of Oriental languages.

Undoubtedly, the consequences of globalization and informatization of society will be different for different regions, countries and peoples. For the survival and prosperity of a universal planetary culture in all its diversity, it is necessary to affirm humanistic ideals based on the ideas of cooperation, mutual understanding, mutual assistance, rejecting violence and recognizing the value of another person and another culture.

The future of culture is being laid today. Right now, radical changes are taking place in people's lives, which open up opportunities that have never been seen before and create dangers that have never been seen before. Which of the current trends in social development will be of decisive importance for the culture of the future? Firstly, it should be noted that the coming decades will be characterized by the accelerating development of the scientific and technological revolution. A steady trend will continue to replace scarce raw materials with the most widespread desire to save the most important components of the production process: materials, energy, human labor. In the short term, automation will ensure the entire production process from start to finish. New spheres and types of industrial activity will become widespread. One of the decisive places among them will be occupied by bioengineering and biotechnology. The spheres of human production activity will expand: the wide development of the world's oceans and outer space will become possible.

The spheres of intellectual labor will increasingly become the main branches of material production. The process of intellectualization of labor will continue; the number of people engaged in intellectual labor will increase. When realizing free time, this social group is characterized by the desire to join cultural values. Consequently, the importance of culture in society will also increase.

The second factor determining the trends of social and cultural development can be called the growth of interdependence of the human community.

The unity of the world market, established back in the 19th century, has undergone changes. It has become global in the truest sense of the word, including all countries, regardless of the region. Industrial relations between countries are very closely intertwined. Regional economic integration has been widely developed.

Throughout the 20th century transport developed rapidly. The means of communication have also undergone a revolutionary transformation. Today, any information as soon as possible can be reproduced and delivered in any form: printed, visual, auditory. The accessibility of transmitted information, the possibility of its individual consumption, has expanded.

The consequence of all this was the growing intensification of the exchange cultural property. As a result of the expanded interaction of national and regional cultures, a qualitatively new situation has arisen. Began to take shape more and more clearly World culture, the common fund of civilization. This process will take many decades, if not centuries, to complete. But the primary contours of such a fund are obvious. There is every reason to talk about the generally recognized achievements of world literature, visual arts, architecture, science, industrial knowledge and skills. All this contributes to the fact that humanity is increasingly aware of itself as a world community.

Interdependence is also manifested in the fact that, along with the achievements of culture various peoples, the negative phenomena that exist among them are becoming more and more widespread.

The third factor, which largely determines the trends of social and cultural development today, is emergence and exacerbation of global problems. These are problems affecting in one way or another all countries and peoples, and the solution also depends on the joint efforts of countries and peoples.

In the middle of the XX century. appeared on the planet the threat of omnicide - total self-destruction of the world community and life as a result of a nuclear and environmental catastrophe. Global problems of our time are being studied global studies considering the problems of man and his future. In this regard, modeling of the future state and trends of global problems is becoming widespread.

In 1968, an independent community of leading scientists from various countries of the world emerged, called the Club of Rome. Periodically, this organization delivers reports that are addressed to all governments and peoples of the world. Already the first reports made a shocking impression.

In one of the latest reports of the Club of Rome, it is emphasized that "never in history has mankind faced steel with many threats and dangers."

The enormous growth of the world population, which increases by 1 million people every 4-5 days, is leading to a huge increase in the demand for energy and raw materials. Uncontrolled population growth is outpacing the increase in food production. Especially since it is taking place in places where there is already high unemployment and severe poverty, and the task of providing millions of people with new jobs is difficult to achieve.

This applies primarily to developing countries, where the population is predominantly young, which will lead to further population growth. By the end of the first quarter of the XXI century. it will increase from 5 billion to 8.5 billion people. The industrialized countries will face the problem of slow population growth and the problem of aging. By the middle of the next century, they will make up less than 20% of the world's population.

A situation is possible when the closed world of rich countries, armed with the latest and most powerful weapons, will confront hordes of hungry, unemployed and uneducated people from the outside. Living conditions in developing countries could trigger waves of mass migration on an unprecedented scale that would be difficult to contain.

The situation in the future may be further complicated by the fact that many of the factors that previously contributed to the cohesion of society have now weakened. These are religious faith, respect for the political process, faith in ideology and respect for the decision of the majority.

Huge stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction are a serious problem. With the elimination of the confrontation between the USSR and the USA, the likelihood of its use has decreased. However, the accumulation of such weapons in itself is extremely dangerous,

The solution of all these problems will require increased cooperation from mankind, and this is impossible without a serious shift in the scale of values, without a deep restructuring of the sphere of spiritual life and culture.

An important factor, which largely determines the future of culture, is that today there are fundamental changes in the consciousness of mankind. Their key point is the search for a holistic view of a person in the context of his natural - actually cosmic - habitat. The first result of this search is formation of a new view of the world, i.e. new quality of culture.

a) The modern perception of the world is materialistic, the concept of matter that is being formed today acquires a new meaning and is interpreted as a set of ordered energy flows that act on each other in their course, generating unpredictable processes and autonomously arising phenomena.

b) The modern perception of the world is atomistic and fragmentary. It considers all objects to be separable from each other and from their surroundings. The new view must take into account the connections that exist between everything that is happening and has ever happened. It recognizes the constructive links between humans and nature, and even between the globe and the rest of the universe.

c) The modern perception of the world is characterized by an understanding of nature as a huge machine, consisting of complex and subtle, but replaceable parts. The new view interprets nature as an organism with irreplaceable parts.

d) The modern perception of the world raises economic growth to the rank of the pinnacle of social progress. The new view is initially based on the whole, consisting of social, economic and environmental components.

e) The modern perception of the world is anthropocentric. It presents man as the ruler of nature. The new view considers man as an organic part of a self-sustaining and self-developing system of nature.

f) The modern perception of the world is Eurocentric. It views Western industrial societies as paradigms of progress. New look embraces all diversity human societies, considering them equivalent formations.

important trend cultural development of mankind is globalization of religions. This process of changing relations between religions, leading towards the achievement of religious identity, began a long time ago (about 150 years ago), but developed slowly.

The contact of religions can occur in four main areas:

orthodox rejection;

tolerant coexistence;

mystical unity;

4) historical unity.

Orthodox rejection was common to all religions. Today it dominates only in some religious communities. With orthodox rejection, other religions are declared "spawn of the devil", and their founders - "false prophets". Such an orientation is not conducive to the achievement of the unity of mankind in order to resolve fundamental issues. At present, in many religious movements one can observe an emphasized rejection of such an attitude towards other religions.

Tolerance is usually based on the following approach: other religions may contain the recognition of the revealed truth, and their founders may be outstanding, deeply religious personalities, but only their own religion contains exhaustive truth. There were supporters of tolerance in different religions at all times. At present, there is a constant trend towards an increase in the proportion of believers who are tolerant of other religions.

The third direction can be defined as mystical unity. The truth and revelation inherent in every religion are recognized fundamentally and unconditionally. Supporters of this position make the choice of their religion on their own, and treat other religions with great respect.

The historical unity of religion comes from the premise that religions are collectively degrees of the divine plan of deliverance. Within this plan, all religions are bound by the following postulates:

All religions have a common basis - belief in the action of divine power;

Religious truth is relative, the prophets proclaim only what they can perceive;

Revelation is progressive.

Today, for the first time in history, it is possible to consider various paths to a single humanity with a single holistic global religious consciousness.

The next factor, which largely determines the future of culture, is the movement of mankind to a new stage of its development. Theoretically, this stage was predicted earlier by Western futurologists. In 1965, the American scientist Daniel Bell first put forward the hypothesis of a post-industrial society. Bell expressed the idea of ​​changing periods in the historical development of society:

The pre-industrial period covers the years 1500 - 1750;

Industrial - 1750 - 1956;

Post-industrial - since 1950.

According to this hypothesis we are talking about the process of reducing the role of industry and increasing the role of the service sector. This sector in the post-industrial society becomes the dominant line of development.

In the 1970s and 1980s, many different concepts of post-industrial society appeared: super-industrial, technotronic, cybernetic, etc. One of the premises that unite them is that a new generation of technology and, above all, information technology is considered a factor in the emergence of this society. Because of this, the name Information society gradually replaces all others.

The main characteristic of the information society is that information becomes a more important component than land, labor, capital, raw materials. Two main features characterize it:

1) demassification and destandardization of all aspects of economic and social life;

2) a high level of innovation, the rapid speed of changes taking place in society.

At present, informatization has affected all regions of the world. However, it goes everywhere at a different pace. Informatization is not only sociotechnical, but also sociocultural process based on the computer revolution. As a result, problems arise: psychological preparation, the formation of the information needs of society, the creation of an environment of mass computer literacy, the formation of an information culture, etc.

Changes in the entire noosphere, affecting the spiritual life, thinking, lifestyle of people, will lead to the formation of a new habitat, the so-called infosphere will be formed. It will change the current picture of the world. Humanity will create a kind of information model of the world.

The list of factors that determine the image of the culture of the future can be continued, however, the most significant, in our opinion, are:

the accelerating development of the scientific and technological revolution;

the growth of the interdependence of mankind and the formation of a common cultural fund of civilization;

emergence and aggravation of global problems;

fundamental changes in the consciousness of mankind and the formation of a new view of the world;

globalization of religions, the beginning of the transition of interfaith relations to the level of mystical unity;

entry of mankind into the informational stage of development.

Functions of culture

Culture determines the development and functioning of society as a whole and the individual as an integral part of it. Culture is a "second nature", which includes, on the one hand, life-giving human activity to create material and spiritual values, on the other hand, the activity of selecting, disseminating and storing these values ​​for the further development and functioning of society on the basis of a well-acquired historical memory. . Proceeding from this, it is possible to single out the main functions of culture as a sociological phenomenon.

• Activity, creative function of culture: the process of interaction between a person and society and society with a person stimulates the development of a human-creative (humanistic) function, i.e. development creativity man in various forms of his life activity.
• Cognitive (epistemological) function: the creation of a "second nature" - culture - requires significant cognitive efforts of a person who comprehends the world and himself as a member of a social group, society.
• Information function: transfer and exchange of knowledge and experience of life, providing a link between times - past, present and future, forming the historical memory of mankind and its ability to foresee.
• Communicative function (communication function): the interaction of people among themselves, between social groups and society as a whole, providing people with the opportunity to correctly understand each other in this process.
• Value-oriented function: ensuring the selection, selectivity of the inheritance of cultural achievements by a person, his orientation to a kind of "map of life values", ideals and goals of existence.
• Management function: ensuring the preservation of society as a socio-cultural system; maintenance of the activity mode of society, the implementation of the program of its development to the target results of this activity on the basis of social and organizational norms for regulating the behavior of individuals developed by mankind in the process historical development. In this regard, the managerial function is often called a regulatory function, when culture acts as a means of social control over the behavior of individuals.

Modern tendencies cultural development

It is sometimes argued that no cultural process can be assessed unequivocally and categorically in terms of "good - bad." However, there is one natural criterion for evaluating any social process, including cultural. This criterion is simple: how does culture serve man? Does it help him live in accordance with universal values? Does it make him spiritually richer, kinder, nobler, more honest, more compassionate towards the grief and troubles of another person? Everything is quite clear here: if culture serves a person and develops his best qualities, abilities and inclinations from the standpoint of universal human values, then this good cultural process, beneficial culture! It is from this position that it is necessary to consider those visible trends in the development of the cultural situation in our country that are unfolding today.

• 1. De-ideologization of culture(elimination of ideological influence on culture) by abolishing the state monopoly on the implementation of policy in the field of culture. It is believed that in terms of content, this led to greater freedom of creativity and freedom of choice in the field of culture - processes that are certainly positive. But freedom of creativity and freedom of choice are good and unconditional only when there is confidence that they are directed to the benefit of a person, society as a whole. Is there such confidence today? Unfortunately, no: freedom of creativity and freedom of choice, often implemented on the principle of "what I want, I turn back!", have led to a loss of control over the quality and level of cultural products offered to the consumer.
• 2. Privatization and commercialization embraced culture, regardless of its features and significance in the life of man and society. The people of Russia are alienated from the values ​​of culture, including such a value as education, which has practically become paid (including primary and secondary, since school repairs, textbooks and other educational services are often paid for by parents). Culture, understood as a process of spiritual enrichment of a person by means of music, literature, poetry, painting, etc., has, in principle, become inaccessible to the general public. populace. She turns into popular culture and the counterculture discussed above. It is only in this highly profitable area that show business managers invest money, since profit is the only motive for their activities.
• 3. Artificially heated interest in the pre-revolutionary past of Russia, including her cultural heritage, is a trend heavily cultivated by the media. Sometimes this interest takes on grotesque forms of rehabilitation and resuscitation of an archaic, obsolete heritage. For example, in an effort to revive the authority of the church, many forget such achievements of a democratic society as the separation of church from state and school from church.
• 4. Trends in the development of national relations are formed very slowly as this is the largest and most delicate area requiring tact and political professionalism. Humanity as a whole, not only Russia, faces a choice of development strategy: will it be a "clash of civilizations" or "cross-cultural co-evolution"? The solution of the national question, the problem of diversity also depends on the choice of the path. national cultures. Will the world be divided into an industrial North and a "global village" of a raw-material South, or will it follow the path of seeking a fair distribution of raw materials and energy resources? Perhaps no one will now say what humanity will choose, although there is less and less time left for a choice.
• 5. The modern processes of education and enlightenment are extremely complex. The trends in the introduction of universal higher education and lifelong education are opposed by the processes and phenomena of "secondary illiteracy", an increase in the gap between the elite culture and the culture of the mass, base, populist.
• 6. Of particular concern is the problem cultural education youth. A vicious circle has formed here: the low personal culture of the consumer determines the demand for low-quality cultural products, the production of which, in turn, reproduces the low taste of the consumer. A breakthrough here is only possible through the joint efforts of civil society and the state.