Morality in the dynamics of socio-cultural contexts

Efimochkina Natal'ya Borisovna PhD in Sociology Associate Professor of the Department of Labor and Personnel Management of the Faculty of Economics and Management, Associate Professor of the Department of Economic Theory of the Faculty of International Energy Business of the Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas 119991, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Leninskii Prospekt, 65 yefimochkina_n@mail.ru

Mamedov Agamali Kulamovich Doctor of Sociology Professor, Head of the Department of Sociology of Communication Systems, Lomonosov Moscow State University 119234, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Leninskie Gory, 1, str. 33 akmnauka@yandex.ru

The relevance of the research topic under consideration is seen by the authors in the fact that the modern world is at the mercy of fundamental changes covering all spheres of human life - economy, politics, culture. The processes of digitalization are blurring the familiar contours of social existence, plunging humanity into a state of global uncertainty ^{[12, p. 80]}. The solution of the problem of assessing the prospects of the future brings to the forefront of scientific discussions the already almost forgotten concept of "morality". 

As representatives of the expert community rightly point out, public morality is a set of moral standards corresponding to the roles that an individual performs in various communities - from the family up to the national state ^{[2, p. 7]}. At the same time, it is important to realize the fact that the meaning of morality as a socio-cultural phenomenon is in the alignment of private interests for the benefit of individuals and society ^{[1, p. 79]}. 

The fourth technological revolution, with which digital trends of modern development are associated, caused radical transformations of society, affecting all spheres of human activity ^{[17, p. 1765]}. High-tech technologies, having systematically changed the material and social context of our life, led not only to the emergence of new spheres of human relationships, but also formed qualitatively new behavioral norms, value orientations, ideas about ethics and morality in general ^{[8, p. 13]}. There is a process of cardinal change of the ideological paradigm and the formation of a system of digital axiology.

At the same time, the new value meanings generated by digital practices and reflected in a new format of human activity are not autonomous and transcendent imperatives in their essence. They reflect the whole spectrum of traditional cultural values adapted to new conditions.

This process is objective and is based on a historical nature – the traditional dichotomy of "being-consciousness", the mutual influence of which generated scientific and technological progress and determined civilizational development. All achievements of science are a product created by human consciousness, activated by his intellect and creative passion and activating the progress of consciousness ^{[16, p. 98]}. The paradoxical fact was that it was the progress of consciousness that was expressed in the creation of levers and methods that control scientific and technological progress and determine the framework of development within the boundaries of a specific historical period. One of these levers has historically been morality. At the same time, morality is the most conservative element/form of consciousness when changing social contexts, where ideas change first, then ideology, social practices, and then morality.

The basis of morality is the fundamental principles and norms based on the paradigm of assessments "good – bad", "virtue-vice", "right-wrong", which are universal, but in a certain socio-historical epoch, depending on the "context of time", they receive different refraction and interpretation in specific ethical readings ^{[28, p. 141]}. That is, morality is a normative value system ^{[24, p. 248]}. And meaningfully, morality can be explained from the point of view of general socio-cultural evolution ^{[4, p. 8]}. In this case, the "context of time" is the very structure of everyday life, including the technologies that form it, generating not only new ways of living and acting, but also generating new modes of representations and assessments of events. and processes, creating a model of public consciousness and establishing a marker of due as a matrix of the imperative of expedient interaction in society.

The logic of the formation of morality in the era of digitalization, when two worlds – real and virtual - have united in the social world order, cannot be traced without understanding the genesis of those imperatives that have formed conceptual attitudes and principles of moral definitions for thousands of years ^{[13, p. 68]}.

The modern interpretation of cultural codes, where the qualitative specificity is globality due to technological progress, public morality becomes a reflection of the eclectic state and "fast history" where society is located and which combines various realities (technogenic, economic, environmental, etc.). These realities correspond to a certain level of sociality, cultural-historical and value-oriented content. It is in this megasystem that a turbulent symbiosis is formed, where the cultural processes of creating an information-industrial society and a fundamentally new technological base for its spiritual and social modernization act as drivers ^{[22, p. 12]}. Thus, the understanding of morality in the digitalization society is connected with socio-economic development, with the reality that arose and is revealed in the activity approach ^{[3, p. 9]}. We proceed from the fact that morality is a way and result of the development of human consciousness and forms a unique channel of paradigms, within the framework and models of which the views and preferences of people "born in this era" are formed. And accordingly, these models determine both the content of the views and preferences of the epoch, the needs of people and society in the regulators of their numerous interactions, and the ways of embodying this content, which establish the forms of influence on society. Actually, the formation of moral concepts historically acts as a purposeful process and as a natural result of mastering the previously accumulated socio-activity experience.

Created in a discrete civilizational field, experience acts as the activity and information potential of humanity, forming a socio-cultural space that is in close relations of mutual generation and mutual determination with the transformation of consciousness and thinking.

Indeed, if we consider history as a consistent change of various technologies and forms of community, regardless of the historical epoch, national or religious mentality, then the theme of morality always dominates, and often determines other layers of mass consciousness ^{[25, p. 63]}. And regardless of the nature of the constructs with which its content is filled, and what methods society uses to consolidate them, morality always acts as a unique means of forming patterns of behavior.

Already the first social practices in history were associated with morality as an imperative of "due", the installation of which was predetermined by human biological instincts that generate fear of natural phenomena, natural enemies, disease and death. From the time when a person first realized himself, isolated himself from the world around him, and, in fact, opposing himself to that world, his instincts acquire meaning and become actions of a reasonable nature. Already at a primitive level, by the method of endless and tragic "trial and error", the realization of the cause-and-effect relationships not only of natural phenomena, but also of events and phenomena concerning the ancient man's dormitory has come. And here the most powerful protective instincts worked, which integrated with the rudiments of logical thinking, forced a person to develop a system of prescriptions and rules that warn him against the dangers of the surrounding world, diseases and death ^{[11, p. 95]}. First of all, these were practices that limited his behavioral (animal) instincts, which showed what consequences there could be if a particular attitude was not perceived by an individual or a community. Thus, the reflection of morality as a means of social regulation was formed, which was based on the matrix "due – fear".

Later, the knowledge of the surrounding world, in relation to his life, gave a person that incomparable experience and knowledge that helped him not only to survive and adapt, but also to win in harsh conditions. Tools of labor were improved, changing the living space and forming new imperatives of the dormitory. The dynamic matrix of morality expanded its boundaries, the reflection "due-fear" was modified into the instinct "due-shame", and having fixed itself as a necessity, it was refined and improved, turning into a system of repetitive practices and prescriptions regulating the inner life of society, generating those unique features that distinguished not only a person from the natural world, but also and one tribe, one kind from another, laying the foundations of social consciousness and mentality and forming into an ancient social institution – the first instrument of management and influence on a particular society.

The reflection "due – fear", fixing the vector "friend-foe" at the psychological level, established the relationship of an individual with "his" group in social, cultural, ethnic senses, when an individual, identifying himself with a particular group and accepting the rules and norms established in it and accepted by all members, considered the lifestyle of this the group was fair and saw in it the meaning of his life. The skills of collective subordination, marked as taboo, integrated with the first models of religiosity and embodied in ancient rituals and magical practices, became not only the first model of social impact, but also, improving, took shape in the culture, worldview and mass consciousness of a person, creating individual mechanisms for improving moral self-awareness.  The imperative of morality acts not only as a supra-individual instrument of control, fixing certain behavioral attitudes in the mass consciousness, but also forming value orientations that, through moral sanctions, form an individual reflection of mutual obligation ("due") both as a behavioral attitude and as a motive for life activity. The motivational nature of morality is reflected in such concepts as "duty", "conscience", "honor", "justice". However, these attitudes, which have received the character of an "internal" imperative, do not have a universal character, but directly depend on the established norms of the community in which the individual is included. This dependence is clearly manifested and sacralized with the advent of the institution of religion, based on communicative influence, which was based on moral imperatives as "due-piety".

At the heart of any religion is the human desire for some kind of Perfection, which in different peoples takes the forms of embodiment, reflecting the features and specifics of their being. Already in the very definition of the concept of "religion" (Latin religare — "to bind, to unite") is a certain system of views conditioned by faith in a higher being, including a set of moral norms and types of behavior, rituals, cult actions and the association of people in organizations (church, umma, sangha, religious community ...) ^[23] it is possible to identify a set of tools for influencing the population. In this perspective, religion is understood as a system of Ideas – certain moral components /tools, the purpose of which was the consolidation of society and the organization of social structure through the formation of stable ideological meanings.

The early religions, having gone beyond the boundaries of the tribe, have already become an instrument of political unification of tribes into proto-state formations. The unifying link becomes a single Idea, the significant and iconic component of which were designated moral and ethical attitudes elevated to the rank of dogmas. The dogmas of morality that have been fixed as a religious institution for centuries determine not only social existence, but also spiritual experiences in which, through religious emanations of morality, it takes the forms of the most powerful mass manipulative influences in its impact.

Radical transformations of the institution of morality begin in a New time, when new economic definitions modify moral attitudes, receiving new emanations. Morality is becoming a more effective tool for influencing mass consciousness, as it affects the objective human desire for material well-being and personal freedom. Work acquires a purpose and significance, and a person acquires satisfaction from the results of his work. Freeing human consciousness from religious zombification, morality in its new format forms a powerful cultural field in which a set of norms of behavior is combined with a deep philosophical and economic basis of ideological attitudes ^{[11, p. 86]}.

In the process of developing capitalist relations, the religious component of these attitudes and norms of behavior fades into the background and makes way for qualitatively different principles and morals. Moral imperatives are transformed into purely economic categories of property, income and individual economic freedom. But, nevertheless, the ethical component of morality as an emanation of Higher Morality remains one of the means of influencing mass consciousness and behavior in the conditions of economic transformations and acts as a filter for the differentiation of capitalist society.

A new vector of development of socio-historical processes has caused qualitative changes in the ways of using morality as a tool of mass influence. Paradigmatic changes in the material, industrial, spiritual, and social spheres of society's life by the end of the XIX century determined the emergence of a qualitatively new environment – the information space, the communicative field, and the artificial environment created by mass communication media. The development of postal communication, telegraphy, telephony created conditions for mobile interaction, and the development of professional journalism, propaganda and agitation turned the mechanism of mass influence into art. An important factor in these processes was the activation of the participation of the masses in all spheres of the life of the state and society, as well as the transformation of information itself, which in the twentieth century turns into one of the life-supporting resources. The message of social drive is no longer the search for "not ordinary, but new", but "new new". The principal difference of this period was the mobility of interaction and the "point" orientation of the impact. Certain interest groups were formed, which in turn began to purposefully create semantic constructs and gained the opportunity for direct and indirect operational and regular influence on the masses.

     The development of the capitalist mode of production has led to the most powerful transformations of a social, economic and political nature. The struggle for spheres of influence has acquired an international character and almost all world powers have been drawn into it. On the other hand, capitalist relations brought to the fore contradictions, primarily of a social nature, the complexity and diversity of which complicated, first of all, the differentiation of society, bringing new social classes and interest groups into the political arena. Their weapon was not only reflection on many different changes, but also the formation of new ways of purposeful influence on the masses. A new tool is emerging, the importance of which in our life is difficult to overestimate – ideology, propaganda and agitation.

The socio-political emancipation of society, secularization, religious pluralism against the background of the dominance of capitalist relations led to a qualitative reassessment of values based on the ideas of rationalization of public relations and aimed at consolidating a new reality, a new being based on the principles of expediency, common sense, protection of civil rights and freedoms. The change of the religious picture of the world with a purely rational explanation of reality, which gave rise to a state of social, economic and political anomie, necessitated not only the creation of new ideological attitudes, but also mobile tools to consolidate these attitudes into the mass consciousness.

In almost a short period of time, the institution of organizing public order was created, which is based on the means of ensuring group interests, mainly elite ones. The motive of propaganda tools is the tactic of primitivization of the meanings of the existing reality, through which a scheme of interaction between a group of interests and the masses is created.  By creating a kind of primitive/accessible to everyone image of group goals and values, the style of behavioral attitudes necessary for the interest group is formed in propaganda, a normative model of perception of the world, which makes it possible to make socio-political and economic anomie simple and understandable, and society consolidated ^{[11, p. 183]}.

 The political struggle and the accompanying economic conjuncture created a kind of ideological space – a field of artificial communications, within which interest groups created the necessary constructs, primitive in nature, but clearly and intelligibly reaching the consciousness of the masses. The methods of such influence are periodicals and posters, they acquire a mass character, become accessible and, most importantly, understandable to the general population.  Political insinuations based on the strengthening of the "friend–foe" dichotomy were used by political leaders to strengthen imperial explications in the context of military-political crises and are particularly relevant during the Second World War.

Having gained a foothold in the field of ideological constructs, the moral imperatives of "due" receive a new transformation, the vector of which is conditioned by the natural and unlimited desire of a person to satisfy his primary needs. Thus, after the Second World War, the economy of European states was in critical condition and recovered very slowly ^{[7, p. 71]}. In general, the global economy was going through hard times. And the desire for well-being became the primary factor and platform of the new ideology, on which the interests of the world's political and economic elites converged, the consolidation of which by that time was acquiring complete features. The principle is being introduced into the mass consciousness – "no worse than that of the Joneses." An active process of political and economic manipulation begins on a global scale, within the framework of which a mass consumption society, morality and ideology of mass culture - an economic and political culture of a new type is being formed ^{[10, p. 84]}. 

The basic trends of the second half of the twentieth century are the trends of the managers' revolution (the "silent revolution"), the "silent revolution" and the culture of mass consumption, which led to critical changes in mass consciousness, mass behavior and worldview attitudes in general. The era of thinkers is being replaced by the era of stars. In the social trend, the vector is to be like a star. And thus, to be noticed.  "I am what they say about me" becomes the credo of life.

The substantial nature of the new trends lies in the plane of the key transformation of the vector of civilizational development and is associated both with the expansion of the scale of social production and with the change of the ruling industrial elite, in the structure of which professional managers begin to dominate, who gain control over the means and processes of production. "White-collar workers" are more clearly declaring themselves, and in all spheres. There is not only a change of the ruling industrial elite, but also a more global process - the stratum of managers expands its functionality to national scales and begins to play a decisive role in the development of all spheres of society. These changes lead to large-scale consequences that lie not only in the plane of economics and politics, but in the field of socio-cultural changes ^{[11, p. 38]}.

First of all, they bring into the mass consciousness a complex of new moral attitudes, in which the norms of "Protestant ethics" are synthesized, which received a brilliant justification in the works of M. Weber and the guidelines of civil and political culture (civic activism, priority of individual opinions, the inalienable and inalienable rights of human rights in the recognition of freedom as an absolute value, loyalty, tolerance and The main concepts of morality are not the constructs of the "due", in combination with the attitudes applied to the "context of time", but the matrices of the individual and freedom. The carriers of these matrices of new morality are the creative class – the new meritocracy - programmers, journalists, politicians, experts, show business figures, etc., whose views and style of behavior differ from the generally accepted ones.

Their behavioral patterns are adequately and mobile adapted in the mass consciousness of modern society and are accepted as standards of behavior, lifestyle and thought by almost all segments of the population of various countries. The explanation of the mobility and ease of the new morality lies in the plane of cultural changes and economic development, which R. Inglehart called postmodernism, and D. Bell – "silent revolution".

The main thesis is the evolutionary modernization, in which society, becoming prosperous in economic terms and in terms of security, transforms its values and worldviews. The dominant value priorities are not the problems of survival and personal and social security, but the problems of civil rights, freedoms and ecology – post-material values. The civic activity of the population is growing, and the mass consciousness is turning towards civic activity, tolerance, solidarity, individual values, the desire for social self-realization in all its manifestations. These value dominants correlate with the culture of creative culture and, in fact, act as its social realization.

The development of high-tech technologies, and, above all, computerization and Internetization led to the formation of a qualitatively different information capital ^[20]. As it is reasonably indicated in the scientific literature, with the development of modern information and communication technologies, in particular, the global Internet, it is the network structure of information dissemination that becomes the most relevant ^{[16, p. 203]}.  Through the Internet, there is not only familiarization with other cultural values ^{[15, p. 49]}, there is a total scientization of everyday life, everyday social practices change. Gadgets have become an integral part of life and have brought rapidly changing information flows into this life. And the mass media in these conditions have not only become a communication tool that replicates this or that information, they act as a means of mass influence /manipulation, forming certain attitudes that are accessible to a wide range of the population. Today, the media is a latent form of power, a global information industry, the basic setting of which is the culture of consumption – the culture of a developed society, a society of prosperity and economic stability, in which all spheres of life are commercialized.

Commercialization has become the "anchor" of the existence of modern man and the content of qualitatively new moral attitudes that are artificial in nature – they are created and replicated through the leisure industry, focused on simplified symbolic forms of perception of certain semantic markers. The main goal of the media industry is to create the necessary stereotypes and behavioral attitudes. Advertising and fashion become the main trends of mass culture and create new ideological values and orientations. The content of the new values is the products of modern industrial production, cinema, television, books, newspapers and magazines, sports, tourism, etc. Their consumption is massive, because the audience that perceives this culture is a mass audience of large halls, stadiums, millions of viewers of television and cinema screens. The mass nature of value attitudes has made them serial stereotypes with primitive content focused on entertainment, naturalism and the cult of life success. These stereotypes create an illusory model of a successful and prosperous life, and industrial production provides conditions stimulated by advertising for the interpretation of this well-being. We can say that mass culture is the outer shell of the "silent and "silent" postmodern revolution, and its content is the flip side of the culture of the new elite strata (managers and "creatives").

The modern system of morality has emerged as a result of socio-economic transformations, in which not only the content has changed, but also the way and forms of its functioning.  The manipulative nature of communication interaction, transforming the value attitudes of mass consciousness, has changed the semantic characteristics and semantics of traditional concepts.

The experience of mankind shows that spirituality and money are practically incompatible things ^{[6, p. 115]}. And on the map of a society based on economic, political and cultural rationalism, the traditional understanding of morality becomes the main obstacle to the introduction of new values, behavioral stereotypes and guidelines into the consciousness of society. The concept of morality undergoes a global manipulative correlation, within the framework of which its semantic perception radically changes. Having passed the path from the early Protestant ethics with its rationalism (approach to profit), asceticism (religious orientation of economic thinking) and the desire to realize one's self in free labor to postmodern attitudes of individual freedom, morality ceases to be synonymous with goodness, justice, virtue and the meaning of life, consolidating new meanings and constructs of the rational.

Semantic metamorphoses that occurred with the semantic content of moral concepts throughout the twentieth century, in fact, in the conditions of mass individualism and digitalization, turned them to their original meaning and morality began to be understood as a kind of "friend-foe" attitude. Moreover, if in the conditions of ancient society the matrix "friend-foe" was the result of natural understanding and the only way of survival, then in the conditions of mass culture, which digital technologies have taken beyond the framework of a particular state and society, the new moral identifier acts as an artificial construct, the main tool and conductor of the interests of specific social groups, as a rule, political, the economic and financial elite, which has become a single entity. With the help of manipulation technologies, the media creates new semantic meanings and concepts, cultural patterns and behavioral stereotypes, presupposition of perception is set.

Morality becomes a kind of attitude – a universal socio-psychological attitude that determines the readiness not only of a particular person, but of the entire audience as a whole for certain / simulated actions. And the processes of media influence aimed at the formation of qualitatively new attitudes, models the matrices of social identity through artificial constructs of perception and experience of "morality" from the standpoint of the phenomenology of aesthetic dispositions. In this construct, the semantic meanings of morality are distributed in a new sequence. If, in the classical version, the concept of morality can be represented as a "core–periphery" system in which socio-cultural values ("eternal values") act as the core, and the semantic meanings of moral "due" adapted to the "context of time", that is, moral filters act as peripheral, then the construct of purity, formed in The twentieth century, especially in its second half, is an artificial education modeled under the influence of factors of socio-economic and political conjuncture, and the so-called "reflection revolution" has become a fundamentally important condition for its formation, when consciousness begins to wonder what is read in books and newspapers. Consciousness reflects what it has read, and changes under the influence of those images, meanings and symbols carried by the mass media. The media is not only beginning to reflect life, it controls life, sets the symbols and myths of social existence. Instead of the real world, an artificially created virtual world with new symbols and meanings (norms and behavioral attitudes) is imposed and consciousness simply copies television.

As a result, the core–periphery system is changing, or rather, the media is transforming it by "swapping" the iconic components of this system. Hygienic, household, and especially social and economic semantic constructs are positioned as the core, which determine the norms constructed in relation to a specific society - the society of mass consumption.

A new aesthetic construct of morality is being formed – an artificial model for achieving an ideal image corresponding to the norms of mass culture and mass consumption, the main ideal of which is fashion trends. The ethical (achievement of moral perfection) component goes to the periphery.

This process can be represented as follows. The media model a certain sense of the moral imperative and level it, for example, in advertising and/or a feature film. The semantic construct is formed by genre forms – advertising slogans, sound / music accompaniment, vivid images of characters, a dynamic plot (in advertising) or is saturated with deep conceptual reasoning, mythological images and symbols of the illusory reality of the film, so close to reality that the audience begins to perceive them as valid. As a result, an emotional component of the attitude of morality is formed, a kind of socio-cultural reflection of the audience, the transfer of the model into consciousness, the copying of telesense that fix in consciousness a concrete idea of reality (the cognitive component of attitude) and models of behavioral actions in specific situations of this reality (the conative component of attitude). This process, of course, is not an isolated one, it is repeated systematically, and the created images and meanings become symbols and myths of a new ideological construct, the moral attitude of mass consciousness.

In this context, we apply a marker called the "Overton window", whose technology algorithm translates one or another moral imperative from the plane of "unthinkable" to the "state norm" ("unthinkable" – "radical" – "acceptable" – "reasonable" – "popular" – "state norm").  A critically important turn here is the constructs – "reasonable" – "popular", which reflect the degree of mass consumption and the level of influence of mass culture. At the same time, it should be noted that one of the key conditions for the formation of a new culture of mass rationalism is the Weber/Machiavellian approach, when old meanings are not denied, not justified, but are considered from the standpoint of reason and intelligence. In this case, the old meaning takes the form of the periphery – the outer shell, the core of the meaning changes. Thus, the commandment "thou shalt not kill", without being denied in any way as a religious dogma, acquires a new socio-cultural meaning in the reasoning: "will it be a sin to kill a murderer or a rapist? Will euthanasia be a sin – "mercy killing"?". This reasoning, presented by the media, accompanied by a colorful and bright field of suffering of the victim, forces the audience to "try on" the situation. And the audience, starting to reason rationally, sometimes forgetting both religious principles, and the letter of the law, and morality, makes a difficult but unambiguous conclusion – "there are situations when murder is necessary." That's it – the circle has closed. A kind of cultural "Beruf" is being created in the mass consciousness - a rational value guideline in which there seems to be no substitution of semantic concepts, but there is a logic of actions depending on a specific event.

These attitudes of the new morality are formed as purposefully individual, they act as mechanisms for the formation of mass stereotypes, a standard of status positions, according to which an individual is assessed by a status group as "friend or foe". They are not the result of reasonableness and/or rationality like T. Veblen's nouveau riche, they are a model imposed on the masses. No longer "To be like everyone else", but "To be no worse than people" becomes the main postulate, exaggerated by the media.

The new understanding of morality as a construct of a correct way of life is an artificially created standard, through advertising and fashion, practically forcibly embedded in the mass consciousness and turned society into a theater ^{[9, p. 47]}, on the stage of which performances are played and role models of behavior are played out. This theatricality, individual mass character with even deeper representations in cinema, becomes a topic for reflection and "conceptual" and "game" cinema. In conceptual cinema, advertising stereotypes acquire a deeper meaning, they "disturb consciousness", demonstrate "mind games", and, leaving the viewer in doubt and thinking about the "meaning of life", at the same time, they form the affirmative character of biased semantic stereotypes.

Stereotyping and simplistic-rational morality, which has become a standard, is most clearly manifested in the Internet space, which in the XXI century is becoming the main driving force of ideological changes. The fake projection of reality, the ability to create such an accurate and deep illusion of realities, provides participants in Internet communications with the opportunity to simulate a key moment of existence. Using conceptual techniques that have been successfully tested in a real format, moderators lay down certain boundaries, create a fashion for certain reflections, conceptualization and perception of reality, and, consequently, create a fashion for certain conclusions that users, "accustomed" to the templates of mass culture in the real world format, position as their own.

Even stronger in impact are the themes of the "current genre", which have become the most popular on the Internet, in which the simplified presentation of meanings, the representation of real reality in its marginal humorous context, asserts the slogans "What is natural is not a shame", "You are the way you are" or leads the user into the field of pseudo-interpretations real events. "Actual genres", created, as a rule, for the masses, bring simplified meanings of reality. The grotesque of meanings simplifies their perception, and the illusion, close to reality, forms stereotypical images and behaviors with even greater speed. And even if we see in them a kind of model of a moral and/or moral installation, it is no longer elevated to the rank of Perfection and a standard for imitation. The mosaic of meanings and the fragmentary nature of images no longer presupposes deep reflections on morality and morality. They are positioned as templates, outdated dogmas that "fetter" the freedom of the Individual, closing the boundaries of self-improvement with archaic conventions. Numerous pseudo-rational arguments, in which moral and ethical meanings are practically taken out of the scope of comprehension, form more and more new "Overton constructs" that users from the digital format bring into reality, creating, or rather, breaking the established mechanisms of social interactions. As a result, not only the "breaking of patterns" of behavior occurs, but also the processes of deep transformations of both individual and social consciousness begin. In this context, the semantic constructs that cause paradigmatic transformations associated with digitalization are of particular relevance ^{[27, p. 120]}.

Today, the very concept of "digitalization" is positioned not so much as a result of the development of high-tech technologies, the next stage of socio-economic development, but as a new socio-anthropological reality in which the digital sphere of socio-cultural human activity has found expression. 

The creation of a huge digitized array of traditional objects, the formation of new virtual objects, in particular Big Data, as well as the possibility of access to them provided by means of information and communication technologies, have repeatedly accelerated and extremely diversified human life and modified individual consciousness, the phenomena of which involve technological imitation and, in the future, actual artificial reproduction of reality. New media, ways of mastering and transmitting objects, new communication channels transform the visualization of perception, fill the cultural system as a whole with new content, modifying the roles and statuses of its institutions, and, above all, morality.

Today there are active discussions about the structure and essence of digital culture, in which a number of modern authors, defining its features, consider this phenomenon as a "third nature" and bring into it the features of an artificially created virtual world, to some extent separated from the real world. This kind of understanding, in our opinion, is to some extent one-sided for the essential characteristics of this cultural environment, since digital reality is created by a person and for a person, and, accordingly, acting as a result and field of his activity, carries all those attitudes that motivate a person and determine his worldview in "real format". At the same time, being an artificial construct, digital reality modifies these attitudes in a new format, leveling the personality of the individual in them, and the characteristic features of digital reality (openness of access, transparency, remoteness, eclecticism, innovation, technocracy), open up the possibility of a social elevator for any "advanced" user, regardless of in what field he shows his creative activity. And in this context, it is digital reality that has at times actualized those attitudes of postmodernism morality that have formed stereotypes of mass consumption society and mass culture. Markers of individual freedom and commercialization of creativity, going beyond the boundaries of traditional moral attitudes, changed the idea of their own social appearance, respectability, personal life and transformed into permissiveness and impunity. Today, any user who positions himself as a "blogger" can not only create and commercialize his image, preferences and certain values, change his status in the real world through his digital activity, but also exert a powerful influence on the masses of users, changing their moral principles and worldview in general.

On the other hand, there is an idealization of the digital space as an information and communication field in which users (people, the state and society) get ample opportunities to realize their needs, activities, creativity, etc. Indeed, modern digital reality has not only entered into all spheres of life of modern society, but has also radically changed the system of communication interactions at all levels of government, social community and individual activity – "You are what you write about yourself."

At the same time, it was digitalization that caused the emergence of a number of problems, both technical, technological, legal, and moral and ethical problems. The presence of these problems, their unconditional recognition by experts, determined the sharp criticism of the digitalization processes. In particular, among the acute problems, it is the moral and ethical character that is singled out today:

1) problems of communication interactions when using a "technical intermediary", the presence of which deforms the process of communication and understanding both in public spaces (social networks) and in the professional field, radically changing, or rather leveling the moral aspect of communication; 

2) problems of communication interactions in the system "man-machine", "man-artificial intelligence", as a result of which the individual as a person is almost completely excluded from the communication system. He is replaced by a user of an information resource whose moral and ethical preferences lie outside the communication space;

3) the problems of the "digital economy", which entailed, firstly, changes in the labor market caused by the problem of "digital equality". Today, the labor market is a mobile space, within which there is a reduction and/or disappearance of a number of professions, instead of which new specialties appear, whose competencies lie in the plane of digital and knowledge-intensive technologies. This actualizes the problem of equitable access to educational resources, as well as exacerbates the likelihood of new types of digital discrimination and creates prerequisites for the risks of increasing social inequality and the growth of social tension. An important risk factor for the development of the "digital economy" is directly related to the problem of access and fair distribution of the achievements of the "digital revolution";

4) problems of using BigData, especially with arrays of social and personal data, in terms of responsibility for their leakage, violation of privacy, unauthorized access to the database, as well as for uncontrolled use. Studies involving monitoring of the IT sphere, conducted by the authors since 2005 and confirmed by analog studies, various consulting companies, show that up to 60% of violations in the use of BigData are the result of the actions of insiders with access to classified information and represent violations of professional morality and ethics;

5) the problem of monopolization of the digital space also has a moral and ethical context and is considered not only as the probability of commercialization of necessary services, technologies and/or services, but also as probabilistic social risks of commercial and/or political manipulation, invasion of privacy and the spread of total control systems (today the latter is positioned as "absolute transparency" a priori inherent digitalization);

6) the problems of responsibility of Artificial Intelligence (hereinafter – AI), which is clearly manifested in the so-called "Moral Machine" - a "genre study–test" based on the inevitability of choosing robot cars, which puts the user in a dilemma of extremely difficult (and, in fact, impossible from the position of humanity) a moral and ethical solution in which there are no adequate alternatives. To date, when humanity is successfully and rapidly replacing human AI, there are no developed models for evaluating the decisions made by AI, the adequacy of their perception by a person/society, the degree and concretized area of responsibility for damage from failures and/or violations of algorithms, etc.

Moral and ethical problems of digitalization are also associated with psychological factors, and it is not by chance that researchers focus on new challenges, including forms of mass psychological manipulation, unprecedented in scope and depth of impact ^{[19, p. 6]}, which are directly determined by the quality of social connections and the transmission of information networks. The modern digital space has provided almost limitless opportunities for such acts ^{[21, p. 201]}. Available digital services allow you to save time (for example, due to information about certain events, the ability to order a taxi, products, etc.) and at the same time, simulate the nature of its use, providing leisure information resources, the quality of which often has an extremely negative impact on both the psyche and the behavior of users, initiating deviant behavior. First of all, we are talking about such phenomena as porn sites, Internet games, various guides to terrorists, etc. ^{[14, p. 729]}.

Such conclusions are confirmed by numerous studies of the impact of digitalization on human behavior and worldview. Thus, a study conducted among students of domestic universities ^{[26, pp. 31-38]} showed that digitalization has a greater impact on the communicative side of communication (82.5%), while the perceptual side of communication is practically not involved (7%). The middle position was taken by the interactivity of communication (33%), which is explained by the possibility of interactions both in real and digital space.

For our research, the survey positions directly related to the moral and ethical aspects of digitalization are of interest. The authors used survey data conducted at the Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin (hereinafter – UrFU), by analogy with which a survey was conducted of students of Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas (NIU) named after I.M. Gubkin (hereinafter – RSU; the number of respondents – 186, age 20-21 years). It is possible to distinguish such digital preferences of young people as

1) image formation – table 1.

Table 1 - How easy is it to form an image in the era of digitalization?

Source: ^{[26; author's survey]}

Survey data show that more than half of respondents consider the formation of an image to be quite easy (54.4% – "easy to a greater extent" and "easy" according to UrFU and 91.2 according to RSU). Moreover, if UrFU students are guided by the templates provided by advertising and image makers, which implies to some extent manipulative possibilities on the part of the latter, and the percentage of correlation with the "free choice" of the external "I" is practically comparable (43.9), then one of the main reasons that Gubkin students named in the formation of the image – this is freedom of expression, relative autonomy of public assessment of individual image (more than half of the respondents). Orientation to templates in % of the surveyed Gubkin students is quite low – 23.4%.

2) the impact of digitalization on personality – table 2.

Table 2. How does digitalization affect a person psychologically?

Source: ^{[26; author's survey]}

The data show that modern youth who perceive "digitalization products" as a given (29.8% – "does not affect in any way" according to UrFU), at the same time, are aware of the danger of the negative impact of digitalization on the psychological state of the individual (36.9% – "mostly negative" and "negative" according to UrFU and 65.3% according to to these categories in Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas (NRU)).

3)                Ethical problems of digitalization – Table 3.

Table 3. In the course of digitalization, the following ethical problems may manifest themselves

Source: ^{[26; author's survey]}

The respondents' answers thus showed that society is not yet able to link the digital format of life with moral values ^{[1, p. 10]}, its traditional moral and moral attitudes are not sufficiently prepared for the rapid changes in lifestyle that digital transformation has entailed. This is indicated by the data in Tables 4, 5.

Table 4. Is society ready for digitalization?

Source: ^{[26; author's survey]}

Table 5. Is society psychologically ready for digitalization?

Source: ^{[26; author's survey]}

4)                The ethical principles of digitalization presented in Tables 6a and 6b clearly show that traditional moral and ethical attitudes synthesized with Weber's morality and the principles of postmodernism in the conditions of digitalization are the main moral and moral guidelines of society. At the same time, the morality of individual freedom of the postmodern is the prevailing behavioral standard.

Table 6a.  Ethical principles (according to UrFU)

Source: ^{[26; author's survey]}

Table 6a.  Ethical principles

(according to Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas (NIU))

Source: ^{[26; author's survey]}

The data of the above survey correlate with the indicators of public opinion monitoring on the moral and ethical problems of digitalization conducted by both Russian and foreign companies and research centers, which actualizes the problems of morality in a digitalization-oriented society.

That is, we can state the fact that the digital space can be called a reflection of the real world, since both the owners and users of digital resources are real people who bring elements of the real culture of the real world into the digital world.

Currently, discussions about the possibilities, resources and potential of digital culture are a direct reflection of the discourse about the culture of modern society, since the problems of digital space are initiated by society.

The nature of digital culture is dual. On the one hand, it is really an artificially created reality, a virtual environment, with its inherent fragmentarity, mosaic expression and dominance of the visual over the semantic, having an entertaining, recreational, gaming character ^{[5, p. 54]}. Analysts note that modern society perceives the digital space to a greater extent as a means of entertainment and obtaining information (mainly general cognitive), and digital services of public services, service sectors, etc. are perceived by an individual in the mode of "a priori-given".

At the same time, the Internet space and other ways of digitalization in their entirety have become the ontological basis of the modern existence of the individual and society, which exacerbates the moral problems of modernity.

Today, a new structure of society is being formed, the segmentation of which is expressed not by state and/or national borders, but by digital groups and associations of "interests". The conceptual characteristics of these groups go beyond the traditional social groups and are more similar to professional groups. But, the main segments of the digital society are united precisely "by interests", which lie in the plane of "gaming activity", where the boundaries of moral attitudes (in the traditional sense of morality) are blurred at best. For example, focusing on the video streaming community, an individual is focused only on the amount of dividends (commercialization of actions) and the growth of popularity with minimal responsibility. Compliance with moral norms and ethical requirements is inversely proportional to the growth of his income, and the growing popularity of video streaming services suggests the absence of moral reflection in the modern environment of real society as internal freedom of choice and regulation of his behavior by internal moral beliefs – conscience, duty, shame, etc. in this regard, the key problem of mass consumption society and mass culture has transformed in the digital format and reflection of irresponsible behavior, in which individual freedom and commercialization of activity, formed in the era of postmodernism, took pronounced forms.

On the other hand, it was the real society that outlined approaches to solving the key moral and ethical problems of the digital space. So, in the case of video streaming today, there is a watershed directly related to the moral attitudes that are most polarized in Western and eastern cultures. Western culture, focused on the principles of democracy and guarantees of individual rights, is aimed at supporting absolute freedom in personal expression, whatever methods it prefers, Traditional Eastern culture, whose morality is based on the principles of collective and individual responsibility as an instrument of social harmony, widely uses censorship of such content, holding their authors accountable ^{[22, p. 96]}.

These examples are a reflection of objective processes of formation of a qualitatively new paradigm of social development, the instrument of which is the processes of digital transformation. A society that has been developing moral attitudes and constructs for thousands of years, which has experienced more than one change of social paradigms, is able to form a new environment of the hostel.

The use of high-tech and information technologies, which led to significant changes in human life and led to the emergence of a digital culture, a system of values and forms of human interaction, forms a unique cultural environment in which a qualitatively new culture is being formed - a culture of freedom of interaction. But at the same time, this new culture in its substantive essence is a reflection of the culture of the real world, the existing reality and forms the same cultural attitudes, moral norms, value standards, forms of behavior as in the "real format". The Internet does not change people, it just allows them to do the same thing in a different way ... Contrary to utopian ideas, the Internet, its development, is unlikely to turn disinterested, uninformed, indifferent citizens into interested, informed and active cyber citizens ... ^{[29, p. 157]}.

Digital culture becomes a modified embodiment of socio-economic, socio-cultural development and the embodiment of the value claims of its creators. In turn, the problems and objective factors of its formation have an impact on all participants of paradigmatic transformations, within which the morality of a new civilization is formed. In this context, the cultural and anthropological definition of the relationship between the phenomenon of digital culture and a person transformed under its influence is valid: "... through 10 – 15 – 20 years, i.e. during the lifetime of the main part of the current generation, today's civilized NOMO will turn into an eNOMO - a new species that retains biological belonging to Homo Sapience, but qualitatively significantly different from it due to symbiosis with products of rapidly developing ultra-high technologies" ^{[18, p. 262]}.