Spiritual Security in the Conditions of Modern Cultural and Civilizational Development

Popov Evgeniy Aleksandrovich Doctor of Philosophy Professor of the Department of Sociology and Conflictology of Altai State University 656038, Russia, Barnaul, 66 Dimitrova str., room 513А popov.eug@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction. Recently, the issue of spiritual security in the context of modern cultural and civilizational development has been raised quite often for quite objective reasons: firstly, the growing confrontation of countries, cultures and peoples, the "revision" of Western worldview and values dictates the need to search for mechanisms to ensure the spiritual security of man and society, secondly, politicization, economization and the legitimization of many aspects of human collective and individual existence contributes to the process of "centralization" of values, which the Dutch researcher A. Hagen characterizes as a powerful redistribution of key values from the space of culture into the space of civilization, which certainly affects changes in the value-normative system, the shift of value priorities, and therefore increases the risks of aggravating the crisis of culture ^[20] thirdly, spiritual security is associated with the need to preserve an original culture, which, in the conditions of the development of man-made civilization, also needs support and ensuring its preservation for subsequent transmission to other generations of cultural carriers. The question of the "ontologization" of culture, understood as the conjugation of the key meanings of human existence with the corresponding value structures and codes and symbols, is also important ^{[22, p. 12]}. Spiritual security is aimed at ensuring the continuity, first of all, of traditional values and norms and their transmission to subsequent generations.

In this article we do not investigate various ontological characteristics of spiritual security, we do not set the task of correlating this type of security with others (for example, social, political, national), but at the same time, defining the value framework of modern cultural and civilizational development, we will attempt to justify the need to "measure" spiritual security as a kind of response on the mutual influence of culture and civilization. From this point of view, the main methodological perspectives for analysis are value-internalization (transfer of social experience through value structures) and civilizational approaches. In order to objectify the process of identifying criteria for spiritual security at the levels of culture and civilization, we turn to some data obtained during the seven rounds (1981-2020) of the World Values Survey^[1], as well as the final results of the European Social Survey^[2], aimed at long-term (2001-2021) comparison of values, attitudes, attitudes and behavior of the population of European countries, including Russia.

Defining the content of the key concepts that have heuristic value for this article, we focus on the relevant scientific discourse that has developed and continues to be replenished with new ideas and positions within the framework of cultural and philosophical reception, which allows us to abstract from certain socially or politically conditioned determinants that affect culture and the development of civilization, and present these phenomena as self-sufficient, past the path of "ontologization". From this point of view, culture will be understood by us as a value-semantic system, the "ontologization" of which is provided by the corresponding fundamental meanings of being (for example, substantial); civilization, following N.I. Lapin, is identified as "the historically formed state of the way of life of a large community of people and/or their aggregates occupying certain geographical spaces which ensures the relatively stable existence of homo sapiens..." ^{[8, p. 6]}. By the way, the goal of civilization is to ensure the sustainable existence of individuals, and the goal of culture is based primarily on the formation and consolidation in the space of human existence of meanings and values that determine human development, his inclusion in social reality, etc. It should be noted that the search for the points of conjugacy of culture and civilization is a special subject for discussion, discussed for quite a long time mainly in an interdisciplinary aspect. It seems to us that spiritual security is a kind of consolidated phenomenon that ensures the interconnectedness of culture and civilization and at the same time a state that affects the relative stability of value structures in the individual and collective being of a person and society. Such an interpretation in general allows us to count on the concretization of this state and, thus, contributes to a more substantive understanding, including in the system of cultural and philosophical knowledge. Actually, as already noted in this article, we aim to show some criteria of spiritual security that can be identified based on the analysis of the results of multicenter reviews of values.

Spiritual security: an integrated approach to analysis. With regard to the interpretations of spiritual security, it is impossible both to simplify the interpretation, reducing the phenomenon under consideration to some one typical state of social development (for example, as a "continuation" of the national security of the state - such an interpretation does not reveal the essence of spiritual security at all, but clearly demonstrates the multidimensionality of the phenomenon associated with it), and unnecessarily complicate, including in its contents various aspects of being. At the same time, one should proceed from the attitude according to which spiritual security can be considered as a complex state reflecting the conjugacy of culture and civilization. From this point of view, it is quite likely to achieve some objectification in the study of this phenomenon.

First of all, we will give a general description of the corresponding scientific discourse, in the center of which is spiritual security. Let us pay attention to the fact that this phenomenon, although it "captures" the sphere of spirituality and spirituality, is still more politicized – for an understandable reason: every phenomenon of security historically becomes an inducer of state activity and the functioning of the state as a whole. In this aspect , however , two main research perspectives can be found: 1) comprehension of spiritual security as a result of the implementation of the policy in the field of preservation and development of traditional culture; in this regard, in particular, the idea is expressed about the need to consolidate in the policy of the state appropriate tools for maintaining traditional culture ^[21]; it would be useful in this regard to recall that the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation dated 09.11.2022 No. 809 The Foundations of the state Policy for the Preservation and Strengthening of traditional Russian spiritual and Moral values have been approved (the document includes, for example, life, dignity, human rights and freedoms, patriotism, citizenship, service to the Fatherland, and others).^[3]; 2) identification of spiritual security as a qualitative characteristic of society, taking into account "the potential of basic goals and values, the balance of individual, group and societal interests, functional coherence of political institutions, ideology and culture" ^{[1, p. 13]}; politicization of spiritual security is also carried out through the search for a national idea consistent with the need to maintain spiritual security and minimizing the risks of value transformations that can lead to the deconsolidation of social development and, thus, a noticeable or even dangerous decrease in the "potential of basic goals and values."

The weak point of various interpretations of spiritual security from the point of view of political determination, perhaps, is the "stringing" of as many meanings as possible, which significantly blurs the content of this concept. So, for example, in one of the definitions we see that the author interprets spiritual security as a special "state of the individual, society and government, ensuring their normal interconnected existence and functioning, and also serves as a cultural and spiritual background for the moral development of the quality of life of the human factor in the system of national civilization" ^{[3, p. 24]}. With such an interpretation, it is quite difficult to grasp the essence of the phenomenon under consideration, since we do not know for sure what the author meant by a cultural and spiritual background, a normal interconnected existence, etc.; in addition, the concept of national civilization used in itself can be confusing - its meaning is completely unclear. Often, the political interpretation of spiritual security is presented due to the need to assess the viability of various threats or risks to individuals and society, as well as the state and its institutions. At the same time, anything can be named among the threats: for example, one of the authors gives the following list of threats: "foreign, including international, non-governmental organizations, financial and economic structures, private individuals whose activities are aimed at violating the unity and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, at destabilization are a threat to spiritual security the internal political and social situation in the country, the destruction of traditional Russian spiritual and moral values" ^{[2, p. 177]}. Such overt politicization of threats overshadows the true sources of threats and risks to spiritual security. It seems that any private person, of course, can become a threat to security on the scale of the state, but it is not entirely true to talk about the fact that it affects the spiritual world of people. Spiritual security is still aimed at preserving and ensuring the transfer of traditional values from one generation to another, and it is impossible to disrupt this historical and genetic process to a specific subject or even non-governmental organizations. Of course, the semantic field of spiritual security is not a simple subject for research, but nevertheless the value–semantic component should remain the key characteristic of this phenomenon (or state); all other elements are likely to be secondary or even tertiary in relation to this perspective.

On the other hand, to understand spiritual security, a comprehensive analysis should be applied, which means that both the political interpretation and any other, undoubtedly, should be taken into account. At the same time, we emphasize again that the defining moment in the identification of the phenomenon under consideration remains the spiritual sphere, therefore, any aspect of understanding spiritual security should primarily affect this sphere. Of course, the spiritual sphere is connected with the spiritual life of a person and society, for which such forms of public consciousness as politics, law, religion, philosophy, etc. become decisive, which means that the interpretation options are significantly expanded – in fact, this is true, but still the spiritual sphere is the sphere of values and norms, at least in the practice of research, it is by values and norms that one can objectify or concretize certain socio-cultural foundations of human existence. Actually, a comprehensive analysis of spiritual security implies the possibility of generalizing value-normative transformations under the influence of certain determining factors or conditions (for example, the conditions of modern cultural and civilizational development); ultimately, the state of spiritual security will be evidenced by the orderliness or "balance" of value structures, while threats and risks to the spiritual sphere will indicate significant transformations of values and norms leading to a crisis of culture.

Note the importance of the conjugacy of culture and civilization for understanding spiritual security – it is the aspect of cultural and civilizational development that interests us in this article. As is known, the civilizational approach (N.Y. Danilevsky, A. Toynbee, A. Ferguson, N. Ferguson, O. Spengler, K. Jaspers and others) has long established itself as one of the heuristically significant in the cultural and philosophical reception, as well as at the interdisciplinary level of research; the main angle of this approach is aimed at identifying the points of conjugacy of civilization and societies, peoples, cultures, techniques and technologies, etc. Only partially at the same time, the questions of value-semantic transformations occupy the civilizational approach, although, of course, for example, N.Y. Danilevsky in his concept of cultural and historical types somehow appealed to the value searches of peoples ^[4]; at the same time and A. Toynbee outlined the position of "challenge-and-response" for cultures and civilizations ^[10], K. Jaspers put forward the theory of axial time as the main vector of cultural and civilizational development ^[15], etc. On the other hand, the value-interiorization approach, which has been designated as an independent direction of cultural and philosophical research, which focuses on the transfer of social experience through value structures, makes it possible to identify spiritual security as a response to changes in value systems, and values both universal (universal) and ethno-regional or having a pronounced ethno-national coloring. Within the boundaries of this approach , two main research vectors can be identified: 1) the transfer of social experience between generations, adequate to traditional values, is possible only in conditions of spiritual security reflecting the "positive" connectedness of culture and civilization; from this point of view, spiritual security is a kind of "security" measure for the value-semantic searches of individuals, peoples and societies: it seems to noticeably induce a sharp change in values structures under the influence of civilizational development ^{[13; 14; 16; 17; etc.]}; 2) the connection of generations, which can also be subjected to serious changes, for example, as a result of the development of technocratism, economism and technogenic civilization, does not ensure the transfer of consolidating social and socio-cultural experience, and therefore needs increased measures of spiritual security (maintenance of traditional spiritual and moral values and norms, etc.)

^{[9; 11; 12; 18; 19; Thus, the identification of the specifics of spiritual security, the possibility of objectification of this phenomenon involves the use of these theoretical and methodological perspectives of modern research. Spiritual security and transformation of values. The application in the framework of this work of some of the results of the World Values Survey (hereinafter – WVS), as well as the final results of the European Social Research (hereinafter –ESS) allows us to approach the objectification of the phenomenon of spiritual security. The methodological basis of these studies, among others, was the civilizational approach – it allowed, for example, to "cluster" all values according to the levels of their "centralization": the first level is the level of universal values that remain practically unchanged during the WVS and ESS, the second level is universal values that have undergone noticeable changes in the prism of the value hierarchy, the third level – traditional cultural universals, the fourth level – innovative universals, etc. Clusters of relevant values were based on value structures related to both individual human existence and social; the research methodology dominant in WVS and ESS – cross-cultural analysis. The relevance of the civilizational approach was determined by the allocation of civilizational factors that have a noticeable or significant impact on several groups of values at once – thus, such factors were typified, which then influenced the clustering of values. Such factors include, for example, an increase (decrease) in the multipolarity of the world, the politicization of key processes of human existence, the transformation of world political and socio-economic systems, etc. As noted in one of the studies, "the issues of spiritual security are directly related to the problem of spiritual capital manifested in all spheres of Russian society, economic, political, social" [7, p. 19]}. Meanwhile, in this paper we did not independently generalize the results of WVS and ESS – some modern works containing analytics were taken as a basis, allowing us to answer the question we posed: how is the state of spiritual security related to the transformation of values. By the way, the transformation of values is almost always identified as a cause or consequence of a crisis of culture or a crisis of social relations – in this article we do not touch on this aspect, it should be the subject of consideration in a separate work.

In his research devoted to identifying the specifics of the fundamental values of civilizational development, N.I. Lapin drew attention to four main components of civilization, each of which is necessarily associated with a certain level of transformation of values: "(1) man as an active contradictory (at the same time biological, cultural and social) being; or rather, a fairly large number of people living in a certain geographical area; (2) the position of this area in the terrestrial space, the natural and climatic conditions of life and activity of members of this community; (3) a type of culture5 that allows homo sapiens individuals to push back the natural boundaries of the biological survival of their communities, ensuring the relative stability of their existence and the possibility of developing their proper human qualities; 4) a type of society, or a set of social relations arising between people in the processes of their activities, corresponding or inconsistent with the type of culture, i.e. contributing to or hindering the realization of its potential" ^{[8, p. 6]}. The clustering of values in the WVS and ESS studies was carried out in approximately the same direction – this point is emphasized in the works of R. Inglehart ^[5], including in co-authorship with K. Welzel ^[6]. Basically, the emphasis was placed on two clusters of values subject to varying degrees of transformation (on a scale of up to 10) within 5-10: survival values and self-expression values ^{[6, p. 87]}.

In relation to the characterization of changes occurring during the entire monitoring period within the framework of the WVS and ESS in these groups of values, the civilizational factor was used: the greatest influence on value transformations was exerted by socio-political and socio-economic processes identified as integral elements of civilizational development. The factor of spiritual security in the methodology of WVS and ESS appears as an inducer of value transformations that minimize the influence of civilizational processes, which inevitably leads to the transformation of values that lose connection with the key meanings of being for individuals and humanity as a whole. According to R. Inglehart's observation, "rapid cultural changes" occur under the influence of civilization, exacerbating changes in the direction of socio-cultural dynamics: value structures are unable to maintain their universalism, do not provide the transmission of social and cultural experience necessary for generations, etc. ^[5]. As the results of the WVS and ESS show, in the cross-country comparison, noticeable "shifts" occur in almost all value structures, and the most significant affect clusters of values that previously remained unchanged for a long time, constituted the so-called "ontos" of culture (the connection of value and the meaning of being, for example, substantial) and, thus, they allowed culture to preserve its uniqueness and identity and at the same time testified to the priorities of cultural development over civilizational. It is not difficult to notice according to the WVS and ESS data that such key values as family, love, friendship and others give way in the hierarchy of value structures to other values more appropriate to the priorities of civilizational development: money (resources, finance, goods), power, comfort, accessibility of services and others. This change is associated with an increase in the level of life security (safety) ^{[17, p. 100-101]}.                                             

At the same time, as the researchers note, it is natural that "a higher degree of vital security and personal independence of a person fundamentally changes his immediate life experience, prompting him to give priority to goals that previously stood in the background, including gaining freedom" ^{[6, p. 12]}. Undoubtedly, this aspect of value-semantic certainty is crucial at the subjective level, but it is also important for determining the boundaries of socio-cultural dynamics, which may affect the system of spiritual security as a system in which values and norms are so ordered that they do not change the appearance of the culture itself, are not significantly influenced by the civilizational factor, etc.

Conclusion. The concept of spiritual security is increasingly used in the broad context of social and philosophical and cultural studies, but the prevailing discourse on this subject is political analysis, which does not fully reflect the essence of the phenomenon under consideration. Meanwhile, spiritual security needs to be objectified, which will allow it to be identified in all cases of deviations or transformations of the value-normative system of culture – as it is established, these changes always lead to risks of politicization, economization of values, which, in turn, become an obstacle to achieving spiritual security.         ^[1] See: World Values Survey.

URL:https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp (accessed 12.10.2022)

^[2] See: European Social Survey. URL:https://www.europeansocialsurvey.org (accessed 13.10. 2022)

^[3] Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 809 dated 09.11.2022 "On approval of the Foundations of State Policy for the Preservation and Strengthening of Traditional Russian spiritual and Moral values". URL: http://publication.pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/0001202211090019?index=2&rangeSize=1 (accessed 12.12.2022).