Features of technogenic civilization and science. Technogenic civilization: its essence and development prospects Main features of modern technogenic civilization

In modern social philosophy, the concept of civilization is increasingly used to explain the factors of the historical dynamics of society. The term civilization itself (Latin sivilis - civil, state) still does not have an unambiguous interpretation. In world philosophical literature it is most often used in the following basic meanings:

as a synonym for culture (A. Toynbee).

as a certain stage in the development of local cultures, characterized by their degradation and decline (O. Spengler).

as a stage in the historical development of mankind, following barbarism (L. Morgan, F. Engels).

The concept of civilization includes the social and cultural components of society. In the modern view, civilization begins simultaneously with the transition of man from a primitive state to a rational existence. From this moment on, it develops according to its own internal laws and based on the preconditions it creates. In other words, a necessary condition for the development of civilization is only its emergence. The concept of civilization is associated with the continuity of the life of society, the presence of cultural traditions in a broad sense - both art and skills in the production of utilitarian items.

Modern technogenic civilization is already the power of machines. Without noticing it ourselves, we have become hostages of the achievements of human thought. We unite ourselves with them. Humanity will no longer be able to live without electricity, but some hundred years ago almost all of us lived by candlelight and nothing. The secrets of ancient history continue to be revealed and we learn what power our ancestors possessed. Our ancestors had knowledge about the essence of the reality around us, they had wisdom. But technogenic civilization is the power of aggression, rudeness and force. To replace the gods of nature, modern technogenic civilization has invented and placed machines and devices at the forefront. People who have wisdom and knowledge walk among us. Their appearance is ordinary, in contrast to the supporters of technogenic knowledge. They do not broadcast their point of view from television screens, do not enter into polemics with everyone who disagrees, and do not try to prove to everyone that they are right.

How many examples does our history know when supposedly “civilized” people sailed and wiped out entire nations from the face of the earth, destroyed temples, destroyed knowledge that was hundreds of years old, just because it disagreed with their own opinion and religion. Strength and rudeness have always defeated knowledge and wisdom. But the time is coming for us all to understand that modern technogenic civilization has no future - only death lies ahead.

17. The doctrine of being: the concept of being, “being” and “being”. Levels of existence

Being - in the broadest sense - existence. The concept of being is a central philosophical concept. Being is the subject of ontology. In a narrower sense, characteristic of the fundamental ontology of M. Heidegger, the concept of “being” captures the aspect of the existence of a being in contrast to its essence. If essence is determined by the question: “What is a being?”, then being is determined by the question: “What does it mean that a being is?” The concept of being was introduced into the Russian philosophical language by Grigory Teplov in 1751 as a translation of the Latin term “ens”

The concepts of being and non-being in their origin go back to the reasoning of the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides. Parmenides is the first to draw attention to such an aspect of all things as being. There is a being and there is the existence of this being, which is called being. There is no non-existence, “nothing” (that which does not exist). Thus, the first thesis of Parmenides sounds like this: “Being is, non-being is not at all.” From this thesis it follows that being is one, motionless, has no parts, one, eternal, good, has not arisen, is not subject to destruction, since otherwise one would have to allow the existence of non-existence, which is not permissible. The second thesis of Parmenides is: “To think and to be are one and the same.” Since there is no non-existence, this means that it cannot be thought of. Everything that is conceivable is existence.

Aristotle's doctrine of being is presented in his Metaphysics. In particular, he divided being into potential (possibility) and actual (reality).

In idealistic philosophy, being is understood as a true and absolute timeless reality, as opposed to the present world of becoming. From the point of view of idealism, this being is spirit, mind, God. Idealism identifies the object of knowledge with sensory perception, “muses,” ideas (entities) - it interprets being as something ideal, dependent on consciousness, generated by it.

ialectical materialism equates the concepts of reality, being and nature. Marxism also introduces the concept of social being as the opposition of social consciousness. Dialectical materialism as a whole does not deny that consciousness and thinking have existence, but they adhere to the opinion that the existence of consciousness and thinking is generated and designated through the existence of matter and nature. In materialistic epistemology, being is opposed to consciousness as an objective reality that exists in the subconscious (outside consciousness) and thereby designates it (awareness). Dialectical materialism considers objectively real being (matter) to be independent of consciousness, feelings, and experience; that being is called objective reality, and consciousness is a reflection of being. The question of what is primary—being or thinking—has become known as one of the formulations of the Fundamental Question of Philosophy.

In the philosophy of existentialism, being is opposed to existence (present existence, given in experience) or essence (frozen, timeless existence). As a rule, being is understood as a personality: transcendental (God), collective (society) or individual (existence, personality, a specific, unique person himself).

In the fundamental ontology of M. Heidegger, being captures the aspect of the existence of a being in contrast to its essence. If essence is determined by the question: “What is a being?”, then being is determined by the question: “What does it mean that a being is?”

Since being can be understood as unique (see Parmenides), the term “being” is often used to designate the world as a whole. Subject of study of ontology. Opposite concepts are “non-existence” and “nothingness”. Significant philosophical problems are the relationship between being and thinking, the relationship between being and time, the relationship between being and non-existence. It is customary to distinguish a number of different and at the same time interrelated basic forms of being: The existence of things (bodies), processes includes the existence of things, processes, states of nature; the existence of nature as a whole and the existence of “second nature,” that is, things and processes produced by man. The existence of man - both in the world of things and specifically human existence. The existence of the spiritual (ideal) is divided into individualized spiritual and objectified (non-individual) spiritual. The existence of the social is divided into individual existence (the existence of an individual in society and in the process of history) and the existence of society.

The existence of nature. The existence of nature is the first form of reality, the universe. Includes everything that exists except humans. It is a consequence of a long universal evolution. Systemic organization of the world order. The development of the world is the process of transformation and interaction of the systems that form it. The ability of all natural systems to self-organize, spontaneously transition to a higher level of organization and orderliness. Subsystems of matter and field. Substance is a type of matter that has rest mass. Field is the main type of matter that connects particles and bodies. Subsystems of inanimate and living nature. Inanimate nature - the movement of elementary particles and fields, atoms and molecules. Its levels: vacuum-microelement-atomic-molecular-macrolevel-megalevel (planets, galaxies). Living nature - biological processes and phenomena, comes from inanimate nature, is included in it, but represents a different level of development. Its levels: molecular-cellular-microorganism-tissue-organism-population-biogeocoenotic-biosphere. Social being Social being is the second form of reality. Includes the being of society and the being of man (existence). The structure of social being or society: individual, family, collective , class, ethnicity, state, humanity. By spheres of social life: material production, science, spiritual sphere (at its level it repeats and reproduces the structure of society), political sphere, service sector, etc. Includes unconscious spiritual structures of the individual and collective unconscious (archetypes) that have developed in the psyche of people in pre-civilization period. The role of these structures is recognized as significant and decisive. Strengthening the interaction of all forms of spiritual life with production, practice (cosmonautics, bioengineering, etc.). New information technologies and means of communication have made spiritual life more dynamic and mobile.

18. The problem of consciousness: definition of consciousness, sources of consciousness.

The problem of understanding consciousness is complex and has many solutions. The most simplified idea of consciousness is given by materialism and the so-called “reflection theory”: consciousness is the highest form of reflection of objective reality, characteristic of man. Human consciousness is a function of “that particularly complex piece of matter called the human brain.” According to materialists, consciousness arises in a person in the process of labor, social and production activities. (Philosophical Dictionary. 1954).

The modern definition of consciousness is more qualitative: consciousness is the ability to direct one’s attention to objects in the external world and at the same time focus on those states of internal spiritual experience that accompany this attention; a special state of a person in which both the world and himself are simultaneously accessible to him.

A figurative definition of consciousness by M.K. Mamardashvili: Consciousness is a luminous point, some mysterious center of perspective, in which one is instantly brought into communication. in correlation with what I saw, what I felt, what I experienced, what I thought.

Consciousness assumes that the acts “I think”, “I experience”, “I see”, etc., caused by the interaction of the Self and the external world, simultaneously generate the accompanying acts: “I think that I think”, “I experience , what I experience,” etc. These accompanying acts constitute the content of reflection and self-awareness. In consciousness, a person not only experiences, but is aware of what he is experiencing and gives meaning to the experience.

The procedure “I think” is not identical to consciousness. For consciousness to arise, it is necessary for a person to take his thinking under the control of the thought itself, that is, to engage in the procedure of understanding why he is thinking about it, whether there is any purpose for his mental attention to this subject. Consciousness provides a person with clarification of all the problems of meaning in life: why he lives, whether he lives with dignity, whether there is a purpose in his existence. The focus on external objects is also inherent in the psyche of animals, but without acts of reflection and self-awareness, which presuppose the formation of the Self as a state of separation of a person from nature and from the community of other people.

There are different strategies for exploring and understanding consciousness:

objective-idealistic (at the level of the Absolute, God)

pantheistic (consciousness everywhere and everywhere)

realistic (human consciousness)

naturalistic, vulgar-materialistic (only the brain).

Accordingly, the following are presented as potentially possible sources of consciousness:

A cosmic information-semantic field, one of the links of which is the consciousness of the individual;

The external objective and spiritual world, natural, social, spiritual phenomena, perceived by consciousness in the form of concrete sensory, conceptual and other images;

Sociocultural environment, scientific, ethical, aesthetic attitudes, norms of behavior, knowledge accumulated by society, etc.;

The spiritual world of the individual, his own unique experience of life and experiences;

The brain as a macrostructural natural system that ensures the implementation of general functions of consciousness at the cellular level.

Technogenic civilization in its very existence is defined as a society that is constantly changing its foundations. Therefore, its culture actively supports and values the constant generation of new samples, ideas, and concepts. Only some of them can be implemented in today's reality, and the rest appear as possible programs for future life, addressed to future generations. In the culture of technogenic societies, one can always find ideas and value orientations that are alternative to the dominant values. But in the real life of society, they may not play a decisive role, remaining, as it were, on the periphery of social consciousness and not setting the masses of people in motion.

The values of technogenic culture set a fundamentally new direction for human activity. Transformative activity is considered as the main purpose of a person. The activity-active ideal of man’s relationship with nature then extends to the sphere of social relations, which also begin to be considered as special social objects that can be purposefully transformed by man. Connected with this is the cult of struggle and revolutions as the locomotives of history. It is worth noting that the Marxist concept of class struggle, social revolutions and dictatorship as a way to solve social problems arose in the context of the values of technogenic culture.

The second important aspect of value and ideological orientations, which is characteristic of the culture of the technogenic world, is closely connected with the understanding of human activity and purpose - the understanding of nature as an ordered, naturally arranged field in which an intelligent being, having cognized the laws of nature, is able to exercise its power over external processes and objects and put them under your control. It is only necessary to invent technology to artificially change the natural process and put it at the service of man, and then tamed nature will satisfy human needs on an ever-expanding scale. In traditional culture we will not find such ideas about nature. Nature is understood here as a living organism into which man is organically integrated, but not as an impersonal objective field governed by objective laws. The very concept of a natural law, distinct from the laws that regulate social life, was alien to traditional cultures. The pathos of conquering nature and transforming the world, characteristic of technogenic civilization, gave rise to a special attitude towards the ideas of the dominance of force and power. In traditional cultures they were understood, first of all, as the direct power of one person over another. In patriarchal societies and Asian despotisms, power and domination extended not only to the subjects of the sovereign, but was also exercised by the man, the head of the family over his wife and children, whom he owned in the same way as a king or emperor over the bodies and souls of his subjects.

In the technogenic world, one can also note situations in which domination is exercised as a force of direct coercion and power of one person over another. However, relations of personal dependence cease to dominate here and are subordinated to new social connections. Their essence is determined by the general exchange of results of activity, taking the form of a commodity. Power and dominance in this system of relations presupposes the possession and appropriation of goods (things, human abilities, information as commodity values that have a monetary equivalent). As a result, in the culture of technogenic civilization there is a peculiar shift of emphasis in the understanding of the objects of domination of power and authority - from a person to the thing produced by him. These new meanings are easily combined with the ideal of the activity-transforming purpose of man. The transformative activity itself is regarded as a process that ensures a person’s power over an object, dominance over external circumstances that a person is called upon to subjugate. A person must turn from a slave of natural and social circumstances into their master, and the very process of this transformation was understood as mastery of the forces of nature and the forces of social development. The characterization of civilizational achievements in terms of power (“productive forces”, “power of knowledge”, etc.) expressed the intention for man to acquire ever new opportunities that would allow him to expand the horizon of his transformative activities. By changing not only the natural but also the social environment through the application of mastered forces, a person realizes his destiny as a creator, a transformer of the world. The ideal of a creative, sovereign, autonomous individual occupies one of the priority places in the value system of technogenic civilization. We, born and living in the world of technogenic culture, take this for granted. But a person in a traditional society would not accept these values.

In a traditional society, a person is realized only through belonging to a specific corporation, being an element in a strictly defined system of corporate connections. If a person is not included in some corporation, he is not a person. This attitude was expressed by A. Herzen, writing about traditional Eastern societies that a person here did not know freedom and “did not understand his dignity: that is why he was either a slave lying in the dust or an unbridled despot.”

In a technogenic civilization, a special type of personal autonomy arises: a person can change his corporate connections, he is not rigidly attached to them, he can and is able to build his relationships with people very flexibly, be included in different social communities, and often in different cultural traditions. The stability of life in traditional societies from the perspective of a representative of Western civilization is assessed as stagnation and lack of progress, which is opposed by the dynamism of the Western way of life. The entire culture of technogenic societies, focused on innovation and transformation of traditions, forms and supports the ideal of creative individuality. Training, education and socialization of an individual in the new European cultural tradition contributes to the formation of a much more flexible and dynamic thinking than that of a person in traditional societies. This is manifested in the stronger reflexivity of everyday consciousness, its orientation towards the ideals of evidence and substantiation of judgments, and in the tradition of language games that underlie European humor, and in the saturation of everyday thinking with guesses, forecasts, anticipations of the future as possible states of social life, and in its permeation with abstract logical structures that organize reasoning.

This kind of logical structure is often not present at all in the human mind of traditional societies. A study of the thinking of traditionalist groups in Central Asia conducted in the early 1930s found that representatives of these groups could not solve problems requiring formal reasoning using a syllogism. But those people of traditional societies who received a school education, including training in mathematics and other sciences, solved these problems quite easily. Similar results were obtained in studies of human thinking in traditional societies in other regions. All these features of the functioning of consciousness in different types of cultures are determined by the deep life meanings and values inherent in these cultures. In the culture of technogenic societies, the system of these values is based on the ideals of creative activity and the creative activity of a sovereign individual. And only in this value system do scientific rationality and scientific activity acquire priority status. The special status of scientific rationality in the value system of technogenic civilization and the special significance of the scientific and technical view of the world are determined by the fact that scientific knowledge of the world is a condition for its transformation on an expanding scale. It creates confidence that a person is capable, having revealed the laws of nature and social life, to regulate natural and social processes in accordance with his goals. Therefore, in modern European culture and in the subsequent development of technogenic societies, the category of scientificity acquires a unique symbolic meaning. It is perceived as a necessary condition for prosperity and progress. The value of scientific rationality and its active influence on other spheres of culture are becoming a characteristic feature of the life of technogenic societies.

The modern development of technogenic civilization is based on the development of technology. Following D. Vig, let us highlight the main meanings of the concept “technology”.

1. A set of technical knowledge, rules and concepts.
2. The practice of engineering professions, including norms, conditions and prerequisites for the application of technical knowledge.
3. Technical means, tools and products (technique itself).
4. Organization and integration of technical personnel and processes into large-scale systems (industrial, military, communications, etc.).
5. Social conditions that characterize the quality of social life as a result of the accumulation of technical activities.

Technogenic civilization- this is a society characterized by: the desire to transform nature in its own interests; freedom of individual activity, which determines relative independence in relation to social groups. Technogenic civilization is a special type of social development, characterized by the following features:

· high speed of social change;

· intensive development of the material foundations of society (instead of extensive ones in traditional societies);

· restructuring of the foundations of human life.

The history of technogenic civilization began with the development of ancient culture, primarily the polis culture, which gave humanity two great discoveries - democracy and theoretical science. These two discoveries - in the sphere of regulation of social connections and in the way of understanding the world - have become important prerequisites for the future, a fundamentally new type of civilizational progress. The second and very important milestone in the history of the formation of technogenic civilization was the European Middle Ages with a special understanding of man, created in the image and likeness of God, with the cult of the human mind, capable of understanding and comprehending the mystery of divine creation, deciphering those letters that God laid in the world when he created. The purpose of knowledge was considered to be precisely decoding the providence of God, the plan of divine creation. During the Renaissance, many achievements of the ancient tradition were restored. From this moment, the cultural matrix of technogenic civilization is laid, which begins its own development in the 17th century. At the same time, it goes through three stages - pre-industrial, industrial and, finally, post-industrial. The most important basis for life activity at the post-industrial stage is the development of technology and equipment, not only through spontaneous innovations in the sphere of production itself, but also through the generation of ever new scientific knowledge and its implementation in technical and technological processes.

This is how a special type of development arises, based on accelerating changes in the natural environment, the objective world in which man lives. Changing this world leads to active transformations of people's social connections. In a technogenic civilization, scientific and technological progress is constantly changing the types of communication, forms of communication of people, personality types and lifestyles. The result is a clearly defined direction of progress with a focus on the future.

The culture of technogenic societies is characterized by the idea of irreversible historical time, which flows from the past through the present to the future. In most traditional cultures, other understandings dominated: time was most often perceived as cyclical, when the world periodically returns to its original state. In traditional cultures it was believed that the “golden age” had already passed, it was behind us, in the distant past. The heroes of the past created models of behavior and actions that should be imitated. The culture of technogenic societies has a different orientation. In them, the idea of social progress stimulates the expectation of change and movement towards the future, and the future is believed to be the growth of civilizational gains, ensuring an increasingly happier world order.

Technogenic civilization, which has existed for just over 300 years, has turned out to be not only dynamic and mobile, but also aggressive: it suppresses, subjugates, overturns, and literally absorbs traditional societies and their cultures. Such active interaction between technogenic civilization and traditional societies, as a rule, leads to the death of the latter, to the destruction of many cultural traditions, essentially to the death of these cultures as original entities. Traditional cultures are not simply pushed to the periphery, but are radically transformed when traditional societies enter the path of modernization and technological development. Most often, these cultures are preserved only in fragments as historical vestiges. Everywhere, the cultural matrix of technogenic civilization transforms traditional cultures, transforming their meaning in life, replacing them with new ideological dominants.

The most important and truly epochal, world-historical change associated with the transition from traditional society to technogenic civilization is the emergence of a new system of values. Personal autonomy occupies one of the highest places in the hierarchy of values, which is generally unusual in traditional society. There, personality is realized only through belonging to a particular corporation, being its element. In a technogenic civilization, a special type of personal autonomy arises: a person can change his corporate connections, he is not rigidly attached to them, he can and is capable of building his relationships with people very flexibly, immersing himself in different social communities, and often in different cultural traditions.

The ideological dominants of technogenic civilization boil down to the following: a person is understood as an active being who is in an active relationship to the world. Human activity should be directed outward, to transform and remake the external world, primarily nature, which man must subjugate to himself. In turn, the external world is considered as an arena of human activity, as if the world was intended for a person to receive the benefits necessary for himself and satisfy his needs.

Of course, this does not mean that other ideological ideas, including alternative ones, do not arise in the new European cultural tradition. Technogenic civilization in its very existence is defined as a society that is constantly changing its foundations. Its culture actively supports and values the constant generation of new models, ideas, concepts, only a few of which can be implemented in today’s reality, and the rest appear as possible programs for future life, addressed to future generations. In the culture of technogenic societies, one can find ideas and value orientations that are alternative to the dominant values, but in the real life of society they may not play a decisive role, remaining, as it were, on the periphery of public consciousness and not setting the masses of people in motion.

The idea of transforming the world and man's subjugation of nature is emphasized by Academician. Stepin, was a dominant figure in the culture of technogenic civilization at all stages of its history, right up to our time. This idea was and remains the most important component of the “genetic code” that determined the very existence and evolution of technogenic societies.

Closely related to the understanding of human activity and purpose is such an important aspect of value and ideological orientations, characteristic of the culture of the technogenic world, as the understanding of nature as an ordered, naturally arranged field in which an intelligent being, having learned the laws of nature, is able to exercise its power over external processes and objects , put them under your control. It is only necessary to invent technology to artificially change the natural process and put it at the service of man, and then tamed nature will satisfy human needs on an ever-expanding scale. As for traditional cultures, we will not find such ideas about nature in them. Nature is understood here as a living organism into which man is organically integrated, but not as an impersonal objective field governed by objective laws. The very concept of a natural law, distinct from the laws that regulate social life, is alien to traditional cultures.

Technogenic civilization is also associated with the special status of scientific rationality in the value system, the special significance of the scientific and technical view of the world, because knowledge of the world is a condition for its transformation. It creates confidence that a person is capable, having revealed the laws of nature and social life, to regulate natural and social processes in accordance with his goals. The category of scientificity acquires a unique symbolic meaning. It is perceived as a necessary condition for prosperity and progress. The value of scientific rationality and its active influence on other spheres of culture are characteristic features of the life of technogenic societies.

So, the cultural aspect of considering science in connection with the types of world development (traditionalist and technogenic) expands the degree of its impact on various spheres of human activity and enhances its socio-humanitarian significance.

Civilization arose in the 5th century. back.
Civilization reformats its sociocults into new formats through the 1st century. in the future.
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This type of civilization, identified by modern authors on the basis of axiomatic research, is a product of assumptions that do not require proof about civilizational development in the past and future. Some of the axiom signs take root, others die off...

The beginning of such civilizations dates back to the time of the appearance of information of civilizational significance, which must be preserved and transmitted to other sociocults.

A society characterized by the desire to transform nature in its own interests, freedom of individual activity, which determines relative independence in relation to social groups..

Technogenic civilization is a historical stage in the development of Western civilization, a special type of civilizational development that formed in Europe in the 15th-17th centuries. and spread throughout the globe until the end of the 20th century.

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WITHThere is the concept of technogenic civilization, which is understood as a society characterized by the desire to transform nature in its own interests, freedom of individual activity, which determines relative independence in relation to social groups.

Tman-made civilization is a historical stage in the development of Western civilization, a special type of civilizational development that formed in Europe in the 15th-17th centuries. and spread throughout the globe until the end of the 20th century.

GScientific rationality plays a leading role in the culture of this type of civilization; the special value of reason and the progress of science and technology based on it are emphasized.

TThe man-made type of civilization is based on machine technology, the widespread development of science, machine labor, market relations, and a high level of professional culture in all its forms. Innovations that became the basis for the emergence of technogenic civilization can be designated as the main themes of our time: Future, Abstraction, Liberation and Secularization. The West is considered the birthplace of these innovations. Their roots are seen in industrial production, capitalist production, in the emergence of legal systems, in the bureaucratized state, in urbanization, which creates overcrowding, impersonality and alienation.

Tman-made civilization is opposed to the divine dimension of human existence. Scientific and technological progress and scientific and technological revolution are two deities of technogenic civilization. Technogenic civilization is an era of social experiments, faith in the capabilities and knowledge of “engineers of human souls” and computer technology, a time of great ideas and general ideals that replace God for people.

ABOUTthe liberation of a person from his divinely destined role is accompanied by a fear of chaos. The intoxicating feeling of freedom goes hand in hand with the fear of having to make a choice that a person himself must make.

ANDAn individual in a technogenic civilization is able to perceive himself as a complex and unique personality precisely as a result of the emergence of abstract mediating structures (all kinds of government social support institutions, interest clubs and similar public organizations and associations), which are unlikely to provide the need for the warmth of direct communication on their own. which a person always experiences.

WITHSocial connections become anonymous, people live for decades in the same house without knowing the names of their neighbors. Social relations and the system of social institutions become incomprehensible to the bulk of the population. For the individual himself, the feeling that society and its symbols are abstract can take the form of the power of impersonal circumstances. People feel that they depend not on each other, but on anonymous forces.

Xcharacteristic features:
1 . rapid change in technology and technology due to the systematic application of scientific knowledge in the production;
2 . as a result of the merger of science and production, a scientific and technological revolution occurred, which significantly changed the relationship between man and nature, the place of man in the production system;
3 . accelerating renewal of the artificially created human-made environment in which his life activity directly takes place. This is accompanied by the increasing dynamics of social connections and their relatively rapid transformation. Sometimes, over the course of one or two generations, a change in lifestyle occurs and a new type of personality is formed. On the basis of technogenic civilization, two types of society have formed - industrial society and post-industrial society.

INTechnogenic civilization perceives time as an irreversible flow. A person develops an idea of his own life as a biography. Individual life is planned in terms of career. The life cycle of a person begins to be embodied in a sequential change of stages, which are often not marked or distinguished by rituals (initiations).

ZWestern civilization is defined as the process of development of Western Europe, the USA and Canada, which have the prerequisites for the successful development of the technogenic side of civilization.

ABOUTthe founding civilizational principle of self-preservation and stability of the Cosmogenic civilization was replaced by a radically different principle in the late Middle Ages, as a result of the evolution of Western European civilization. The initial stimulus for this shift was the development and highlighting of human activity - the ability to increase knowledge and invent new things.

Therefore, a civilization that arose on the ruins of a medieval one is called technogenic. It is based on a fundamentally different relationship between man and nature compared to cosmogenic civilizations. By mobilizing and developing his creative genius, a person strives to break his dependence on nature, become its master, and transform it in his own interests. The highest principles of human life and society become renewal, growth, progress; cyclical development is replaced by progressive one. The development of technology, technology, and scientific knowledge is becoming a leading determinant of social development.

INIn societies belonging to a technogenic civilization, the nature of connections between people and the relationship between the individual and society changes fundamentally. This civilization presupposes the mobilization of the creative potential and initiative of the individual; the need for freedom of individual activity requires a greater degree of autonomy of the individual in relation to the social group.

WITHfreedom and basic equality of people, independence of the status of an individual from his social origin are the principles of social life that are most adequate to the imperatives of technogenic civilization. The establishment of these principles in the public consciousness, and the progress of practical forms of their implementation in the spheres of law and politics are one of the greatest achievements of technogenic civilization.

INThe emergence of technogenic civilization is inseparable from the formation of capitalist economic and social relations. The connection between the triumph of this civilization and the development of capitalism is also undeniable. Characteristics of economic relations inherent in capitalism, such as the market, private property, competition, wage labor, represent the necessary conditions and foundations for the existence of a technogenic civilization. The relationship between capitalism and Technogenic civilization does not seem inextricable and unchangeable. This connection is historically limited.

Erevolution of Western societies in the 19th-20th centuries. reveals fundamental inconsistency, dualism of determination mechanisms inherent in technogenic civilization. On the one hand, its highest goal - increasing material wealth on the basis of constant updating of technical systems - turns a person and the social organization of relations between people into simple functions, tools for effective economic activity.

On the other hand, the powerful mobilization of human activity and free activity of people in society inherent in technogenic civilization cannot, sooner or later, not come into conflict with their total dependence on the imperatives of technology and economic efficiency.

TMan-made civilization gave birth to both a capitalist economic basis and a new type of person corresponding to its principles, who little by little was able to significantly modify and humanize this basis, and create a system of social and political relations relatively independent of it.

WITHmodern Western societies in the strict sense of the word are not capitalist, but dualistic; they represent a synthesis of a capitalist economy and a liberal-democratic system of socio-political relations, including social protection mechanisms. The contradictions between the main components of this synthesis are real, but they are generally resolved on the basis of mutual “grinding in” of economic and social priorities.

INWithin the framework of the historical-stage approach, depending on the choice of certain axiomatic criteria, various types of civilizations are distinguished.

ABOUTHowever, in most cases, historical-stage studies use a technocratic approach, on the basis of which agrarian (pre-industrial), industrial (industrial) and information (post-industrial) civilizations are distinguished (W. Rostow, D. Bell, O. Toffler).

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high speed of social change;
intensive development of the material foundations of society (instead of extensive ones in traditional societies);
restructuring of the foundations of human life.