“Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.”
Martin Luther King Jr
We have been through crises at other times in history, although they were not as tragic or radical to justify calling them a “birth.” We regard them as developmental phases in the history of humankind. However, our current state differs from all the previous ones. Thus far, we have striven to achieve new goals. Changes happened as a result of new breakthroughs: the discovery of new lands, inventions of innovative weapons, and implementation of new technologies such as the Internet that unveiled a totally new level of connection between us.
Nevertheless, those innovations were not global upheavals that addressed all levels of human life in all its spheres. They did not extend to all of mankind, to all countries and continents, to every family and every person, so that today they are universal. Now, we are approaching this new birth and cannot state with confidence whether it is happening already or not, although we do see that we are coming closer to it. The crisis we are going through is similar to the one that precedes delivery. It presses us more and more with each passing day, both individually and collectively.
We see that people cannot live in peace within their families any longer, get divorced, avoid getting married, do not get along with each other, have hard time raising children and don’t know how to avoid unemployment and poverty. In all aspects of our existence, we suffer from absence of understanding and lack of organization. We can call this situation a total revolution, a universal re-birth of humankind rather than an appearance in one separate state or community because this is happening on a global, integral scale and concerns everybody. This situation has never emerged before. The worst is that we don’t sense the future.
Before, upcoming social and economic structures seemed more advanced than the previous ones. For example, when slavery ended, it was followed by a more highly developed society. Although we have to admit that drastic changes triggered new revolutions, religious and civil wars, at the same time, people still anticipated a brighter future to come. Some societies agreed with what they faced in the future, and some did not. Some countries went through transformations, but others did not. Presently, we all are going through a global process that has never occurred before.
Moreover, at this time, we all are witnessing comprehensive climate and ecological changes. Previously, dramatic climatic changes always caused vast changes in humankind. Global cooling once led northern nations, like those in southern Siberia and Asia to migrate to Europe. In the past, all revolutions occurred due to climate changes, new technologies, or countries that could no longer tolerate their heads of state.
At this time, all changes are happening simultaneously: environmental, ecological, and with the inner nature of man who is not able to be at peace with anything, people no longer can reconcile with the world. Even the systems which we are totally dependent on are dysfunctional: the food industry, job market, families, education, and security, essentially everything that man needs in order to sustain life from generation to generation. We have arrived at a general state of affairs in all spheres of our life where nothing works properly. And most importantly, we do not see in what form or how to proceed.
Is it possible to view our new stage and move towards it with understanding and awareness? Can we act as foresighted people? Are we able to look ahead and make sure that the path we have chosen is correct? Can we calculate our future beforehand? If the answer is yes, then we can facilitate our advancement and avoid wandering in blindness; otherwise, we will be making mistakes and triggering new troubles.
If we continue acting blindly making global mistakes, things eventually will turn out terribly. We simply cannot continue sightless attempts and continue making errors any longer. And this is why we need global, integrative education!
The Need For A Contemporary Understanding Of The World
Such education is necessary due to the fact that the crisis in the relations between crisis and society is growing, and the social demand for education, which is far beyond the narrow professionalism, is increasing as well.
A modern person must see the world in its entirety. Only the understanding of a general logic of the development of the world in which we live will help overcome the disastrous consequences of the relentlessly approaching crisis and perhaps even avoid it!
Such a course should precede the studying of social sciences and philosophy, for which it is a necessary introduction. It is particularly necessary to the future experts in the humanities and social sciences, for whom the natural sciences and ecology are on the periphery of their interests.
Future engineers and physicists also need it because the natural sciences and engineering departments lack the general knowledge about the processes of development of the contemporary world and the processes of cognition, although these professionals will have to solve many problems of modern ecology, politics, and ethics. But the foundation for such new education should be love, love as a selfless act.
