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Back to Nature
| Article
# : |
18426 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1990 |
2,427 Words |
| Author
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Andrei Kosyrev
Andrei Kosyrev, director of international organizations for
the Soviet Foreign Ministry in Moscow, has written widely on
global policy. |
History itself has determined that the time remaining before the advent of the next century is associated in the minds of a growing number of people not merely with the chronological passage from the twentieth to the twenty-first century, but in great measure with the crossing of the watershed between the Cold War age now receding into the past and the dawning postconfrontational era. The transitional period is marked by the developing process of de-ideologization. What this implies is not the discarding of all ideologies but a bonafide rejection of the so-called enemy ideology. In terms of its social and cultural roots and consequences, such a turnaround is much more fundamental than a simple termination of East-West confrontation would be. It is, in fact, a historic breakthrough sweeping across all levels of human consciousness, be it a single individual or mankind as a whole. Contemporary problems are no longer associated in the human mind with the intrigues of an adversary but with objective conditions independent of anyone's will. Accordingly, the search for solutions to these problems is no longer based on the exposure of internal or external “enemies” but on a scientifically objective analysis of reality.
This process of internal restructuring lays the groundwork for a profound transformation of humanity's spiritual, cultural, and psychological milieus. The challenges presented by the physical environment, primarily as a result of damage inflicted by man, are, in turn, becoming important factors contributing to that process. In many respects, the roots of the conflict between man and nature are to be found in that same enemy ideology. Due to its pervasive character, that ideology finds expression not only in wars between peoples but in man's war against nature. The same confrontational stereotype is at play in the latter case - man, having obtained through technological progress powerful levers for transforming the environment, comes to regard himself as a conqueror. Many in the Soviet Union remember a motto popular in 1930-1970: “We should not await nature's favors, our task is to take them.” For these reasons, the scientific and technological revolution, which encompassed practically all countries and all aspects of social life, was primarily directed toward achieving military and technical goals. At the same time, interaction with the environment was placed in the background and deemed to be a secondary issue. The emphasis on an obligatory victory over nature through the use of force seems to have played its role on the level of the human subconscious.
Environment center stream
Despite warnings from many
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