№ 3 - 2001
Neklessa A.I.
A la carte

On the threshold of the 3d millennium, modern civilization is living through universal, systemic transformation and in a number of its vitally important aspects displays features of a new epoch, the author maintains. Trying to grasp the purport of the global transformation of the world is nowadays all but the main intellectual occupation of the humane sciences community. Analyzing available prognostication as to eventual development of the situation, that is to say, the “menu card” offered by the future forecasting “kitchen” (hence the heading of the article which means: “[what is] in the menu”, or, in French: “[ce qui est] a` la carte”), the author comes to the conclusion that the upbuilding of a universal community based on the principles of person’s liberty, democracy and humanism, now turns out to be called in question. Global civil society has, after all, failed to take shape, and now one has to ever more often think of alternatives to modern civilization, of prospects of a different, post-globalist end of history. The balance of security in the world is unstable and undergoes threats tending to increase. The USA has, on the whole, proved unable to claim for the status of a superpower, and, in the meantime, it is regional conflicts that present the greatest danger to mankind. Economistic mentality of the West may in not so remote a future be faced by a civilizational challenge of New East. Culture of the Christian Oecumene living through spiritual crisis has faced rationalism and practicalness of neotraditional society. The world community has to face painful alternative: either the necessity to create a complex system of global security “oriented at a new organ of world political power”, or transition to obviously non-classical scenarios of a new, non-stationary model of international relations.