The Origins of Planetary Ethics in the Philosophy of Russian Cosmism

By A. Bezgodov and K. Barezhev

In this book, Aleksandr V. Bezgodov and Konstantin V. Barezhev formulate planetary ethics—the most important part of the philosophy of the Planetary Project. Planetary ethics represent the moral basis and value code for building a biocompatible, harmonious, and manageable civilization. They analyze the moral and ethical views of those Russian cosmists who belonged to the natural science branch of this unique philosophical, scientific, and cultural phenomenon. Looking at the world through the prism of a planetary-cosmic consciousness, cosmists developed a system of biocentric and humanistic values.

Russian cosmism is a spiritual rebellion of life against chaos, death, and limitation. A combination of science, philosophy, poetry, and a certain utopianism extended on a universal scale makes Russian cosmism a prologue to the modern nonclassical, science-based worldview that emphasizes synergy and globalism. Back in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, cosmists focused on a united humanity and the principles of a close relationship between man and the universe. This monograph lays the groundwork for the planetary ethics that originated in the philosophy of Russian cosmism. The monograph continues the series of books of the Planetary Project, Planetary Project: From Sustainable Development to Managed Harmony and Planetary Rent as an Instrument for Solving Global Problems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Jan 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543494181

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 by Aleksandr Bezgodov.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2019900168

ISBN:                Hardcover                978-1-5434-9420-4

                          Softcover                   978-1-5434-9419-8

                          eBook                         978-1-5434-9418-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 01/25/2019

Xlibris

800-056-3182

www.Xlibrispublishing.co.uk

790207

Authors:

Dr Aleksandr Bezgodov, Doctor of Economics

Dr Konstantin Barezhev, Ph.D. in Philosophy

Editors:

Prof. Dmitry Gavra, Doctor of Sociology

Dr Mikhail Velikoselsky, Ph.D. in Political Science

Translators:

Dr Elena Bugreeva, Ph.D. in Pedagogy

Dr Vadim Golubev, Ph.D. in Philology

Mr Peter Ellis, BSc in Engineering

CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1   THE IDEA OF PLANETARY ETHICS

1.1. The worldview reasons for global issues

1.2. The question about the relevance of ethics in the modern world

1.3. The justification of the theory of morality and its groundlessness

1.4. The ethical aspects of modern cultural and political trends

1.5. Ethics in the status of a positive science

1.6. The essence and purpose of planetary ethics

Chapter 2   AN OVERVIEW OF RUSSIAN COSMISM

2.1. Russian cosmism: A historical overview

2.2. The main ideas of Russian cosmism

2.3. Physics, metaphysics and ethics in Russian cosmism

2.4. The special features and value of Russian cosmism

Chapter 3   NIKOLAI FEDOROV: THE RESUSCITATION PROJECT AND THE NEED FOR SPACE

3.1. Nikolai Fedorov’s teaching: an overview

3.2. Nature, dissension and mortality

3.3. The tasks for humanity and the solutions

3.4. The common cause and the prospects for its fulfillment

3.5. The common cause as the moral and ethical project

Chapter 4   NIKOLAI UMOV: ANTI-ENTROPY ETHICS FOR CONTROLLED EVOLUTION

4.1. The naturalistic conception of ethics

4.2. Moral balance of life

4.3. Basic existential and ethical problem

4.4. The universal network of all living beings as a condition for moral progress

4.5. Purposefulness of ethics and foreshadowing a new man

Chapter 5   KONSTANTIN TSIOLKOVSKY: THE COSMIC PHILOSOPHY AND THE ETHICS OF TRUE EGOISM

5.1. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky: personality, style, originality

5.2. Cognition, mind and its supreme practical purpose

5.3. On man, humankind and its prospects: anthropology and sociology

5.4. The ethics of overcoming evil and suffering

5.5. The complementarity of K. Tsiolkovsky’s ideas and the philosophy of the Planetary Project

Chapter 6   KONSTANTIN VENTTSEL: THE ETHICS OF HARMONIZED GOALS

6.1. Ethics as the science of morality

6.2. The spiritual capacity of man: the doctrine of will

6.3. Goal setting and the system of goals

6.4. The moral dialectics of a personality and society

6.5. The ethics of harmonized goals

Chapter 7   VLADIMIR VERNADSKY: ETHICS IN THE NOOSPHERIC PERSPECTIVE

7.1. Vladimir Vernadsky as a naturalist and philosopher

7.2. The criticism of scientific reason as an ethical project

7.3. The ethical charge of social anthropology

7.4. Noospheric ethics and the autotrophy of humanity

Chapter 8   NIKOLAI KHOLODNY: ANTHROPOCOSMISM AS ETHICAL OPTIMISM

8.1. Man and nature: thoughts of a naturalist

8.2. Anthropocosmism: a new worldview

8.3. Anthropocosmic morality

Chapter 9   ALEXANDER CHIZHEVSKY: HELIOTARAXY, HISTORIOMETRY AND THE PROSPECTS FOR UNIVERSAL SCIENTIFIC SYNTHESIS

9.1. The problem of the determinacy of the historical process

9.2. The social consequences caused by the Sun

9.3. Historiometry and managing the masses

9.4. The system of cosmic thinking and spirituality

9.5. Universal scientific synthesis and anthropo-ethical tasks

Chapter 10   IVAN EFREMOV: BETWEEN INFERNO AND HARMONY

10.1. The picture of the world: from paleontology to artistic and philosophical symbolism

10.2. The present: problems, criticism, and foresight

10.3. The path of man: the formula of heroism

10.4. Moral problems and solutions: ethical design

10.5. The world of the future: projective humanism

Chapter 11   A GENERAL RECONSTRUCTION OF THE BASICS OF PLANETARY ETHICS: COSMISTS AND THE PLANETARY PROJECT

11.1. The ideas about man

11.2. The ideas about morality

11.3. The ideas about nature

11.4. The ascending order values

11.5. The principles of planetary ethics

11.6. Imperatives

Chapter 12   THE FULFILLMENT OF PLANETARY ETHICS: THE SPIRITUAL BASIS OF MANAGED EVOLUTION, MORALITY IN THE CRISIS-HIT WORLD, AND THE AXIOLOGY OF THE SIXTH TECHNOLOGICAL PARADIGM

12.1. Managed evolution: the goal, technology, scenarios

12.2. The axiology of the Sixth technological paradigm

12.3. Morality in the crisis-hit world

12.4. The performance of planetary ethics: levels, forms, prospects

12.5. The Russian cosmists and the Planetary Project: congeniality, parallels, continuity

CONCLUSIONS

PREFACE

The modern world is in crisis, burdened with global problems and risks, slipping into disintegration and a planetary catastrophe. It seems hopelessly immoral and extremely pragmatic, cruel and cynical. There is not a single common moral or value system, and those that exist conflict with each other and sometimes deny each other. They maintain division between people, pushing them to confrontation, rather than uniting human communities and harmonizing relations between them. Ethics seems to be an atavism, having no weight in the global belief systems.

Against the background of new challenges and profound changes in all strata of human being, the need for an ethics commensurate with the problems facing humanity is becoming increasingly obvious.

Many say that before a catastrophe happens on the physical level, humanity will experience moral destruction.

What can help in this situation?

Appealing to religion often yields negative results, making people even more embittered against faiths they consider wrong or untrue. We need some kind of universal basis for the spiritual unification of humanity, for a synthetic world view. The basic value of which would be life itself. Humanity needs a common cause.

Over centuries, thinkers have embarked on serious philosophical journeys in their search for a universal moral truth, a common unifying idea and value system. The Origins of Planetary Ethics in the Philosophy of Russian Cosmism is one of such journeys.

This treatise follows two monographs by Aleksandr Bezgodov: Planetary Project: From Sustainable Development to Managed Harmony, a manifesto of a new paradigm of human development referred to as a Planetary Project; and Planetary Rent as an Instrument for Solving Global Problems, which lay out an economic life support mechanism for integrated humanity. The roots of the moral consciousness of the era of the planetary world are discussed in this monograph.

The authors of the book, Aleksandr Bezgodov and Konstantin Barezhev, propose the concept of planetary ethics. They present an interesting picture of the ethical aspects of cultural and political trends of modernity, arguing against treating ethics as a positive science. The scholars come to the conclusion that only a common normative-value and ideological field will allow people to unite in understanding and assessing global problems, and to find a balance of interests of all parties. The main thing is to realize that global problems can be solved only on a planetary scale.

For planetary ethics the highest and basic value is life. Its central moral maxim is that even when fighting for survival every person must be guided by a dignified planetary mission – a shared responsibility for managed evolution and the fight against chaos.

In today’s crisis situation, humanity needs a new world view and a new ethics code that will be able to solve the problem of preserving the human species from self-destruction. This mission can be feasible only for this type of morality, which will become universal, but not impersonal; one which produces accessible, but at the same time sufficiently elevated values, ideals and principles to make it attractive to all.

The undoubted merit of the book is that it is the first real attempt to identify and systematize the views of representatives of the natural science branch of Russian cosmism in a special ethical context. Planetary ethics is an important contribution to the creation of a single and universal value field that has the potential to unite all people in the world in solving global problems, preventing a planetary catastrophe and building a harmonious biocompatible civilization.

Prof. Vladimir Kozlovskiy. Doctor of Philosophy

Director, Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Russia

INTRODUCTION

What is the difference between the era of the global world and the old eras? Undoubtedly, it is in what we see as its positive features: the achievements of civilization, a high level of intellectual and technical development, a considerable improvement in the quality of personal and social life, and the humanization of human relations. At the same time, we are concerned about the global world’s negative features. For some people, they outweigh in their historical perspective the things modernity can be proud of. Both quantitatively and qualitatively, the negative features of the global world can be summarized in terms of global problems, threats and risks.

Whatever country they come from or whatever political or religious affiliation they profess all people, with the possible exception of extremist radicals, agree that global problems must be solved. They all admit that the world is in danger. At the same time, different groups see the causes and effects of global problems in different ways. They assess the significance and level of danger based on their attitudes and ideals. Another global problem is therefore a lack of a common perspective on global problems. People do not want to and consequently cannot agree even on the definition of global problems, let alone ways of addressing them. This subjective problem is more global and complicated than the objective ones.

Religious, class, party, cultural and corporate differences cannot remove the need to address global problems radically and without delay. However, not only are the problems not getting solved, they are being aggravated. Why is this happening? Is it happening because there is a lack of financial, managerial and technological means to solve global problems? Hardly! In the second book of the Planetary Project,¹ we showed (hopefully with sufficient arguments) that such means can be found. Moreover, they already exist. What remains to be done is to competently mobilize and organize them. The difficulty is that it is almost impossible for the people on this planet to agree on common approaches to solving global problems. The differences between cultural and national formations, political regimes, and ruling elites are too insurmountable.

Today, the global world is already emerging as a disintegrative one. Disengagement and confrontation trends have manifested themselves most vividly since 2014 with the crises in the Ukraine, Syria and the European Union. In just three years these events have turned into a growing frightening trend, which is promising nothing good for the world in the future. The bottom line is that in the global community there cannot be winners and losers: if someone loses, ultimately, everything gets lost.

The disintegrative world as a separate pseudo-development paradigm is based on the following ideological grounds. In essence, these are archaic vestiges that have become complexes, but keep getting historically cultivated as values, archetypes or stereotypes.

• the individualism of divided consciousness, both on a personal and group scale, and the belief in one’s own exclusivity;

• building a group identity based on a clear definition of external enemy (the traditional juxtaposition of us and them);

• the consciousness of a time-server: detachment from Nature and its own kind following the principle Après moi le deluge;

• polarization of interests on material and ideological grounds;

• the suicidal paradigm of spirituality (spirituality, understood as sacrifice to the incorporeal Absolute);

• segregated worldviews: currently fashionable ideological systems from Nazism to the mythology of a nation’s special way.

Another global problem of a psychological nature is that the concept of spirituality has become a derogatory term and a scarecrow for intelligent adults. It has been literally privatized by many countries’ governing elites. This is especially true of those countries where the government: makes an active use of psychotropic technologies; manipulates through the media to target the unconscious; and exploits people’s illiteracy, phobias, and dissatisfaction with their personal and social life.

There are at least two basic images of spirituality including the negative and positive image. As a correlate, one can use invariant interpretations of the concept of spirituality in ancient biocentric-oriented cults and beliefs. However, the enterprise to find the sources of a positive understanding of spirituality as a property of moral reason is very laborious, time-consuming and, in a certain sense, risky. Therefore, for now we will put our trust in intuition and the Kantian a priori participation.

The first image of spirituality is negative or negating and could be referred to as repressive. It exploits in Hegel’s terms an unhappy consciousness or according to Nietzsche it is an evil conscience, also it is the Freudian guilt or castration complex. Probably, this image of spirituality is tied to the repression of sexuality, to its cultivation. This model of spirituality can be conditionally called vertically downward. Spirituality is interpreted here as an awareness of the inevitability of punishment for violating the rules of the game, that is, relations in a group or society. In this model, the principle from the general to the particular is implemented, when the community through anonymously established rules (taboos) becomes the judge for the guilty individual. There are a number of theories in favor of the objectivity of the genetics of spirituality. Its origins are seen in the myth of the murder of the tribal Father implicit in many religions: from the cult of Osiris to Christianity.

The second image of spirituality is positive and professed by ancient cults and philosophies. In contrast to the negative image, it is vertically rising. The principle from the particular to the general is implemented in it: the individual puts into effect the universal connection between everything that exists in the world and himself as its integral part. Evil then becomes harmful and meaningless both for the one who is suffering as well as for the one who is causing the suffering. In this case, the person endowed with mind and soul takes responsibility for his or her behavior voluntarily and joyfully.

To solve global problems and bring about world-wide integration, it is necessary to correlate the existing image of spirituality (as the generating basis of the diversity of values) with the concept of the planetary-cosmic relationship of all things, including man.

On the one hand, there is no real humanity on Earth. There are scattered groups of people called tribes, ethnic groups, nations, citizens of different states, members of different parties, and parishioners of different churches. On the other, there is man as a biosocial species, different from other living species on the planet. There is also the idea of a true mankind that humanists have dreamt of, and the possibility that people will eventually become a universal community, a single macro subject of history and evolution. As this macro subject, humanity will be able to reach the noospheric level of development and make its evolution manageable.

What really divides people? First and foremost, values divide because they underlie people’s worldview and behavior patterns, which in effect constitutes the global spiritual system. Therefore, it is necessary to identify and systematize those human values that would be universally acceptable and capable of uniting people rather than separating them. People should resist their aggressive instincts and certain constants of cultural identity, rather than looking for enemies in each other. If they cannot do this, then they should turn their sights on really dangerous and harmful phenomena such as: chaos, entropy, illness, aging, and threats from outer space.

In fact, the search for a unifying worldview and ethics, derived from topological reflection and biocentrism, began with ancient physics. Following from Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas, from Campanella to Spinoza, from Feuerbach to Kierkegaard and further, anthropological parameters of ethics have become transformed with the changes in human activity chronotope. It has finally broken now when the eschatological end of history of the Christian project is being replaced by a concrete danger of the end of history as a fact of the global world. Therefore, today, in the context of ethical search, there is a need for alternative sources where models of morality can combine classical philosophical ideas with findings in natural and social sciences. That is why, when we developed planetary ethics, we decided to check our course by the azimuth of Russian cosmism, which combined ideas and methods that belonged to different cognitive disciplines and spiritual teachings.

Planetary ethics is a product of the Planetary Project whose main tenets are spelt out in the manifesto book, Planetary Project: From Sustainable Development to Managed Harmony. One of the core elements of this unique social and academic initiative is the philosophical approach we refer to as the global spiritual synthesis. However, before moving confidently to reveal the essence of this method in a separate study, we decided to turn to the legacy of Russian cosmism. This is where we discovered an amazing harmony with the philosophy of the Planetary Project.

From the outset, the Planetary Project was the product of independent thinking. However, we always drew on the ideas of great philosophers that focused on the same issues and often came up with similar conclusions. As we said above, we found possibly the most vivid interpretations of Planetary Project philosophical concepts in Russian cosmism. In the context of the Planetary Project, Russian cosmism has been given a second life and a new reading.

Few of the Russian cosmists directly discussed ethics; nevertheless, moral issues occupied a special place in their writings. A lot of the ideas are common to cosmism and the Planetary Project:

• worldwide human integration;

• synthesis of science and non-scientific forms of learning about the world;

• achieving harmony between man, society and nature;

• victory over chaos and entropy, achievement of immortality;

• reaching a level of active, meaningful and controlled evolution;

• building a planetary civilization on the basis of justice, reasonableness and goodness;

• exploration of outer space for the purpose of sending people to other planets.

Somewhere explicitly, somewhere implicitly recognizing life as the highest value permeates the whole paradigm of Russian cosmism. Therefore, we expect to find in Russian cosmists a consistent version of biocentrism and, perhaps, even the formulation of a universal ecological imperative.

We expect that the axiology of cosmism will contain categories, principles, images and conclusions that will help build a system of planetary ethics. We hope to confirm the validity and vitality of our own ideas. This is all the more important considering the fact that planetary ethics is not only the spiritual and moral basis of a harmonious worldview, but also a practical system of motivation, behavior and activities. The main task of planetary ethics is to see through a new Copernican turn in public consciousness that would drive worldwide unification. This form of global crisis management means creating an active and self-developing value basis for a planetary type of thinking and behavior.

In the ethical dimension, planetarity necessarily requires the ability to integrate as the primary basis for people’s self-perception and self-identification. The ability to integrate man with mankind and the world and an affinity with all living things (brotherhood in cosmist terms or unitotality according to religious Russian thinkers of the early 20th century) are the source of responsibility of the main moral nerve of a rational being. Man carries the highest responsibility on the planet: to represent the interests of living and inert nature in space. This is revealed in two aspects or two dimensions of life: taking care of life on Earth, and protecting it from possible outside threats. To fulfill this responsibility, man is given intelligence, intuition and spirituality as an awareness of his universal connection to all things in existence. In the history of philosophy and science, Russian cosmists were the first to arrive at this idea.

Do ideas have nationality? Hardly, because if we trust Plato, Hegel, and Vernadsky, whose authority in the history of philosophy and science is unquestionable, it is rather that the ideas and truths themselves find us if we are able to recognize and understand them. Very few people receive them as a revelation. More often you need to get to them, working hard, making friends with experience, logic and intuition. At the same time, the thought always talks with the thinker in his or her mother tongue, in the language of his or her people, environment, and time. Martin Heidegger’s poignant phrase Sprache spricht (which literally translates as language speaks), perhaps, also means that language becomes a mediator between consciousness, truth and culture. This indicates that ideas have roots. The roots of ideas, which help us comprehend a world of truths and that are able to use evidence and translate it into our language, belong to the history, culture and philosophical tradition that the thinker belongs to.

Indeed, there is no denying the fact that we are all shaped by our native sociocultural context. Unfortunately, Russia is still associated in the world either with the communist adventure, or with the autocratic imperial syndrome. Our ideas have nothing in common with either of these things. Even in one’s own culture, it is possible to choose a language. It is up to us to decide what this language will be: the language of blind dogma or the language of free knowledge.

We hope that this in-depth study of Russian cosmism will do justice to this philosophical teaching and reveal its ideological closeness to the Planetary Project. Back in the late 19th to early 20th century, cosmists expressed views on united WE-humanity and the close relationship that man has with the universe. We are now developing these views in the Planetary Project.

1.png

Aleksandr BEZGODOV

2.png

Konstantin BAREZHEV

CHAPTER 1

THE IDEA OF PLANETARY ETHICS

We have to address global issues, but they are persistently exacerbating the approaching apocalypse. The world needs saving, but we are still ruining it. Despite the need for uniting, people are fervently perishing in fratricidal wars for their sovereignty. Some ought to and can limit their excess consumption without compromising themselves. Others should begin to live as people rather than shadows. Nature is not a dump; it is time to restore the damage caused by our plundering. People are unable and unwilling to realize the evident and stop sacrificing their lives for the sake of values that few want to share.

Why do we continue to slip into the abyss of a systemic crisis? Why do we continue to approach a catastrophe that will make all living things the past forever? Is there no money for addressing global issues? Some countries do not have money, but the world economy does; we only need to properly appropriate and expediently allocate it. Is there no technology to solve global issues? There is a lot more technology of this type and level than it may seem; tomorrow there will be even more. The list is long: environment friendly programs, alternative energy, materials replacing natural resources, vacuum vehicles, artificially grown organs, green architecture, restored ancient agriculture, quantum computer … Science is close to the point of singularity and an unprecedented jump in reality management. However, many technologies do not progress because they threaten the stable raw materials sector and have outdated production, which belongs to global oligarchs, influential transnational corporations, political regimes, and governments. This takes us closer to the clue! The true reasons for the evil known as global issues and the systemic crisis in the modern world are: the lack of political will to change; the desire to hold power and the sources of super wealth; and rejected innovation. This is the unwillingness to forgo narrow personal corporate and even national interests for the sake of the interests of the whole humanity including following generations. That is the root of the evil! This phenomenon is characteristic of politics, economics, diplomacy, lawmaking, and law enforcement. These are not financial or technological issues. These are the issues of objectives and values, ambitions and aspirations, ideals and prohibitions, personal orientation and life choices, compassion and conscience. In other words, it is everything that we attribute to morality. Since ancient times, ethics have dealt with the issues.

Why ethics?

The answer lies in the question. Ethics as special knowledge raise these questions and answer them. These questions and answers are about what ought to be. As a rule, the sciences that explore and count are not interested in such issues; they ask and answer the questions what, how, when, where, and how much. These questions and answers are about the things that exist. When the New Age mechanism evicted expediency from Nature, Immanuel Kant, who inherited it, carefully added homeless expediency to some subjective a priori. Only ethics remained the science of goal setting with its postulates reflected by history, politics and aesthetics. Kant’s ethics were already deprived of any external justification, that is to say the justification out of and without a subject. An example is something in the manner of ancient natural foundations of different levels and orientations. In German classical philosophy, Kant’s successors were so obsessed with the idea of ethics that are systemically subjective and seem to completely and irrevocably deprive it of its body as well as ethos of vitality. Later on, some critics of classics tried to significantly devalue the role of ethics as a practical discipline. The critics ranged from irrationalists to neopositivists and psychologists. They made their claim as if Spinoza, in his time, had not attributed the rigor of mathematical order to ethics. Thus, since the 19th century, the status of ethics has been and still is fairly downplayed and its competence is limited. Now, ethics seem to age in place on the payroll of philosophy; all of their issues belong to sociology, psychology and the popular esoteric practices for a proper and effective life.

Skeptics would question the very intention to use ethics to deal with global issues. Indeed, this will be a variation of the radical question: is ethics relevant in today’s commercialized, corrupted and cynical world? Ethics seem to be naive in the context of the globalist reality, in particular, that reminiscent of their ancient, Renaissance, critical and classic versions. They are naive at the level of society and an individual person as both have changed a lot since the time of Plato and Aristotle, Spinoza and Kant, Hegel and Feuerbach, and even Russian cosmism. However, ethics, as the science of morality and theory of morals, is necessary when talking about the need to prepare and implement civilization changes, which are impossible without mental and spiritual changes at the global and individual level. Voluntary choice, meaningful decisions, and serious work involving self-restraint, discipline, and soul-searching require fundamental ideological shifts. Therefore, we are to destroy skepticism towards ethics, its capacity, experience, tools and efficiency in anti-crisis planetary management.

1.1. The worldview reasons for global issues

The problem of human moral perversity was mentioned back in the oldest sacred books of different peoples, many of which have already disappeared from the Earth. It was captured in the myths and stories about the murder of God, patricide, fall into sin, fratricide, incest, fighting against God, betrayal, and breached divine or natural laws. From the objective historical point of view, it was expressed in class exploitation, wars, genocides, social injustice, racial segregation, religious extremism, and intergroup and interpersonal conflicts.

It is only in the second half of the 20th century that ecological immorality was justified as an ethical issue. (Russian cosmists had claimed it before!). The book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson is believed to have launched the process. Published in 1962, it was about the harmful impact of pesticides on the environment. Many consider it as the first book that has revealed the issue of the anthropogenic factor in ecology.

Global issues have ethical dimension, because it is man who causes and aggravates them. Man is a projective creature with his goals and values, motivation and desires, evil inclinations and vices. Today, due to the growing population on the planet, ethical issues have become planetary rather than interpersonal, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches in the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, and threaten organic life.

Since the beginning of the 2000s, socio-philosophical literature tended to describe, catalogue and rank the ethical challenges of globalization. Now, we will rank the worldview issues of the current disintegration phase of globalization that began with the 2008 global financial crisis and has aggravated since 2014.

Every massive and objective global issue has different levels of problematization. In other words, they are performed through peoples, states, transnational corporations, international business and political organizations and, ultimately, through small groups (working teams, family), and individuals. Human mass consist of nations, ethnic groups, and individuals like a forest consists of trees. For whatever reason, they are subjected differently to the processes of integration or disintegration and manipulative influence. They have different assimilation capacities. Their cultures and mentality react differently to the natural and historic progress of globalization and correspond to the logic of the modern civilization development. They have different attitudes towards education, responsibility, work; they treat changes and historical time differently. However, due to the urgency of global issues and threats, we need a unified methodological approach to the ethical analysis and assessment of their anthropogenic, psychological and philosophical reasons.

Table 1. The psychological basis and ethical aspects of global issues for the Planetary Project

This ranking deliberately ignores the pseudo-problems of globalization and their ethical reflection. An example is the problem of universal information transparency. First, it does not exist (it is enough to list the countries with low social, economic and technological development; most towns there have no telephone service, not to mention an Internet connection!). Second, what is wrong with universal information transparency if the participants of the information domain do not violate laws and threaten international and global security? On the contrary, universal information transparency could be a tool for the geopolitical system of checks and balances.

Some highly serious challenges within the current systemic crisis of civilization are worth analysis, because they cause many negative and devastating consequences.

An increase in violence

Many philosophers, political scientists, and sociologists tend to see an increase in violence caused by globalization in today’s world. Direct and indirect violence is problematized in ethics through the permissibility of force and the paradigm of domination-subordination spread in public and personal relations. This paradigm is based on a very archaic life and communication model fueled by primitive instincts. If people can qualitatively differ from animals by something substantial, fundamental, this is just their ability to sublimate aggressive instincts. That is why the cultural forms of sublimated violence appeared such as sports and arts. However, violence is widely believed to be ontological for man. Despite the humanistic peaks reached by civilization, unbelievable 100-150 years ago, man still depends on violence, whether due to an arrogated right or compulsively. The historical development from wildness to civilization as well as individual maturation does not make people less aggressive …³

Unfortunately, violence has become a lifestyle in the poorest countries with growing populations, an increasing social gap in society, and limited access to material and spiritual benefits. For many people, especially the poor, it is a tool for survival and self-affirmation. When violence becomes a norm, the problem of anomy arises, which might lead to a distorting cultural shift in consciousness at the mass and individual level.

Human egocentrism

Nihilistic egocentrism is characteristic of modern people, first of all, decision-makers. It results from their inability and unwillingness to see themselves as part of humanity and the whole world. The representatives of elites, above all, the so-called nationally oriented elites, tend to regard their reference group as the masters of humankind and the world. They consider themselves as the master of masters appointed by God or fate due to their capabilities and efforts (that often contradict morals and violate laws).

The isolation of man from Nature

The isolation of man from Nature is another reason for the critical egocentrism of the modern man. It is also one of the anthropological and ethical issues in our time. Formally, this is due to an increase in the concentration of urban life and growing urban population. Now, 51% of the world’s population lives in urban areas and 49% in rural areas. The rural population is mainly concentrated in the countries of Asia and Africa.⁴ At the same time, in some European countries, urban population fluctuates from 72% (Germany) to 82% (Great Britain). Cities occupy more than three million square kilometers, which is about 2% of the land surface. In some countries, for example in Japan, cities occupy 20% of the territory.⁵ Urbanization is increasing the gap between man and Nature in every sense. By the end of the 20th century, artificial man-made objects (techno-mass) considerably exceeded natural biomass.⁶ This physically and spiritually isolates man from Nature.

For most people, Nature has turned out to be replaced by its various substitutes, installations and simulations. Life in an artificial environment isolated people from their natural habitat and caused estrangement and alienation. How can one truly, that is to say, responsibly, love what one does not know?! Few contemporary patriots regard the concept of Homeland as the nature of their native land and respect for it. Privatized by political ideology, the concept of homeland has lost its natural ecological sense. In many countries and political cultures, authorities substituted the true value of the image and feeling of homeland with the opportunistic product of the state order.

Ideologically and ethically, monotheistic religions have increased the isolation of man from Nature. They have inspired man with the divine origin of his right to populate the Earth and dominate over any creature inhabiting it.⁷ The New Age mechanism completed the development of anthropocentrism, which deprived Nature of animateness and appropriateness, at least, for the thinking and acting subject. The subject no longer wanted to see natural life equivalent to his life, human life, as the sole carrier of sense, values and expediency.

The critical lack of knowledge about Nature among most contemporaries is another important reason for an ethically neutral and even nihilistic attitude to it. Primary and secondary education systems do not spend enough time on the cognition of Nature and bringing up the young generation with a love for it. The education system has few appropriate curricula and teaching methods for it. The ignorance and unawareness of the natural environment, the categorical failure of scientific and environmental education turns people into marauders destroying Nature, first and foremost, the biota. However, the biota is not just a decoration or population of ecosystems, but their essential integral part. It is crucial for the regulation and stabilization of Nature including man however independent he may try to become from it.

Many scholars are passive in promoting environmental education and conservation and shaping public opinion on the environmental management and the anthropogenic impact on the Earth’s biosphere. The ideological discord in the scholars’ community, the lack of their corporate ideological and ethical solidarity allows unscrupulous dealers and politicians to loot and coerce the planet. Ordinary people also participate in this directly or indirectly.

Planetary evil

Global issues constitute global world EVIL or planetary evil. Due to the globality of planetary evil exceeding the thresholds of perception⁸ it may seem non-existent.

Planetary evil contains the reasons for the main current issues:

• man’s gluttony that leads to excess consumption;

• man’s ruthlessness that caused his nihilistic attitude to Nature;

• man’s aggressiveness increasing intraspecies and interspecies violence.

Where does the undoubtedly anthropogenic global evil lead the world to? It leads to uncontrolled chaos and self-destruction.

What causes global evil? It results from soullessness (including the narrow, negative, wrong ideas of spirituality⁹) and irresponsibility of man in existence, which have increased to a planetary scale. It is important to understand spirituality and soullessness correctly: beyond any narrow ideology, party, nation or religion.

Evil as a moral category has been used to assess people’s deeds. When it was not about social phenomena, the category was either applied figuratively (metaphorically) or declared scientifically naive, absurd and incorrect. Natural processes are objective, evil is subjective and relative. It is only human suffering that can measure evil.

However, the history of philosophy and culture has experienced an extensive dramatic effort to present evil as ontological. Looking ahead, this experience is fundamental for building a systemic moral theory of modern type. For planetary ethics, Chaos is fundamental, absolute evil represented by entropy, crises, catastrophes, diseases, and death. Without freedom, mind and moral compass, people are involved in chaotic attacks and become the blind instruments of evil, the cannon fodder of Chaos. Therefore, Chaos is the main enemy of life, mind, man, and society.¹⁰ Axiomatically, this is the basis for one of the key maxims of planetary morals.

An increase in the critical mass of evil is directly proportional to its unawareness, leveling, and normalization. Ethics as a scientific theory of morality could cure the progressing moral blindness for evil.

1.2. The question about the relevance of ethics in the modern world

Minerals do not disappear from the Earth’s interior by themselves. The ozone layer in the atmosphere does not become thinner by itself. Weapons do not make sense without a shooter. Even the most intelligent robots and computers have not yet learned to fully self-program and to be completely independent from the programmer. In other words, the vast majority of problems are anthropogenic: man causes the issues.

Man’s motivation starts machines, production cycles, state system and law mechanisms, armed conflicts and wars. The first gears of all activistic processes are started inside a person, group or community. How does motivation form and drive people?

Behavioral motivation is especially important for modern man and his activity: career, business, and personal growth. In the postindustrial society, the mass media, education system and consumer culture are still increasing their importance. The cult of monolithic motivation obscured an important question: what is the role of moral consideration in shaping motivation? Do we often think about it? What if something profitable for my business may cause negative consequences for contractors, state, and employees? What if something beneficial for me may be evil for someone else? What if something beneficial for a few people today will trouble millions of people tomorrow?

The question about the moral component of behavioral motivation seems to be obvious and implies similar answers. However, it is worth an honest answer without stereotypes such as: capitalists are rogues, the poor are honest, all is fair in love, there is nothing wrong in the desire to be happy, and so forth.

Motivation always serves needs that, in turn, are linked to values. The higher a need is in Maslow’s hierarchy, the more it performs as it is forced by social, cultural and elevated values. Provided that human history enhances humanized relations among people and institutions, the nature of motivation will change. As an example, the behavioral and activistic motivation of contemporary man (at least, a citizen of a developed country) in a way differs from the motivation of medieval man. The higher the educational, professional and social status of today’s inhabitants of the Earth, the more their objectives and motives are bound with the need for self-realization, respect, recognition, development and harmony. This means that such needs are value-supported in their worldview.

Among many different typologies of personality, historical and anthropological metaphor is applicable for the research of human responsibility and motivation in psychology.

The most common type of personality today can be roughly described as the archaic man. Obsessive pursuit (by the state, the employer, the creditor, family members, circumstances, and so forth) and fear are the dominant features of his behavior; historically, they are the most ancient and traditional. In this case, self-preservation and compulsive responsibility are his activistic aspirations.

Another type is the modern man whose dominant activity is the maximum utilization of resources. He aspires to success and relative (or conventional) responsibility.

The behavioral dominant of the man of the future is spiritual search. The goal of his aspirations is harmony and voluntary responsibility. In fact, this level of personal development can be achieved either through fully satisfied primary and secondary needs (the paradigm of techno-communism) or the qualitatively changed nature of man (the paradigm of spiritual transformation). Thus, this is the issue of a new integration ideology, its mechanisms, approbation and efficiency.

What is the mechanism of man management? To manage man means to learn how to influence his worldview. It also means to shape, change, adjust and set the value and behavioral patterns and guide him to achieve the desired objectives. Compulsive man’s activity or passivity is short-term and ineffective.

Of significance, man’s worldview is ruled by everyday or scientific knowledge and determined by values. In one way or another, values reflect two physiological and emotional poles of our psyche: pleasure and pain, delight and fear, happiness and woe.¹¹ Ancient Greeks called them the principle of Eros and the principle of Thanatos. Sigmund Freud transformed these images in terms of psychoanalysis to refer to basic human instincts: love and death, creation and destruction. It is values that stand as a beacon for our life choices. They encourage us to accept and reject persuasions, guidelines and principles.

The interrelation of values and truths are of interest.

A value can be the truth or logically consistent and non-contradictory to it. A value can include the truth. Such values, apparently, can be considered the best and right.

A value cannot change the objective fact of the truth, for example the mathematical or physical, scientific truth. However, a value can set the attitude of a personality as its carrier to the particular truth the personality is familiar or acquainted with. As an example, we are negative about the truth expressed in the law of increasing entropy, because order is an undeniable value for us. Looking ahead, the teaching of Nikolai Fedorov is an even better example. His obsession with the value of life transformed his attitude towards the truth that all men are mortal so much that he announced death as the main enemy of existence. He devoted his entire spiritual life to intellectually combating death.

Thus, values are the foundation of human personality. Man builds up his objectives, motives, attitudes, relationships, habits on the basis of values. The question is: do we choose, create and grow values by ourselves or do we get them ready-made from outside? Which values are imposed from outside and which are freely mastered? The very nature of values determines setting these issues, because values are not eternal essences. They closely relate to the preferences, individual evaluation and, ultimately, the history of customs and morals. Values are like sedimentary rocks formed by the accumulated common opinions and individual preferences that once occurred. The sedimentary rocks, in turn, provide an objective basis for new evaluation …¹²

It is here where we need ethics. Skeptics may ask global issues: why ethics rather than economics, politics, technology? The correct answer would be: not all issues are solved by material, financial, legal and formal logical tools.

Why do we not talk about psychology and psychological techniques? Firstly, predefined psycho-technological tools are used either for psychotherapy, psychological support, or ideological manipulation. They are irrelevant with regard to human worldview on global issues. The first is too narrow, individual. The second refers to political practice always engaged by a relatively narrow group of individuals to meet their own self-serving interests. For the moral-psychological impact on the human worldview, we use humanitarian knowledge to solve global issues: philosophical, psychological, sociological, cultural and communicative.

Another question is whether ethics can cope with the problems that have led to the systemic crisis of the modern world and the risk of its destruction. Certainly, the question is about the human, fundamental, dimension of these issues. Within the dimension, man develops and accepts values; sets goals and chooses means to achieve them; accepts the forms of motivation; makes decisions; commits deeds; and takes over or rejects responsibility.

No, if ethics halt at the threshold of the terminological, analytical, discursive entrance to the issues domain. No, if ethics are impeded by the disputes of philosophers, anthropologists and moralists about the words and the acceptability of categorical judgments. No, if ethics do not learn how to respect proper realism.

Yes, if ethics overcome its dissension in many dull specific ethics and revive as the rigorous and consistent science of morality and behavior, the core of philosophy. Yes, if ethics recover and retain the link with the natural basis of behavior and manage psyche a priori through moral consciousness (imperatives, regulations, principles, values, standards, categories, and so forth).

In fact, modern ethics as a science seems to stand still in the face of the contradictions of globalization (and deglobalization since 2014). Ethics are still confused by the growing moral dilemmas of the New Age. Ethics have forgotten that the essence of globalization is the development of the world as a whole, the increasing interconnectedness and interdependence of people.¹³ The philosophers, moralists and humanists of previous eras dreamt about it, did they not?

Today, the opponents of integration are trying to challenge the idea of humanity as the planetary population. At the present stage of history and evolution, it ought to unite at its