Two traditional events took place over the last day of October and first day of November: the speech given to graduates entering Russia’s diplomatic service and Lavrov’s address to the Forum Strengthening Traditional Spiritual and Moral Values as a Guarantee of the Unity of Russian Compatriots, which is depicted in the above photo.
I will need some time to reflect on this more, but followed the link to the Decree #809 about Traditional Values being front and center to the State which I find fascinating especially when compared to what's coming out in other nations.
Although I haven't read through it thoroughly - need a quiet month with few distractions to do so - I believe Iain McGilchrist's magisterial 'The Matter with Things', though overly tethered to wading through hemispheric brain concerns through the first several hundred pages (1300 in all!), emerges from such corporeal midwifery into crafting a next generation synthesis of western philosophy laced with generic, but authentic, esoteric sensitivities such that, for example, he goes so far as to posit Value as a fundamental building block of Reality which is far more than mere matter and thus has non-material as well as material aspects. One such non-material aspect is indeed the experience of Values of which in societal context Putin's oft-repeated 'traditional values' are paramount for they are what ultimately provide both the context and content of what binds a people together in any given and particular polity, in his case that which we know as 'Russia'.
Also interestingly, both Iain's and Russia's statements, though coming from two different civilizational poles often at odds with each other, herald a return to bedrock spirit-inspired values without relying upon institutional religions as the primary torch bearers. They are part of the overall warp and weave, certainly, but do not on their own reveal the story told by the entire societal tapestry which each individual nation or civilization holds sacred and comprehensible within its own cultural and legal jurisdiction. This is a simple, but important thing, that we can contemplate the value of returning society back to cherishing the development of traditional values - character, honesty, hard work, courage, service, humility, good-heartedness and so forth - without having to bind them into a rigid ideological or scriptural frame. This is new. Up until now, secularism has tended to deny mind and spirituality because of its insistence on physical materialism as a dominant philosophical, and indeed anti-religious, mindset, aka world view. It seems that we are in the throes of a new age dawning.
Indeed, in the midst of the carnage being visited upon the old central region of the Holy Land venerated by all three major Religions of the Book, something else is now being born, something taking good from the previous century's secular bent and bringing it to bear on now reviving much that was also good prior to last century's great secularist upheavals in which, of course, Russia played such a leading, and most painful, part.
Remember our brief conversation on Asian thought and value systems, the whole idea and reason for seeking Harmony? What Confucious teaches is that a God isn't required to set forth wholesome fundamental values to uplift society and its leaders. Humans can do that themselves.
Yes, but interesting this approach is coming from a Western/European culture which has gone from overly theocratic to overly materialist. Ordinary people in Asian cultures can be as superstitious as anywhere else. To my mind the main difference is that the experience-based approach to philosophy on down in Asia has relied less on creating Rule Books or Religions based on books because of course reality is always changing slightly and doesn't follow set procedures even though there are fundamental, unchanging principles always in the mix. So the issue about God is whether or not it has been written down, i.e. predetermined, what is good or bad in any situation versus having to work it out each and every time by following principles, values.
Anyway, it's a shift away from post-religious secularism to something different. Both traditional, religious and spiritual but undogmatic. It remains to be seen how it all unfolds, but we won't be around long enough to witness it!
When I first studied the Social Gospel Movement, I was taken by the attempt to universalize basic human values that were based on basic human needs. FDR's One-Third of the Nation speech did a lot to advance that notion. That was followed by the vow to attain the Four Freedoms as Humanity's WW2 War Aims, which still hasn't been attained. When studying cultural anthropology in the late 1990s, I developed the idea of People Centered Development, which was a riff on what Social Capitalism and non-Maxian Communism was supposed to promote. The Soviets and Chinese did the right thing with education and other needs support, but IMO the Chinese have been more successful simply because they had to because of their numbers if Harmony was going to attained and maintained.
The big test will be Africa, and to a similar degree, Central/South America.
I will need some time to reflect on this more, but followed the link to the Decree #809 about Traditional Values being front and center to the State which I find fascinating especially when compared to what's coming out in other nations.
Although I haven't read through it thoroughly - need a quiet month with few distractions to do so - I believe Iain McGilchrist's magisterial 'The Matter with Things', though overly tethered to wading through hemispheric brain concerns through the first several hundred pages (1300 in all!), emerges from such corporeal midwifery into crafting a next generation synthesis of western philosophy laced with generic, but authentic, esoteric sensitivities such that, for example, he goes so far as to posit Value as a fundamental building block of Reality which is far more than mere matter and thus has non-material as well as material aspects. One such non-material aspect is indeed the experience of Values of which in societal context Putin's oft-repeated 'traditional values' are paramount for they are what ultimately provide both the context and content of what binds a people together in any given and particular polity, in his case that which we know as 'Russia'.
Also interestingly, both Iain's and Russia's statements, though coming from two different civilizational poles often at odds with each other, herald a return to bedrock spirit-inspired values without relying upon institutional religions as the primary torch bearers. They are part of the overall warp and weave, certainly, but do not on their own reveal the story told by the entire societal tapestry which each individual nation or civilization holds sacred and comprehensible within its own cultural and legal jurisdiction. This is a simple, but important thing, that we can contemplate the value of returning society back to cherishing the development of traditional values - character, honesty, hard work, courage, service, humility, good-heartedness and so forth - without having to bind them into a rigid ideological or scriptural frame. This is new. Up until now, secularism has tended to deny mind and spirituality because of its insistence on physical materialism as a dominant philosophical, and indeed anti-religious, mindset, aka world view. It seems that we are in the throes of a new age dawning.
Indeed, in the midst of the carnage being visited upon the old central region of the Holy Land venerated by all three major Religions of the Book, something else is now being born, something taking good from the previous century's secular bent and bringing it to bear on now reviving much that was also good prior to last century's great secularist upheavals in which, of course, Russia played such a leading, and most painful, part.
Interesting times....
Remember our brief conversation on Asian thought and value systems, the whole idea and reason for seeking Harmony? What Confucious teaches is that a God isn't required to set forth wholesome fundamental values to uplift society and its leaders. Humans can do that themselves.
Yes, but interesting this approach is coming from a Western/European culture which has gone from overly theocratic to overly materialist. Ordinary people in Asian cultures can be as superstitious as anywhere else. To my mind the main difference is that the experience-based approach to philosophy on down in Asia has relied less on creating Rule Books or Religions based on books because of course reality is always changing slightly and doesn't follow set procedures even though there are fundamental, unchanging principles always in the mix. So the issue about God is whether or not it has been written down, i.e. predetermined, what is good or bad in any situation versus having to work it out each and every time by following principles, values.
Anyway, it's a shift away from post-religious secularism to something different. Both traditional, religious and spiritual but undogmatic. It remains to be seen how it all unfolds, but we won't be around long enough to witness it!
When I first studied the Social Gospel Movement, I was taken by the attempt to universalize basic human values that were based on basic human needs. FDR's One-Third of the Nation speech did a lot to advance that notion. That was followed by the vow to attain the Four Freedoms as Humanity's WW2 War Aims, which still hasn't been attained. When studying cultural anthropology in the late 1990s, I developed the idea of People Centered Development, which was a riff on what Social Capitalism and non-Maxian Communism was supposed to promote. The Soviets and Chinese did the right thing with education and other needs support, but IMO the Chinese have been more successful simply because they had to because of their numbers if Harmony was going to attained and maintained.
The big test will be Africa, and to a similar degree, Central/South America.
Excellent, my neighbor; following and learning from the best. God as my guide. Old lady with a virtual cat❤️🐈⬛