RUDN journal of Sociology (Dec 2023)
In search of a strategy for creating the future
Abstract
The article is a review of the book by P.A. Vodopyanov At the Turning Point of the Epochs: In Search of a Strategy for Creating the Future (Minsk: Belorussian Science; 2023. 469 p.). The monograph is of great theoretical and practical significance and outlines new horizons for the future sufficient development. The author argues that the humans’ embedment in nature and subordination to the laws of nature, the search for ways to overcome new challenges and risks caused by the negative consequences of scientific and technological achievements determine the new main directions of the coevolutionary strategy for sufficient development, which are associated with the extraordinary and unpopular measures: demographic regulation; reduction of industrial pressure on the biosphere through the introduction of nature-like technologies; economical use of natural resources and their replacement with artificial ones; increasing resource productivity through the introduction of new technologies; the use of alternative energy sources instead of hydrocarbon fuels; the changing vector of the social-economic development based on the laws of nature; a new type of morality and a new humanism; transition to the era of ‘new Enlightenment’ based on the ecological consciousness and thinking. The book identifies the main factors of maintaining the stability of natural ecosystems and the biosphere, which explain the need to use the laws of the biosphere organization to choose a strategy for a secure future. The author presents the key directions for ensuring the future based on bio-anthropocentrism as the main condition for preserving the biosphere and focuses on the main factors of human life under global instability and the need in appropriate ideological universals.
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