Spiritual and moral development of the individual in Russia in the XXI century

Abstract

Nowadays the spiritual and moral tendencies of Russian society are due to the opposition of the spiritual and moral foundations of the traditional mentality to the intrusion of Western non-traditional mentality values. As a result of the imbalance, the spiritual image of Russian society, as well as the spiritual and moral image of the individual, his worldview is transformed. The representatives of educational institutes, state and municipal authorities, the media, who are most closely related to this problem, discuss the issues of the spiritual and moral development of a personality, emphasizing their importance for the civilizational future of Russia. An expert assessment of spirituality and morality provides the opportunity to determine the possible ways of overcoming the crisis. In this regard, an expert survey as a sociological study was conducted in three stages: in 2009 it was a pilot study to clarify the toolkit, as well as in 2010 and 2019 there were some surveys of the representatives of three activity areas. The research was based on such approaches as personal, activity, systemic and subjective. The results were the consideration of the experts’ understanding of the content of the concepts “spirituality”, “morality”, “spiritual and moral development”, the determination of the level of morality and spirituality of Russian society, the conditions that cause its decline, and the conditions, resulting in its development. An expert survey made it possible to reveal a low level of the spiritual and moral development of the society, distortion of the spiritual and moral baselines for the development.