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The Global Crisis of the Consumer Civilization
The crisis phenomena on our planet brought about by the economic activity of mankind increase at such a rate that it causes misgivings about the future of humanity as well as biosphere. The ever increasing environmental contamination, the global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer in the stratosphere, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction fraught with global nuclear catastrophe, - this list of fatal threats is far from being over. Along with the crisis phenomena of planetary character, there is a number of problems concerning first and foremost the mankind itself. All of them express the crisis of the present-day civilization.
New and new deadly diseases appear (AIDS, SARS, mad cow disease, the bird's flu, etc.). Due to their spreading there is a real threat of extinction of a significant part of the population.
The mankind is split into two contradictory camps: economically and militarily developed countries, in which hi-tech production is concentrated, on the one hand, and basically raw material supplying countries, whose population is low-educated and not provided with the necessities of life, on the other hand. In the last years the struggle between these camps is shifting from sheerly military field to the field of international terrorism. The population of the poor countries has nothing to lose, it lives in poverty and hunger. On the contrary, the population and the rulers of economically developed states do not want to lose stability and a high standard of living. These states, "in reply to terrorism", more and more frankly reveal their imperialistic tendencies in the effort to establish by force a world order advantageous for them.
In the poor countries people suffer from shortage of medicines and foodstuffs, while in the rich ones from obesity and food's morbid denaturation. The world pandemic of addiction diseases is spreading rapidly. Due to all this the birth of a healthy child is becoming a rarity. Threat to the genofund of humanity increases. Many scientists forecast a genetic catastrophe in several decades.
Under the existing world order, the acceleration of technical progress is also a problem. Nowadays the majority of technical innovations, being intended primarily for enrichment of commodity production magnates, is not to the good of human personality.
Today the very ideal of harmoniously developed, spiritual personality is not called for because it is not profitable to anyone. The primitive mass culture becomes the most powerful instrument of personality shaping crippling people for the sake of interests of commodity production magnates. Most traditional spiritual institutions are on the decline. The politicians cover their inhumanity and inspirituality with hypocritical assurances of their adherence to this or that religion.
All stated above is not the full list of the phenomena threatening the future of Humanity. The mankind faces the most serious humanitarian crisis. We believe that the crisis phenomena of planetary scale as well as the humanitarian crisis root in the crisis of today's civilization. There are all grounds to believe that it is a system crisis.
Is there a way out? What are the prospects of overcoming the Global Crisis?
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