Dmitry Ivanov

Humanism and Love

The speech for the IX conference of the Coalition "For Humanism!"

Humanism is a worldview that recognises a close interconnection between Man and Universum. Man with his properties is not something casual but a necessary link in purposeful development of Universum. Love, too, is not something casual, an epiphenomenon, but it is in the nature of things, it is the subjective equivalent of Universum’s tendency to increase in complexity and integration.

Transcendentally (beyond space and time, spiritually) the World is a single whole, an organism which is developing from chaos to unity, to Living Spiritual World. Man is akin to Universum, to biosphere, and, first and foremost, to other people, humankind. Feeling one’s close connection to another being or entity is, essentially, love. Love is the experience of unity. Love rests on the ability to feel other’s feelings, to identify with another being, and love is always a step to a higher whole. Where love is, there is no more isolated individual but there is a union of souls, a spiritual union. The whole of humankind, biosphere, Universum are destined to be such spiritual unions.

The coming stage of development of mankind is NOOSPERE. It is, basically, mankind as an interconnected organism filled with mutual feeling. Therefore referring to Noosphere one can speak not only about sphere of reason but also about sphere of love.

The today’s consumer civilisation is in a deep crisis because its organisation is far from true human nature but it bases upon underhuman nature, in fact that of a beast.

In spiritual plan, or dimension, we can see two “planets” on our planet: the Planet of Love and the Planet of Hate. The Planet of Love is our future, it is also true human nature, the “idea” of mankind, the source as well as the goal of mankind (similar to P.T.de Chardin’s Point of Omega). The Planet of Hate is a remainder of former stages of our development and also a fruit of abusing human freedom. It is the very organisation of today’s individualist civilisation.

The borderline between these two spiritual formations goes through everyone’s soul. Everything that fosters hostile feelings to others, cruelty, greed, egoism, indifference to sufferings of other peole and peoples – all this stems from underhuman Planet of Hate. On the contrary, everything that makes us realise human interconnection, mutual dependence, our being a part of biosphere, everything that motivates to actions to save life on Earth – this is the voice of human nature, the voice of Planet of Love. With the Global Crisis deepening, it will become more and more clear and obvious to everyone.