Образ человека будущего, Том 7
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The Ideal Image of a Man: the Main Characteristics and Ways of Achieving by Galyna Shevchenko
standing scientists and people of culture, as it will help to rich a higher level of spiritual life, to broaden the worldview, to observe examples of a bright human spirit and greatness. Then the second question has arisen: How idealization of successful in business and "cool" TV characters can help us to form highly educated and well-cultured individuals and society? If we want our country to become harmoniously developed in the context of accelerated changes, we should think about the following: Who are those examples for young people to follow? Dario Salas Sommer reflected on the mentioned above in his "Morals of 21st century" book. The author asked: "Are there Pythagoras, Socrates, Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Shakespeare within those people? Socrates was convinced of talking too much. Nero killed Seneca because he could not stand the truth. Jesus Christ exposed an imperfect world and was crucified. All those stories illustrate that at all times perpetrators could not hear the truth. That is the reason for destruction and defamation of true prophets by people who try to imitate goodness." [Sommer, 2014: 30]
We can find further development of the mentioned above thought in works by Pitirim Sorokin. The author has mentioned that the basis of an existing culture is always those values, which are important for a particular society [Sorokin, 1992]. In this context, it is important to notice that every historical stage forms a unique architecture of social life. It identifies a particular system of values, which all members of the community have to share. In turn, that system determines the content and the purpose of human existence. Dario Som-mer has rightly underlined that a real human value is in his own content, but not because of the assessment by others. "We should please our Lord, not the crowd. We should under - stand that only following the way pointed by our Creator we can get full self- realization as humans" [Sommer, 2014: 41]. In his "Morals of the 21st century" book, the author draws our attention to the fact that modern people have not been still reflecting a Perfect Human Image programmed by the Almighty. They rather look like a bridge between a wild animal and a true Man. Current image is not completed. That is why "people should realize their eternal unimportance, rebuild their capacities and complete the true Man"s Image. Every person has enough spiritual power to break out of imperfection through constant moral and spiritual improvement" [Sommer, 2014: 47]. The author underlines the importance to become people with a strong will and a firm character, but being sympathetic and united. [Sommer, 2014: 215] To get that purpose, as the author believes, it is necessary to come back to the traditional human values: hard work, honesty, integrity, readiness to sacrifice, tolerance, goodness, love, justice, solidarity, friendship and altruism. It is also important to remember about spirituality as a particular practice, which allows people to develop the highest virtue and get self- improvement through formation of a personal consciousness. As Sommer has identified the mentioned above qualities are the basis for a Completed Human Image. His classification consists of 23 points. Let us consider some of them. "A Completed Man" cannot be influenced by the crowd. His "I am" perception is developed and mature. He is thankful to God, his family and country. He feels hate to anybody. He is patient, kind, sympathetic, obtains the highest human qualities. He is not able to cause harm consciously. He assesses himself objectively. He controls his consciousness and stays open-minded. He evaluates himself according to the current development level, but does not depend on other"s appreciation" [Sommer, 2014: 41 50].
The 21st century is known as a period of rapid changes in the environment, society, culture, economics, interpersonal communication sphere and a Man"s inner world. Alvin Toffler, the author of the "Future Shock" book, discusses in his work the following question: "What do
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people feel in times of changes?" In his opinion, they experience an unprecedented acceler-ating and that is why people might look for another world escape. "Their souls can"t catch up with the changes. The world seems to be hostile and scares by its immensity. When new cul-tural standards appear, people get a "cultural shock." The author underlines as well that every culture has its own pace of development. That"s why cultural shock should be considered as a particular phenomenon in the context of a certain period which has appeared as a result of overlapping a new culture level on the old one [Тоffler, 2002]. As Professor Pavel Gurevich notices, it is important not to become a slaver of transience. It is necessary to be prepared for changes, train adaptability in the context of decreasing fear of changes. The proper training should include development of observation and critical thinking skills. It will give an oppor-tunity to assess the particular events and phenomenons in the context of their accordance with the purpose and potential value for future.
Unfortunately, most often we face anti-values. It provokes such negative emotions as pes-simism, disappointment, irritation. They affect human ideals in general and, particularly, nega-tively influence on our young generation. In this situation, it is extremely important to support humanitarian aspect of social life. Today the process of youth education is focused on master-ing competencies. The whole system gives the top priority to the professionalism. However, it is a well-known fact that "professional improvement can"t be substitute for the complex human development process, as these two aspects do not usually go together." We speak about education, which depresses upbringing. Moreover, it is dangerous for a person. Particularly, it is pity to notice that youth upbringing activity as a part of teaching has been excluded from HE teachers" working plans. Following Anton Makarenko ideas, it is worth to say that people create their image all his life. Therefore, we can definitely state that a person should been ed-ucated and increases his culture level all his life as well.
It is important to notice that a principle of culture centricity has become as one of the current trends within the education content and methods modernization process. It supposes development of a humanitarian culture, which should make "the most complicated mechanism of a human soul" (Dmitry Likhachov) to start working through forming the universal value system, establishing positive dialogue as well as through emotional and spiritual development of youth. It is supposed that culture will become the content of pedagogy. Correspondently, the basis for the education content filling includes different texts within certain cultural con-texts as well as different kinds of art, which represent an ideal of a particular historical stage. [Kashekova, 2014] These ideas have a strong potential to become implemented into modern educational process. Culture and arts will help to develop visual and verbal thinking skills, stir creative imagination, get high ground thoughts, arise Beauty in human souls, develop emo-tional culture and an ability to sympathize. What is the power of culture as an educational tool? Philosophical determinations of the "culture content" term give the answer to the mentioned above question.
Among a great number of the "culture" term determinations, we can choose the following: "Culture is a fundamental source for the world recovery which feeds human minds and feel-ings. People can percept the world model and interpret the answers to the main questions in the context of human existence through culture. It lives by its own life. Therefore, it is necessary to safe the culture as we do with a human life. Culture encourages high tension of a spiritual energy, intellectual excellence and human desire to harmonize himself with the environment" [Arnoldov, 2007]. In addition, we can enlarge "culture" tem description and add the follow-ing: culture is a perfect performance. It includes the best examples of morals and aesthetics
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of human behavior and deeds. Culture is a filter through which a person percepts the world. Culture phenomenon can be subdivided into the following subgroups: internal, external, spir-itual, political, ecological, artistic, aesthetic, communicative etc. It should be considered as a part of an ideal creation and as an ideal based system in the context of human existence, where an ideal is considered as moral purity and consciousness improvement (Dario Sommer). The ideal is the center of a life sense idea and human spirituality. In the mentioned above context the following words of Fyodor Dostoyevskyi are relevant: both Man and nation cannot exist without the highest idea. The value system is a fundamental basis for a perfect existence. In turn, culture and arts are the most important tools for this. Arts draw our particular attention. We cannot imagine an Excellent Man who lives apart from it. The world-known Canadian culturologist Paul Shafer rightly admitted that studying arts should serve as a basis for general education. Arts "fill people with a spiritual fullness," "teach to express thoughts and feelings through images," form spiritual, moral and aesthetic ideals, emotional culture and a feedback to Beauty and Hatefulness, high art taste and aesthetic perception. Arts reflect advances and a culture level of a particular historical period, dominated aesthetic and artistic preferences and ideals. It can also show preferable examples of possible future. The art world teaches an indi-vidual the most difficult thing to do - live among real people through getting such experience that he did not have in his real life before (compassion together with the characters). It is urgent to implement into pedagogical practice the following idea of an American scientist D. Kagan.
The main point is that educational process has some features that allow us to consider it as a particular form of art. In addition, it has characteristics, which help us to identify it as an art image and, in some way, as an artwork. That is why any form of educational process should be considered as an energetic art performance, an act of human interaction and as a picture of art. This process encourages formation of general cultural knowledge, visual thinking, value con-sciousness, humanitarian worldview. The value of art in the context of looking for the purpose of human existence is in an opportunity to unify people around the highest spiritual ideals.
Moreover, it can be implemented through spiritual and moral deeds, ethics of human behavior, aspiration to beauty, overcoming "emotional still" aimed at creating an aesthetic world picture.
Conclusions
Culture and arts are the catalysts for appearance of excellent humans who have good souls, thoughts and deeds, who feel an urgent necessity to live in accordance with their conscience, to give people joy and happiness. The purity and light of these people are comparable with those perfect images, which are brightly represented in arts and nature. It comes to mind the follow-ing literary abstract, which is an excellent illustration to the mentioned above: "I saw a lily which was in dark swamp water. Everything around was rotted. However, the lily stayed pure like angel"s clothing. Then some waves appeared in the dark pond. They waggled the flower but any sport appeared on its surface." So people should become like those flowers. We have to remember that "we aren"t so civilized, conscious, kind and fair as we suppose. Actually, we are in the very beginning of our long walk to excellence. Our feeling of greatness and power is based just on the advances of the scientific and technological progress. But it isn"t helpful indeed for true human improvement" [Sommer, 2014: 19].
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References
Arnoldov,
Bazaluk. Volume 1. Kyiv: Condor, 2011.