The Russian Federation chair the BRICS interstate association in 2024. The 16th BRICS summit was held in Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, from October 22 to 24. One of the key topics of discussion was the topic of expansion, as more than thirty countries have already expressed their desire to join the association. In recent years, such countries as Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates have joined BRICS. The founders of BRICS are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. These countries, representing traditional civilizations, interact at the level of state leaders.
In this case, the concept of "civilization" describes a long-lasting spiritual environment in which each national culture is only part of the whole, forming a unique combination of traditions, statehood and social structures. The difference in characteristic features, which are expressed by geographical location, historical path, highest goals and dominant attitudes, is leveled due to an important and unifying factor. Chinese, Hindu, Islamic, Russian and the emerging Latin American civilizations are united in the fight against threats to universal human values.
The center of the worldview of traditional civilizations and cultures is moral responsibility for one's actions and the conviction of the inevitability of punishment for a crime committed, when the supreme judge is the almighty and all-seeing Creator. Adherents of a completely materialistic worldview (which finally took shape in Western civilization during the "Age of Enlightenment") removed themselves from divine jurisdiction. The concepts of honor and conscience turned out to be burdensome, and personal gain triumphed, beginning transnational ideological expansion and economic enslavement.
Forced interactions between cultures as a result of mass migrations and conquests cannot be considered a conversation on equal terms. An enslaved culture either degrades and disappears from the historical stage, or is reborn. Then civilization is a qualitatively different state of culture, capable of withstanding “growth crises”: interreligious conflicts, intervention and colonization, as well as other external and internal threats. Modern science understands “intercivilizational dialogue” as a bilateral trade exchange and its derivative connections, as a result of which individual knowledge, skills and technologies are borrowed.
The importance of the dialogue of civilizations cannot be underestimated. It allows to realize the unity in which all traditional spiritual and moral values converge. A deep understanding of the important meaning and nobility of own tradition allows to compare, judge and understand each other's cultural advantages and disadvantages, while preserving the diversity of cultures, peoples and individual tribes. Cultural exchange develops national self-awareness and promotes the growth of the national dignity of its participants.
No attempts at artificial and forced fusion of different doctrines can be allowed, and even more so there can be no talk of replacing one tradition with another. Each of them is self-sufficient and has its own meaning of existence, if only because it is best adapted to specific natural conditions and circumstances that have arisen over the course of thousands of years of historical progress. Unsuccessful attempts to bring them to uniformity according to the Western model are deplorable and destructive.
The culture of Western civilization is an impressive part of the general history of mankind. As proof of its influence, it is enough to cite at least the fact that today the entire information technology industry, which helps solve complex problems and improve the quality of life, speaks English. But as already mentioned, under the banner of progress are advancing the "kingdom of money", destructive cosmopolitanism and globalism. The antithesis to this should be a futuristic project of a fair world order. In this regard, the XVI BRICS summit will be another step in the development of a single civilizational ideology that would be acceptable to all countries.
The material uses an article by the coordinator of the activities of the “Russkiy Mir” Foundation, Nikolai Mikhailov
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Alexas_Fotos\Pixabay