Humanitarian Culture As A Factor Of Social And Economic Development Of Society

Abstract

The paper is devoted to humanitarian culture as a fundamental factor of the social and economic development of man and society, while studying the problem of assessing the socio-economic development of man and society. The article substantiates the urgency of improving the decision-making process, using an approach based on the principles of humanitarian culture, the accumulated potential of which will allow mankind to survive in the conditions of the resource crisis, when some forces try to find a way out of the situation by conflict military methods, including using space weapons. The modern approach is that a set of factors, which characterize the quality of society, was revealed from a variety of factors affecting the development of man and society and it was achieved by using the system method; a model of the socio-economic space of the society’s quality indicators was constructed to form the resulting indicator of a generalized socio-economic assessment of human and society’s development. The author proposed the resulting indicator of a generalized socio-economic assessment of the development of man and society, and it provides an opportunity to conduct objectively systematic studies, to formulate options for the development of society, to make a comparative analysis of the decisions taken in the past historical period, in order to avoid mistakes in the future and to choose the optimal perspective option for the development of a separate region, country and, in general, the development of human society.

Keywords: A model of socio-economic spaceHumanitarian cultureindicator of socio-economic development of human and society

Introduction

A distinctive feature of the second half of the twentieth century and the present twenty-first century is the high importance of humanitarian culture in all spheres of society’s life and activity. The growing need of man and society in humanistic values, the growth of requirements for the quality of education, historically, caused the improvement and development of education. At present, some countries can try to solve the resource crisis, which is manifested in exacerbating military, territorial, demographic, confessional, information-network, ecological, food and water problems in the world by military methods, including using space weapons, and destroy all life on earth. The way out of the crisis requires the goal-setting of education, both from the position of man and society. In these conditions, it is necessary to study the processes occurring in socio-economic systems, and to work out objective indicators for tracing the development of man and society. The essence of the concept of culture makes it possible to describe both society and an individual. This can be done within the framework of a humanitarian paradigm that reveals education through the prism of culture. Regularities in the development of human society require improving the methods of resource management and developing new approaches that will allow people and society to develop themselves.

The paper considers humanitarian culture as a factor in the social and economic development of man and society; an approach is proposed to identify the components of an objective indicator that satisfies the provisions of measure theory. The proposed resulting indicator provides an opportunity to carry out systemic research, form and compare options for the development of society. The problem of the objective assessment of the development of society is a result in solving the problems of a comparative evaluation of options for the development of man and society.

Problem Statement

On the basis of the obtained results of the analysis of factors, which affect the vital activities of man and society, to propose an approach to identifying components of an objective indicator that satisfies the provisions of measure theory, to form the resulting indicator for carrying out system studies and comparing options for the development of society.

Research Questions

As a part of the problem of human and social development, it is possible to single out questions about the humanitarian culture as a fundamental factor in the socio-economic development of man and society, environmental education, improving the methods of resource management on the principles of humanitarian culture, and developing new approaches to addressing factors that are necessary for survival and development of man and society resources, and about the modeling of socio-economic space to form an indicator of an objective generalized socio-economic evaluation of the development of society.

Purpose of the Study

To describe the factors that influence the development of man and society, show that humanitarian culture is a fundamental factor in the socio-economic development of society and propose an approach for forming an objective indicator to assess the development of man and society.

Research Methods

The following research methods were used: Description, analysis, generalization, comparison, modeling, system approach.

Findings

In current studies, there is a large number of definitions of humanitarian culture, the dynamics of which is analyzed by Zhukova (2014).  

For modeling socio-economic processes, one can use the concept of “humanitarian culture as a socio-psychological entity in the structure of the individual, consisting of axiological (value-oriented), cognitive (cognitive), communicative and self-determinative (activity- practical) components” (Polyakova, 2008, p.88). Humanistic values ​​are instilled in the process of education.

It is common knowledge that the humanitarian paradigm, unlike the humanistic paradigm, focuses on the education of the whole man in all the complexity, multidimensionality and diversity of his connections and relations with the environment, and the goal of the humanitarian approach in education is to develop humanity in man, i.e., that is truly human essence in its correlation with the world of values, culture, human relations and the environment.

The building of moral education in Russia in practice takes place with the help of pedagogy that is systematically oriented towards the relation with the environment (Chistyakova, Selivanova, & Tagunova, 2017).

The problem of teaching proper environmental behavior requires the understanding that any successful activity depends on the balance between humanity and nature, simultaneously and with which a person is evolving. This makes it necessary to use the co-evolutionary approach in the pedagogical process. Its introduction into environmental education contributes to the formation of an ecological culture of young people by organizing sociocultural niches in the school and socio-natural niches in nature. This type of niche presupposes the ecological behavior of students and teachers (Chistyakova, Selivanova, & Tagunova, 2017).

Anthropogenic activities make significant changes in the environment. French scientists have discovered that genetic limitations and the environment limit human capabilities. Despite the progress in nutrition, medicine and science, the maximum life expectancy (for example, in Japan, women – 86.8 years, men – 80.5 years), (World Health Organization, 2017), growth and physical endurance will not increase. More people will reach the current life expectancy records, but they will not be able to surpass them (Marck et al., 2017).

The protection of key areas of biodiversity on the globe is important for the maintenance of genetic, species, ecosystem diversity and usefulness to people (United Nations, 2016). This causes the need to confront anthropogenic pressure, requires continuous environmental education, which should cover all stages of a person’s life, starting with pre-school education (Kulikova, 2016).

To analyze many factors, which affect the development of man and society, one can apply the philosophical basis of the concept of humanitarian culture – “an attempt through the person himself to determine the basis and meaning of his being and being of the world” (Polyakova, 2008, p.88).

Factors influencing the life and activity of a person and society can be described with the help of a system approach that allows uniting the elements of the system to achieve a common purpose: the upbringing and development of a healthy, educated, creative and useful person for society and nature, simultaneously and with which a person evolves.

Models facilitate the selection of various (previously isolated) parts of knowledge in a single, logically coordinated representation (Holtz et al., 2015).

Everything that happens in society simultaneously affects the set of indicators that characterize the quality of man and society: the population; the number of students studying in the education system; and the number of healthy population in the country. In the latest studies on the modeling of socio-economic systems on the planet Earth, it is recommended to take into account the humanitarian, ethical and religious motives of human behaviour (Gerten, Schönfeld, & Schauberger, 2018).

The level of human education is its qualitative characteristic and depends on the culture, educational institutions of various types, human and material resources, technology of education, science and innovation. The number of educated people is a qualitative characteristic of society.

The population in the country can be regarded as a qualitative characteristic of the human society in this country. The change in the population in the country is affected by a large number of diverse factors. In general, the population depends on the natural and man-made environment (including industrial, urban, household), the ethnic characteristics of the population, economic relations in society and the social mobility of the population.

Health can be regarded as a qualitative characteristic of a person. Human health depends on heredity (health potential), lifestyle, environment, nutrition, work activities, health system. The number of healthy people characterizes the quality of society. Tendencies in the development of the world economy and states are characterized by radical economic, scientific, technological and technological changes and transformations. Under these conditions, the decisions of the scientific and technical elite in the field of technical, technological and information development of society determine the opportunities for the development of society, therefore, they must be more moral and based on the principles of humanitarian culture.

In the comparative analysis, along with the used, cost macroeconomic indicators that do not provide adequate information about the real state of citizens, regions and countries, an objective indicator is needed. The widely used human development index (a composite indicator of human development in countries and regions of the world) gives an idea of the quality of life, considering the limitations of the elements of the index, which are that the HDI does not take into account many other criteria that significantly affect the “quality of life”. For example, the state of the natural and man-made environment, ethnic characteristics, unemployment, and others. In addition, the HDI calculation methodology (equal weight assigned to each of the three components of the index) creates obstacles to the objectivity of the estimates obtained.

Professor of Economics Bryan Caplan in support of the index bias gives an example of a country where people are immortal and endowed with an infinitely high GDP per capita. Such a country can count only on the HDI = 0.666 (the level of South Africa and Tajikistan) if the population were illiterate and never went to school (Caplan, 2009).

Despite these shortcomings, the human potential development index is still offered for comparative analysis. For example, the rating of countries on the human development index in 2016 (Human development indices, 2016).

Because of this, erroneous decisions, which harm human development, modern society, future generations of people and the environment, can be made. Measures and comparisons are needed on the objective indicator of social and economic development, and it is necessary to rethink the value system of the development of civilization on the basis of humanitarian culture, and to create an economy that provides the optimal living conditions for the human population on the planet Earth.The conducted research revealed that the number of population in the country, the number of healthy people, the number of students in the education system were the model-forming components of the socio-economic space of human and social development. Any of the factors influencing the development of man and society affects one of the three specified indicators of the quality of life of society.

Each of the generalized qualitative indicators simultaneously characterizes a separate quality of life of a person and society. These three indicators characterize fully different aspects of human life and form a system.

Healthy and educated population of the country can be the driving force that determines the production of innovative products and services based on the sixth technological order underlying the development of the intellectual economy, as well as the progressive social and economic development of society.

The number of healthy people can be determined indirectly through the indicators of the SNA: employed persons, persons who are underemployed in terms of working hours, as well as unemployed persons and potential labour (candidates for entering the labour market) (ILO, 2014).

The described scheme of research of the variety of factors influencing life activities, development of man and society from different sides, allows forming an approach to the identification of components of the objective indicator that satisfies the provisions of measure theory.It is obvious that the process of development of society and man is determined by the maximum possible values of indicators of the population, the number of students in the education system and the number of healthy population in the country (Figure 1 ).

Suppose that the population is P ; the number of students attending different levels (pre-school, general education, vocational education, continuing education, etc.) of the education system is E ; and the number of healthy population in the country is H .

See Full Size >

These indicators are related and the values of one or two of them are insufficient to assess the functioning of society as a whole.

Indicators of the quality of society are components of the vector M . $$M=(P,E,H)$$

in the socio-economic space (S³) (Figure 1 ). (Karganov, Kudryashov, & Raschesova, 2017; Ponomarev, 2014; Raikov, 1962).

It is the set of qualitative indicators of the development of man and society that makes it possible to compare objectively different variants of the development of man and society.The problem of assessing the socio-economic state of the society and inter-country comparisons can be solved with the help of the resulting indicator (index) of a generalized socio-economic assessment of the development of society – $RID{S}_{peh}$ (Kulikova, 2018).

$$RID{S}_{peh}=\frac{c_f}{c_i},$$

where $C_f$ is an actual socio-economic state of society;

$C_i$ is a desired projected social and economic state of society.

$$RID{S}_{peh}=\frac{P\times E\times H}{P^{\mathrm{3}}},$$

where , E is the number of people studying in the education system;

P is the population;

Н is healthy population.

This indicator can be used to assess the development of man and society. This is the resulting indicator that provides an opportunity to conduct objectively systematic research using the branch and boundary method, which allows forming and comparing the long-term options for the development of society. Any society can be assessed objectively by the index of the general socio-economic assessment of the development of society – $RID{S}_{peh}$

Conclusion

Education and development of a healthy, educated, creative person who is useful for the life of society and nature, at the same time and with which a person evolves, can be realized on the basis of humanitarian culture, with the introduction of a co-authoritarian approach to environmental education throughout the person’s life.

Thus, humanitarian culture is an indispensable factor in the socio-economic development of man and society in each country and the basis for comparisons with the use of the proposed objective resulting indicator (index) of a generalized socio-economic assessment of the development of society.In the context of intellectualization of the economy, the accumulated potential of humanitarian culture is an indispensable factor in the social and economic development of man and society.

The system approach allows us to combine factors influencing the development of man and society, to construct a model of socio-economic space of quality indicators for the formation of the resulting indicator of a generalized socio-economic assessment of human and social development, to formulate variants, to use the branch and boundary method to select the best perspective option.The proposed approach to assessing the development of man and society, based on the three-dimensional metric, will help to increase the level of trust and interaction between countries and peoples due to the fact that it is based on an objective basis and can visually show the disadvantage of making decisions about military conflicts, since this will lead to a decrease in the population, the number of students studying in the education system and the number of healthy population in the country. To restore the destroyed economy will require new resources that are limited to the planet Earth. In another situation it will help to make a comparative analysis of the decisions taken in the past historical period in order to avoid mistakes in the future and to choose the best perspective variant of the country’s development and, perhaps, the development of human society in a specific historical period.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank O.V. Pilipenko, Doctor of Engineering, Professor, Rector of Orel State University, L.P. Khalyapina, Doctor of Pedagogics, Professor, Humanitarian Institute of St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, and E.N. Clemenova, Doctor of Philology, Professor of Rostov State University of Economics, for their comments and support of the long-term research.

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