PLANETARY ETHICS

Implementing any social development concept faces a whole range of ethical, moral and ideological issues, ultimately of a value-symbolic character. This is especially true of such a large-scale task as saving the biosphere, solving global problems and creating the basis of a new type of civilisation. The Planetary Project implies the need for planetary ethics, capable of laying the foundation of a new worldview meeting the goals of planetary anti-crisis management and future managed harmony.  

A monumental task faces humanity as part of the Planetary Project: to create conditions for fundamental changes in public consciousness, mass beliefs, national mentality and, finally, people’s self-identification. It is necessary to persuade leading scientists, politicians and economists, social activists, as well as leaders of ethnic-cultural movements and churches to shift from words to action in solving global problems, saving the biosphere, and integrating humanity. They must be equipped with necessary information and communication instruments to disseminate Planetary Project ideas among their followers, and later among the wider public. We need a united mobilisation anti-crisis integration ideology. At the initial stage of the planetary “rescue operation” it will work as an instrument of enlightenment and propaganda to involve people in integration processes, new production and economic models, co-operation and consumption, as well as motivation and behaviour. Later, it will have to perform a paradigm shift in the modern belief system taking it from: a crisis to an anti-crisis phase; then to biocentric, compatible with managed harmony strategy; and then to the phase of planetary self-identification contributing to the fulfilment of humanity’s space mission. The planetary type of thinking is possible not only due to a leap in science and technology and the dominance of rationalism of the Sixth Techno-economic Paradigm, but also due to a global spiritual synthesis that needs to be carried out through the joint efforts of all constructive social forces of the modern world.    

To develop, launch and assimilate a single mobilisation anti-crisis integration ideology, which is in line with Planetary Project objectives, and make it truly influential, it must contain more than scientific arguments, utilitarian-practical schemes, programmes of action and solutions in the fields economy, politics, law, ecology and social reform. It is not enough to have information alone, however logically flawless it might be. To transform significantly consciousness, judgement, motivation and interest, it is not enough to involve only rational reasoning; especially when it comes to making choices and accepting limits. It requires deeper psychological influence including the significance of the figurative, emotional-psychological, moral-ethical and spiritual components of human decision-making motivation. Survival instinct must be spiritualised to the same extent that an action could be stimulated by motivation. The notion of sufficient reasons is backed by an act of will, and expressed in the form of motivation; it is then necessarily checked against the value “compass” of a person or group. The dominant status of value for human activity is explained by the fact that values, normally, underlie motivation, decision making and active behaviour.

The Planetary Project dissemination, public awareness and communication objectives can be effectively resolved; and they can lead to needed worldview transformations only if they are justified and warranted from a spiritual-value perspective. Planetary ethics is in charge of creating an axiological basis of the Planetary Project.

Developing and substantiating planetary ethics is a primary objective as part of developing and promoting the Planetary Project.

Planetary ethics must be systemic, universal, biocompatible, practical and realistic; but it also has to incorporate diverse cultural and civilisation spiritual experience. It will have to address a number of socio-psychological, cultural, and ethical issues. Hence, it has external and internal objectives.

Planetary ethics external objectives will be directed at the public; they will deal with contradictions of mass consciousness, individual mentality, and cultural issues, their conflicts and paradoxes. They may include:

  • Contributing to institutional understanding (through education, public awareness and religion), and spiritualisation of world objectives of saving the biosphere, global problem solving, and attainment of social justice and harmonious development;
  • Creating a compromise-based model of global human integration and its universal spiritual-ethical justification;
  • Moral-ethical justification of limiting economic, needs and population growth;
  • Propagating bio-centric, vitality and environmental values and motives in the life of society and the individual, their rehabilitation, and basing them in culture;
  • Constructing noospheric priority ranking in accordance with value-symbolic codes of the most influential world cultures and religions;
  • Creating a new value-symbolic code of planetary consciousness, and the self-identification initially of the anti-crisis person and later of the integral person as a planetary agent.

In addition to the above large-scale strategic external objectives, planetary ethics will deal with smaller, tactical “field tasks”, but they are not less important or timely because of that. They include, for example:

  • Driving military values out of socialisation mechanisms and ethically positive cultural archetypes;
  • Moral “cleansing” of politics;
  • Ecological education at the early stages of personal development etc.

Planetary ethics internal objectives will involve the formation, development, self-development and self-justification of planetary ethics. In this regard, we must formulate our own axiological axioms and postulates, generate principles and values, norms and symbols, and formulate hypotheses. It is clear that the central reference framework should include the values of life, naturalness and harmony. At the Planetary Project’s initial stage, the most important internal objectives of planetary ethics can be represented in the following statements:

  • Clear formulation of planetary environmental imperative;
  • Clarification of the essence, origin, content, structure and purpose of the phenomenon of spirituality as human ontological quality;
  • Development of the ideas of panpsychism and holism interpreting the world of nature and people as a single living organism;
  • Review of the categories of development, progress, harmony in relation to society, bio-centric consciousness, and history; and a comparative civilisation analysis in the spirit of the Planetary Project;
  • Revealing the internal potential of planetary ethics for further psychological and ethical human evolution.

The planetary ethics direction is dynamic and evolutionary (this is its main innovative difference from traditional, self-absorbed kinds of ethics): it is meant to ensure that people consistently pass through stages of their already managed history from current civilisation’s anti-crisis mobilisation to opening planetary possibilities, and realising their cosmic potential as part of a noospheric biocompatible civilisation they build themselves. The planetary ethics goal stays constant at all foreseeable stages; it is to harmonise people through systemic and stable synchronisation of reasonable-rational and imaginative-intuitive qualities of their soul as spiritual faculties. We view the dynamics of planetary ethics in the Planetary Project as a transition from the effect of paradigm shift and elite integration mobilisation, to the effect of creating a new mass ideology for the Earth’s population. It is important to note that neither the direction nor the objectives of planetary ethics contradict world religions and constructive spiritual teachings, which is confirmed by Planetary Project research.

The attractiveness and high potential of planetary ethics are based on the fact that it will not stop developing, even when it reaches the state of being a coherent and functional system, applicable to solving motivational-psychological problems of planetary anti-crisis management. Having experienced the first success in saving the biosphere, and establishing the noospheric civilisation foundations, it will create a new cultural-anthropologic type of person, the integral person, and a new bio-socio-historical evolutionary agent, WE-humanity, destined to realise the cosmic potential of planet Earth. Alongside innovation science and the breakthrough technologies of the Sixth Techno-economic Paradigm, planetary ethics will create the worldview of the Future. 

Promoting the planetary ethics values and principles as well as law-making activity must become a collective effort of all constructive actors of global human integration, all Planetary Project participants based on the parity of their rights, interests and values. It must address the main goal of saving the biosphere and implementing harmonious social development ideas. We invite all visitors to this website to co-operate in developing planetary ethics.

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