Каталог статей из сборников научных конференций и научных журналов- Mass culture: the main aspects of development in society

V. N. Goncharov, Doctor of Philosophical Sciences, associate professor,

North Caucasus Federal University,

Stavropol, Russia

The assimilation of mass culture products, unlike classical culture, does not require either labor or special knowledge. This is how researchers view modern society as a new Middle Ages, or a new barbarism of the 21st century, in which there is a transition from a text to a screen form of information transmission and cultural invariants [1, p. 95–100].

This reproduces the thesis of such a basic function of mass culture as recreational function, based on the understanding that in order to restore neuropsychiatric costs, the human body really needs much stronger recreational effects than those carried out when compensating for energy losses due to physical labor [6, p. 136–143]. The stress as a basis of modern society objectively contributes to the search for effective mechanisms of adaptation to changed environmental conditions [4, p. 118–124]. And in this sense, the phenomenon of mass culture turned out to be a very successful social innovation.

Of course, the apotheosis of mass culture is a single product. This uniqueness only confirms that an innovative idea in any sphere of human existence is always original and creative, even if, as in this case, it is designed to implement mass consumption in society [11, p. 282–284]. The question of the prospects of the latter is very important from the point of view of the evolution of modern culture.

The work of theorists of the post-industrial society and the information society, and, above all, E. Toffler, made a significant contribution to the study of this problem. In the context of this consideration, the two basic theses of the American futurologist are most significant. The first concerns the evolution of modern society from the food consumption industry to the sensation industry, from material to mental satisfaction. Like E. Toffler's remark that human sensations are the shortest-lived, but also the most sustainable product. In terms of personal development, this vector can, on the one hand, be considered positive, since it is known that the desire for self-realization through purchases indicates the decay of the person. Another thesis, on the contrary, indicates that the desire to get sensations, by no means always can take socially acceptable forms. Overcoming the stage of mass culture will not mean achieving complete harmony in the sociocultural interaction of the individual and society [12, p. 73–78].

The phenomenon of modern culture can be successfully described in two dimensions: post-industrial and post-modern [13, p. 39–44]. Culture develops as a result of the interaction of these two global approaches to transformation, as well as to assessing reality. At the same time, it turns out that the first directly regulates the ways of forming modern social and technological realities. The second creates and broadcasts values arising within modern culture [7, p. 123–128].

Post-industrial society is commonly interpreted as a knowledge-based structure [9, p. 78–82]. However, what is knowledge for modern culture? In post-industrial coordinates, knowledge is, above all, information that is of practical value and serves to obtain specific results [2, p. 168–177]. Such total practicality is one of the basic characteristics of modern culture.

The role of the post-industrial vector of evolution is still stronger than the power of the postmodern with all their mutually complementarity, primarily because in the world, according to the apt expression of J. Bodriyar, more and more information appears and there is less and less meaning.

Post-industrial society, as it were, sets the postmodern mentality of the rules of the game in the subject and information worlds, forming the formation of the latter in its new quality. The influence of postmodern manifests itself, rather, in ways of realizing the post-industrial direction of social development, rather than in the real possibilities of steps to change it [5, p. 6–9]. Postmodern perception of the world rather focuses on passive adoption of post-industrial processes, abandoning attempts to adjust them both by individuals and by society as a whole [10, p. 57–62].

The main problem of modern culture, first of all, lies not in aesthetic, but in social. It appears as the impossibility of building an effective interaction between the attitudes of consumer individualism and socially significant values [10, p. 10–16]. And only through rational awareness of threats to culture from modern society is the path to preserving the fruits of enlightenment as opposed to the chaos of consumption [8, p. 87–93]. In fairness, it should be noted that Plutarch also said that it is unnecessary, not what we need that makes us happy.

In modern culture, post-industrialism acts as a counterweight to postmodernism with its technological dominant society, not only built on innovation, but also instilling education throughout life, including as a form of leisure [3, p. 80–85]. But it is precisely it, according to the ancient sage Diogenes, that restrains young men, comforts the old, enriches the poor, decorates the rich. Thus, in the future, the educational rationalism of the post-industrial world order, without which society will not survive, can be opposed to the omnipotence of consumption. And finally, modern culture is still not destined to become a new Middle Ages also because human history fortunately develops not in a circle, but in a spiral. And this includes both supreme wisdom and hope.

Bibliogrpahy

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