In this article, we will analyze and compare the traditional and innovative cultures and values that we use in everyday life in our society. The course of the analysis is based on the results of a sociological study conducted within the framework of the project «Cultural analysis of the processes of traditional and innovative values in the southern regions of Kazakhstan». The relationship between tradition and innovation, the apparent harmony between the cultural worlds, is a very complex process, and its implementation requires a lot of conditions. The return to the past, the burning of the dead, the religious renaissance, the inventory of scattered values is undergoing changes in the area of active modernization and mass Westernization. Although national culture is the most established system, within the framework of globalization, opportunities for its transformation, preservation of identity and development also begin to appear.
Keywords: traditional values, innovative values, information society, information, the younger generation.
Interest in the problem of values, in particular traditional values, in the humanities is not actualized throughout all stages of the development of human society, but acquires its own specific coloring in each epoch. Special attention to axiomatic issues increases at the turning point of times, at crisis and turning points in human history, and the need to understand them naturally requires addressing issues of value. It is in such a transitional state that modern society is experiencing the processes of globalization and digitalization.
It is known that the processes taking place in the information society significantly change both the social and spiritual spheres of a person's life, his values. The formation of value relations of a modern person has also been significantly influenced by the process of globalization, which has provoked significant changes of a social, political, economic and spiritual nature in many countries of the world. The processes of globalization and informatization contribute to the emergence of innovative values in society, new value orientations, norms and patterns of life and behavior corresponding to the new socio-cultural and economic paradigm.
In modern society, due to these processes, changes are taking place in the value orientations of people, especially young people: the established traditional values are being questioned, attention is attracted by new values born primarily by the processes of digitalization, virtualization of social reality. Therefore, there are situations of interaction, and sometimes collisions of previously functioning traditional and newly emerging innovative values in the modern information society, which gives rise to the task of forming the value orientations of the modern young generation.
Therefore, attention to the formation of personal values in the information society, which today is called digital, should become a priority. The solution of this problem is largely connected with the understanding of the essence of traditional values, their relevance in the modern world, the features of values generated by social and technological processes taking place in society, and the mechanisms of their interaction.
In connection with what has been said in this article, we will determine the understanding of the essence of the category «value», the content of the established traditional values and highlight the innovative values of the modern digital world and identify the problems of their interference.
The concept of «value» is revealed in a large number of scientific works of domestic and foreign researchers of different periods in the field of philosophy, sociology and cultural studies. It should be noted that the definition of this concept in each epoch depended on the philosophical approaches of its comprehension. Studying the positions of philosophers, it can be noted that the content of the category «value» was introduced by the German philosopher R. G. Lotz [1] in the 1860s. and it developed from the ancient understanding of it as the concept of good, good and evil, the meaning of life, happiness and virtue to the position of understanding value as a persons relationship to objects of value, as a norm regulating moral behavior.
Philosophical and sociological approaches to the definition of the category «value» were the methodological basis for understanding this category in cultural studies.
The analysis of scientific literature shows that in psychology the understanding of the category «value» is also interpreted ambiguously. Most scientists define values as the most important components of the motivational and semantic sphere of personality. At the same time, it is possible to distinguish three main forms of value in the interpretation of this concept, such as social ideals formed by public consciousness, containing abstract ideas about the corresponding attributes in various spheres of social life; concrete objects of realization of the value ideals of society, manifested in the works of material and spiritual culture or the behavior of people; one of the sources of motivation for their actions. Most researchers agree that personal values are characterized by a high level of consciousness, that they are reflected in consciousness in the form of value orientations and that they are important factors regulating social interactions and personal behavior of people [2].
The concept of «value» in the «Russian Encyclopedic Dictionary» is revealed as «the positive or negative significance of objects of the surrounding world for a person, determined by their involvement in the sphere of human activity. Criteria and methods for assessing this significance are expressed in normative representations, ideals, attitudes, goals» [3, p. 1744]. In pedagogical science, values are defined as special forms, elements of individual consciousness, which are landmarks, ideal models for personal and social activity [4, p. 100]. Summarizing the various approaches of teachers to understanding the term in question, the following main meanings can be distinguished in it: the human, social and cultural significance of certain phenomena of reality; a special human type of significance of objects and phenomena; the general meanings of his life realized and accepted by a person; socially accepted ideas about what is good, beautiful, fair, patriotic, friendship, etc.; an attitude to the surrounding world colored by personal perception, which arises on the basis of one's own life experience, as an attitude to the world, others and oneself.
Revealing the issue of reliance on traditional values, it is important to understand which values can be considered traditional. The analysis of scientific literature has shown that the complex nature of values, different approaches to its interpretation cause a variety of their classifications, which can be reduced to two groups: meaningful and hierarchical. The ideology of traditional values has become widespread.
It should be noted that the essence of understanding traditional values follows from understanding the essence of the concept of «tradition», which reflects selected and preserved spiritual values, a particular type of spiritual culture, significant experience of generations; the core of collective memory; the formed experience of reproduction and development of universal culture, social relations. Tradition is also the basis of social and personal identity, which is regulated by public opinion on the basis of moral norms existing in society.
Traditional values are the most stable and durable, have a universal character, rely on authoritative public opinion, act as ideal cultural models, norms of behavior. Traditional values form the core of cultural heritage, have been preserved for centuries, reflect the spirituality of the people, their understanding of good and evil.
Thus, traditional values serve as the basic structures of human consciousness, allow a person to perceive the world around them, to master the social experience accumulated by previous generations, which contributes to the formation of a person's worldview. It is these values that should determine the picture of the personality's world, be a guide to action in making behavioral decisions.
The understanding of the essence of traditional values is briefly presented in the following formulations of scientists. Thus, the traditional values of culture are characterized by R. M. Nikolaev as values inherent in people living together and having developed a common set of skills, rituals, manners, traditions, ways of self-regulation, behaviors. T. A. Rassadina defines values as «varieties of values in which historical social experience is selected, transmitted and perceived from person to person, from generation to generation, accumulating in the form of samples, norms, principles of the idea of the best, authoritative in culture» [5].
Summing up the analysis of approaches to the content of traditional values, we will highlight a number of basic approaches that help summarize what has been said.
Firstly, traditional values act as conservative values that reflect adherence to traditional social orders, concepts and religious positions. Preservation of traditions, institutions and values of society is considered the main value. At the same time, possible changes, if they are already overdue, are not denied, but their implementation should be carried out with great caution.
Secondly, traditional values are often viewed as religious values. This is understandable, since religions and their organizations are defenders and guardians of traditional values, including those that do not have a direct religious origin and are not directly related to religious beliefs.
Thirdly, traditional values are defined as values associated with certain traditions of peoples, nations and countries — national, folk, ethnic and ethnographic values.
Today, in the information society, information is an important means of social communication, a powerful factor of influence on the socio-cultural life of an individual, his material existence, his value attitude to reality. Based on such a global impact of information on human life, it can be concluded that information itself becomes valuable, influencing various spheres of human life — politics, economics, spiritual and moral development, culture, education, interethnic relations. Thus, information (in its various meaningful manifestations, forms of representation) can be considered as a new value of the information world.
As innovative values of information civilization, along with information, researchers name such as personal knowledge and intellectual capital, the core of which are universal forms of thinking, through which they are acquired, produced and used on the basis of moral values. The value of intelligence in the modern world is increasing, and intellectual capital itself acts as the most important resource of the economy, which is successfully bought and sold, the resource of the person himself, plays an important role in all spheres of his life.
Thus, information technology, virtual reality, information, knowledge and intellectual capital form a new value system that is interfaced with the traditional value system, and sometimes come into conflict with it. We define this process of integration and interaction as the process of interference of traditional and innovative values.
This process of solving this problem, in our opinion, will be facilitated, on the one hand, by the support of traditional values relevant to modernity through information and communication technologies and the development of morally justified innovative values leading to the development and self-determination of the individual, on the other. It is possible that the modern virtual space can offer many positive behaviors and activities for the benefit of man.
The search for such ways of dialogical interaction of values is an important task, which can be solved in a joint search for sociologists, IT specialists, psychologists, educators, marketers, etc. In this situation, virtual technologies (social networks, virtual social events, charity marathons, computer games promoting traditional values, media volunteering and many other forms of information communication and virtual activities) can come to the aid of solving this problem.
The solution of the question posed using virtual space is associated with the problem of assessing the value orientations of users of the virtual environment, the values held by the holders of social networks, websites, blogs. Therefore, the solution of the problem cannot be fully left to the virtual space with the absence of clear moral laws and responsibility for the information provided, where pressure and violation of traditional values are carried out. Therefore, virtual influence is not enough for the formation of values, it is also necessary to have real dialogical interaction of subjects, including at the level of behavior, and in this we fully agree with E. M. Molchan. According to the scientist, in the virtual Internet space, the behavioral sphere of activity is usually closed, and value representations are, as is known, in the cognitive-emotional sphere. Therefore, it is important that the process of mastering values in social reality includes subjects of activity and behavior.
The above highlights another task facing culturologists: the formation of critical thinking among the younger generation and among teachers themselves, providing the ability to analyze incoming value-relevant information, to realize, to give it an adequate assessment, to make informed decisions, on the basis of which to form a morally justified attitude to certain values relevant to modern society and meeting the principles of universal morals and on their basis to build their behavior. Questions also arise: what is the mechanism of transmission and perception of traditional values from one generation to another; to what extent can universal values remain stable in conditions of uncertainty in the development of society; what should be the authority of the subject who translates new values or introduces them to traditional ones; what may be the motives for their acceptance or rejection and to what extent modern technologies will they help to adequately accompany this process? All these and other relevant questions will have to be answered by research scientists and practical teachers.
On the other hand, it is necessary to create conditions for effective dialogical interaction of traditional and innovative values in real and virtual space, to offer ways, means, forms of information communication that ensure the preservation of traditions, spirituality and the formation of a system of innovative value orientations.
References:
1. Lottse R. G. Osnovaniya prakticheskoy filosofii [Foundations of practical philosophy]. Saint Petersburg, Tipografiya M. I. Rumsha Publ., 1882. 87 p. (in Russian).
2. Golovin S. Yu. Slovar’ praktitscheckogo psikhologa [Dictionary of a practical psychologist]. Moscow, AST, Kharvest Publ., 1998. 660 p. (in Russian).
3. Rossiyskiy entsiklopedicheskiy slovar’: v 2 knigakh. Glavnyy redaktor A. M. Prokhorov [Russian Encyclopedic dictionary: in 2 books. Chief editor A. M. Prokhorov]. Moscow, Bol’shaya Rossiyskaya entsiklopediya, 2001. Book 2: N–Ya. 2015. 1744 p. (in Russian).
4. Slastenin W. A., Isayev I. V., Shiyanov E. N. Obshchaya pedagogika: uchebnoye posobiye dlya studentov vysshikh uchebnykh zavedeniy. Pod redaktsiyey V. A. Slastenina: v 2 chastyakh [Textbook for students of higher educational institutions. Edited by V. A. Slastenin: At 2 o’clock]. Moscow, VLADOS Publ., 2003. Part 1. 288 p. (in Russian).
5. Gurevich P. S. Filosofiya kul’tury [Philosophy of Culture]. Moscow, IFRAN Publ., 2007. 300 p. (in Russian).
Acknowledgements. This research has been funded by the Science Committee of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Grant AP19577138 «Cross-cultural and axiological analysis of the processes of national identity of ethnic minorities in the Southern region of Kazakhstan».