The socio-ecological consequences of cultural and religious globalization processes in the late 20th century

Dominik Kubicki

Abstract

In the context of the current 21st century globalization processes, the author raises the significance of reflection articulated on the part of the post-communist
and post-totalitarian communities, the integrating European Union and its member states. This importance stems from the necessity to consider contemporary integration processes from all angles, and not to concentrate only on the intellectual vision of both the European and American West, so apparently permeated with one-sidedness of interpretation. As it seems, the intellectuals of the West fail to notice the gravity of the fact that secular equivalents of religiousness, which are totalitarianism and western consumer capitalism, have become a mere caricature of human aspirations and ideals, thus distorting intellectual bases of consecutive stages of globalization. The reflection of the article has been contained in three parts. In its first part the author characterises the rising topicality of globalization. Next, he raises the necessity to differentiate between various human communities in the analyses on the current stage of globalization processes. Thus, he recognizes the importance to identify different stages of human communities’ historical development, which due to an enormous progress in technology had to face the reality of globalization. Last but not least, the author attempts to outline the possibilities to overcome ideological helplessness concerning the issue of socio-ecological problems resulting from the globalization processes in the continental diversity of cultural religious local communities.