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- Published on 05 July 2010
- Written by Vladimir Yakunin
An article by the World Public Forum «Dialogue of Civilizations»Founding President Vladimir Yakunin in “National Forecast” magazine published on July 2, 2010.
The «Dialogue of Civilizations» phraseology has become universally accepted in the diplomatic community. I am grateful to our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to Sergei Viktorovich Lavrov for what have become notes of our diplomacy. However, this does not mean only diplomacy. Neither countries, nor public and business institutions can communicate through a dialogue. They are able to conduct negotiations, but the dialogue is conducted by representatives of civilizations. Communication between representatives of countries or business communities is dominated by interests of their own institutions; the dialogue is focused on willingness to understand the other party. That is why we think that the «dialogue of civilizations» is a manifestation of a civil society.
The requirement in a global dialogue emerged at the consciousness level. The dialogue of civilizations is built on the understanding of the fact that there are «we», but there are «others» who can differ from us by any characteristics — racial, national, religious and other attributes; however, it does not mean that «others» are worse or better than «we» are. Here other principles must be applied. We should learn how to build a dialogue by, understanding differences and identifying common interests.
Globalist tendencies of the contemporary history brought a new element into cross-civilization interactions: there is an explicit tendency to prove the advantages of this or that model of globalization, trying to avoid any direct violence, appealing to panhuman content of these or other models, offering them as universal processes of mutual development. Quite often such hard-sell of a universal model can cause an opposing reaction from people.
Russia is an opposite example. We are against universalization. We are residents of a huge country, within which representatives of totally different cultures and religions coexist. In Russia alone there live more than 700 ethnoses and sub-ethnoses, and 170 nationalities. in the country that is multi-confessional, multi-cultural and, at the moment, to a high extent socially disunited, the willingness to share thoughts and listen to the interlocutor is enormously important.
We have unique experience in finding ways to a dialogue. I believe that the whole history of our country is connected with a dialogue of civilizations, with their interactive communication. This must be respected. We are looking forward to serious scrutinizing of the next stage that is offered to us so that we could develop our own behavior and that can be defined as the transition from the dialogue of civilizations through cooperation to inter-civilization integration. The subject is very interesting and difficult to develop; we must find the right distance between the well-known studies in globalization, economics, politics and the underlying concept that forms our understanding of intercivilization integration. This is the basis of our intentions.
The distinguishing feature of the forum is that we talk not about delegations; we talk about leaders of scientific, business and political communities. Sometimes I am asked: “Do you have attention? Does the dialogue work?” Yes, it works, and it works so successfully that we have to limit the number of participants; about 600 to 700 quite busy people get together to hold the conference. Besides, we hold conferences all over the world. We create online social network of "dialogue of civilizations"; we make arrangements with UNESCO about opening “dialogue of civilizations” schools. We publicize and build a certain “network of good against network of evil”. Only a system can fight against another system.
The saying states that history of mankind is the history of wars. However, the development of a civilization is similar to the development of a child. There is a time for everything, and that stage had also to be passed. I am sure that the evolution of mankind is governed by the vector that always is pointed to the positive. Today, 300 million people instead of living in “their” traditional countries are living in other countries. In the near future – this number was voiced at the «Dialogue of Civilizations» meeting – this category will total 1 billion people. It is an absolutely new phenomenon. Meeting representatives of other civilizations has become natural and casual.
When we speak about a dialogue of civilizations, about their interaction, we do not mean standardization or universalization, quite the contrary. And it is very important. Coming into another country or another civilization, you must respect its values. You have no right to establish your canons in another civilization. You must consider the environment you live in.
First of all, it should be understood that «Dialogue of Civilizations» is probably a forerun to forming a new ideology and new global order. I think that we are on the eve of the birth, «hatching» of new morality that is springing up on the wreckage of old values. The core of «Dialogue of Civilizations» is a new ideology that must unite society, because society cannot be united following the principle: you are free to do anything that is not forbidden by law. Society cannot be raised to defend the wealth of someone else. Society can defend only what is valuable to it as a whole.
And the key point: the interaction must take place at the level of religions, because one of the elements composing civilizational interaction is inter-confessional interaction. By the way, the model of such a world can be seen in our meetings on Rhodes – a holy father, mullah, rabbi and palestinian are sitting at the same table. Even in the back rooms, we have never had any clashes or antagonistic disorders. I think that it is gradually growing into a sound model of interaction of civilizations all over the world.
