Armenian civilization as an ambitious project
The 21st century poses new threats for Armenians. To respond them, one must have answers to some fundamental question which will be the guide lines to shape our strategy. Questions connected with world outlook civilization are especially important. Whether Armenia and the Armenians are the carriers of steady (local) civilization? Which were the countries or cultures which exerted more influence on Armenians (negative or positive)? Which western values are in keeping with our national character and which of them contradict them endangering our national security? If Armenia is able to preserve its identity, not to be integrate into larger civilization systems and carry a mere dialogue of civilizations? These is the not complete list of questions relating to civilization and in this article an attempt is made to answer these questions.
The complexity of the issue is in the definition of the concept “civilization” and the goal this conception is used for. Morgan and Engels defined civilization as a phase of social development following vandalism. In the theory of Marksism-Leninism the given theory of civilization was used for periodization of history from the standpoint of dialectical materialism, that’s to say this term was used in certain ontological frameworks. In the given context civilization is defined as an aggregate of features of social and political character and spiritual development distinguishing great extent of development of human society from its primeval state. If we consider civilization as a step of social development of material and spiritual culture connected with division of labor and rationalization of production, consumption and distribution, then one can assert that Armenia and the Armenians are a part of global civilization.
Another context of the concept of civilization emerged in the 18th century in close connection with the concept of culture. French philosophers-enlighteners considered that civilized society was based on the principles of reason and justice.
There is a concept of man-caused civilization, that’s to say a society, for which it is characteristic to strive for transforming nature in its interests and freedom of individual activity which defines the individual’s relative independence from social groups. One can say that Armenia was back to civilization after gaining independence and introducing private property and the main democratic institutions. The Western civilization is defined as a process of development of Western Europe, the USA and Canada having all the necessary perquisites for successful development of civilization’s man-caused direction. By saying traditional civilization we usually understand a society with great extent of dependence on living conditions as well as close connection of the individual with his social group. The society which is shaped on the basis of Islam is usually related to such civilizations.
According to another definition civilization is a big variety of people admitting the unity of their destiny. The idea of civilization is the idea of united destiny. It is obvious that in the context of such definition the Armenians are considered to be a civilized nation.
According to traditional notions, the defeated states (nations) in the war or conflict are considered to be out of history and civilization processes. Their return to civilization was through restoration of political independence.
Thus when it is discussed whether Armenia is considered to be a specific local civilization, special attention should be paid to the context in which the issue is discussed. If we consider the history to be a competition and dialogue of civilizations, then the nations which lose the capacity of historical and cultural self-determination are excluded from the historical context. By the failure of this capacity we are derailed from the trend of historical developments and turn into the waste of other civilizations, maybe somehow usable but worthless to great extent.
In today’s geo-territorial domain by saying civilization we understand historical and cultural self-determination of the society with high extent of full value and coordination, in other words the society’s culturological essence (kernel).
For pretending to the sate of high-value and coordination the Armenians must coincide with the following criteria of civilizations:
-to be recognized by the other civilizations in the course of cooperation with them as an independent subject which is above the level of nation, territory and state.
-the existence of the nation’s peculiar, unique potential directed to the future.
-the ability to preserve historical heritage, the existence of its own history and the feeling of sharing the united destiny.
-the existence of critical mass of carriers of valuable criteria.
-the existence of elite which is able to reproduce norms of behavior and valuable criteria.
-the ability to adopt others’ norms of behavior.
Gaining its statehood Armenia returned to the history in the context of old notion of civilization. According to our interpretation of the history we still don’t exist on the level of civilizations’ competition and dialogue. We are just the representatives of a unique civilization which existed in the past, but today we are not a civilized nation. At the same time as a culturologicaly self-determining substance, civilization is a dynamically changing system: It means that each civilization is in the process of development or degradation. Strong nations are able to adopt the influence and norms streaming from outside or to transform and adjust them to their own civilization essence (nucleus), in that way strengthening or repelling alien or destructive. Under the influence of alien norms the nucleus of weak nations is transformed leading to loss of self-determination and assimilation with other civilizations.
For us to understand how one civilization influences on the other we should clear up how the translation of civilization means, attainments and knowledge is realized.
According to us the main transmitters are:
-The state as a social institution which realizes the institutionalization of the rule of conduct on normative-legislative level.
-Science, scientific-technical progress as a powerful tool of innovative changes in the human being’s and society’s living conditions.
-Art as a form of preserving and transferring the society’s historical memory.
-The elite, as a determiner of norms and mode of life and behavior and their re-interpretation.
-Church, as a social institution, preserving the succession of vital guiding lines, the world’s integral spiritual picture and mental and ethical norms of behavior.
A certain code of thinking and behavior is transferred through these transmission canals and if the nation lacks for its own transmissions or they are very weak, then the influence of other, more powerful civilizations is inevitable.
Being not able to form our own standards in Armenia through state system, we adopt the European ones. That’s why the Armenians aspiration to become the UN member state should be considered as a tactical issue realizing the danger of losing the ability of self-determination in the strategic perspective. Incomprehension of the danger which follows communist nihilism, may lead to a new disease, namely consumer like attitude to life, lack of spirituality. And the only meaning in that movement, in case of losing once own “voice”, will become the aspiration to get into “the golden billion”.
We become participants of powerful globalization process through science and scientific and technical progress, which whips out civilization confines or becomes the leverage in the hand of one civilization to control the other. Today the process of Americanisation is mainly carried out through science and scientific and technical progress.
The Art, in a certain historical phase, was under the influence of the main world tendencies. Today the Armenian art develops under the influence of the East and West. But the art gains concernment as a civilization translator when world masterpieces are created under the influence of civilization-culturological essences.
The elite today is dissociated and is not able to elaborate an integral system of valuable criteria and rule of conduct. As a result, mutually exclusive rules of conduct emerge in the dissociated society.
Church is the only institution which preserves and can provide transmission of the unique, integral confessions of Armenians who have preserved the main invariable dogmas throughout centuries. Historically the role of elite in the Armenian community was always undertaken by the representatives of the church. Throughout centuries the church ensured this succession, but for the last 100 years due to historical developments, it was alienated from the wide society. The society’s new institutionalization which was in process for the last 15 years, hasn’t taken into account this peculiarity of our nation, leaving the place of the spiritual elite vacant.
As a matter of fact the elite is considered to be the main transmitter of norms and values reflected in our imaginations about civilization, the elite should provide their adaptation and impose certain restrictions. If the elite lacks these functions, different and often foreign norms take roots in our life circumventing the restrictions and Armenia turns into a province (now one cans speak about a tendency of Europe to turn into a province). (According to our definition provincialism is peculiar to the society which is not able to preserve, create, put into practice and develop its own rule of conduct, valuable criteria and has to orient to the foreign).
From the other hand it is unequivocal that the western values streaming from such Christian approaches to the world as honor, freedom, justice and morality, are acceptable for our society. It is thanks to the church that especially Armenians succeeded in preserving and representing the Christian creed in the destined text passing it throughout centuries, which in the future may provide us a chance to harmonize Christ’s eternal heritage with the tendencies of the new century.
One of the peculiarities of our society is that we are not only under the influence of western civilization; we often forget that we are also under the influence of eastern values.
In this relation let’s cite V. Brusov: “Two powers, two contradicting beginnings crossing, interweaving and interflowing into something new and united, have directed Armenia’s life and created it’s nation’s character throughout thousands of years: the beginning of the west and the beginning of the east, Europe’s spirit and Asia’s spirit. Situated on the verge of two worlds, it has constantly become an arena of clashes among nations and in course of the events was involved in the greatest historical vortexes, It has been destined for Armenia to undertake the role of conciliatory between two different cultures, the one on the basis of which grew the whole Christian West and the other, which today is represented as Muslim East”. Armenia- vanguard of Europe and Asia. This old definition correctly determines the condition of the Armenian nation in the world. Armenian nation’s historical mission, inspired during the whole course of its development, is to be looked for and found in the synthesis of the West and East.
In this sense it is very important if we are able not to integrate into great civilizations and lead a dialog of civilizations instead. We think that not only we can, we just have no choice if we want to preserve our originality.
Each civilization, as a special form of social-historical development, has its culturological and valuable guiding lines differing from the others and its own estimates about the truth. What is true for one civilization may be wrong for the other, that’s to say the criterion is a social-historical practice, which is to distinguish civilizations. The ideas of justice, freedom in different civilizations have different meanings and mental and ethical rules of conduct are completely different and, what is more, mutually exclusive. Should one draw a conclusion from it that one civilization must prevail over the other, make it change its guiding lines, something which happens very often today? Our answer is “no”, the essence of the dialogue among civilizations must be the understanding of these differences and search for mutually acceptable forms of existence.
The solution of civilization self-determination for Armenians is to be the re-interpretation of the past by the elite, which must give us a chance to reveal uniqueness of our identity due to which the Armenians lived in quite different civilizations with various religions and economic and cultural peculiarities at the same time preserving their national identity and thus creating the formula of civilization dialogue and peaceful co-existence. It becomes necessary to look for an own way of development, re-interpret the reasons which caused genocide, create its own conception to co-exist with other civilizations. In the 21st century the main mission of the Armenian nation is to present the whole world its own concept of co-existing.
The key to work out such a doctrine is in the well known formulation of blessed Augustine: “Firstly unity, secondary freedom and love to everything”. It becomes more obvious through the researches of Armenian Church’s history. The essence of the Armenian Church’s history is that the church has preserved the main evangelical confessions in the original form overflowed by Christian pure liberalization.
In comparison with the other Christian trends, in Armenian Apostolic Church it is accepted minimum dogmas and maximum means to develop doctrines. Due to it Armenian Church has always been penetrated with patience both to its parishioners and the representatives of other religions. In spite of the fact that such openness of the church damaged it a lot and made it easy for the other churches to propagandize in the circle of its believers, it was “responsible for fatal consequences of its tolerance, yet, in spite of this bitter experience, it remained faithful to its holy rules of theological and church liberalism. It has and in the future will preserve them inviolable. And if the Armenian Church succeeds in reconciliation of churches, it has all the rights to be proud of its well-deserved fame”. (Archbishop Maghakya Ormanyan).
The originality of our identity is that we have undergone ordeals yet remaining even more viable. In the end, the ordeals made Armenians more unbending not to decline their main confessions, mode of life and world perception in general. Paradoxically as it may seem, the essence of the Armenians is that we are completely overflowed with ineradicable delicate feeling of freedom and justice.
There are a lot of myths which do not let us elucidate the essence of our history’s mission. We try to prove to ourselves that we have prominent scientists who have brought forward new directions, that our art has shaped new directions, that the Armenians were in the basis of many innovations. Such a mythology is necessary for a nation in the regime of survival, when it is essential to find power, energy and incentives to fight for preserving its identity. But when it is a question of development, such myths can catch us in an intellectual trap and not allow us to uncover the cardinal essence of the Armenian nation.
Civilization may be considered the nation which realizes its historical mission, and from this standpoint the exposure of Armenian nations’ historical essence reveals its mission for us and gives an answer to the question: “Why do we exist up till now and what must we say to the world?”. The way predetermined for our nation was full of ordeals. Overcoming them we became stronger, more viable and each historical ordeal put in our subconscious and genetic code at least two formulas which helped us to continue our life:
- Belief in triumph of freedom and justice.
- Belief that we are elected to undertake the mission of transferring this faith to the others.
The main problem for Armenia today is to realize this mission and suggest the formula of this civilizations’ existence. It is important to understand that we create ourselves as a nation and civilization. We will just look like as we want to see ourselves. Just today an ambitious project is necessary for our nation which will allow us to accumulate potential for farther development.
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