25.10.2007

NORAVANK LECTURING GAGIK HARUTYUNYAN: “INTEGRATION IS THE BEST WAY TO PRESERVE IDENTITY”

On October 17, 2007 in “Noravank” Foundation was delivered a lecture on the subject “Civilization factor in the context of national security problems” (lectured by the political scientist and executive director of “Noravank” Foundation Gagik Harutyunyan) which was the third lecture in accordance with the “Noaravank” educational program on “Armenia and the Armenians in global developments: the present situation and challenges.”

In the beginning of the lecture the speaker mentioned: “information and spiritual security problems have become very urgent in the political clashes characterizing geopolitical picture and the preservation of spiritual values has turned into a most important national security problem. The society may have various spiritual values; however, if they don’t make a system, they become very vulnerable from the standpoint of national security.” It is not by chance that according to the American political scientists the main goal of the national security system is to preserve and spread the US civilization system of values. One can assert that disregard of the civilization and information factor makes any political strategy incomplete.

In this context G. Harutyunyan more scrupulously touched upon the issues of politicized civilization. Noticing that the civilization factor had a primary role in the past as well, the speaker stressed up that as a political category it has been used since 1993, after the publication of Samuel Huntington’s article titled “The clash of civilizations,” which was later on worked up to be issued as a monograph. According to the author, the very clash of civilizations issue the biggest threat for the world in the process of globalization. At the same time, any globalization process includes elements of civilization expansion. Harutyunyan thinks that there are all in all three civilizations in up-to-date world – Western, Latin-American, African, Islamic, Chinese, Heduistic, Orthodox, Buddhist and Japanese. According to Gagik Harutyunyan the Western civilization would better be presented as divided into two parts - European and American (Anglo-Saxon).

The speaker also referred to Huntington’s conception of “divided and disrupted civilization” and as the example of it in post-Soviet territory he mentioned Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan. According to civilization orientations there are elements of disruption in Armenia as well and among Armenians in general. Thus, a part of political orientations of our Republic is directed to the west, and the other part – to Russia. In case of Diaspora, where the orientations differ in accordance with the country of inhabitance, the picture is more colorful. According to G. Harutyunyan, such an approach is first of all conditioned by the complimentary policy carried out by the RA.

The political scientist thinks that nevertheless the position of Armenians is incomparably favorable and there are all the preconditions to assert that the Armenia and Armenians union make a unique, local civilization. The unique spiritual-cultural values peculiar to the Armenian civilization are: a) the etymology and language of Armenians have their unique place in the group of Indo-European countries, b) as the Armenians were the first to adopt Christianity, the Armenian Apostolic Church has its unique orientation and place in the Christian world, c) the alphabet created by Mesrop Mashtots is quite a unique phenomena and the centuries-old literary heritage has been given birth thanks to it, d) Armenian culture (architecture, music, dancing) has all the peculiarities of uniqueness. Let’s add that the Armenians have passed their peculiar historical way and acquired rich political culture, traditions becoming the subject of not only regional but also global policy (particularly taking into account the problems relating to Genocide and the NKR).

One should put a stress on the fact that the Armenian uniqueness is not a mere history; it is also an up-to-date reality and is rooted in the nations’ consciousness. It is obvious that to have a worthy place in the international competition field, civilization uniqueness is a necessary but not sufficient condition. The carrier of a civilization should not only be able to preserve its spiritual-cultural values, but it should also be able to spread and undergo influence, to make use of the chances to develop in the spiritual, intellectual and economic fields, to walk in accordance with international developments. In other words, the civilization system should be perceptible and “open” to be competitive. And, as a solution, the speaker put forward the slogan “integration is the best way to preserve identity.”

The lecture was followed by questions and answers and here was discussed the civilization role of the Armenians in Diaspora, it was stressed up the importance of the role of the national security conception in the sense that that conception for the first time included the Armenians all over the world and an attempt should be made for it not to remain a mere document and turn into a working system. “The problem needs to be treated seriously and worked on consistently” – concluded G. Harutyunyan.