Noocenologist: The Profession of the Future

Ekaterina Shen

Annotation:

1. Positive models of organising civilization according to the understanding of Russian cosmists.
2. The noosphere as a result of a sensibly arranged biosphere.
3. Biospheric rent as a fundamental condition in fulfilling the requirements of the ecological imperative.
4. The present model of noocenosis: the elementary cluster of a noosphere. A ten-minute slide show, and a seven-minute documentary film
5. Practical noocenology as a highly demanded form of activity.

I have often thought about what it is that differentiates humans from animals. Simple observations of my dogs suggest that they live in the moment and don’t plan for the future. Planning the future by the most part of all people separates from animals, except, quantitatively: humans adapt to the changing conditions of their surroundings, and as a rule never leave the framework of banal consumption and comfortable improvements of their existence, while the future vanishes before them in a sinister endless chain of deaths and births. However, when developing a scientific picture of the world, the most enlightened minds of humanity have learned to draw in fine detail various strategies not only targeting human civilization, but also all planetary biomes. The most well-known strategy for the future of human civilization was outlined in the, albeit already forgotten, theory of Marx. In addition to the theory of Marxism, at least two fundamental paradigms of the human future have been described in, foremost, the masterpieces of world scientific fiction. The American model, as found in the works of Harry Harrison, Arthur Clarkе, Ursula Le Guin, and Frank Herbert, implies the predatory expansion of earthlings into other worlds. Cultivated on Earth and then transferred, this model constitutes the seizure of foreign territories by “nations-colonizers” with the goal to extract all resources, including the elimination of obstructive factors, among other things the aboriginal population. Specifically, we are talking about strategies to barbarously plunder the natural resources of the colonized territories. It is relevant to mention that after a 30 years of interaction with professional colonisers there is every reason to suggest that the shared fate of colonized peoples will befall the inhabitants of Post-Soviet countries. I dare to suggest that the fate of the North American Indians and the natural environment which served them as a habitat is well known to the present reader.

A polar opposite model concerning the development of humanity was first demonstrated in the works of Russian cosmist Aleksander Sukhovo-Kobylin at the end of the 19th century. He was the first to formulate the possibility of "sideral" penetration of earthlings deep into space, carrying out a noble mission to study new worlds. From this time onwards, this model of a noble development mission when venturing into new worlds was depicted in the science fiction works of Ivan Efremov and expressed in idea of the Great Circle - a cosmic commonwealth of highly developed intelligent civilizations. This idea was picked up by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky and reached it’s zenith in the works “Hard to Be a God”, “Beetle in the Anthill” and “The Time Wanderers” , which promote the idea of “progressiveness” as the fundamental chain used in penetrating other worlds. This conception fundamentally differs from that of pillaging attainable worlds, illustrated extensively in the blockbuster "Avatar" by the American director James Cameron.

With the fall of the Soviet Union the idea of the Great Circle and Progressiveness as a highly ethical form of advancement into the Large space lost its ethical and material base, transforming, together with the idea of building communism, into a utopia. Planet Earth in today’s world is saturated with the ideology of business and overconsumption, which is leading to the destruction of biosphere and the collapse of human civilization. At its present stage in history, humanity, infected with the ideology of money grubbing, poses a threat to any humane power throughout the cosmos, as it carries with itself potential extermination and reckless overconsumption of accessible resources. Thankfully, technological progress is not capable of solving the problem of how to send destroyers in mass beyond the limits of our planet. As a result we are doomed to stay within the borders of Earth’s limited space and if we want to live it is necessary to create a model of existence that does not only not bring harm to nature, but that also restores destroyed biosphere, on the huge territories which have been devastated by people due to imprudent management. Such form of activity is absent in the world classifiers of economic activity and citizen services. Nevertheless, such work is being conducted, and according to the conceptions of my colleagues, it is the hand-created reasonably-arranged biosphere of the second order, that is the noosphere.

The current mass-strategy of “Sustainable Development”, actually formulated as Managing and Measuring Sustainable Development, is geared towards developing control over every square meter of land, every person and every piece of currency in order to further  exhaust all  types of natural resources and to stimulate new forms of consumer activity.

As such, there are two mutually exclusive paradigms on how to hypothetically master the Great cosmos: consumeristic and progressive, which are correspondingly polarized in American and Russian formats.

Two cosmological doctrines emerge from these positions:

The first doctrine is the “American dream”: the dominating and priority myth of modernity, impudently championed by the promoter of American ideology Zbigniew Brzezinski in his work "The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership". Take notice that Brzezinski does not offer any alternatives to global domination and global leadership, which are, in essence, exactly the same.

The second doctrine is that of the "Russian idea", which is entirely tangled up and clouded by "exaggerated slavophilic patriotism" and imported clericalism. An enlightened mind, however, is able to perceive the fundament of the «Russian idea» not only as the intuitive aspiration to live justly, according to truth and to one’s conscience, but also the deep conceptual fundament expressed in the  ideas of Russian cosmism and the domination of a clear noospheric theory by the mutually exclusive logos of "Sustainable Development".

Theoretically one could endlessly debate the indicated topics. The authentic scientific foundation, however, as expressed in the ideas of Russian cosmism and noospheric world understanding, requires the transition to practical forms of work, because, as we know, only practice is the criterion of truth. Such practical experience manifests itself precisely in the sensible physical transformation of already devastated terrestrial biosphere into noosphere, and only subsequently we acquire the right to cosmic progressiveness, first of all on one’s own planet. Otherwise humanity has not earned the right, ethically, to export into outside worlds a disgraceful model of interaction with the natural environment, as is currently prevailing. As such, we, people, either rebuild the planetary landscape into a harmonious rationally equipped biosphere - noosphere, and receive the right to access other worlds, or we perish in our own toxic waste and self destruct with the help of our self-devised weapons of mass destruction. One of the most authoritative futurologists of the west Dennis Meadows, who published in Russian his work "The Limits to Growth. 30 years later", conducted large-scale research, modeling the development of human civilization along 10 possible scenarios, and determined the 100 most important parameters for these scenarios, which all end in an apocalyptic finale.

An alternative theory is presented in the works of the world-famous Soviet scientist Nikolay Vladimirovich Timofeev-Ressovsky, in coordination with the mathematical models of Nikita Nikolayevich Moiseyev. He promoted the model "biospheric rent", which views the biosphere as a gigantic combine, on which humanity is obliged to live with a certain percentage of "green turnover". With the thoughtless destruction of this "combine", the human race is dooming itself to self annihilation. In view of the short-sighted and irrational operating control systems, the predictive models of future civilization, as presented by Meadows, Timofeev-Ressovsky and Moiseyev, coincide with reality.

It is extremely difficult to dispute the opinion of authoritative specialists. It is evident that humanity is incapable of intentionally changing the course of unlimited consumption. It would seems that the project for transforming biosphere into noosphere, ends on this sad note, as humanity is clearly unable to cope with the role of a sensible environment-forming factor and the sensible idea to build planetary communism did not take root in body of civilization. It turns out that mankind condemned itself to collapse until it has reached a biospherical appropriate level, that is almost until zero. Thus, how can we in such situation talk of creating noosphere without being utopians? I would like to give you good news. Such conception exists, formed upon the empirical basis and mapped out in  Alexander Edvinovich Wegosky’s publication "Characteristics of Posthomo Evolutional Group", as published by the academic Stakhov on the site Academy of Trinitarianism. In order to avoid bias, I, myself, will not illustrate the particularities of this valuable scientific work, and instead refer to the commentary of Doctor of Technical Sciences, prof. Yuri Vasilyevich Safroshkin.

… As we understand from the review, the disappearance of mankind is not the end of the world, for evolutionary logic indicates to the wise arrangement of nature, which replaces inadequate biogroups with ones more ideal. In Wegosky’s conception the responsibility to form noosphere lies upon the shoulders of the next generation of sentient beings, that fundamentally differ from people according to a number of ethical and other innovative features. The practical application of this concept can be found in conscious evolutionary-progressive work, as expressed in the creation of clusters of post-industrial society - noocenosis, meaning the elementary subunits of a forthcoming noosphere. I have been fortunate enough to become a full member in this process and actually doing practical noocenology for the past 12 years, since completing my postgraduate studies at Mendeleev University