Intellectual Triumph of Harmony in Collective Global Peace Science
INSPIRATIONAL, 13 Jun 2016
Leo Semashko – TRANSCEND Media Service
Source, Milestones and the Fruits of Intellectual Triumph of Harmony
SOURCE: June 22, 1941 – my mom, Augusta Rumyantseva, 21 years, with me two days newborn in a maternity hospital in Grodno, on the USSR western border, at 4 o’clock in the morning wakes up from the horrible Nazi bombings. She spent all week underneath them during evacuation in a freight train to Leningrad. Their hell was vividly remembered during her lifetime and she could not remember them without tears. In the war’s early days my father was killed. He was a Red Army lieutenant, who remained for us with mother forever by missing heroic soldier who died defending us. My mother’s constant memories were of that terrible murderous evacuation with me as a newborn, when not only she saved me from death, but, as she spoke, I saved her, giving her courage to fight for the life of child and her mantra “that there was no more war for you” became for me a testament and the priority of life motivation, overcoming all other aspirations: wealth, power, career, savings, property and personal well-being. (I note in parentheses, poverty is not a vice but is disharmony, even explainable and justifiable by circumstances). But God gave me two good sons, who help me, many grandchildren and great grandchildren. At the end of my life I am very lucky with a soft and knowing wife who shares my desire for harmony. However, maternal motivation was the initial landmark of my conscious life in the search for an answer to key question: “How people can exclude war?” This question from my mother brought me to the philosophy of harmony via diversity my earliest enthusiasms.
In childhood and adolescence, which took place up to graduating from high school in town Bezhetsk, Tver region, among the many books read, a special impression was left on me by Hugo’s novel “Toilers of the Sea”, the protagonist persistence of which was for me an example of permanent follow. Another memorable example of perseverance was my grandfather, Konstantin Rumyantsev, who with his paralyzed right arm stubbornly coached it by pood kettlebell. Although I was not particularly diligent in teaching, I differed with passionate desire to learn different areas of human life, to try my own hands in all available and to experiment on himself. So I passionately entrained with skiing, bicycle, skating, gymnastics, athletics, boxing, sambo, chess, swimming, almost all kinds of simulation (air, electricity, radio, shipbuilding), construction of boats, theatrical studio, singing, playing the violin, poetry, painting, creative writing (especially fiction), journalism – in adulthood, with all kinds of tourist trips, physics, philosophy, etc. (I am practicing exercises, swimming and jogging until now). Of course, at the same time, I always helped my mother to work in the garden, which fed us during those famine times. In all cases, I wanted to be a leader, the first, although it does not always work. To do this, I always wanted to learn, first of all the humanities, to respond to the mother’s social issue.
The first milestone: 1959 – admission to the correspondence department of the Philosophy Faculty of Moscow State University. I could not study in the full-time department because the family was very poor and I must was to work. The combination of study and work on the construction of Bratsk hydroelectric station in Siberia turned out to be a very fruitful harmonious synthesis, which I have kept for a lifetime and I was never afraid of physical work. After graduation, my employment has always been connected with intellectual and pedagogical work. Another benefit of distance learning was that it saved me from the excessive imposition of Marxism, which was impregnated with each course at the faculty and left no room for freedom of thought and choice beyond as “the only true and invincible teachings of all in the world“, which burst on all seams with the collapse of the USSR.
The second milestone: 1970 – completion of full-time graduate studies in the sub department of “History of Foreign Philosophy” and successfully defended my doctoral dissertation on the history of ancient Greek philosophy to Plato inclusively at the Philosophy Faculty of Moscow State University. Outstanding professors of this department had great influence on me – Valentin Asmus and Igor Narski, who were my scientific supervisors. During graduate school I had a lot to catch up in the student and study of Greek, English and German for working with ancient sources. The means for life I earned in Norilsk with the MSU student construction brigades, which I organized every summer. Immersion in ancient philosophy was for me to dive in the harmony of cosmos and society through the ideas of great thinkers – Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Plato, Aristotle, and others, who have become for me an intellectual ideal for which I have always aspired in my sociological imagination. But at the time I was a convinced Marxist and I sought to improve Marxism, in the course of development of which I faced long and difficult changes to be freed from its heritage, keeping from it its major achievement and discovery in “German Ideology”, 1845 – four spheres of social production as the core of society. Marx developed the struggle and antagonism employed in them particular (local) classes on the way of materialistic (economic) monism, and I, under the influence of pluralism and harmony of ancient philosophy, took the path of tetra-Spheres (four-dimensional) pluralism, developing social harmony of the universal spheral classes of the population (SPHERONS) constituting a deep social structure and eternal social genome (SOCIONOME – genetic code) of society. Their conscious discovery took place in the “Demiurge” Club in 1976. Marx was one step away from their discovery in “German Ideology”. Making this step prevented his materialistic monism, overcoming which required almost two centuries.
The third milestone: 1976 – organization of the student (then – worker-student) Club “Demiurge” for harmonious development of young people in the Leningrad Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics (ITMO University), where I worked as assistant professor in the department of philosophy. With this Club began my philosophy and sociology of social harmony, which later became known as “Tetraphilosophy” and “Tetrasociology”, components in unity “Tetrism”, as they were based on the ideas of tetrad (four-dimensional and four-spheral) structure of the universe, society and human. These ideas were evolved from ancient sources but not only one of them. The Demiurge organizational structure was constituted by the four spheral micro groups of its members, corresponding to the four spheres of social production and the four harmonious spheral classes of the population, which received then the name SPHERONS, which define the deep (spheral) social structure, unknown until now in social science. More detailed work of “Demiurge” and related follow-up of youth associations are presented here: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=259 and here: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=257 .
The “Demiurge” motto was two Latin sayings: “nosce te ipsum” and “per aspera ad astra”: “know thyself and through thorns to stars”. The Club spiritual confession of faith was the Kipling’s poem “If” (“Commandment”) with its first lines of the heroic enthusiasm “If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you.” This poem via 35 years became the epigraph of the GHA book “Harmonious Civilization” in 2009.
As a result of my scientific work in the design institute “Lensistemotehnika” in 1981-1988 I was developed and tested in many projects of economic development of a city in a unique “Spheral Information-Statistical Technology” (SIST) on the basis of tetrasociology, its theories of four spheres and four spheral classes of the population. SIST is designed to ensure their universal harmonization (coordination, balance), overcoming the social disharmony. More detailed results of this period are presented in my first published book “Spheral Approach”, 1992: http://peacefromharmony.org/file/5162/1992-semashko-sferniy_podhod.pdf. Naturally, in view of the inconsistency of this approach to Marxism, as well as stagnation of the Soviet leadership, unable to understand the SIST technological breakthrough it was ignored, and the author became and remained still a dissident for the Marxist and liberal way of thinking, kindred in spirit and exclusive harmony. I am deeply convinced that SIST with its unique ability to statistically digitize any socio-economic processes, will become the center of the starting fourth technological revolution, core of digital economy of the 21st century, publicly available as a manner of pacifization, global peace, transforming globalization and informatization in the peace-building tools and providing a bridge between two centuries of backwardness of social sciences from natural and military sciences. The science of harmony and its systems technology SIST will open a new, social cosmos for studies and be used as a primary source of economic growth and social progress. Time for the understanding, recognition and application of systems technology SIST has come just now. It is necessary for all, everywhere and always to save mankind from the corrosive disharmony of industrialism in its equal dead-end systems of capitalism and socialism.
The fourth milestone: 1990 – I was elected by deputy of the Leningrad City Council (Parliament) of 21 convocation from the 48 electoral district in our city. I started with creation of the “Children’s Foundation of F.M. Dostoevsky” and later with the Parliament faction “Spheral Democracy” on the basis of Tetrism and Tetrasociology. The most important result of this period was the political use of tetrasociology, embodied in a completely new concept and theory of “spheral democracy” built on the equal distribution of power in all its branches between four spheral classes of the population – between SPHERONS. Only such democracy is harmonious, truly popular, serving the entire population, rather than 1% of the rich or the elite, eliminating militarism and ensuring the global peace from SPHERONS’ social harmony (http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=58, http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=368).
Another important contribution to the science of social harmony (in tetrasociology) at this stage was theory of the social priority of children, embodied in the activities “Children’s Foundation of F.M. Dostoevsky” (1990-1998) and its first Russian project of “Family Code” (1991) with the spheral classification of children’s rights and many other innovations that are included partly in the Constitution of Russia (through Anatoly Sobchak) and the Family Code of Russia, which gradually develops the theoretical wealth of our project. But its key political and humanistic idea – children’s suffrage, exercised by parents, and harmonizing the state, politics and democracy, was beyond the reach of the modern disharmonious political system. This idea will be implemented in the future harmonious transformation of the traditional state (http://peacefromharmony.org/docs/2-4_eng.pdf,
http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=211, Institute of Children’s Suffrage for Global Peace by Peter Semashko: http://peacefromharmony.org/docs/global-peace-science-2016.pdf, p. 274-276).
The fifth milestone: 2005 – establishment of an international peacemaking volunteer (without a single dollar of external funding) “Global Harmony Association” (GHA) together with the website in 12 languages to ensure the broad spread of innovative peace ideas. GHA became an international incubator for the science of social harmony and global peace from harmony as an intellectual triumph of harmony in our time, lifting it for the first time in history on a global scientific level. The embodiment of this triumph is the book “Global Peace Science” (616 pages) by 174 co-authors from 34 countries, which was published first in Russian by 89 co-authors from 30 countries (432 pages) in 2015 in St. Petersburg, and a year later – in 2016 – in English in New Delhi, India, in collaboration with the Pedagogical IASE (D) University (http://peacefromharmony.org/docs/global-peace-science-2016.pdf). A brief Resume of the book on one page, look here: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=656. In this book, in its more than 300 articles on the basis and within the four-spheral paradigm of social harmony, we found organic synthesis and logical unity of almost all constructive peacemaking ideas of the past and the present of hundreds of authors in almost all cultures and civilizations of the world. No one, anywhere and never has created anything like and comparable in history. Social harmony and global peace from it first received scientific expression and explanation in this work. The triumphant achievements of Global Peace Science (GPS) are clearly defined in the book title:
- Peace in its scientific terms is the first common good and human right to life,
- The scientific understanding of peace from harmony is a revolution of social sciences and thinking,
- Peace science is the beginning of historic creation peace from harmony and not from war, as in the past,
- This science is a historic nonviolent victory of peace over war possible already in the 21st century.
These integral achievements, all together with their deep historical reasons, as it seems to me, expressed the peak and turning point in the development of “second axial age” of humanity, since 1950, as German philosopher Karl Jaspers wrote, comparing it with the first “axial time” about 2,500 years back. The second axial time is the fall of the industrial empires of disharmony – the USSR in 1990 and the US in 2020 – are both on Galtung’s prediction, and the decline of their private, disharmonious “branch” thinking and the emergence within the old – the new, spheral harmonious tetranet thinking. Together with it begins a new, harmonious civilization, which starts in the GHA since scientific self-awareness itself, and since creation of peace science (GPS), in order to avoid any violence of its appearance and give it only the peaceful way of building by all the peoples of the planet.
The GHA intellectual work on development of science of harmony and peace initiated many new historical trends or helped them find their scientific awareness. We listed these trends:
- Beginning new, harmonious era starting since the creation of “Harmonious Era Calendar” (2006),
- Launching building harmonious civilization since the creation of its scientific consciousness in Tetrism embodied in “Harmonious Civilization” (2009), excluding social violence,
- Start of the Age of Harmonious Enlightenment and global harmonious education since the creation of “The ABC of Harmony” (2012),
- Beginning of the Peacefulness and Global Peace era, which excludes from the history all the wars, armed conflicts, and providing complete general disarmament, starting since the creation of “Global Peace Science” (2015/16). No matter how fantastic they did not seem to people of the militaristic industrial era, these trends are insurmountable facts of birth of a new civilization and a new humanity within the old and moribund. The conscious birth of these trends is marked by the publication of the relevant GHA books during 11 years.
Another fundamental difference of these achievements is that they constitute a collective triumph or triumph of “collective consciousness” according to Durkheim. I always understood clearly and repeatedly stressed that I alone would not be able to do this work and to achieve these results without the huge international team of GHA. Although I was doing it as the mission of an intellectual initiator, integrator and organizer but without two key influences of the GHA collective I would not be able to finish its work. The first factor of influence is the ideas richness and diversity of the initial information making necessary building blocks of GPS and other works. The second factor is the team organizing impact, responsibility, obligation and duty before it for the commitments of team’s ethics and simple human support, sympathy and help. Now it is difficult to say which of these two factors was more important. I know only one thing: without them I would not have fulfilled my social and personal mission in GHA. Therefore, in my soul sounds only a deep gratitude to all members of the GHA, especially the hundreds of coauthors of our eight books + 50 peace projects and especially to coauthors of the last book, crowning our 11 years creativity.
The intellectual triumph of harmony in GPS – is its first but not the last conscious triumph, the number of which will be countless in followed times. We distinguish already now that, if not quickly and easily, for an intellectual triumph will follow the cultural and educational triumphs of harmony, its political triumph, its economic triumph, its social and historical triumph. They radically transform the whole traditional, violent history of mankind excluding from it all, as nightmare, wars, militarism, terrorism and any physical violence. This triumph of the 21st century is opposed to disharmony triumphs of the past centuries:
- Intellectual triumph of disharmony, violence and struggle in the writings of Marx, 19th century;
- Intellectual and political triumph of disharmony in the writings of Lenin, 20th century.
The GPS positive value cannot be overestimated. In its light the causes of recent cataclysms become clear. Without this science and its universal technology of statistical digitizing (SIST) of all social and economic processes for their constant harmonization there were two world wars of the 20th century, the USSR fell, the EU is crashing, the USA approaches the collapse of 2020, as Galtung predicted, China is losing ground, Russia is mired in crisis, etc. The world as a whole came close to the brink of nuclear self-destruction in the new and last, fatal for humanity, global thermonuclear war. Its alternative of life from social harmony is SIST within the framework of Global Peace Science, which was born in Russia internationally. This is an alternative of the third way in relation to the equal but in different ways disharmonious systems of capitalism and socialism – the way of a harmonious civilization built on SPHERONS and based on them preserving and promoting all their cultural achievements of the past. Disharmony of private property in the capitalist camp was not corrected and repaired by disharmony of state property in the socialist camp of the 20th century.
Therefore, GPS and its technologies meet a crucial global need of the time and the first condition of global sustainable development. Of course, our GHA of GPS version is only its first, far from perfection, variant requiring further international development under the auspices of the UN and UNESCO (http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=686), that it has found universal acceptance by all the peoples of the world. It is the most difficult task.
Of course, I realize well that the GHA (as well as my previous creative teams) was not ideal as a perfect example of harmony and was far from it. GHA was burdened with the rudiments of the old industrial (capitalist and socialist) disharmonious world, so its harmony has been limited in all its aspects. But the very deliberate aspiration to harmony, contrary to traditional personal and social disharmony, is a victory of harmony. I can judge this for yourself: my conscious aspiration to harmony has made me a much better and, if not relieved, it severely limited and has frozen my many personal disharmonies and disadvantages derived from society. So I can say with complete justification: my first historic triumph of conscious harmony for 40 years is the harmony of its first conscious organizations, starting with the club “Demiurge” and ending with “Global Harmony Association” with its unparalleled intellectual achievement – “Global Peace Science” opening a new era of humanity – Peacefulness Age. Its appearance in a result of purposeful release from the generic covers of individual and social disharmony and its totalitarian ideologies of Marxism and liberalism – is a fundamental victory for each participant of this historical process of harmonization and accompanying its pacifization.
I would especially like to comment on the role of Russia in this process. It is contradictory. On the one hand, and this is its fundamental dignity and historical advantage, Russia has a unique experience of thousands of years of social harmony in the form of the Orthodox sobornost, tune, concord, consent and peace of different peoples and cultures, as Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote great as well as and dozens of other prominent Russian thinkers. The attempt of acceleration of those experiences of social equality with good aim in 1917 led Russia on the grievous Marxist path of violent revolutions and class wars, which ended in a historic collapse of the USSR and Marxism. Once again, both given and contained many constructive, that is worthy of preserving and developing in GPS. But in general, as the country history has shown, the paradigm of class violence (class disharmony) is contrary and prevents the development of Russia as, however, and the development of all countries without exception. Now Russia stays only on the powerful intuition of harmony with Vladimir Putin, which he possesses originally from the Russian spirituality (see our analysis of his position in GPS, Chapter 10). This intuition keeps Russia from the loss of its spiritual identity and from any aggression. But it cannot take shape scientifically due to the ideological prejudices of Marxism and liberalism related to the root and pressuring in society – different forms of totalitarian ideology of disharmony. And this intuition cannot be eternal and universal. Eternal and universal can only be a science of harmony, which is ignored and remains a dissident in Russia for these reasons, although it was born in it. But I am sure that in Russia young thinkers and practitioners who will understand and appreciate this science to master its unique technologies of harmonization will be found, and will create political democratic system based on harmony of SPHERONS and will return Russia to the direction of generic spiritual harmony but on a completely new, scientific level. This is my intellectual and political testament for Russian young generations and not only Russia.
CONCLUSION – Each person’s life is significant as it has the vital achievements for society, family and for nearby. My life I can call, without boasting, very significant for humanity thanks to the intellectual triumph of harmony in GPS reached on my initiative and with my direct and most weighty (my 100 articles of 309 in GPS) participation. Following our poetic star – Alexander Pushkin, I can say that by my peace science (GPS) I “monument created without hands/ to it has not overgrows the popular trail” because people always need peace, which is impossible without science (GPS). But some, being in captivity of militaristic prejudices consider me as “crazy” in my aspiration to peace from harmony, as for example some of my former ‘colleagues’ at the Petro Soviet, who were obsessed with Marxism or liberalism/conservatism and loaded them with head not knowing anything else. I repeat: they both – neither one – were able to offer in the 20th century a scientific project of global peace, before which they were weak, powerless and helpless, in contrast to GPS. These doctrines are limited to class; they represent the interests of particular classes only, only 1% of the ruling elite, not the population in a whole as the 100% of GPS in its SPHERONS, therefore they are false, disharmonious, militaristic and unscientific. These teachings are examples of historically transient, perverted militaristic consciousness, which inevitably will be replaced by the true peacebuilding and scientific paradigm of GPS from harmony. It is an alternative to them, because it expresses the interests of the whole population and all its classes, so it is acceptable to all classes and nations of the Earth. This is alternative of the third way, which is harmonious and a just for all in harmony, therefore its general recognition and final victory are inevitable in the future. Perhaps, in this conclusion is the main achievement and triumph of my life in GPS and GHA. It is a conclusion of key importance for social consciousness, spiritual culture and human sciences of mankind in the 21st century for its survival and sustainable development. But for mainstream, degraded and moribund doctrines of the 20th century, I, GPS and GHA with our harmony and global peace from it are dissidents or “crazy”. This should be recognized fairly as a medical fact. What is its perspective? It was well defined by Gandhi: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” This has been the second after Kipling epigraph of my life that keeps me afloat. For others to understand its significance fully is possible only mastering GPS as a whole.
For my life I was led by a Russian spiritual intuition of harmony, in my version of which there were many failures and mistakes of disharmony inherent disharmonious society in which I lived. Of course, I was carrying in my life marks of almost all environmental vices of disharmony, making a lot of mistakes but resisting them and as far as possible trying to overcome them according to my narrow understanding of self and social harmony, trying to extend it continuously to reach its deep and eternal truths.
Each age has its own laws of harmony as every person who consciously or unconsciously chooses them. They need to listen and feel their by intuition, so that they become agents of life. I came into life with the beginning of the war, but I want to overcome it and get away from life in the other world with harmony, at least with a firm hope for its triumph via science we created in the GHA. I am sure this science will not remain forgotten and without followers in all spheres of society in the world. And how soon it will happen – it is not so important. The important thing is that it will happen inevitably if humanity will save itself from military self-destruction. This convinces me in all my life milestones in 75 years. Sadly and tragically, because of the lack of humanity of GPS, only one thing: as 75 years ago on the western border of Russia, which Pentagon declared “enemy number 1” and accumulates the aggressive forces of the US/NATO, like the Nazi forces of 1941, the attack of which will mean not only their crash but a catastrophe of humanity as a result of a global nuclear war. Only Russia can stop it, if it will head the global nonviolent peacebuilding front based on GPS against the US/NATO militarism. This project is presented in details in GPS (Chapter 10).
As much as I expressed my perception of the world – for someone it is difficult and unclear, for someone it is clear, convincing and inspiring (to please everyone is impossible, as it is known), in any case, I hope it will serve for each member of my jubilee a good spiritual impetus for self-knowledge and persistent harmonious movement through the thorns to the stars.
FEEDBACK. As a professional sociologist, not quenching the thirst of sociological surveys and experiments, I ask everyone to print this text for yourself, read it carefully and select in by underlining and numbering the five most positive ideas in it and two more negative ideas. Please send me the marked text for sociological generalizations by email or regular mail. It will be an interesting intellectual game to find harmony and develop its understanding for everyone. Thanks for your reply.
My detailed biography is here: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=253
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 13 Jun 2016.
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