Global Harmony Association
Dr. Leo Semashko
Global Harmony Association President,
St.Petersburg State Councillor,
IAEWP Advisory Board Chair,
Director, Public Tetrasociological Institute, St. Petersburg,
Address: 7-4-42 Ho-Shi-Min Street, St. Petersburg, 194356, Russia.
Tel: +7 (812) 513-38-63
Fax: +78125133863
www.peacefromharmony.org
General Harmonious Education as the Best Way for Harmonization of Relations between Religions
By the Global Harmony Association project:
World Harmony/Peace Academy and General Harmonious Education in an Information Society
Presentation in Yalta at Conference "Religion and civil society",
November 20-22, 2008
Publications:
In Russian: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=374
In English: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=352
Copyright © 2008 Global Harmony Association
Copyright © 2008 Leo Semashko
Abstract
The qualitative difference and advantage of "general harmonious education" is to unfold scientifically the deep fundamental elements and natural laws of social and individual harmony. This scientific knowledge comprises the universal key contents of general harmonious education. These elements and laws of harmony are unfolded in a new social science, known as tetrasociology. The main purpose of general harmonious education and the Harmony Academies is to transfer and apply scientific knowledge about these laws and technologies for the benefit of new generations. The harmonious education is necessary, useful and acceptable for all nations and for all conscious people to ensure prosperity, sustainable development, the common good and harmonious peace on the Earth. Therefore, general harmonious education is the best way for decision of all global problems of humankind, including a problem of the inter-faith relations.
Foreword
Four great educational ideas make a basis of my presentation.
1. Confucius, 2500 back: If you think 100 years forward: teach children.
2. Mahatma Gandhi: If we are ever to have real peace in this world, we shall have to begin with the children.
3. Nelson Mandela: Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the World.
4. Eleanor Roosevelt: We must prepare with the revolution of education, which will be unavoidable if we want to face the new conditions of understanding and controlling them. Without a completely new approach in education, our youth will not be completely equipped to face the world of the future.
The general sense of these ideas consists in recognition of education as key way for decision of all problems of humankind. These great universal ideas are as urgent today as they ever were. They "ripened" and even "over ripened" into an information society in expectation of a global project that would bring about their fulfillment.
Such a project was created in the first half of 2008 by more than 70 authors of the Global Harmony Association (GHA) from 22 countries. Their project is titled "World Harmony/Peace Academy and General Harmonious Education in an Information Society". It is published in five languages: Russian, English, Spanish, Chinese and Romanian on the web site: http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=277 and in a 104-page book with the same title [1].The translations into French, Arabic and other languages have also been prepared.
The great educational ideas were embodied in the real project at the expense of creation of a new four-dimensional science about social and individual harmony, which received a title "Tetrasociology." This science unfolds a deep (invisible) structure of harmony, which comprise the fundamental elements of harmony in society and people and their laws. The scientific knowledge about elements and laws of a deep structure of harmony learned in an appropriate educational technology at all schools, colleges and universities of the world creates general (or global) harmonious education. The harmonious education simultaneously is a synonym for the true peace education acceptable to all world religions. Such education provides harmonization of the relations between them.
Therefore, harmonious education represents a harmonious revolution of education in general, and it completely corresponds to a new, information civilization.
16 fundamental elements (spheres) of social harmony
The science of harmony begins with the unfoldment of its fundamental elements and laws. In this lecture, we shall be limited only to the subject of social harmony.
All history of philosophical and sociological thinking resulted in allocation of sixteen necessary and sufficient elements of any society; these include harmony. We shall title them the “elements of social harmony,” because only their coordination, proportion and balance provide harmonization of a society and make it harmonious.
Elements of harmony are the extreme large spheres, which are titled ”sphere elements.” There are four groups of the fundamental elements (spheres) of social harmony: RESOURCES, PROCESSES, STRUCTURES and CLASSES of the population. They are necessary and sufficient for existence and harmony of any society in any place at any time.
Resources are: all People, all Information (knowledge), all Organizations and all Things, material boons, including material services. In abbreviated form the resource elements are designated PIOT. They are a subject of a social statics in tetrasociology.
Processes (or functions) are: Production, Distribution, Exchange (Market) and Consumption. In abbreviated form, the functional elements are designated PDEC. Each resource of PIOT passes through processes of PDEC. They make a subject of social dynamics in tetrasociology.
Structures or spheres of PIOT reproduction are: Social, which reproduces People (P); Informational, which reproduces Information (I); Organizational, which reproduces Organizations (O); and Technical or material and economic, which reproduces Things (T). In abbreviated form, the reproduction spheres are designated SIOT. The reproduction spheres unite the resources of PIOT and the processes of PDEC for reproduction of the new PIOT. The SIOT spheres make a subject of social structuratics in tetrasociology.
Note. For the first time in a history the similar four spheres of social reproduction named Marx in "German Ideology" in 1845. However, this certainly ingenious idea was only intuitive at Marx. It was deprived of any proofs and fundamental bases. Marx was resulted by it to economism, i.e. to materialistic monism as a primacy of material sphere and secondary character of three other spheres. This theoretical mistake, i.e. monism, as all subsequent history shown, turned back by the enormous practical mistakes (world system of socialism) and huge human victims in the 20th century.
Tetrasociology keeps four spheres of social reproduction from Marxism. However, Tetrasociology makes under them the fundamental bases of four necessary and sufficient social resources of PIOT, which simultaneously are and products, and subjects of the appropriate productive spheres of SIOT. The necessary and sufficient character of PIOT resources, excluding their primacy (monism), determines necessary and sufficient (i.e. equal and pluralistic) character of SIOT spheres. Hence, the SIOT spheres in Tetrasociology exclude a primacy (monism) and express their fundamental pluralism, i.e. equal necessity and sufficiency of each sphere for ANY society and civilization.
Marxism and Tetrasociology coincide in a recognition of four social spheres but they fundamentally differ from each other as monism and pluralism, as the one-dimensional and many- (four) dimensional theoretical systems. Marxism was the theory of a disharmonious industrial society, in which the economy or production of the material boons dominates. Tetrasociology is the theory of a harmonious information society, in which the priority (but not primary) place occupies production of the information ensuring CONSCIOUS harmony as between the PIOT resources as between the appropriate SIOT spheres. It is unfolded below in the laws of Tetrasociology.
Classes of the population occupied in the spheres of reproduction of SIOT are:
SOCIOCLASS, which is employed (occupied) in the sociosphere;
INFOCLASS, which is employed (occupied) in the infosphere;
ORGCLASS, which is employed (occupied) in the orgsphere;
TECHNOCLASS, which is employed (occupied) in the technosphere.
Sphere classes cover the entire population and differ in the general spheres (SIOT) of occupation or employment rather than the private and temporary attributes of property or stratification. Therefore, they are titled as SPHERE classes. In abbreviated form, the sphere classes are designated SIOT as well as spheres. Sphere classes are the actors of social harmony. Their general employment and occupation express the universal activity of people from birth to death in spheres of SIOT. General employment and occupation and the sphere classes are a subject of social occupatics in tetrasociology — from the English language, this means ‘occupation’ as any kind of activity.
All elements of social harmony exist in all social objects: family, enterprise (small firms, corporations, and so on), branch, region, country, humankind (social world, global society, and so on). However, in each object and at each level, they exist in a specific way, that is, in a qualitatively unique form and in infinite diversity [2].
The laws of social harmony
The laws of social harmony express the basic characteristics, qualities and dependences of its 16 fundamental elements. The basic qualities of elements are universality, necessity, sufficiency and priority.
All elements are universal and necessary for a society, as the absence of even one of them excludes a social existence. All of them are sufficient because there are no other universal social elements necessary for a society and its harmony. This equal necessity of elements is expressed in their different priority in different historical times and in different social spaces of a society.
The basic forms of dependence of elements are disharmony and harmony. The disharmonious dependence is a spontaneous unguided interrelation of elements, characteristic of all types of disharmonious societies. The harmonious dependence is consciously and scientifically controlled harmonious and optimally balanced proportion of all fundamental elements in a society. The harmonious proportions of elements are quantitative measures that require appropriate statistics and mathematics. In tetrasociology, the sphere statistics have already been created and the mathematics of the sphere and harmonious proportions has recently been developed.
The harmonious proportions of the listed elements are a consequence of the laws of social harmony. The formulations of these tetrasociological laws can be independent or be accompanied by the formulations of axioms and definitions. The number of elements (spheres) of harmony in tetrasociology is constant and number of their laws is variable. It depends from the concrete conditions of social space-time of separate societies and civilizations. Therefore and the elements of harmony and their laws require constant scientific (tetrasociological) research in concrete societies. From a lot of the laws of social harmony I shall mention only six laws.
1.AXIOM. All elements (sphere) of social harmony are necessary, sufficient, with different priorities and aspiring to a mutual harmonious proportion as the most favorable state for development of each element. They exist only in mutual inclusion and do not exist separately.
LAW. From all elements (spheres) of social harmony the determining (priority) importance belongs to resources PIOT.
2.Definition. Any social resource is inseparable unity of all PIOT resources, aspiring to a harmonious proportion with a priority of one of them.
LAW. The harmonious social resource is a harmonious proportion of PIOT in it with a priority P, i.e. proportion subordinated to interests of the harmonious human.
3.Definition. The social harmony is an optimum quantitative proportion of the lower and top limits of the sphere elements, which (proportion) makes the most favorable condition of development for each of elements.
LAW. The social harmony all of its elements is determined by harmony of PIOT resourceswith a priority of People.
4.AXIOM. From all resources of social harmony the highest priority have the People as a resource of all resources producing all resources, including oneself. Harmonious proportion of all resources and elements depends only from people and only people provide creation and maintenance of social harmony.
LAW. From all human resources of harmony the highest priority have children, from which grow and produce all human resources (all social capital) in all their diversity and riches.
5.Definition. General harmonious education is the scientific coordinated informing, nurturing and learning of each person, since childhood, in all four spheres of society and individual.
LAW. The quality and harmony of a human resource is determined by level and scale of general harmonious education of children and youth.
6.AXIOM. Humankind will survive in conscious harmony or it will destroy itself.
LAW. General harmonious education is the best way of humankind to social harmony and the most effective method of the decision of its all problems.
Elements of social harmony and their laws make and exhaust a deep structure of social harmony, which is accessible only for appropriate scientific knowledge, which focuses in tetrasociology.
Tetrasociology as a science about social and individual harmony
Definition: Tetrasociology is the pluralist four-dimensional scientific MACRO-SOCIOLOGICAL theory of social and individual harmony. The elements (or macro spheres) and laws of harmony in social space-time are the subject of Tetrasociology. Tetrasociology is the global scientific consciousness and worldview adequate to a harmonious information civilization.
Tetrasociology structure includes the scientific theories of four dimensions of social space (spheres), united by social morphology and the scientific theories of four dimensions of social time or stages of social development, united by social genetics.
The theories of spheres (elements) of social space or social morphology:
Social statics as scientific theory of sphere resources (PIOT);
Social dynamics as scientific theory of sphere processes (PDEC);
Social structuratics as scientific theory of the spheres of reproduction (SIOT);
Social occupatics as scientific theory of the sphere classes of the population (SIOT classes);
The theories of stages of social development or social genetics:
The theory of harmony as balance and prosperity of spheres;
The theory of deceleration as imbalance of spheres;
The theory of decline as degradation of spheres;
The theory of dying as destruction, ruins and chaos of spheres.
The conditions (states) of deceleration, decline and dying make disharmony. The conditions of decline and dying make the strong disharmony and the conditions of delay makes the weak disharmony.
The scientific knowledge of the elements and laws of harmony allows society and persons to constantly be safely within the borders of harmony, to avoid the conditions of decline and dying, and to minimize the conditions of deceleration [3, 4].
Social harmony is a cause; true peace is its consequence
True (indestructible, harmonious and global) peace can be a consequence only of social global harmony, that is, a harmonious proportion of its fundamental elements at a planetary level. True peace expresses the motto of the Global Harmony Association: "Peace goes from harmony; Harmony gives peace and happiness".
