Civilization from the ecological worldview

The article puts forward the thesis that the ability of a person to transform the natural habitat is the basis of civilization and its energy component. Civilization performs the functional role of a universal means of implementing culture in specific historical conditions. Culture is the substance of spirituality and the quintessence of the mankind’s experience, which helps the individual to navigate the world. The ability to work, the manufacture of tools, the development of technology, on the one hand, were used to master external reality and, on the other, determined the formation of the inner spiritual world due to distancing from direct contact with reality. The modern type of individuality is characterized by a desire for independent determination of life positions, as well as the orientation towards free intellectual search, pluralism and diversity of cultural values. The anthropocentric approach views civilization as a set of options for the exploration of the outside world by a person, defines it as a set of the mankind’s socio-cultural and scientific achievements. What we call «social reality» is not only made up of various events produced through practices, but is also present in the form of certain identification mechanisms that distinguish people according to their sociocultural differences. The individual «I» embodying the internal aspects of being as opposed to the external ones and representing an «inverted» image of reality re-creates both the center and the environment of life, which predetermines the structure of a special whole called «ecological civilization».