Anthropological Regression in the Modern World Versus Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s Metaphysics of Ontopoiesis of Life

Abstract

Information and technical civilization and the neo-liberalist social and economic system embedded in it causes a number of unfavourable changes in the psychical, mental, personal, somatic and health spheres of life of the modern man.

They have a particularly negative impact on man’s subjectivity and spirituality, quality and style of his life, internal development and traits that constitute humanity.

Among characteristic manifestations of changes discussed here it is necessary to include: emotional and empathic impoverishment of many individuals, weakening and intentional unilaterality of inter-human relations (transformation of such relations into instrumental relations, based on interest, making them formal and functional), trivialization and simplification of lifestyles, depriving life of deeper sense, falling into irrational consumerism and commonplace hedonism, into a life characterized by the premise of “to have” and not “to be”, to become enriched internally and to aim for self-fulfillment.

Further manifestations of the changes that are of interest to us are the increasing symptoms of nervous weakening of many people, especially young people, disintegration or confusion of their personality, uniformisation and dulling of their mentality, lowering the skill of understanding and comprehending the reality in which we live, frequent confusion of what is real with what is virtual, increasing anxieties and internal frustrations, worrying types of various new neuroses and social diseases.

The basic causes of such anthropological changes which take place in the context of technical and information civilization in the area of modern globalization process are, inter alia, the overwhelming impact on mentality, stances and behaviour of an average media person (i.e. inadequate, unilateral and frequently deformed), picture of reality, excessively accelerated and continuously speeding up technological developments whose results – in the form of various constructs, devices, items, IT programmes, etc. – are used so commonly and so mindlessly with respect to their internal mechanisms and technical functionality, especially from the side of various and long-term negative effects of their too frequent usability.

Among further causes of anthropological changes discussed here is the all-powerful impact on the mentality and emotionality of the modern man of various types of mass culture, frequently of very mediocre and spiritually blunt genre, successfully supplanting the impact of homo-creative high culture.

The discussed anthropological, social and cultural changes not only deform and distort the sphere of spirituality, consciousness and behaviour of man, posing a serious threat for correct development and survival of man as a species, but they also have a probable impact on a more long-term homo-creative process – on further social and cultural evolution and, to a certain degree, also on the natural and biological evolution of man.