Abstract

A series of independent calculations done by scientists from various countries and professions show that the 21st century is expected to be crucial for the human history. Current generations’ activities will determine how exactly the turning point will happen and what direction the subsequent evolution will go. From time immemorial, the relative sustainability of human communities has been provided by the image of a common enemy. Intergroup conflicts have been abridging in-group violence and with it, have been setting the vector for the creation of life’s meanings. Yet, the current level of technological development completed by blurring lines both between war and non-war technologies and between the conditions of peace and war has made this psychological inertia suicidal. Therefore, the problem of life’s meanings is becoming the nucleus of the 21st century global problems: Will the human mind prove ready to develop strategic meanings beyond religious or quasi-religious ideologies, which are always built on, the “them-us” mental matrix? Insights of great philosophers and prophets, as well as special socio-psychological experiments and some crucial episodes in political history have demonstrated that besides the image of a common enemy, both human solidarity and strategic meanings can be built on the image of a common cause, although the experience of assimilating this kind of construct by the mass consciousness is scanty. Instead, historical evidence is abundant showing that after long periods without real or potential wars, life’s meanings “hang up” and the masses feel nostalgia for new demons. Actually, we observe an intensification of this trend in many regions of our planet accompanied by a growing instability in global geopolitics.