Invitation to an International Conference

Re-Learning to Be Human for Global Times:

Transition of Human Civilizations and Value Changes in Human Development

 Shaanxi Normal University, Xian, P.R. China

July 19-20, 2017

Theme

During the process of modernization the industrial revolution in the West dramatically changed the human civilization. It produced not only advanced sciences and technologies, but also many paradoxes and predicaments. Different modes of human civilizations and new understandings and conceptions of human development and developmental values have emerged in different cultural traditions across the world.

Indeed, civilization and development are closely connected with interactions and mutual impacts. In fact, modern paradoxes and predicaments are the results of crises of human civilizations due to the un-proper understanding of human progresses and unreasonable implications.

Facing these challenges people are urged to search for new understandings, theories and models. Sustainable development in environment, ecology, economics, society, etc., has become the major focus in policy-making and actions in terms of human progresses. Recently the Chinese government suggested the notion of “people-oriented development” and “five development concepts”: innovation, coordination, openness, greenness and sharing.

How to understand the transformation of human civilizations and the change of developmental values, how to develop a new concept of cultural values for humankind, and how to construct a just and peaceful socio-political order of development in these complex and fast changing times. These are not easy questions, but need joint efforts of international communities, especially thinkers, scholars and intellectuals, in our case, from all corners of the world to come and think together in order to provide suggestive solutions and insights for our common concerns.

Subthemes:

1. Mechanism and law of the change of civilizations and social development

2. Advantages and disadvantages of the modern civilization and its impact on concepts, models and practices of social development

3. New forms of human civilizations and their significance for value transformation

4. New concepts of the human nature

6. The meaning of Chinese "five development concepts" for the development of human civilizations