SOCIAL-CULTURAL DETERMINANTS OF PERSONAL DIGNITY DEVELOPMENT THROUGH THE PRISM OF THE POST-COLONIAL AND POST-TOTALITARIAN UKRAINIAN NARRATIVE

Abstract

The author focused her research on dignity determinants and their links with the social-cultural environment on the example of Ukrainian society. For this purpose, an analysis of the cultural and historical imperial and totalitarian background of the Ukrainian past has been conducted. The research used the following methods: theoretical-analytical, structural-systemic, historical-comparative. The author has specified and outlined that dignity is an integral formation, based on the intersection of three axiological spheres: personal, professional and social values. The article outlines the impact of artificially created cultural regimes on people’s dignity and the determinants of the higher and lower order of formed dignity in the context of Ukrainian realities. The former include external factors – postcolonial and post-totalitarian Ukrainian society – and internal factors – life-purpose orientation, values, and spirituality. Determinants of the lower order are represented by the behavioural, verbal and emotional spheres of a personality. A particular focus has been placed on the close connection between human freedom and the issue of human dignity. Emphasis has been given to one of the key values attacked by the empire or totalitarian regime, namely freedom in almost all its manifestations: an individual’s freedom of thought, freedom of action, freedom of creative development, free expression and development of the culture of the enslaved people. The current consequences for this phenomenon in the Ukrainian society are: lowered ability of many people to accept responsibility as a key concept of freedom and to avoid simple answers to complex and multidimensional challenges, that is, non-desire to consider complex phenomena from different points of view and to search for multilevel solutions. The author has examined the influence of the socio-cultural environment on an individual’s dignity development. The list of the following socio-cultural factors is presented: social factors, as politics in its various aspects, ideology, social environment, interpersonal interactions; cultural factors, a language, mentality, spiritual and emotional experiences, broadly defined: the culture of free thinking and creative realization, the culture of meaningful cooperation, civility, culture in its artistic aspect, and so on.