Traditional Culture of Sayan-Altaic People as a Factor of Formation of Ecological Consciousness
50th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, Kazan 2007
At different stages of human history there were various views of a person’s relation to nature in public consciousness. From the point of view of their value system they can be divided into two systems of views of nature. The first one expresses itself in opposition of a person to nature. It is closely connected with the era of the industrial revolution. It is possible to notice a degradation of a technocratic person rather than a degradation of nature itself during this stage. This degradation has found its reflection in the narrowing of an inner world of a person. This resulted in a change of human consciousness, which was oriented towards pleasing the technocracy. Another view of nature can be found in traditional cultures.
Representatives of the specified viewpoint attributed elements of spirituality to all living beings, and idolized nature. Thus nature was treated as something that possessed self-value and that attitude caused the recognition of its laws. It was more important to the person of a traditional society to enter into balance with an environment, instead of dominating it. As a whole the traditional culture represents a universal way of adapting to the world around.
The traditional world view is historically the first type of a world view of an ethnos in which all the vital problems of people are considered from the perspective of mutual relation of Nature and Person. Thus ethnogeny of people is closely dependent on its environment, so the basic form of interaction of ethnos and its habitat is people adapting to the conditions of their environment. Therefore the main condition of the development and the existence of ethnos is preservation of the corresponding environment. Therefore religious and other world views of a given ethnos favor a balance between a person and their environment that was sufficient for existence of the ethnos.
Today in search and development of new values that are called to provide for a survival strategy and progress of humankind, some methods of mutual relations of a person and nature have become of special value in traditional societies. In this context, the cultural history of the peoples of Sayan-Altai region deserves attention. Considering many of their characteristic features, it is possible to say that Khakass, Tuvinian and Altai people found the properties of technogenic civilizations. Nevertheless, they have substantially kept traditional character. Being a product of the South Siberian nomadic civilization, the traditional culture of peoples of Sayan-Altai region exists in various forms: folklore, literature, art, religious beliefs, and knowledge. Despite seeming abundance of themes reflecting various aspects of attitude to nature, animals, and plants, as well as the use of various kinds of flora and fauna in ceremonies of a calendar cycle and in family-patrimonial ceremonies in traditional cultures, it is rather difficult to get a precise picture of the ecological knowledge, consciousnesses, behaviour, and, therefore, of the ecological culture of a particular ethnos.
Within millennia consciousness of the Turkic peoples of Southern Siberia, such as Altai, Tuvin and Khakass people, fixed the interrelation of a person and nature in the form of unwritten orders, traditional instructions, and also in the form of ceremonies, customs which have been kept up to nowadays and are a component of their modern world view. The idea of a caring attitude toward the earth, water, to all living creatures and lifeless things runs like a red line through such large epics of the South- Siberian Turks as Tuvinian “The Legend about Keser-Mergen Khan”, Altai “Maadai- Kara”, Khakass “Altyn-Aryg”. Therefore, in the world view of the South-Siberian Turks there is no distinct opposition between “society and nature”. In their world view the idea of the existence of a three-layered world prevails: the top world or the world of inhabitants of heaven, the medium world or the world of people and other living-beings and the bottom world, or the world of those who are dead. The top and bottom worlds represented an unrecognizable and intangible world, the medium world was the real environment of their inhabitance and, accordingly, in this world a person felt as an integral part of the environment. It starts with the perspective that in the traditional world view man is not the top of the evolution of living beings- man is represented as only one form of life equal in rights with other forms, and, consequently, one form of life can easily pass into others. But at the same time a man has been given the responsibility for observing harmony in the medium world.
The originality of traditional world view of Tuvinians is derived from two religious beginnings — Shamanism and Buddhism. Shaman and Lamaist religious syncretism impose an imprint on the character of ecological convictions of Tuvinians. They consist of the basic elements of Buddhism about a person and the universe. Tuvinians’ Shamanist views on the environment are basically similar to convictions of Altai and Khakas people.
For a system characteristic of an ecological component in the content of the traditional culture it is necessary to distinguish the following aspects:
The scientific aspect including natural-science knowledge, that is a basis of rational wildlife management, attitudes of ethnos to the nature, and traditional cultural forms of managing. The aspect of values describing the moral and aesthetic attitudes of ethnos to the environment and promoting overcoming excessive rationalization and use.
The normative aspect focusing on systematically mastering norms and rules, instructions and prohibitions of an ecological character, irreconcilability to displays of violence. The activity aspect including kinds and ways of human activity, directed at formation of cognitive, practical and creative skills of an ecological character, at development of special qualities and skills to solve environmental problems.
Having studied the features of traditional culture and world view of peoples of Sayan-Altai region, one may conclude that their convictions about eternal values, their activity in mutual relations with nature have close interrelation with the ecologically focused consciousness. Moreover, the traditional culture is the basis of formation of the ecologically focused consciousness. And in conditions of globalization the preservation and development of national and cultural originality of peoples means not only the development of humanistic “reference points” of a modern society, but it also becomes one of the important means of formation of ecological consciousness based on ethno-cultural, ethno-ecological traditions and values of native population.