About the “Great Post-Cultural Filter”

Abstract

This article makes an attempt to consider the problem of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations from the point of view of cultural studies. Traditionally, this issue is studied in natural science discourse. In the direction of research set by the book by I.S. Shklovsky “The Universe. Life. Mind” and continued with the book by V.M. Lipunov “From the Big Bang to the Great Silence”, problematizes the situation of the absence of manifestations of intelligent life in the observable cosmos. This phenomenon is given the name “great silence”, and the supposed absence of intelligent life is called the “Great Filter”. The author of the article shows how this problem can be transferred from natural science discourse to humanitarian discourse. The great filter in this case will turn out to be that integral condition for the constructiveness of human existence, which throughout history various kinds of religious and non-religious philosophical teachings, which became the ideologies of sociocultural systems, wanted to achieve. The author renames the Great Filter into the Great Postcultural Filter, showing the dialectical logic of the deployment of “cultural-postcultural” strategies.