Evolution of Value Systems in the “Era of Great Changes”: General Challenges and Problems

The article examines the evolution of the system of traditional values in the era of fundamental changes in the social system. Values of different levels are considered: formational, belonging to a certain social system and changing with the change of the system, as well as civilizational, deep values, generated in a certain religious and cultural space and preserved in the system of ideals and norms of behavior of many generations. Values reflect and express a certain state of the whole society. With the change of the social system through formational evolution in the West or through “catch-up modernization” in non-Western countries, changes occur in the system of values as an interconnected set of ideals, ideas and norms. Traditional values, as a rule, retreat before the values of “today”, generated by society itself or borrowed from outside. Conflicts of identity and self-identity of the individual and society arise. In the first decades of the 21st century, in the context of the beginning of the change of the world order, new meanings of development are being developed and sought. The processes of globalization (technological revolution, global migration, flows of goods and information), as well as the West’s desire to maintain the dominant order, while nonWestern countries strengthen their importance in the world system, give rise to conflicts of values at different levels. However, not every civilizational challenge becomes a threat to traditional values. In non-Western societies, there is an adaptation of their value system to changed conditions while maintaining fidelity to the ideals and norms of their cultural and religious tradition.