THE PROBLEM OF CULTURAL CRISIS IN ROMANIAN AND EUROPEAN SOCIOLOGY.

The crisis phenomena which roam the present day world laid their mark upon spiritual life. The urge towards bringing form to perfection in its struggle against the rebellious and amorphous matter represents human condition's capacity of self-exceeding its status. Through creation and artistic knowledge, man clears up the unknown paths of the future and offers himself inner peace and an existential certitude in what concerns his place in the Universe and his future. From the point of view of the crises manifesting themselves at the macro-social level, social disorder represents the main sociological indicator. Social disorder manifests itself primarily through denying some traditional values. This seems to be the consequence of speeding up life's evolution as it is seen in the framework of technical civilization: acceleration rather through cultural diffusion - or through mimetic cultural pretensions - than through a real intellectual and moral education; acceleration through double-dealing cultural education, abstract and intensive; through alteration of the parents - children relationships; through multiplication of pleasure opportunities, entertainment and evasion; through the young peoples' chase for shallow acquisitions, difficult to accomplish by honest means, but indispensable for satisfying the temptations. This way, the anomic phenomena of the 21^st century go hand in hand with nature's transcendental and symbolical framework. The main issue of this paper is understanding the role of culture in scattering the darkness of distrust between peoples, the invitation to cooperation through plenary communication of values conferring dignity and meaning to human existence, one of the culture's role being that of offering new perspectives to human progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]