The Beacon: A New Journal for Studying Ideologies in the Multibillion World

The main reasons that led an international team of scholars to publishing journal The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions, are discussed in the article. It is emphasised that in the modern world with eight billion people of population, the ideological means of managing the population, are ultimately changed in comparison with the beginning of the twentieth century and the earlier times. Therefore, the scholars all over the world have to have a venue for discussing the current ideological instruments and apparatuses, as well as their historical evolution. The Beacon journal is concerned with these tasks.

измѣненія по сравненію съ началомъ ХХ вѣка, а также болѣе ранними историческими періодами. Поэтому ученые из разныхъ уголковъ міра должны имѣть возможность обсуждать современные идеологическіе инструменты и аппараты, а также ихъ историческую эволюцію. Журналъ The Beacon можетъ стать мѣстомъ такого обсужденія. К Кл лю юч че ев вы ыя я с сл ло ов ва а: : идеологія, соціальный менеджментъ, соціальный контроль, международный журналъ, населеніе Земли, эволюція человѣка WO OR RL LD D has to be free of ideologies and ideological influence. What makes us to think so? The worldwide spread of the concept of "global democracy," a dark side of globalisation, along with the digitalisation of the younger generations, compels us to re-consider the very notion of ideology, its intrinsic value. In our times, the term "ideology" became a patch to the fabric of politics and international relations, fabric very much tattered and torn during the last three decades since the dissolution of Soviet Union, declared end of the Cold war and the new stage of delineating Europe (Bailey and Gayle 2003, 12, 14, 43;Gershon 2010, 288;Jaffe 2008, 517-518). Some credulous souls believed that the deconstruction of Berlin Wall, would proclaim the end of the era of ideologies (see, e.g. : Armstrong 1993;Fuentes 1991;Harrison 2011). This did not happen. The concept of ideological action transformed to a scarecrow to fright masses around the world. After the sad connotations this word received in Fascist and Nazi worldview, after the grim truth to which this word brought people during Stalin's era in Soviet Union, it is unsurprising. To be sure, Mussolini and Goebbels made their essential contribution in broad despising the term "ideology" in our time (Lemmons 1994, 63, 78;Richardson 2010, 177). It is not a plausible pretext, however, to refuse studying ideologies and ideological influence, especially taking into account that the border of the second and third decade of the new Millennium, demonstrated the rise and spread of a great deal of ideologies to the desperately confused human society.
To name but several instances, terrorist ideologies are blossoming in the heart of Europe and not somewhere "there," in the Muslim countries that the Europeans made obscure and dim themselves.
Most of US politicians, in particular of the Democratic party, declare that the American international politics is void of ideology; but we face a contrary and incontestable fact that all the coloured revolutions of 1990s-2010s were and are caused by the direct US influence. That influence, along with the economic levers and stimuli, includes a clearly detectable ideological part, the dissemination of the "highest" and "utmost" ideal of global democracy across every corner of the world.
In Russia, there are the following sections in the Constitution of Russian Federation (in all the editions since 1993 till the last one, of 2014) that read: 1) In Russian Federation the ideological pluralism is accepted; 2) No ideology can be made as official or obligatory. 2 In fact, the court practice in Russia demonstrates that an ideology in favour of the state power, always occupies an advantageous position, while the ideological narratives of the political opposition receive the lowest credit of trust. In addition, the legally declared absence of the official ideology in Russia, together with the destruction of the Russian classical educational system taking place since 1999 hitherto, results in public educating 3 politically and socially amorphous mass, the youth that is not interested in the public life at all, and, therefore, can be easily manipulated. The equality of ideologies, declared legally in the modern Russian law, does not prevent definite political and social actors from using ideologies preferred by them as their powerful instruments of social management, control and transformation.
The anti-European ideology widely accepted in Russia, is reflected by different flavours of Russophobia blooming in the governments of some European states, not only of those around the Russian border, but sometimes of the farthest -let us recall the Skripals' case of the 4 March, that seems to become an itching wound in British-Russian relations for the years to come. In addition, in all Western Europe, a call for equality and liberalism transformed to an ideology depriving the Europeans of their own rights in favour of the migrants' rights.
US trade wars with China lead both parties to ideological control over masses, individuals and business entities (Marchant and Wang 2018, 1-3;Rasmus 2018, 350-352;Sachs 2018, 145-150;Zhang 2018, 68, 72). The Chinese threat in USA and American threat in mainland China, are ideological bubbles that do not seem to have any reasonable volume limits. They are still swelling and growing, with the media discourse in USA and China being given the respective carte blanche instructions of the governments (Mitchener and Yan 2014, 147-148;Shobert 2018, 8-10). Hong Kong protests will not in the least give rise to a new Asian "democracy" independent of the mainland China. 4 Everything is witnessing that for many years to come, we shall see yet increasing and strengthening ideologies fables and ideological influence in every part of the world, with no exceptions. If a downfall of the era of ideologies ever be, we shall not observe it soon, in any case.
Everybody is still playing ideological games, and it is highly confusing to believe that ideology is a social phenomenon of "developing" countries, be they of the "third" or "fourth" world. The very idea of the "four worlds" -whichever worlds, to be sure -is an ideology itself, created by the European and US elitist political thinkers of the second half of the twentieth century, as a number of researchers convincingly proved (Hall 2003, 255;Madhavan and Thomas 1993, 117, 120;Manuel and Posluns 1974, 34;Castells 2000, 102). With the advent of mass media and Internet, ideology cannot be restricted to a definite part of human society (Beauvillé 2011;DeNardis 2009;Moyer 2010). It cannot be stored in an obscure box and drowned somewhere in the ocean. The attempts to create ideological influence by cutting-off or restricting the use of the Internet connections, such as in China (Chi 2012, 390, 392) or Russia (Barrera 2017, 5;Ristolainen 2017, 121, 126;Sherstobitov et al. 2018, 165-166), are very likely to fail.
We have to clearly understand that the world with eight-billion population cannot be treated and managed in the same way as it was done at the beginning of the twentieth century, when it numbered just one billion, and the population growth rate will only increase in the future. Such huge numbers are incredible not just for researchers, but also for governments, political elites, social architects, economic and financial transnational corporations, that is for those actors who directly influence the political and social processes around the world. It is not unexpected, therefore, that ideology and ideological apparatuses are widely used in the modern multibillion world. These apparatuses may be found in every place where the virtual communications are established. With the borders of the states and nations being erased by the omnipresence of Internet and social media, GSM connections and satellite phones, the Earth's population is transforming not to the set of individuals but to the unified humanity. In 1900 newspapers were as well the main instruments of social management as sources of information. The major London papers were issued thrice a day, but the real rate of ideology spread was much less due to the time they had to spend on border control and on crossing the oceans. Today we are basically not limited by any time delays and impediments. The most powerful computers and the networks with largest bandwidths and lowest ping times allow to disseminate any pieces of information in microseconds. Ideologies may be distributed with an eye blink rate.
In The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions, we are headed towards investigating these processes, and are convinced that the researchers of different cultures, nations and backgrounds, who are interested in the fate of humanity and homo sapiens, will join our efforts. Quoting Dr Wolfgang Sassin, a renowned German political thinker and social reformer, whom I would like to express my earnest gratitude and appreciation to, for his direct and immediate participation in The Beacon launch, In order to really interest concerned individuals focussing on the most challenging issue of our times, namely to deal with the mass phenomenon of 8+ billion people, confronted with each other via "virtual realities," the need and the possibility to bridge language barriers, is an essential feature of The Beacon's approach... Our point is not to preach, however, Beacons were established to keep ships and their crew from hitting what stabilised the basis of "Lighthouses." The Beacon hints at a consolidated beam of light, as the word is literally translated... And even not the light itself is what we need, but it is the information carried by a "controlled beam" that helps sailors to orient themselves in unknown waters. The basis of ships are waters. To communicate about vital differences, not to eradicate them, is what is needed in times of mindless mixing of different cir- However, we hope to stand out in our utmost devotion to a non-ideological approach to studying ideologies. Our task is to create a place for the discussions on the Second Enlightenment we so urgently need in our days, a deliberate interdisciplinary and cross-cultural dialogue.
The main epistemic square that shall be in the focus of The Beacon, is as follows: Any academic researchers and practitioners are invited to the collaboration that may - or believe that they may -advance studying ideology and ideologies to a new stage of analysing their theoretical, practical and methodological aspects. On journal pages, we plan to discuss secular, scientific as well as religious ideologies (in case of religion, ideology approaches homiletics). Any ideology contains a systematic narration for a large throng, with producing the collective conscious WE. Studying religious ideologies as Church instruments, may facilitate a successful interconfessional and interreligious interaction in the modern globalised world. Studying secular ideologies might assist us in our analysis of political, social, legal initiatives and manifestations that involve speeches, public narratives, media discourses as major instruments. The similarity between ideology and homiletics does not lie only in the sphere of Church affairs. According to Dr-Ing Wolfgang Sassin, homiletics is the art of forming a conscious WE from an otherwise uncorrelated throng controlling it thereby. 6 This is a very essence of ideology. In order to achieve this, a religious, political, social, economic, business etc. force uses simple and more complex parables and allegories that can be understood by individuals with widely different interests and capabilities. Panem et circenses already served this purpose both in ancient Greece and ancient Rome. The art of ideological narration has been exceedingly refined since the times of St John Chrysostom, from Edmund Burke via Edward Bernays (the father of Public Relations) and Thomas Edward Lawrence to Mahatma Gandhi, Mao, Archbishop John of Shanghai and particularly so with the advent of modern mass media. 7 The research in the scope of ideology additionally includes philosophy of language, investigating literature and arts, media and social discourses. Any study of any form of ideology, will be encouraged in The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions, political, social, artistic, literary, legal, business, economic, financial, media and so on. Therefore, to investigate the specifics of ideological theory and practice, is a goal for a wide group of authors. Among them, we would greet any researcher that deals with theology, sociology, political studies, philosophy, linguistics, literature, culture and art studies, law, history, employees of commercial companies and legal practitioners, workers of non-profit organisations and social workers, and authors of social projects.
Not the last factor that advances The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions of the pool of journals on ideologies, is the sincere commitment of the Editorial Board to the tolerance to different languages, cultures and independent researchers. In a number of journals, independent researchers and thinkers without a current affiliation, are not given the full scope of rights. We are heading towards eliminating any possible dis- The main goals of the journal are the following: ■ understanding ideology and ideologies; ■ discussing the ideological side of the most urgent problems of humanity, including climate, energy, and overpopulation; ■ facilitating a dialogue between religion, Church (as an organisation) and science; ■ contributing to a communication between religious groups and society; ■ promoting an interaction between different religions and confessions, as well as atheist thinkers; ■ expanding the scientific and spiritual world outlook, and understanding the social evolution.
In The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions, we look forward to publishing materials on the following topics:  The structure, targets, main techniques and taxonomy of ideology and ideologies;  Ideological control and management of the society;  Various ideologies: social, political, religious, literary, economic, financial, military etc.;  Religious and anti-religious ideologies in science and society;  Atheism as a form of ideology;  Language, parables, narratives, stories, slogans, allegories and fables as instruments of ideological influence in the globalising world;  Linguistic and meta-linguistic means of mediation and avoidance of religious, ethnical, racial and social conflicts;  Analysing the structure, semantics, and pragmatics of the following narratives: nationalist, racialist, and inciting interreligious animosity;  Investigating preaching activities of fundamentalist, terrorist groups, totalitarian sects, and their linguistic means of recruitment new members;  Artistic ideological influence and control in literature, music, architecture, visual and performing arts;  Linguistics and meta-linguistics of an ideological narration: visual, acoustic, and the other semantic series;  Public Relations as a form of ideology;  Ideology as a political technology in different types of communities and the global context; Vol.  Ideological side of mass media and social media; creating mass media ideological contexts;  Hybrid forms of ideology and ideological allegories;  Virtualising and digitising ideologies;  Energy, climate and other global humanity problems as constituents of ideological apparatus;  Philosophy and methodology of creating social discourses;  Semiotics of an ideological message;  Ideology and social evolution;  Cognitive and epistemic prospects of the development of ideological apparatuses;  Church preaching and all the questions connected to it;  History and evolution of ideologies and ideological methods from the ancient days to the modern world.
The list of topics above is open because of the incessant development of ideologies and the appearance of new problems connected with ideology, in the modern world. EQ QU UA AL LI IT TY Y of the authors, include the widest possible range of languages. With English being regarded a preferable tongue for discussions (Disputamus section of the journal) and compulsory for a contribution title, authors' names, abstract, key words, extended summary, references and author information, no language used for core text, is given priority. Since the researchers of any nations, confessions and religions as well as atheist and materialist thinkers are welcome, we propose the widest variety of languages for publication.

T TH HE E S ST TE EP PS S T TO OW WA AR RD DS S O OU UR R F FU UT TU UR RE E A AU UT TH HO OR RS S
Ideology and ideologies are ultimately closely connected with the language. Therefore, the material can be written in any language of the world, modern or archaic. We use this unique approach, dissimilar with other journals on ideologies, to give prospective authors the opportunity to reflect characteristics of different ideologies, religions, media discourses and speech of historical eras as accurately as possible, and to describe the sources as authentic as possible, if an author has such a wish. The presence of an Extended summary in English, containing nearly 500 words, for each article will help the readers, who may not be fluent in the language in which the article is written, to get acquainted with its content. It is obvious that, if an author discusses an Old French literature, sometimes it may be easier to do using French, not English, or if he or she considers a Russian media discourse, it is probably wise to accomplish in Russian.
The selected grammatical, spelling and syntactic features of the language in which a paper is presented, should be consistent throughout the text, i.e. if, for example, an author writes about medieval English homiletics in Middle English of the North-Western dialect, he Petersburg. In case of any troubles, the editorial staff will help the authors with the translation from modern Russian into traditional Russian free of charge. Why are we sticking to traditional Russian spelling written in Russian? The Russian Emperor Nikolay I was deliberating on an idea to cancel Peter the Great's spelling and transform it to the Russian orthography that is in use now. In a reply to the question of the Emperor "why people should torment themselves with such difficult spelling," the renowned Russian philologist Nikolay Ivanovich Grech said: "Your Majesty, Peter the Great's spelling must be preserved for us to be literate." One of the goals of publishing The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions, is to revert the dialogue to its pristine form. We have to remember, a colloquy should not be altered to a soliloquy. For making the communication of the authors easier and more successful, we offer the Disputamus section, that in Latin means "we dispute with each other." In this section, an author may write his (her) reply or commentary to the articles published in the previous issues. We consider such a venue for the scientific discussions and debates, as a place of hearing each other, a think tank for the mutual solving a problem we would like to solve. Beacon. The responsibility for this action is laid entirely upon the author. 5. Confidentiality. Before publishing, materials sent to the journal The Beacon, are considered confidential and not subject to any discussion and/or disclosure to any parties other than reviewers, members of the Editorial Board and Editorial Council of The Beacon. The works sent to reviewers by the Editorial Board are completely anonymised, and any passages contained in the text that allow to know the authorship are replaced by identical but anonymous ones. The texts sent to The Beacon are used only in discussions of the materials by the members of the Editorial Board, and/or Editorial Council, and/or groups of reviewers, as well as in the publication of these texts and their publication preparation in The Beacon, and are not used in any form, any context, and under any circumstances outside these processes.

A AS S A AN NO OT TH HE ER R S ST TE EP PS S T TO OW WA AR RD DS S T TH HE E P PO OL LI IC CY Y O
6. Malpractice statement. An author of the text sent to the Editorial Board of The Beacon journal guarantees that the text does not contain any incorrect borrowings, and all quotations provided properly state their authorship. The sources of all borrowed materials (e.g. quotations, diagrams, charts, maps, photographs, drawings, figures etc.) should be specified explicitly. The Editorial Board of The Beacon journal is making every possible effort to preserve and protect the copyright understood as the legal and ethical rights of all the authors. A prospective author is responsible for obtaining all necessary rights to copy and use the materials provided in the text of his (her) paper. In case of claims about plagiarism (incorrect borrowings without stating the authorship), the Editorial Board of The Beacon holds a special meeting dedicated to the discussion of the situation in question, taking into account the explanations of all the parties concerned. In case of a proved plagiarism, the paper is retracted and the author is restricted from any further publications in The Beacon. 7. Financial conditions of publication. The publication is completely free of charge for all the authors. No royalties are paid upon publishing. The inclusion of any illustrative materials (figures etc.) whether black-white or coloured, is also free of charge. 8. Authors' opinions. The opinions of the authors expressed in the texts are the authors' personal views and may not coincide with the views of the Editorial Board. This notwithstanding, the editorial policy aims at creating the wide variety of viewpoints. 9. Text preparation for the publication. If a material is approved for publication in the journal The Beacon, editors can introduce a number of changes to the text, including scientific editing, language correction, and in the case of texts in Russian the translation into traditional (Peter the Great's) spelling. The author in question is provided with the final version of the text (proofs) for his/her approval before publication. 10. Editor-in-Chief's role. The Editor-in-Chief is the utmost guarantor of the implementation of these provisions and other ethical rules of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). She provides an objective and indifferent review process and selection of materials for publication. In case of conflicting and controversial situations, the Editor-in-Chief makes necessary final decisions. At first, a material sent to The Beacon journal, is evaluated by the Editorial Board. A decision to submit it for reviewing or reject at the initial stage is based on the following criteria:

T TH HE E R RE EV VI IE EW W P PR RO OC CE ES SS
1) compliance of the text with the journal's profile; 2) correspondence of the title with the content of the paper; 3) correctness of the citation style and references provided.
If the Editorial Board decides to submit the article for review, the anonymised version of the text is sent to three reviewers chosen from the Editorial Board, Editorial Council or other group of experts on the topic of the paper. These experts are normally recommended by the members of the Editorial Board and Editorial Council.
The Beacon journal applies the principles of double-blind peer review (the review process is anonymous for all the parties). If there are at least two positive reviews, the Editorial Board decides to publish the text a) as is; b) after minor corrections; or c) after significant revisions. After improving the text has been accomplished (if necessary), the material is sent for review once again. The decision of the Editorial Board and the opinions of reviewers are submitted to the author(s). The overall procedure of initial evaluation, reviewing and making a final or interim decision on the submitted material takes about three-four months. We always try to make a grounded decision and inform the author(s) as soon as possible.
The main criteria of selecting an article for the publication: a) novelty; b) importance of the contribution of the author's ('s) hypotheses and concepts in science; c) independence and originality of the work; d) logic and consistency of the presentation of ideas and conclusions; e) depth of understanding the problem; f) good level of language proficiency; g) compliance of the literature quoted with the main logic of the work. For the key contributions sent to The Beacon, we shall use the multilingual approach. A version of an article is written in a main language and may be supplemented by several translations. By such a measure, we intend to support the cross-cultural dialogue and involvement of readers and authors from different civilisations, cultures and languages, to the pivotal discussions offered on pages of The Beacon. We regard this a unique feature of our journal.

A AR RT TI IC CL LE E D DE EN NO OT TA AT TI IO ON
List of main article's scope of knowledge codes, is also available upon request.
In the example above (Article ID = 020310104), the identifier should be understood in  (1); it is written in Russian (01); and its topic is defined as primarily belonging to theology (04) as the scope of knowledge. In the text, we quote a source published in The Beacon, like this (Lysenko 2018), or if we would like to refer to an exact page, "(Lysenko 2018, 4)." However, as you may see, within the paper, page numbers are given in the Article ID-page number format, that is 010100000-1, 010100000-2, … Article ID system gives great flexibility in that we may publish a contribution immediately after (and if) it has been given positive reviews and approved for publishing by the Editorial Board. That provides an author with considerable advantage. The two core contributions of this issue are written by Dr-Ing Wolfgang Sassin (Austria). In the first article, he is discussing the transformation of societal consciousness, while in the second he is propounding an explanation of the reasons of such a transformation. The latter is illustrated by geometric argumentation. On its basis, Dr Sassin expounds the importance of multidimensional approach to understanding social and scientific transformational processes and its ideological nature. Both of the papers are written in German, and the translations into several languages, are provided as supplementary files available in the journal website http://thebeacon.ru. The discussion is continued by Judith Byrne (Ireland), Natalia Moiseeva (Italy) and Konstantin Sharov (Russia) who are applying Dr Sassin's methodology of understanding the conscious WE, to their research of nations and nationalities. Finally, Lady Cecily Grey from the United Kingdom is offering her reflections on the just published monograph, Sassin, Wolfgang, Donskikh, Oleg, Gnes, Alexandre, Komissarov, Sergey, and Depei Liu. 2018 An idea is advanced that, despite we are all used to believe that the contemporary world has to be free of ideologies and ideological influence, everything is witnessing that for many years to come, we shall see yet increasing and strengthening ideologies fables and ideological influence in every part of the world, with no exceptions. If a downfall of the era of ideologies ever be, we shall not observe it soon.

T TH HE E F FI IR RS ST T I IS SS SU UE E O OF F T TH HE E B BE EA AC CO ON N
We have to clearly understand that the world with eight-billion population cannot be treated and managed in the same way as it was done at the beginning of the twentieth century, when it numbered just one billion, and the population growth rate will only increase in the future. Such huge numbers are incredible not just for researchers, but also for governments, political elites, social architects, economic and financial transnational corporations, that is for those actors who directly influence the political and social processes around the world. It is not unexpected, therefore, that ideology and ideological apparatuses are widely used in the modern multibillion world. These apparatuses may be found in every place where the virtual communications are established. With the borders of the states and nations being erased by the omnipresence of Internet and social media, GSM connections and satellite phones, the Earth's population is transforming not to the set of individuals but to the unified humanity. In 1900 newspapers were as well the main instruments of social management as sources of information. The major London papers were issued thrice a day, but the real rate of ideology spread was much less due to the time they had to spend on border control and on crossing the oceans. Today we are basically not limited by any time delays and impediments. The most powerful computers and the networks with largest bandwidths and lowest ping times allow to disseminate any pieces of information in microseconds. Ideologies may be distributed with an eye blink rate. In such a situation, there is an urgent need in a new venue for dialogue between academic scholars, men of cloth, and practitioners (politicians, lawyers, business representatives, etc.). Any study of any form of ideology, will be encouraged in The Beacon, political, social, artistic, literary, legal, business, economic, financial, media and so on. Therefore, to investigate the specifics of ideological theory and practice, is a goal for a wide group of authors. Among them, we would greet any researcher that deals with theology, sociology, political studies, philosophy, linguistics, literature, culture and art studies, law, history, employees of commercial companies and legal practitioners, workers of non-profit organisations and social workers, and authors of social projects.
In The Beacon, we are headed towards investigating the most urgent ideological processes of our time, and are convinced that the researchers of different cultures, nations and backgrounds, who are interested in the fate of humanity and homo sapiens, will join our efforts.

Author / Авторъ
Lyudmila Lysenko, PhD (Biology), is a Russian biologist, ecologist, theologian and public figure, a Leading Scientific Researcher of the Karelian Scientific Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She is the Editor-in-Chief of The Beacon. Lyudmila is the author of 2 monographs, 3 chapters in monographs, 2 textbook, more than 70 articles in periodicals. In 2004 she defended her PhD dissertation in Biochemistry on the topic "The influence of some environmental factors on intracellular proteolysis in hydrobionts." Dr Lysenko is committed and directly involved in the formation of civil society in Russia.