The problem of spiritual growth and public leadership in contemporary society

It is hard to find a more controversial and reinterpreted question than the essence of human spiritual growth. Generally understood as an increase in the level of intellectual and ethical development of a person, as well as the awareness of the transcendent aspect in one’s personality, spiritual growth has always been taken for granted in human life, a part of the social worldview, whether in the societies of ancient civilizations, the Middle Ages, the modern era, or even up to the end of the 20th century. At the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, a unique situation arose in human history: the overload due to interaction with information, caused by scientific and technological progress, began to contribute to a growing alienation from social subjectivity and human nature in general. This alienation is manifested in the spread of the idea of the necessity of technical enhancement of human beings, concepts that disorient individuals in understanding their identity, attempts to be something other than human (the movement of quadrobears), and so on. As a result, the idea of spiritual growth is replaced by the notion of aimless transformation and chaotic multiplication of the diversity of life experiences. Without setting ourselves the impossible task of fully examining the essence and historical understanding of human spiritual growth, we will attempt to describe the contemporary understanding of the content of spiritual growth, the problem of spiritual growth in modern individuals, as well as our vision of ways to address this issue by postulating the idea of spiritual growth through public leadership. The research employed formal-logical methods, analysis, synthesis, comparison, and the specific-historical method of scientific cognition. Despite the "timeless nature" of the question of human spiritual growth, its characteristics in the context of modern realities require further investigation. The main conclusions of the research focus on rethinking the significance of the issue of spiritual growth among the younger generation (in the conditions of a secularized society) and the role of public leaders in conveying the idea of spiritual growth. The author notes that the problem of human spiritual growth in modern society is associated, on the one hand, with the possibility and appropriateness of using artificial intelligence to improve the quality of life. On the other hand, the crisis of spiritual growth stems from the gradual displacement of its very formulation from the topics of upbringing and education, as it is no longer a criterion for recognition and obtaining status in society.