Searching for Lithuanian Identity between East and West

ENIn Lithuania, as in other Western countries, at especially dramatic historical junctures interest has grown in "nonclassical" (as assessed from a traditional Eurocentric viewpoint) cultures, of which the great Eastern civilizations stand out as the more significant. Increasing contacts between cultures have periodically encouraged intellectuals to delve into the complex problems of the interaction between Eastern and Western cultural, philosophic and artistic traditions, and to grasp that each culture, despite its uniqueness, is a component part of universal world culture. In human cultural history, which spans many centuries, there exist unchanging truths and values that have not lost their relevance, ideals that unify the goals of the mankind. At any given point in history, separate cultures embody, actualize and express, in their own way, these attitudes toward values. A national culture to which "a longing for world culture" is foreign has no future. The better able a culture is to naturally assimilate the values of other cultures, the more deep its impulses to develop. Here, the problem of dialog between cultures arises - how authentically to transfer concepts from "foreign" cultures to one's own. The boundaries between that which is "one's own" and that which is "foreign" shift and constantly change, no matter what megacultural systems influence a national culture.