Writing season 2016-2017 = Book 3. Divination

Hi patient readers,

I have started writing, these last few weeks, the first draft of "Book 3: Divination" of my series "From Modernity to After-Modernity". My experience last winter with "Book 2: Theoretical Considerations" was really exhausting. Furthermore the length of my posts and the weekly publishing I had imposed on myself resulted in draft versions that I felt were sometimes not sufficiently thought out.  So I plan on a slower rhythm this winter with shorter posts (3-4000 words instead of 8-9000).

My first post, in this 2016-2017 winter series about the future, will appear on December 9th. Thinking about the future has been called divination since ancient times that's why I borrow that old word as title of the writing of this season 3 that later will become Book 3.

For those of you who did not follow the posts of the last 2 seasons here is what I wrote about:
1.  Season 2014-2015: Book 1: A rapid survey of the history leading to Late-Modernity
     - Volume 1 : History shapes the present
     - Volume 2: Today in Late-Modernity
2. Season 2015-2016: Book 2: Theoretical considerations
     - Volume 3: knowledge formation
     - Volume 4: brain-mind-consciousness
     - Volume 5: axioms of civilization, worldviews, culture
     - Volume 6: about societal governance
     - Volume 7: about the arts
3. Season 2016-2017: Book 3: Divination

What follows is a tentative table of content of what I'll be writing about during this 3rd season. Please remember that this table will eventually evolve with the writing... I just give it as an indication of what to expect from this season's writing.

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Introduction

• Confrontation, reconciliation, integration
• About divination
• The future is a probabilistic outcome
• A few inescapable conclusions

1. The context in which the future emerges
1.1. The axioms of civilization
1.2. Loss of societal worldviews
1.3. The cultural context of Late-Modernity
      1.3.1. Relativity of the societal atom
      1.3.2. Globalization, science & technology
      1.3.3. The great convergence and its outcome
1.4. The ideologies at work in Late-Modernity
      1.4.1. Power
      1.4.2. The Reason of Capital
      1.4.3. Philosophic rationalism
      1.4.4. Postmodernism
      1.4.5. Neoliberalism
      1.4.6. Exceptionalism
1.5. Eastern Pragmatism versus Western Rationalism

2. Dreaming the future
2.1. Dreaming versus engineering (Curtiss)
2.2. Probabilistic outcome (Prigogyne)
2.3. A limited set of realistic scenarios

3. Scenarios about the future

This part 3 should constitute the bulk of this season's writing.
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I wish you enjoy, the spectacle of the transition of the human world, as much as I do...
Hope you'll be back on December 9th for my first installment of this season,

laodan