How societies work & the role of worldviews and art

In my last post I tried to brush a rapid sketch of the profound mental disconnect between the West and China. In the present post I’ll brush an even more rapid sketch about how large societies function; it lays the foundations upon which, in my next 3 posts, I’ll build a more in-depth comparative analysis between the present and the future of Western and Chinese societies.

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We live in power societies. What this means is that within any given society institutions are legislating and implementing the rules of the game that is being played within their territory. And whatever the philosophy that dominates the political landscape of a society its institutions of power are always ‘owned’ by a small minority of actors who are shaping the societal game in such a way that it maximizes their own interests. This is the case in whatever form of polity.

The ‘owners’ of the societal institutions (1) rely on a network of highly schooled ‘technicians’ who are in charge of managing the institutions of power under their control. This goes for:

• the state institutions that formalize and manage the rules of the societal game as well as their implementation,
• the economic institutions that are meant to generate the profits to ensure continued economic growth for their nations.

Since the down of civilization power societies have also ensured state ownership of the societal institutions servicing the “objective needs” of their populations:

• schools,
• food storage,
• energy distribution,
• diplomacy,
• military,
• police,
• social policies, etc.

The list of what constitutes the objective needs of the population varied, historically and geographically, according to the interests and the ideology of the owners of these societal institutions… The management of these societal service institutions was also realized by a network of highly schooled ‘technicians’ under the control of the owners of these societal institutions.

Since the emergence of tribes human societies have always ensured the ‘gluing’ of the minds of their subjects by a given worldview – religion, – or a pragmatic set of principals to help the individuals navigate their daily life. What constitutes a worldview varied, historically and geographically according to the particularities of the local context. Studies in sociology and political sciences uncovered that the citizens of any society on earth have always been sharing a worldview. They also discovered that the more effectively the citizens shared a common worldview the more the cohesion of their society increased. Societal cohesion is an absolute necessity to ensure that a society can possibly reproduce over the generations.

Since the earliest model of society, I mean the tribe, and until quite recently the worldview of the men of knowledge of the day was shared with all the citizens by means of visual signs. And by the end of the Middle-ages, with the European “Enlightenment”, visuals were the vehicles that spread the idea of the social primacy of the new rich merchants and their new values. The triumph of these values essentially ensured the primacy of Modernity over religion which was the worldview of the clergy and the aristocracy. This triumph was largely attributed to the impact of visual signs on the minds of citizens and in the process visual signs received the appellation “art”.

How does all this apply to contemporary societies?
How does all this differentiate the West from China?
How does all this foreshadow the world of tomorrow?

 In my next 3 posts I'll try to answer these questions:
1. Big capital holders own Western ‘societies
2. The communist party owns China
3. The habitat of life trumps societal realities
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Notes 
 

1. The owners of societal institutions.

– in the West big capital holders own the media, finance think-thanks, and donate to political campaigns. This gives them the necessary tools to ensure that the decision making process satisfies their demands.

– in China the political decision making process is in the hands of the Communist party.