This
series of posts about “the disconnection between the West and China”
centers around societal evolution, and more particularly, the present
shifting of the center of gravity of the economy-world from the US to
the territorial expanse of the Chinese civilization in North-East Asia.
In the preceding posts we have seen how this shift is due to the
interactions between the following factors:
- Globalization & Financialization: jobs have been delocalized. Big capital holders were demanding this delocalization but it was their servants the intellectuals, the economists, who argued that this would be a good deal for the West because better paid high end jobs would enrich the Middle-class. In all the preaching it was said that the West would retain its privileges by keeping a monopoly on science and technology that drives the highest paying jobs. Unfortunately for the West China proved that it could also master science and technology…
- Class war = record levels of inequality. Big capital holders and their technical servants have always rejected the practice of using social policies to pacify societies in order to avoid revolutions. But social and christian democrats were reaping huge electoral majorities by imposing social policies starting from the twenties till the seventies. The seventies were a time of debate among the elites about a radical economic reorientation under a new societal ideology called neo-liberalism. In the meantime public relations and propaganda had successfully developed techniques of mind manipulation. Equipped with such techniques big capital holders and their technical servants succeeded to convince large majorities of citizens in Western countries that “There Is No Alternative” to their policies (TINA). After implementing, economic austerity while breaking down the institutions that ensure social redistribution, 30 years later the verdict is in. Western societies have reached levels of inequality never seen before and the 99% are angry and want revenge. In light of all this the fact that Western citizens are now utterly upset should astonish no-one but intellectual idiots. People got Brexit and ‘cocktail Molotov Trump’ but this is not going to help them. Unfortunately far worse is on the way.
- Nations, corporations and consumers are entrapped in debt. Statistics indicate without any possible doubt that the income of the Middle-class has not increased in real term from 1980 till today while the richest 1% have been reaping the entirety of the increases in productivity. The Middle-class’ stagnating real income has been partially compensated by the cheaper prices of imported Chinese consumer goods and partially by debt. On the corporate level a system linking increased managerial pay with the demand of shareholders for short term stock-exchange gains resulted in accountancy tricks. As a result the prices of stocks increased in tandem with the debts of corporations. The control of state institutions by big capital holders furthermore resulted in increasing military budgets that exploded state debt. All in all Western countries today are entrapped in debts that would have to be repaid by the next generations... Will they agree?
- Nations want to govern themselves and reject global governance. Citizens’ anger about unjustifiable levels of inequality, debt and social misery, manufacture electoral outcomes like Brexit and ‘cocktail Molotov Trump’. In other words people now reject economic globalization and global governance systems. This outcome pits the working Middle-class against big capital holders who come to see the recent promises of technological innovation as a way to... ho ...get rid of the working class...
- Societal cohesion transformed in societal atomization. As stated by Alastair Crooke “We live in a moment of the waning of two major projects: the decline of revealed religion, and - simultaneously - of the discrediting of the experience of secular Utopia.” (1) This relates to the displacement of religion by science in the West. But science is incapable to offer a holistic narrative about what reality is all about and so the citizens are left on their own. As a result, to quell the anxiety resulting from the unknown and to avoid going berserk, everyone feels the need to invent her/his own narrative… and so society ends up being atomized. Only inertia keeps things moving now. But when all the inertial energy is consumed societal movement comes to a radical stop that’s when societies are officially dead. Under sheer necessity citizens start to experiment new forms of living and soon their minds come to understand that there is no survival possible outside of societal groupings...
- China or the elephant in the room. Were it not for the stupendous economic success of China over the last 30 years Western big capital holders might have reached by now their target of instituting a truly global system of governance. Never in their wildest nightmares did they imagine that China would one day be derailing their plans. But then the unexpected happened. The unleashing of ‘cocktail Molotov Trump’ awakened the dragon spirit in Chinese minds. China has still some way to go to reach parity with the West in science and technology but the awakening of its dragon spirit is mobilizing the entire energy of the country into a giant drive toward scientific and technological innovation. Forbidding ZTE to buy US chips was the last straw that broke the camel of Chinese innocence. Citizens’ money deposited in bank accounts reaches nearly the equivalent of 30 Trillion US dollars. Until now that money was being invested in infrastructure and real estate. The government is ordering a dry-up of investments in these fields and all that money will now be invested in new scientific research programs. As a result within 5 to 10 years the applications generated by this investment are going to dwarf all new Western applications. Think about that for a second; it is indeed world-changing.
China’s economic weight is increasing year after year and within 2 decades its share of the economy-world is bound to dwarf any competitor. For many years the US has been the biggest consumer nation on earth but the Chinese consumer is soon going to eclipse its US counterpart. And being over 4 times more populous one imagines the substantial economies of scale that Chinese consumption is going to generate for its manufacturers.
Ultimately economic might means financial power. Financial power means a thriving culture. And China’s financial power unmistakably means its culture will be shining throughout the entire world.
But the mode of reasoning in Chinese traditional culture (animism) is rightly pushing back against this kind of mechanical thinking. The Chinese leadership is well aware that the future is unfolding as a combination of 2 trends – Western containment and possible great war, – nature overwhelms societies.
1. Does Western containment of China lead to great war ?
As I have mentioned elsewhere when the communist party jumped in its program of reforms in 1980 the initiators of these reforms were clear-minded about the fact that the whole program was violating the core principle of Traditional Chinese Governance. I mean the Precautionary Principle inherited from animism that rejects the governance possibility to initiate changes without having first acquired the certainty that these changes will not negatively impact the future of society. The program of reform agreed upon in 1980 did certainly not offer any such certainty. But the program was nevertheless decided upon for the good reason that its initiators thought that doing nothing was conducive to the annihilation of the Chinese nation following the move by Western big capital holders to expand their reach to the whole world. This was indeed the time when they were starting to implement the plan to globalize the reach of their capital base through financialization and the recourse to technology and the Chinese leadership was well aware of these plans.
Economic growth allowed China to build up its military strength and so the danger from Western encroachment has by now largely faded. But all signs point to a US last ditch effort to disrupt the shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world toward North-East Asia and more particularly toward China. The trade war initiated by the US is indeed a lot more than a trade story. The US ambitions nothing short of derailing China’s economic policy which is presently undertaking the transformation of China’s manufacturing sector from a low added value to a high added value production system. This transformation relies largely on China developing its capabilities in fundamental science which is necessary for the country to possibly attain the highest value added productions.
It is the Chinese view that such a transformation is a strategic undertaking that only the state can pursue successfully. And this is what is being vehemently contested by the US which insists on the application by the whole world of its neo-liberal ideological diktat that the exclusive actors in the economy are private companies. In this ideological view the state has no right to meddle in the game of private multi-national corporations. This ideological conflict inevitably drives the US in overdrive mode multiplying the possible sources of conflict with China and this inevitably increases the risk of miscalculation that could eventually result in a hot war. But war between two nuclear powers has the potential to annihilate humanity. Unfortunately the self-fulfilling dynamic of Western ideological pressure is cornering the parties and the unthinkable suddenly becomes possible.
But the unexpected materialized in the form of ‘cocktail Molotov Trump’. He completely disorganized the actors’ position on the great game's board of the economy-world. "In a stroke of genius, Trump, despite his thoroughly neoconservative regime, is destroying Washington’s hegemony. We might never know whether this result is an unintended consequence of arrogance and hubris or whether it is a clever strategy. But if it turns out the way it seems to be heading, Trump will go down in history as Trump the Great, the man who saved the world by dismantling American hegemony” (2). Yes the bizarre actions of ‘cocktail Molotov Trump’ are indeed resulting in the rapid fading of US hegemony and the repositioning of the other actors.
The game is nevertheless not over yet and as Linh Dinh states “Already hollowed out, caustically divided and poisoned by a preposterously crass culture, America will break apart, with choice parts hacked off by China, Russia and Mexico, probably. The rest will revert to savagery, but peopled mostly by newly-feral whites. The more enterprising ex-Americans will escape to less devastated lands, to become line cooks, dishwashers, gardeners or sex workers. With English dead, there won’t be a demand for English teachers” (3).
 |
| Borrowed from “'Neighborhoods
Are Crying Out':
Baltimore Is Nation's Deadliest Big City, Says
FBI”
|
Nobody will come out intact from a 3rd great war. The US this time will indeed no longer benefit from its continental isolation. Its territory will be ravaged as much as the territory of other countries.
Is there a livable future after such a conflict? I can’t imagine humanity going extinct but I can certainly imagine that in the devastation one side comes out with better chances to restart societal groupings. What I mean by this is that:
- in China, Asia, Europe, the Middle-East people have experienced the hardship of war multiple times and are thus ‘better prepared’ to suffer the blows than US citizens who have been sheltered till today from the ravages of world wars and so the blow for US citizens would be very hard felt indeed.
- in China and Asia more generally, outside of big cities, Modernity has not penetrated society and the minds so very profoundly as in the US and so people are less dependent on technology. Without electricity for a month US society would be decimated demographically not so in China and some other Asian countries.
- Individualism has also had less time to freeze the minds in the illusion of me me me and so Asians are still largely thinking about life along communal and collective lines. As a result in times of difficulties they are thus naturally more resilient and more inclined to cooperate for the common good. I can imagine the savagery “newly-feral whites” would inflict on the few surviving citizens of other colors…
2. Nature overwhelms societies
Chinese traditional culture is steeped in the animist notion that all particles on earth are interconnected. Societal governance is thus automatically extending the application of its Precautionary Principle to the side-effects that human activities impose on their societies, on all living entities, and on all processes active inside the system earth. What I mean by this is that the Chinese are attuned to the reality that human activities can alter natural processes and they are thus accepting the conclusions of the scientific community relating to climate change, higher acidity of the oceans, mass extinction of life, impact of pollution, and so on. Most Chinese leaders are engineers and, as realists,
they readily agree with the scientific consensus on climate change
which leads them to implement policies to counter future emissions of
CO2. As a result, not only did the air in Beijing improve markedly these
last years but the country is also undertaking a monumental
restructuring of its activities. Coal is being phased out and replaced by less polluting fuel sources like natural gas while renewable sources like solar, wind nuclear, or hydroelectricity are being privileged in new investments.
Furthermore building the new city of Xiongnan is planned as a national testing ground for a new vision on urbanity: – planning of a sustainable city by using smart design, green architecture and cutting-edge technology, – management of the city assisted by artificial Intelligence, – super energy efficient buildings that are socially, economically and ecologically sustainable, – electric and self driving vehicles in an assisted environment, – robot assisted housing, office, and production facilities, – and so on. This national testing ground is under the direct supervision of the state council which guarantees that finance shall be sufficiently abundant. The grand plan is then to spread the innovations resulting from the Xiongnan test to the four corners of the country. Not only does this indicate that China is building a sustainable future for itself; this experiment also portend such economies of scale that this will de-facto give the country world dominance in these fields...
All this planing and investment in research and development suggests that China is deadly serious about combating the side-effects of Modernity. But will this be sufficient?
Being conscious and pro-active in countering the impact of human activities on our habitat does indeed not guarantee a future devoid of ecological catastrophe. The climate, the oceans, pollution, mass extinction, and so on are global problems that necessitate global answers. But in a world that is divided by national interests only extreme hardship will finally motivate decision makers to take the necessary drastic measures to avoid human extinction. But will their decisions come in time or will it be too late by then?
In fact more and more scientific studies indicate that the side-effects of Modernity are materializing at a lot faster pace and with far worse outcomes than anything scientific models have been forecasting. Observation of the reality on the ground indicate that the destruction of the habitat of living species, including the human habitat, has been abruptly accelerating over the last decades. Now we know as a matter of fact that after reaching an unknown threshold of destruction there will be nothing that can be done to remedy the situation. The reality observed on the ground today already means that our societal institutions are going to be overwhelmed and in consequence most societies are going to collapse. The point at which the threshold of destruction sets in is
unknown for the good reason that all side-effects of Modernity are
interacting among themselves generating feedback loops that science does still not understand or even still does not know exist.
Some scientists affirm that we have already passed this threshold and that humanity is now doomed to extinction (4).
Others insist that we are on the brink of the abyss but they don’t
agree among themselves on the solutions to our predicament which leaves the political decision makers in a quandary to say the least. Finally a few isolated scientists reject the idea that there would be a problem at all. So we the individuals are being stuck in uncertainty left ruminating existential questions and the fact of the matter is that more and more of us are just abandoning all hope. This is not the ideal scenario for societies to possibly grow out of the doldrums of Late-Modernity.
As
the testing ground of Xiongnan attests countries are taking different
paths. Under the weight of powerful political lobbies the US is
exonerating its fossil fuel industries from any obligation to take any
remedies and in consequence, not only is its sustainable energy sector
being hampered, the country is also been ravaged by all kinds of
side-effects inflicted on it by its fossil fuel industries. In the
meanwhile a country like China is investing heavily, not only in the
Xiongnan national testing ground, but also in electric cars, in new
sustainable energies, in desert sun farms connected to the national grid
that will service the nation’s fleets of electric vehicles, and so on
and on. These radically different approaches could soon enough give such
an advantage to China that the US can simply no longer compete and
needs to shut its doors...
Humanity today is confronted with a real predicament. On one side we unmistakably observe
that our economic activities are generating side-effects that destroy
the habitat of living species including our own. On the other side we are forced to observe that there
is no consensus in the scientific community about the remedies to this
predicament. In such a situation, even if they agree that something has
to be done, it is difficult to see how the political decision makers will be able to implement really valid solutions to save the world from the side-effects of Modernity.
3. Humanity’s future and the role of the artist
I first need to clarify the meaning of the word
artist. Millions of people today qualify themselves as artists. But what
do they mean exactly? The great majority among them try to produce
pleasing little squares or rectangles to be hung as decorations on white
walls. But such products qualify at best as interior decoration
commodities that have no commonalities with artworks. They may
eventually reflect the technical mastery of their authors but this does
in no way transform such works into works of art. Having understood how
the art market values works others have adapted their productions to its
monetary game of speculation. But I would venture to say that interior
decoration and financial speculation have nothing to do with what art is
all about.
Let’s be clear here. The word art originated in the European Renaissance. Its meaning related to the efficiency at persuading the viewer of the truth represented in the works commissioned by new rich long distance merchants. These works were commissioned with the express intention to empower their new values and ideas in order to gain the approval of society and more particularly of the Christian church. Their success at attaining that goal is what came to be recognized as magical great art and producing such a magic was handsomely remunerated indeed.
Before the Renaissance image craftsmen had been working for some one thousand years for the church as ‘illustrators’ of its creed for all to see. And, note that during this whole time, these craftsmen were at the bottom of the social order. What is remarkable is that when entering at the service of the new rich long distance merchants they rapidly gained richness. And this helped them to climb the social ladder which ultimately pushed them up the social ladder. What we have to understand is that the origin of the word art resides in the fact that it was viewed as a magic act of empowering the new values and ideas of the long distance merchants. It was the common understanding at the time that art is what was gaining the approval, of society and of the Christian Church, for the reason at work within capital, individualism, private property, greed and so on...
To possibly get a grip on what was going on at the time we have to understand the context of the Late Middle Ages. This was an era of total dominance of the church over society. For one thing landing money at interest was strictly forbidden and punishable at the stake. But long distance merchants depended on loans, or investments financed by loans, to be able to buy the luxury goods that they would sell to European aristocrats and other rich merchants. The church also rejected the acquisition of material possessions and acquiring luxury goods was viewed as the worse. It was seen as corruption and decadence. In such an environment the church was highly suspicious, to say the least, about the long distance trade of luxuries. And so long distance merchants and their aristocratic clients had to devise strategies in order to gradually gain the acceptance of the church for their new values. And that’s how painting became the vehicle to popularize these new values.
Over the next centuries art came to be understood as being representations of what I call the 3 obliged subjects. The sanctification of the new values of Modernity focused indeed exclusively on – portraits of those in the mansions, – landscapes around the mansions, – and stills adorning the tables in the mansions. Modernism finally rejected all that. But lets honestly recognize that this whole conversation about “art” was a European construct that other cultures largely ignored. It is only after Western economic hegemony had successfully projected its tentacles to the whole world that other cultures were exposed to Western culture and its fine art. Upon their first contact with Western culture the elites of other societies started to doubt about their own values and it is in such a context of doubt that, to make a buck, some artists started to ape European works at the attention of Western buyers. This whole story is simply pathetic but the world nevertheless fell for it. In their doubts the elites of non-European cultures forced their societies to adapt ‘High Western Culture’ while their traditions were eventually preserved locally far from Western influence. Such a story has been at work all around the world over the last centuries and it is the reason of the cultural devastation suffered by the non-European world at the contact of Western culture.
When I speak about art it is in this Renaissance meaning of visual signs having the power to invade the viewer’s mind with the express intention to deposit abstractions in it that will end up modulating the working of his conscious mind. But at this point I have to clarify a 2nd thing. I mean this notion of modulating the working of the conscious mind of the viewer is what power tries to achieve through propaganda. The question then arises ‘is art also propaganda’? The answer to that question is a resolute no; art is no propaganda. But what is the distinction then between art and propaganda?
Both art and propaganda use visual signs to deposit abstractions in the viewer’s mind. Where they diverge is in their intention or why they want to deposit abstractions in the minds of the viewers. In other words it is in their intention to modulate the working of peoples’ conscious minds that art and propaganda diverge. Here is how things stand:
- The
tribal men of knowledge were in charge of the knowledge of the tribe
starting with the societal transition from ‘bands’ to ‘tribes’ and
ending with the transition from ‘tribes’ to ‘kingdoms’ and ‘empires’.
This means that over a time span of many tens of thousands of years the tribal men of knowledge were responsible for the knowledge of the tribe which encompasses – knowledge formation, –
and the sharing of this knowledge with all tribesmen. Being put in
charge means that the shaman had responsibilities and obligations
towards his fellow tribesmen and from their side the tribesmen
compensated the shaman’s satisfaction of his obligations – by
exonerating him from daily chores, – and by satisfying his material
needs. As one can imagine the men of knowledge devised a slew of methods
to satisfy their obligations. I’ll pass the methods about knowledge
formation. What interest us here is the sharing of knowledge with all
members of the group.
But let us start with the reasons why tribes concluded such arrangements about knowledge – everywhere on earth, – and starting at approximately the same time in history. An extensive presentation on that subject is available on my blog at Book 2. Chapter 1. “About the formation of human knowledge”. In short the evolution to Homo-sapiens in our present form was concluded at the latest some 300,000 years ago which means that our descendants had the same physical brain as ours and so they had acquired, by that time, the capacity of reasoning and making abstractions. Over the millennia they observed that there were ‘ways’ to decrease suffering or to increase happiness. These observed ‘ways’ led them to the abstraction of “knowledge”. This was sometime during the transition from ‘bands’ to ‘tribes’ when the group could not lose the work force of one of its physically able members. The bands thus decided to ask one of their least physically able to specialize in knowledge formation and this decision rapidly increased the capacity of the group to satisfy its material needs. The reliance of bands on men of knowledge resulted thus in their demographic growth which destabilized their governance by alpha males. The men of knowledge then guided their groups in balancing demographic growth and governance. After thousands of years of trials and errors the tribal model of society was adopted over the whole earth which recognized that all members are equals who trust each other and can thus manage the affairs of the group by taking decisions at the unanimity. Humans all around the world have lived in tribes for many tens of thousands of years in, what is generally recognized was, a situation marked by cooperation and peace. The men of knowledge were the reason for such a state of affair.
Ensuring trust between the members of the tribal group was perhaps the central task of the shaman and he viewed trust as the automatic outcome of strong levels of societal cohesion. Boosting societal cohesion was thus his highest priority and visual signs were among the most potent instrument in his tool-kit.
The intention of the tribal men of knowledge to modulate, the working of the conscious minds of their fellow tribesmen through visual signs, was the satisfaction of his obligation towards his fellow tribesmen’s which was part of an unwritten societal contract. These contractual obligations were:- to share a worldview or a narrative about the working of reality in order to boost the societal cohesion of the group so as to ensure high levels of trust between the members of the tribe
- to share a narrative that is highly pragmatic. This means that the narrative had to facilitate, or ease, the production of the group’s daily life. In other words it was expected that contentment would result in the individuals’ minds
- to divine the future and the remedies to the individuals’ suffering
- to boost the happiness of the members of the group, while reinforcing their belief in the shared worldview, by officiating as visual artist-musician-dancer and master of ceremonies during regularly held feasts
- The transition from tribal, non-power societies, to power societies started some 10-11,000 years ago following an abrupt climate change at the end of the Younger Dryas (5) and concluded sometime around 5000 years ago with the stabilization of the institutions of the first kingdoms and empires. Power
societies are societies that impose, the acceptance by all citizens of,
the privileges of a minority. Imposing the acceptance of the privileges of a minority in a group is never an easy task. Having said that how could free and equal tribal citizens have accepted to be governed by a privileged minority? And how could they furthermore have accepted to work a lot longer hours to acquire subsistence goods that had dramatic negative consequences for their health and life expectancy? Life expectancy fell by half. Peoples’ height shrank substantially and we only recovered the heights of ancient hunter-gatherers in the last century in the richest parts of the world.
The transition to power societies was spread over 5 to 6,000 years and so the evolution was slow. But more importantly what is being observed, around the time of the stabilization of the institutions of kingdoms and empires in the Middle-East, is the dominant role that religious beliefs played in coalescing people in a unity made of belief. In other words what is being observed is the intention of the ‘religious class’ to modulate, or better to manipulate, the working of peoples’ conscious minds into acceptance, submission, and veneration of their kings and emperors.
In other words power and its privileges was imposed on the people through mind manipulation against their express consent. And the coalescence through belief was accompanied by the exercise of force in case belief was insufficient to pacify citizens. In such an environment it starts to make sense that image crafters were simply visual technicians who were recognized very low social esteem. The men of power and the men of knowledge were sharing the privileges and the role of the rest of society was to supply the work and the goods representing such privileges. In power societies force accompanies mind manipulation. Modern societies are no different.
Art was not an invention of the Renaissance. The new rich and the aristocrats simply copied a strategy that had already been used very successfully by the church over the past millennium and the church itself had copied it from other religions, or pagan beliefs, that were practiced even earlier. Ultimately it were the tribal men of knowledge who were the real initiators of art and its strategy to spread knowledge to all in the societal group. Power societies did nothing more then to adapt a tribal knowledge strategy to their need of pacifying and manipulating their citizens’ minds so that they would accept the glaring privileges of a minority by taxing the work of all which necessarily led to social inequality materializing in the poverty and misery of the majority.
Now that the meaning of the word art has been clarified lets try to understand where those who create art, the artists, stand today in Late-Modernity.
The shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world will necessarily re-calibrate the comparative power of nations. In the best of all possible outcomes ‘cocktail Molotov Trump’ will be remembered in history as “Trump the Great, the man who saved the world by dismantling American hegemony” < (2). But if the deep state at the service of big capital holders were to succeed to contain ‘cocktail Molotov Trump’ things could well end up in a 3rd great world war. Whatever the outcome it appears nevertheless evident already that the power of nature will soon enough overwhelm nations and the probability is very high indeed that under the weight of their systemic complexity societal institutions will have nowhere else to go but to collapse.
Reason inspires a vision of the future in which individualism is cloaked under the mantle of natural necessity. Survival appears indeed to be the name of the game of life in the future. How all this unfolds precisely is anyone’s guess. But what is a certainty is that the convergence, of the numerous side-effects of Modernity, is going to be an ugly sight indeed. I hesitate to start a sketch of that sight because I see too much misery there and I feel that in due time that sight shall vanish from the survivors’ memory. They will be so thoroughly occupied fighting for the survival of their small groups that their daily culture will rapidly forget the most gruesomest facts inflicted on their species during nature’s spell at cleansing Modernity.
Let me be as precise as I can here. To me the future means the culture of those who survive ‘the great cleansing’ and in this culture the words of Mahatma Gandhi will certainly resonate the vital truth that “all through history the ways of truth and love have always won”. The struggle for survival can indeed not be won individually. This struggle is necessarily the feat of groups of individuals searching for the truth in the creation of their daily life. In the struggle to survive truth means nothing short than the fact of surviving and anything that helps to survive becomes a truth. And so food and the cooperation of the group that allows to acquire food, both, are fundamental truths of survival. Living such truths day after day projects beauty in the minds for the very good reason that these truths allow us to be successful at surviving. In the long chain of biological evolution success equates beauty and failure equates ugliness and these patterns are inscribed deeply in the code of life of the individuals of all species. These patterns are guiding rods utilized by the computing brains of the individuals of all species to ensure their survival. How such a basic fact of life remains hidden for most of us is a mystery to me.
Sharing truths, and the beauty they project, glues the minds of the members of a group in a deeply shared feeling of love. It is indeed not the individual who succeeds to acquire what is necessary to survive. It is the cooperation of all in the group that makes it possible to acquire what is necessary for each individual to survive. These are the profound lessons that in the future will be impressed in the minds of the survivors of ‘the great cleansing’ and this is going to re-introduce a set of values and ideas in peoples’ worldview that had been entirely lost in Modernity. This set of values and ideas formed the core understanding of our ancestors about the place of man in the universe, the role of societies in ensuring the survival and thriving of species, the role of societal cohesion in ensuring the reproduction of societies over the future generations, the role of knowledge and the arts to ensure the gluing of the citizens’ minds in a common vision of the world (worldview), and so on.
These ideas about – future small group cooperation, – success in survival equals beauty, – sharing beauty glues the minds in love, – feeling the love for the others in the group strengthen the cohesion of the group, – thriving for a highly cohesive group calls for men of knowledge and artists, – strong group cohesion ensures the reproduction of societies over the generations, – the reproduction of societies over the generations ensures the survival of the species,… all these ideas should by now have awakened the sensitivity of the real artist and inspired him to search to know more about it all.
The fact of the matter is that throughout humanity’s entire history the function of visual art has been to ‘illustrate’ the values and ideas of the man of knowledge of the day for his fellow citizens to share. Shamanic and religious practices often associated music and dance with visuals signs to amplify their perceptions. The vibrations of music act on the minds and bodies and thus modulate the mood of the individuals so as to maximize their ‘availability’ to act in a given fashion best adapted to the circumstance. Certain music vibrations have the particularity, for example, to enhance the perception of visual signs. Dance amplifies that perception a lot further by filtering the information coming to the conscious mind and thus altering the consciousness of the individual whose attention is then being so radically focused on the visual sign that the truth of its meaning suddenly pops in his mind while immersing his body in a sensation of ecstasy. In religious circles this kind of popping of meaning in the mind was called illumination or enlightenment or spiritual awakening.
Over long timespans of relative stability visual signs changed relatively little and societal roles were ossified at the image of the working of modern bureaucracies. No change no thinking no flexibility there; the societal worldview was passed down to the artists for illustration to be viewed by the maximum of eye-balls. But when societal change accelerates cultural memes are integrated more rapidly in the worldview and uncertainty arises. In Late-Modernity societal changes are coming so rapidly that they are overwhelming the minds of citizens. As I wrote here above science has displaced religion in the west but “Science is incapable to offer a holistic narrative about what reality is all about and so the citizens are left on their own. But as a result, to quell the anxiety resulting from the unknown, everyone feels the need to invent her/his own narrative… and society ends up being atomized”. This also explains the profound crisis that the art-world has been navigating in for more than half a century.
This malaise was a direct consequence of the failure of Modernism to satisfy the target the avant-garde had set for itself which was to represent a truer vision of reality than the 3 obliged subjects of Early-Modernity and the Christian worldview. But while launching themselves in all kinds of directions the fact of the matter is that all schools in Modernism failed to solidify a more profound knowledge into visual representation and so they ended up with multiple visual forms that were unfortunately completely empty of significant meaning about the working of reality. This emptiness of meaning transformed their works into artistic nonexistence and the public response was rather telling. The eyeballs of the great majority of Western citizens refused to watch and looked in another direction. There could not have been a harsher societal judgment. Society was languishing for sense but Modernism failed miserably to satisfy this societal need.
But lets not blame the artists. The real culprit was, and remains to this very day, the societal arrangement of Modernity that forgot about the basic natural laws of life:
- species want to survive,
- the survival of species is the fact of their societies,
- their societies ensure their own reproduction by gluing the minds of their citizens in a common vision of the world (worldview),
- the narrative of the worldview was the domain of the man of knowledge and the visual artwork was his medium to insert the worldview in his fellow citizens’ minds.
Ha but... I hear already the loud complaints of indoctrinated minds
about my ignorance of the centrality of individual freedoms. I don’t
ignore the role of freedom. The fact is that it simply has no place in
the basic natural laws of life. Freedom can only come into the picture
after the survival of life has been ensured and its role is then to make
sure that the systems of life evolve into ever more complexity. But
that is another subject that I write about elsewhere.
Minds indoctrinated by Modernity don’t have any clue of what reality is all about and certainly don’t understand that the basic natural laws of life are the primordial truth of life. Scientists are no men of knowledge in the traditional sense of these basic natural laws of life. They are specialists of the scientific method who observe little bits of reality and try to understand how those are animated. But the resulting ‘knowings’ fail to supply a narrative about what reality is all about. Such a narrative is nevertheless what people yearn to share amongst themselves in order to quell their anxiety in the face of the unknown. Such a narrative was the responsibility of the traditional men of knowledge but Modernity is missing that and so its Late-Modern societies are plagued by individual anxiety, anger, and atomization. As I mentioned earlier atomization is societal death. Atomized societies are zombie societies that their residual inertial energy drives somewhat further down the line and then the line of societal life stops...
The vision of the future that I lay out does not offer a ready-made new worldview. But it opens up a path, to what comes our way, that is free of the many illusions that are being peddled very lightly by scientists and futurologists. The future that I describe results from reasoned thinking and when you push the thinking far enough you discover that Artificial Intelligence, robotics, and other so called technological remedies are not a viable part of our real future. I argued this idea in different chapters of “From Modernity to After-Modernity” and so I don’t plan to add to this argument here (6).
My interest here is to address the subject of visual art in Late-Modernity. The predicament of the artist is that he no longer is supplied with a worldview to illustrate and so he is turning in circles blind to any art sense. Some will counter in the vein of Pollock that the artist has feelings that he can express. To that I’ll simply answer that poverty of meaning for the sake of its poverty is masochism and furthermore the poverty of meaning is of no use for society. At this point postmodernists will certainly want to enter the conversation adding that focusing on bits and pieces of reality will do. To that I’ll simply answer that this is exactly at the image of science, and as science, the postmodern approach is simply incapable to soothe the anxiety in peoples’ minds resulting from the absence of a worldview that they yearn to share with those around them. So Postmodernism leads the individual in a micro-view impasse and it is of no use to society as well. That’s why society as a whole is ignoring it. The only ones who found a use for Postmodernism were big capital holders and their servants who adopted the postmodern tenet that worldviews are from the past and have no use in Modern societies. Financing university chairs for famous French intellectuals peddling the Postmodern idea that worldviews are unnecessary and should be avoided was a cheap way indeed to combat all ideologies that are opposed to Modernity, capitalism, and globalization-financialization-technologism. Big capital holders had the last laugh on this one.
I want now to address the subject of visual art in Late-Modernity from the viewpoint of the artist. No longer sharing a common worldview we can’t simply invent a new one. The whole point of sharing visual signs of a worldview is to reinforce in the minds something that is already vaguely there. But having completely disconnected from any common narrative we are now in the same position as the Modernist avant-garde. We know that we have to depict reality at a more profound level but we have no real clues as to what such a more profound reality entails. Having a fuzzy knowledge about what awaits humanity in the coming decades it would be wise to keep our feet on the ground by:
Minds indoctrinated by Modernity don’t have any clue of what reality is all about and certainly don’t understand that the basic natural laws of life are the primordial truth of life. Scientists are no men of knowledge in the traditional sense of these basic natural laws of life. They are specialists of the scientific method who observe little bits of reality and try to understand how those are animated. But the resulting ‘knowings’ fail to supply a narrative about what reality is all about. Such a narrative is nevertheless what people yearn to share amongst themselves in order to quell their anxiety in the face of the unknown. Such a narrative was the responsibility of the traditional men of knowledge but Modernity is missing that and so its Late-Modern societies are plagued by individual anxiety, anger, and atomization. As I mentioned earlier atomization is societal death. Atomized societies are zombie societies that their residual inertial energy drives somewhat further down the line and then the line of societal life stops...
The vision of the future that I lay out does not offer a ready-made new worldview. But it opens up a path, to what comes our way, that is free of the many illusions that are being peddled very lightly by scientists and futurologists. The future that I describe results from reasoned thinking and when you push the thinking far enough you discover that Artificial Intelligence, robotics, and other so called technological remedies are not a viable part of our real future. I argued this idea in different chapters of “From Modernity to After-Modernity” and so I don’t plan to add to this argument here (6).
My interest here is to address the subject of visual art in Late-Modernity. The predicament of the artist is that he no longer is supplied with a worldview to illustrate and so he is turning in circles blind to any art sense. Some will counter in the vein of Pollock that the artist has feelings that he can express. To that I’ll simply answer that poverty of meaning for the sake of its poverty is masochism and furthermore the poverty of meaning is of no use for society. At this point postmodernists will certainly want to enter the conversation adding that focusing on bits and pieces of reality will do. To that I’ll simply answer that this is exactly at the image of science, and as science, the postmodern approach is simply incapable to soothe the anxiety in peoples’ minds resulting from the absence of a worldview that they yearn to share with those around them. So Postmodernism leads the individual in a micro-view impasse and it is of no use to society as well. That’s why society as a whole is ignoring it. The only ones who found a use for Postmodernism were big capital holders and their servants who adopted the postmodern tenet that worldviews are from the past and have no use in Modern societies. Financing university chairs for famous French intellectuals peddling the Postmodern idea that worldviews are unnecessary and should be avoided was a cheap way indeed to combat all ideologies that are opposed to Modernity, capitalism, and globalization-financialization-technologism. Big capital holders had the last laugh on this one.
I want now to address the subject of visual art in Late-Modernity from the viewpoint of the artist. No longer sharing a common worldview we can’t simply invent a new one. The whole point of sharing visual signs of a worldview is to reinforce in the minds something that is already vaguely there. But having completely disconnected from any common narrative we are now in the same position as the Modernist avant-garde. We know that we have to depict reality at a more profound level but we have no real clues as to what such a more profound reality entails. Having a fuzzy knowledge about what awaits humanity in the coming decades it would be wise to keep our feet on the ground by:
- trying to sense what new ideas and values are starting to sprout in our present societies,
- and trying to plunge mentally into the future in order to sense what will bind our descendants into cohesive groups which will be the condition of their survival.
I started by sketching the context our descendants will live in after surviving ‘the great cleansing’ and here above I mentioned the following 7 basic rules of life:
- future small group cooperation will arise by necessity,
- success in survival equals beauty,
- sharing beauty glues the minds in love,
- feeling the love for the others in the group strengthen the cohesion of the group,
- thriving for a highly cohesive group calls for men of knowledge and artists,
- strong group cohesion ensures the reproduction of societies over the generations,
- the reproductions of societies over the generations ensures the survival of the species,
All
these ideas should by now have awakened the sensitivity of the real
artist and inspired him to do something in order to know more about it
all.
Confronted with such ideas sensitive and adventurous minds suddenly awaken and once they are awake they start to grasp at straws to sense ‘the form of the bale’. What I mean by this is that weak signals are starting to point to the natural processes that transform Late-Modernity into the context in which our descendants will be living in. These signals are still very weak but they are nevertheless starting to be accessible to sensitive eyes and minds. I call the context our descendants will be living in “After-Modernity” for no other reason than to avoid being ranged in the category Postmodernity that has been cooking in so many different sauces that reasoned conversations about it now pass over the interlocutor’s head without little chance of reaching his mind.
In “Nature overwhelms societies” I tried to give an analytical framework for the unfolding of societal and natural realities that shifts the world from Late-Modernity into what comes in After-Modernity. In this transition lays a great wealth in terms of lessons to learn from the working of reality. But this suggests that the real artists in Late-Modernity and thereafter have to act as ‘men of knowledge’ in the sense of the tribal shaman who knew about the basic natural laws of life. We can’t indeed as Late-Modern artists accept to fall in the absurd like the Modernist avant-garde simply because we don’t have the necessary knowledge base to comprehend what happens around us and to see what is coming our way in the future. I know that this is a tall order to climb but it is the price to pay to attain artistic greatness which is the only thing about us that will eventually be remembered by our descendants.
As the animist men of knowledge the Late-Modern real artist has to be able to have a peek into the future in order to ‘divine’ the knowledge that will bind our descendants into cohesive groups. The task of the artist is not to reproduce that knowledge in any realistic fashion. This is simply impossible but he can sketch new visions of reality that are pointing in the direction of the future knowledge that will sustain the worldview of our descendants. This is the kind of material that the real artist has to share with his fellow citizens. Such works are powerful in the sense that they put societal reality in motion. They do this by reinforcing subconscious notions that are already present in the minds of all of us and in that sense they push people forward. What I mean by this is that powerful artworks that reflect the future are helping people to become aware of presently sprouting seeds that growing further will materialize in trends that act like bricks in the patterns stored in the memory contained in the coding of life. The works that successfully represent the transformation of presently sprouting seeds into bricks of the patterns of societal change are unmistakably facilitating the reconciliation of the contradictions between peoples’ conscious certainties and notions in their subconscious that they are unaware of. When such a reconciliation is successful a supplement of consciousness is gained and one’s conscious certainties are augmented. That in short is the potential power of art today.
Biological evolution has been operating for nearly four billion years now and over this immensity of time a near infinite number of mutations have left their imprints in the form of patterns inside the coding of life that is written in our DNA. The brain somehow, without us understanding the mechanism, has access to these patterns and integrates them in the mass of data that will be processed in its computation of responses at the attention of the body. The individual is unaware of this and what we are unaware of we have come to call the subconscious. The subconscious is thus not a special place. The word simply reflects our unawareness of the computation mechanisms of the brain. The word has been used and re-used for the simple reason that some individuals sometimes, somehow, have access to some of the hidden knowledge used by the brain. Real artists are among such individuals who, somehow, gain access to some of the knowledge hidden in the brain. My use of the word ‘somehow’ is to signal that something happens without us really understanding its mechanism.
The patterns of life’s biological and societal changes are stored in the code of the individual’s life. These patterns inform about what works and what does not work and in this sense our future is already traced with a very high probability inside our brain which essentially means that the future is already traced in the subconscious minds of all of us. The potential power of the visual artist today resides in sizing the traces, of the values and ideas of future societies, that are already present in the form of accumulated patterns of the past in our brains or subconscious minds. The artworks that succeed to catch such traces are suggesting to the conscious minds of their viewers something that they are unconscious about but that is nevertheless already present in their brain and in this sense we can speak about such a mechanism as being a reinforcement in the mind of something it is unconscious of. And after several such reinforcements these ideas and values slowly become accepted as the normal in the conscious mind.
What I’m trying to suggest here is that the artworks successfully representing visual signs of such traces of the future, that the artist succeeds to extract from his mind, have the power to influence the minds of their viewers. And in this sense we can say that such artworks participate in the process of creating the future. I think that this is exactly what the tribal men of knowledge were doing. They were driving the evolution of their groups at the rhythms of changes in their natural environments. And this mechanism of knowledge formation, and its sharing through visual signs, became the engine that powered the transition from tribal societies to power societies with their kingdoms and empires.
I’m firmly convinced that men of knowledge, as in the traditional sense of the knowledge of the 7 basic natural laws of life, will again be called to come to the fore during the transition from Modernity to After-Modernity to be active participants in the formation of the knowledge of After-Modernity. And one of their tasks will be to share this knowledge through visual signs for all to see. In order to strengthen the cohesion of their societal groups.
_____________
Notes
Confronted with such ideas sensitive and adventurous minds suddenly awaken and once they are awake they start to grasp at straws to sense ‘the form of the bale’. What I mean by this is that weak signals are starting to point to the natural processes that transform Late-Modernity into the context in which our descendants will be living in. These signals are still very weak but they are nevertheless starting to be accessible to sensitive eyes and minds. I call the context our descendants will be living in “After-Modernity” for no other reason than to avoid being ranged in the category Postmodernity that has been cooking in so many different sauces that reasoned conversations about it now pass over the interlocutor’s head without little chance of reaching his mind.
In “Nature overwhelms societies” I tried to give an analytical framework for the unfolding of societal and natural realities that shifts the world from Late-Modernity into what comes in After-Modernity. In this transition lays a great wealth in terms of lessons to learn from the working of reality. But this suggests that the real artists in Late-Modernity and thereafter have to act as ‘men of knowledge’ in the sense of the tribal shaman who knew about the basic natural laws of life. We can’t indeed as Late-Modern artists accept to fall in the absurd like the Modernist avant-garde simply because we don’t have the necessary knowledge base to comprehend what happens around us and to see what is coming our way in the future. I know that this is a tall order to climb but it is the price to pay to attain artistic greatness which is the only thing about us that will eventually be remembered by our descendants.
As the animist men of knowledge the Late-Modern real artist has to be able to have a peek into the future in order to ‘divine’ the knowledge that will bind our descendants into cohesive groups. The task of the artist is not to reproduce that knowledge in any realistic fashion. This is simply impossible but he can sketch new visions of reality that are pointing in the direction of the future knowledge that will sustain the worldview of our descendants. This is the kind of material that the real artist has to share with his fellow citizens. Such works are powerful in the sense that they put societal reality in motion. They do this by reinforcing subconscious notions that are already present in the minds of all of us and in that sense they push people forward. What I mean by this is that powerful artworks that reflect the future are helping people to become aware of presently sprouting seeds that growing further will materialize in trends that act like bricks in the patterns stored in the memory contained in the coding of life. The works that successfully represent the transformation of presently sprouting seeds into bricks of the patterns of societal change are unmistakably facilitating the reconciliation of the contradictions between peoples’ conscious certainties and notions in their subconscious that they are unaware of. When such a reconciliation is successful a supplement of consciousness is gained and one’s conscious certainties are augmented. That in short is the potential power of art today.
Biological evolution has been operating for nearly four billion years now and over this immensity of time a near infinite number of mutations have left their imprints in the form of patterns inside the coding of life that is written in our DNA. The brain somehow, without us understanding the mechanism, has access to these patterns and integrates them in the mass of data that will be processed in its computation of responses at the attention of the body. The individual is unaware of this and what we are unaware of we have come to call the subconscious. The subconscious is thus not a special place. The word simply reflects our unawareness of the computation mechanisms of the brain. The word has been used and re-used for the simple reason that some individuals sometimes, somehow, have access to some of the hidden knowledge used by the brain. Real artists are among such individuals who, somehow, gain access to some of the knowledge hidden in the brain. My use of the word ‘somehow’ is to signal that something happens without us really understanding its mechanism.
The patterns of life’s biological and societal changes are stored in the code of the individual’s life. These patterns inform about what works and what does not work and in this sense our future is already traced with a very high probability inside our brain which essentially means that the future is already traced in the subconscious minds of all of us. The potential power of the visual artist today resides in sizing the traces, of the values and ideas of future societies, that are already present in the form of accumulated patterns of the past in our brains or subconscious minds. The artworks that succeed to catch such traces are suggesting to the conscious minds of their viewers something that they are unconscious about but that is nevertheless already present in their brain and in this sense we can speak about such a mechanism as being a reinforcement in the mind of something it is unconscious of. And after several such reinforcements these ideas and values slowly become accepted as the normal in the conscious mind.
What I’m trying to suggest here is that the artworks successfully representing visual signs of such traces of the future, that the artist succeeds to extract from his mind, have the power to influence the minds of their viewers. And in this sense we can say that such artworks participate in the process of creating the future. I think that this is exactly what the tribal men of knowledge were doing. They were driving the evolution of their groups at the rhythms of changes in their natural environments. And this mechanism of knowledge formation, and its sharing through visual signs, became the engine that powered the transition from tribal societies to power societies with their kingdoms and empires.
I’m firmly convinced that men of knowledge, as in the traditional sense of the knowledge of the 7 basic natural laws of life, will again be called to come to the fore during the transition from Modernity to After-Modernity to be active participants in the formation of the knowledge of After-Modernity. And one of their tasks will be to share this knowledge through visual signs for all to see. In order to strengthen the cohesion of their societal groups.
_____________
Notes
1.
“The
‘Pivots’ to the Coming Era Can Already Be Discerned” by
Alastair Crooke. In Strategic
Culture Foundation.
26.09.2018
2.
“Trump:
An Assessment by
Paul Craig Roberts in Katehon 2018-09-27. Robert’s
article was then followed by:
- John Mauldin’s warning that “Trump Might End US Hegemony
- Dr. Ramzy Baroud’s analysis in End of Hegemony: UN Must Reflect Changing World Order
3.
“Sunstroked
Observations from the Orient” by
Linh Dinh in Postcards
from the End of [the] America[n Empire]
4.
Some
scientists concluded that humanity
has
passed the point of no return and that near
term extinction (NTE) is
now a certainty.
The
most vocal proponent of this thesis is Dr.
Guy McPherson. Check
his “Climate-Change
Summary and Update.
5.
The
Younger Dryas is one of the most well known examples of abrupt
change. About 14,500 years ago, Earth's climate began to shift from a
cold glacial world to a warmer interglacial state. Partway through
this transition, temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere suddenly
returned to near-glacial conditions. This near-glacial period is
called the Younger Dryas, named after a flower (Dryas
octopetala) that grows in
cold conditions and that became common in Europe during this time.
The end of the Younger Dryas, about 11,500 years ago, was
particularly abrupt. In Greenland,
temperatures rose 10°C (18°F) in a decade.
Other proxy records, including varved lake sediments in Europe, also
display these abrupt shifts”. In “The
Younger Dryas” by
National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) under
(NOAA) the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
6.
About the myth of science and technology as saviors of humanity. This
is merely the same old illusion of human supremacy over nature that
is being re-conducted. See “From Modernity to After-Modernity”
Book
2. Chapter 1 and Chapter 4.
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