What’s going on here ? (3)

2. the cultural context forces human thinking and actions

The present post covers:

-  the introduction of this part 2

-  and its first chapter 2.1. Axioms of civilizations.

Next week’s post will cover:

-  chapter 2.2. Societal worldviews 
-  chapter 2.3. Culture 
__________

I wrote the following about adapting our thinking to the facts in “Pragmatism versus Ideology”:

“...after practicing for decades the strategy of confrontation and adjustment of the mind to reality, our views are paradoxically strengthening into quasi-certainties that can easily petrify into a new ideological path. Pragmatism requires thus discipline in order to avoid falling into this new ideological trap. And the required discipline consists in keeping the mind open – to the fact that our life systems (habitat) form no more than a tiny ensemble in the whole universe which puts the truth about reality out of our reach – to the fact that inside the tiny ensemble constituted by our habitat we have to ensure the coherence of our thinking in order to possibly survive while minimizing our suffering and maximizing our pleasure – to the fact that to avoid falling in the trap of rationalizing petrified beliefs we have to avoid picking some facts at the exclusion of others. ”

In reality keeping one’s mind open, to the facts as I mentioned here, is a near impossible task. I say ‘near impossible’ because there is a very narrow path for the individual to free oneself from one’s cultural context. But only a few wise-men have ever succeeded to attain such a radical open-mindedness. The minds of the rest of humanity remain indeed unconsciously stuck in their cultural context.

You have surely observed that the word culture gets as many definitions as the number of people talking about it. And this participates in hiding the reality of our cultural context in a deeply forbidding fog. But the fact of the matter is that our cultural context is imposing on all of us a very particular way to see and understand what reality is all about which explains why people in different cultural contexts experience such difficulties in understanding each other.

In our present-day geo-political situation these difficulties are furthermore magnified by the noise and propaganda of our societies which results in an ever deeper civilizational retrenchment of the USA inside itself. But in doing so the US is drawing a caricature of itself for the eyes of a few attentive observers to see. And what attentive observers see is that the USA is positing the primacy of the axioms of its own civilization:

• its society and systems are said to be on the side of what is good for humanity
• the rest of the world, being different. is said to be on the side of evil

Having thus posited its human centrality we observe that the US now wants to impose the adoption by the rest of the world of its societal forms and norms.

But the rest of the world does not want any of it. And so the result of such a US civilizational retrenchment is that the “governance-world” and the “economy-world” have reached an impasse which has the potential to blow up these systems. I do not imply that this is what will occur. I only want to signal that the systems of the “governance-world” and the “economy-world” that have been constructed under Modernity are facing their moment of truth. And this is why a good understanding of how cultural contexts operate is so precious today to possibly understand how the world unconsciously landed itself in this place.

But what do I mean by cultural context?

I mean all the following and their interplay:

1. the axioms of civilization:
   At the image of mathematical axioms the axioms of a civilization are “non-proven” general principles that set the foundations upon which the different societies, within the civilizational realm, will build worldviews that act as the ideation walls of their societal house. As an extension of this analogy we could say that culture acts like a layer of color decorating the walls of the societal house at a given time in its history. Such a layer of color fades fast and a new one is easily applied in a following present moment.
   The axioms of a civilization date from its start as a civilization and are anchored very deeply in the minds of the individuals from the societies participating in that civilization. But citizens are nevertheless unaware of the existence of such civilizational axioms. We might thus say that they somehow force in the minds of the individuals the civilizational nature of their behaviors and beliefs. When asked why they behave or believe in such a way citizens face difficulties coming up with sensical explanations unable even to conceive that other types of beliefs and behaviors might be as valid as theirs. 
   
   
2. societal worldviews:
   Worldviews are the narratives of religions or philosophies that slowly evolve over the centuries by integration of replicable cultural memes. In other words a worldview is a grand narrative that brushes a rough image of what reality is all about and such a narrative is being shared, consciously and unconsciously, by all the citizens of a given society throughout its history. The sharing of a societal worldview – procures certainty to the citizens that the group is behind them which ensures the maximization of trust between all of them – this trust, in turn, ensures the maximization of the society’s cohesion which is absolutely necessary for its reproduction over the long haul. 
   
   
3. culture:
   In its broad meaning culture is the sum total of human behaviors, beliefs and actions – in a given society – at a given time. In other words culture is like the color of the day that gives human behaviors, beliefs and actions their present day particular form and shape which differentiate them from what they were in the past and what they will be in the future.

As the reader might imagine the cultural context, as presented here, is the most determinant factor shaping the behavior of nations. And it is also without any possible doubt the most determinant factor explaining the perception by the West of what it sees as China’s ‘other-worldliness’. So let’s examine one by one the 3 parameters of the cultural context as they address the formation of the conceptions of what reality is all about in China and in the West and more particularly these perceptions and further conceptions about ‘the other’.

2.1. Axioms of civilizations

The axioms of civilizations shape general behavioral traits among the citizens living within the boundaries of a civilizational space. And such behavioral traits remain a constant during the whole of the historical span of that civilization. What interests me here is to pinpoint how the axioms of the Western civilization that originated in Europe shape in the minds of the citizens of a geographically extended Europe:

1. the perception of a ‘behavioral otherness’ by the Chinese
2. the perception that this “otherness’ is somehow evil
3. the perception that the West has to correct that evil or to annihilate it.

An extended presentation of my views about the axioms of civilization is available here. What follows is a short sketch of these views as they apply to the perceptions of the other side in the relations between the west and China.

What are the axioms of civilization ?

Dualism versus polarism and derivatives

Dualism is the most significant axiom in the countries within the realm of the Western Christian civilization while Polarism is the most significant axiom in the countries within the realm of the Chinese civilization. Dualism and polarism are prime axioms that engage the emergence of further derivative axioms.

Dualism posits that all entities are at the mercy of ‘good and evil’ opposites that oppose each other so strongly that their ambition is to dominate the other into submission. And if they can’t bring the other into submission their target is to annihilate her or him. The best example of dualism is given by Christian believers who feel that they are constantly being subjected to the temptation of good and evil forces. I could fill a long list of what they perceive as being such good and evil forces but since this would take pages I will use the devastating power of an example that has been tearing apart the USA along the last 2 years. I mean an evil Russia has been accused, without irrefutable proof, of trying to bring the good USA into submission by pushing the election of its agent the devil Trump. The result of such a narrative is best described in “What Polarization Does to Us” by Robert B. Talisse, 2019-05-30, in the University of Cardiff’s blogs “Open for Debate”:

“ As we transform into more extreme versions of ourselves, we also come to adopt increasingly negative stances towards those we perceive to be different. As we shift towards a more extreme position, opposing views begin to look increasingly unfounded, unreasonable, and irrational. …


In the end, once belief polarization has set in, amiable interactions with our political opponents tend to further our extremity; calls to “reach across the aisle” can backfire. Ironically, as we come to regard our opponents in these ways, we come to more fully fit the description we ascribe to them. “

What Robert Talisse mentions here is the form of the interactions between the two dominant factions within the US establishment. But he fails to mention the substance of these interactions. Both side posit a narrative about an evil Russia and a good USA. Where they diverge is in their appreciation of Trump – one side views him as the devil who was elected because of Russian interference in the US electoral system and who is now working for Russia – the other side views him as a hero that brings back its greatness to the USA. Unfortunately for the USA dualism has no back door and so the country can’t escape this destructive narrative. Only another narrative, based on a stronger dualism, could displace the dualism USA-good and Russia-evil… But another narrative, even if successful in changing the substance of the interaction, is not going to eliminate the forms of future interactions as described by Robert Talisse. It will only further increase the rage and blindness of both sides.

In stark contrast polarism, or the dance between polarities, posits that any entity is composed of 2 complementary poles whose interactions bring about changes in the entity that put in motion a transformation in the contextual settings of that entity. The best example of such a dance between polarities is given by the complementary poles in electricity. The interactions between the positive and negative poles generate bursts of energy that discharge the stored electricity (change in the entity) while powering and putting in motion a transformation in its contextual setting.

Dualism, not only posits that all entities are at the mercy of ‘good and evil’ opposites, it also sets limits to the path of entities. Dualism posits that the path of all entities starts with a beginning and stops with their ending. And so dualism itself is operating for the limited duration of the path of an entity. In other words each entity unleashes a cycle of dualism.

This idea that any entity is limited circumscribes the Christian conception about the territory of human reality and it forces us to question the ultimate causality that has put in motion the era that started these cycles of dualism. That ultimate causality or prime cause was posited as being the love of god which was understood as an ultimate good that procures its substance to the good in the duality good-evil that sets in motion the cycle of dualism within any given entity.

This idea of the love of god is the starting point of the Christian narrative about what reality is all about. This idea that reality has a start and an end forces any entity within this limited reality to be limited itself. It also foreshadows the idea of rupture at each end of the limited time-span of an entity’s cycle of dualism. Dualism has been introduced into Christianity at the time of the unification of the Christian creed by the Roman Emperors in the 4^th and 5^th centuries. And it acted as an agent of violent rupture with all the traditional animist beliefs and practices of the populations in the four corners of the empire.

In stark contrast the Chinese view of dancing polarities engages an unlimited path which foreshadows a continuity within an unlimited time-span. In other words the dance between polarities is not limited to the cycle of life of a finite entity. It is indeed the ultimate nature of reality. And as such there is no need for the Chinese to think about a beginning and there is no need for an ultimate cause which explains why the Chinese are so fundamentally a non-religious bunch of people.

China inherited such a pragmatic view from animism that viewed reality as “the One” or “the Whole” which became “Taiji” in Chinese. Taiji conveys the idea of:

• the potential of the One that is activated by its polarities
• the absolute and infinite potential of the dance between polarities.

In Taoist philosophy such an absolute and infinite potential is called “Supreme Ultimate”. “Tai” translates as “Grand” in the sense of something that looks awe-inspiringly large. Ji means “Ultimate” so the “Supreme Ultimate” means something like an ‘infinite indetermination’ which is what must have inspired the author(s) of the DaoDeJing in writing the first chapter of this 81 chapters work:

“ – The infinity that can be conceived is not the everlasting Infinity. The infinity that can be described is not the perpetual Infinity.

– The inconceivable indescribable is the essence of the all encompassing Infinite. -

– Conceiving and describing applies only to the manifestations of Infinity.

– Free from distinctions, experience the oneness of Infinity. Focus on distinctions and see only the manifestations of Infinity.

– Yet distinction and non-distinction are one within Infinity.

– Potential within potential is the essence of Infinity. ? 
Tanslation by World Peace

I would need the space of a book to address the working of these axioms in both civilizations. This being an article that addresses the fields that participate in the formation of our contemporary governance-world, I will concentrate on trying to sketch how these prime-axioms affect so radically differently the perceptions of Westerners and of Chinese about societal governance.

Civilizations originated out of the societal answers that emerged from a long societal transition from tribal societies to power societies that was put in motion by an abrupt climate change that followed the end of the era called the Young-Dryas. This transition lasted some 8 to 10,000 years or more, depending on the location, and invariably concluded with the establishment of power societies in the form of empires and kingdoms. These power societies were founded on what could be called a “philosophic constitution” or “axioms of civilization” in my personal terminology. The West stumbled upon dualism, a conception of opposites that are in a life and death struggle for dominance in each successive moment. China inherited from animism an approach based on observation, over tens of thousands of years, of the inner working of the mind and the outer working of the environs and the sky which concluded that everything is animated by spirits. And the spirits themselves were understood to be animated by the dance of their twins. These twin-spirits deeply impacted the formation of animist knowledge. It is thus not a mystery that they figured preeminently in the collective memory. This explains how the idea of twins is at the core of the mythologies of all civilizations. Mythology was indeed largely inspired by the memory of Late-Animism.

Dualism in the West resulted from a rupture with the past that took the form of a violent liquidation of the knowledge base of animism and all visual signs relating to it. This eradication was undertaken in order to facilitate the expansion of the popular following of Christianity after it had been made the official religion of the Roman empire. China, on the other hand, favored continuity and co-opted animism the vast body of knowledge that tribes had accumulated over the past tens of thousands of years.

The worldview of empire in the West stabilized in the form of a new worldview given by the Roman newly codified grand narrative of Christianity. China has been incrementally building add-ons on top of animism and in this sense its worldview has to be seen as a kind of animism+.

After the fall of Rome Western Europe was governed for some 1,000 years by the Catholic church which had been made the official religion of the Roman empire by Emperor Constantine during the 4^th century AD. The Christian creed at the time was not unified. Every region and city, where the creed had a following, had its own interpretation and its own ‘sacred texts’. Wanting to spread the creed throughout the entire empire successive emperors adopted a policy of unification of the creed. Rome had expanded into a wide geographic empire having a strong military and a strong economy but culturally it had widely adopted the more advanced culture of Greece. This is how the unification of the Christian creed integrated the metaphysics of Aristotle as the reasoned foundation of the new belief system and this is where Christian dualism found its theoretical foundation.

Christianity adopted Aristotle's notion of opposites and the principle of an ultimate cause that Aristotle viewed as being god. The ultimate cause is the concept of an ultimate force that interrupts the infinite chain of causes and effects. Aristotle posited that this ultimate force was the love of god. This abstraction was then woven in a popular narrative that centered around the life of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

After instituting Christianity as the religion of their empire the Romans codified the Christian creed and imposed this newly codified version to all; by force if necessary. To contrast its vision from the communalism of animism, along the following centuries, Christianity pushed a vision of the individual’s “self” as being under the constant oversight of god. This forced in peoples’ minds the idea that god knows all their actions and thoughts and so each individual was feeling forced to negotiate his relation with god which soon transformed into a life long dialogue that forced in the minds the rise of the idea of the “self” which gradually erased communal thought. This newly formed notion of the self later formed the substrate upon which individualism was able to grow. It is important to note here that the “reason at work within capital” could never have been idolized by the long-distance merchants in the absence of this prior Christian build-up of the notion of the self. And in this sense Christianity has to be seen as one necessary step on the societal evolutionary ladder that drove humanity into Modernity and capitalism.

By the time of ‘the great discoveries’, and the colonial adventure that followed, the Catholic church was utterly corrupted which led to protests and the separation of “protestant” groups from the centralized Catholic institution. Feeling suppressed by the Catholics the Protestants participated “en masse” in the colonial expansion of Europe towards what are presently the US, Canada, Australia and New-Zealand (the Anglo-world). Being dominant in enacting this expansion, and being less prone to follow the commandments of institutions, Protestants cultivated a predisposition for entrepreneurial endeavors which put them on a bifurcating path that nevertheless always remained within the boundaries of the European Christian trunk. This bifurcation was indeed at all times contained within the domain of the common Christian vision or worldview about the working of reality and dualism was thus the prime axiom of both Europeans and Americans: man against woman, good against evil, god against devil, white against black, day against night, dry against wet, democracy against whatever other system of governance, and so on and on.

But how does dualism work in real life?

I wrote here above “That ultimate causality or prime cause was posited as being the love of god which was understood as an ultimate good that procures its substance to the good in the duality good-evil that sets in motion the cycle of dualism within any given entity”. Being followers of god explains how Westerners came to consider that they share in god’s love and are thus automatically on the side of good. This automatism has been ingrained in the minds for so long that it is still at work in the minds of those who left Christianity. And when a Westerner sees an ‘other’ who is different than him in any fashion he automatically judges that he is on the side of evil. So when Westerners are asked, for example, about their system of governance versus the Chinese system the same unconscious logic applies. They think “we are on the side of good, our system of governance is on the side of good, so the Chinese system being other’ and different is necessarily bad”. It’s as simple as that. And the propaganda is then further lubricating this automatism so that the whole thing happens outside of people’s awareness or consciousness.

What is most remarkable is that the vast majority of Westerners have not the slicest idea as to why they think that they themselves represent what is good while the other who is different must necessarily represent what is bad. Or for that matter that ‘democracy’ their system of governance is good while any another system of governance is bad. The facts nevertheless indicate that Western systems of governance have failed them miserably over the last decades which polls register and attest in the form of levels of unfavorable opinions about their political decision makers reaching 70 to 90%. This has to be contrasted with the highly favorable opinions of Chinese citizens, about their own government, reaching an order of magnitude of 80%. In light of these figures it is disingenuous at best to continue advocating the superiority of the Western, so called democratic, system of governance.

These kinds of polls are undertaken by multiple Western polling institutions and they all convey a similar judgment of the population about the system of governance of their own country. The Chinese think that their system is worth at least 80% of their trust while the citizens of the USA think that their system is worth no more than 30% of their trust. If by good we mean that a system of governance is legitimate and if by legitimacy we mean high approval levels by the citizens then, in all logic, we have to conclude that the Chinese system of governance must be far superior than the US system. But why then are Westerners in general permanently shouting about the legitimacy of their system and about the non legitimacy of the Chinese system that is represented by the communist party? This shouting is the exact opposite of what they express in opinion polls.

So how can it be that Westerners in general are so prone to forget the facts? A reasonable answer is that their axioms of civilization are very powerful indeed – and US authorities are furthermore really good at mind manipulation or at “engineering popular consent”.

The reality is that dualism forces very different perceptions in the minds of Westerners than what polarities force in Chinese minds. I use the word force intentionally because the vast majority of citizens are not conscious at all about why they are so attached to a system of governance that fails them so badly since so many decades. The same can not be said of the Chinese who, while being brainwashed by western movies, music and propaganda, since they travel abroad are starting to recognize that the realities on the ground in Western countries are not what they are made to appear in those movies and in Western media. They start to understand that Western governance is not about answering the needs of their citizens but to answer the needs of big capital and of their 1% elites and they also start to understand lately that the prime role of their own system of governance is to answer the needs of the Chinese people.

Good and bad are never frozen as absolutes in Chinese minds. They are viewed merely as the character of fleeting moments that are immediately superseded by new moments in an unending process of transformations. So the Chinese don’t feel the urge to permanently identify themselves with being on the side of good. And in light of the dance of polarities they can eventually view, for a moment, that their system of governance fails them but this view changes with the changes taking place in the process wherein the governance evolves. The fact of the matter is that, according to Western polling institutions, along these last decades the Chinese have been thinking that their system of governance is worth around 80% of their trust. Things play out vastly differently for Westerners.

Speaking of good and bad the Western mind has been hammered ideologically for so many centuries by Christianity to identify with what it considers to be good. So when a Western mind observes the otherness of an individual, or a country, it has only one choice and this is to judge his otherness as being something bad. And While observing other countries, which the individual does not know anything about, his perception is furthermore modeled by the propaganda of his own country’s media. So two forces are at work simultaneously that condition the perception of the Western mind:

• the axioms of his civilization force his mind to condemn otherness
• the propaganda of the media reinforces this negative bias towards otherness.

In such a context objectivity has no access at a first seat observation and force is to recognize that to attain an objective perception the individual has to be willing to spend the necessary time to understand the complexity of his cultural context. Few make such an effort and the result is that the propaganda of their media always gains them a distorted perception of reality. And whatever the polling institutions of their own countries tell them about the high marks of Chinese popular trust in their country’s governance, and the extremely low marks in US or French governance, Westerners continue to view their country’s system of governance as good and the Chinese system of governance as bad.

I known from experience that very few Western individuals have a grasp of the complexity of their cultural context. So it is my firm conviction that Westerners are at a real disadvantage with the Chinese in their perception of reality. Their axioms of civilization give the Chinese a direct view of the changing nature of the observed reality and so their raw perception is generally right on the mark which helps them to see through the propaganda of the media. In contrast Western perceptions have no comparative reference to possibly judge the validity of the narrative of the propaganda carried by their media. Resisting the pressure of these two forces in order to keep an open mind is a near impossibility. Some rare individuals nevertheless succeed to keep an open mind and to encounter ‘the other’ as an equal. But one should understand that this can only come about at the price of a long effort which I summarized as follows in 1. “Pragmatism versus Ideology”:

“Daily reality confronts your closely held views and you are basically left with two strategies. Or you close your mind to the facts and focus on strengthening the belief that makes up your views. This is called following an ideological path. Or you adapt your views to the facts. This is called following a pragmatic path.

Pragmatism means that you adjust your views to the present reality in order to ensure coherence in the process of your thinking. I other words injecting reality in the process of thinking coheres your ideas and erases the contradictions from the worldview that forms into the mind. This contrasts with the ideological path which rejects facts that contradict one’s worldview in order to keep coherence inside the belief system. In other words rejecting reality coheres your beliefs and erases the contradictions from the worldview shared by the members of the group you belong to.

What we discover here is that reality and belief both strengthen the worldview. The difference resides in whose worldview is being strengthened. Reality strengthens the worldview that is affirming in the mind of the individual who is searching to understanding the working of reality while belief strengthens the group worldview that is being shared by the individual with the members of the group he belongs to.

...after practicing for decades the strategy of confrontation and adjustment of the mind to reality, our views are paradoxically strengthening into quasi-certainties that can easily petrify into a new ideological path. Pragmatism requires thus discipline in order to avoid falling into this new ideological trap. And the required discipline consists in keeping the mind open

• to the fact that our life systems (habitat) form no more than a tiny ensemble in the whole universe which puts the truth about reality out of our reach
• to the fact that inside the tiny ensemble constituted by our habitat we have to ensure the coherence of our thinking in order to possibly survive while minimizing our suffering and maximizing our pleasure
• to the fact that to avoid falling in the trap of rationalizing petrified beliefs we have to avoid picking some facts at the exclusion of others. ”

This is quite a program and the discipline required is daunting which explains why so few are venturing through it. That’s why I wrote here above that I feel that “Westerners are at a real disadvantage with the Chinese in their perception of reality. Their axioms of civilization give the Chinese a direct view of the changing nature of the observed reality and so their raw perception is generally right on the mark”. But again...