What’s going on here ? (4)

2. the cultural context forces human thinking and actions


The present post covers:

-  chapter 2.2. Societal worldviews


Next week’s post will cover:

-  chapter 2.3. Culture

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2.2. worldviews



As stated before a worldview is a grand narrative that is shared by the citizens of a society throughout its whole history. Over time each society builds its own narrative that is distinct from the worldview of other societies. This means that in any given society the citizens share a series of common beliefs that are proper to their own society and these beliefs address the following:

• what reality is all about
• how reality operates
• how the individual fits in the picture.

Worldviews are narratives that societies derived from the axioms of their civilization. The axioms of civilization act like 'background' assumptions from which societal worldviews are derived as a set of logical consequences or conclusions. This implies that within the realm of a given civilization societies can have different or varying worldviews. And this is best exemplified in the case of a society that splits into different parts. The original society had one shared worldview. The multiple societies that result from the split of the original society start by sharing this worldview. But worldviews evolve over time and after a few centuries these societies will thus have evolved different worldview paths. The best illustration of this phenomenon is given by Western European nations. Over the 1000 years following the collapse of the Roman empire all of Western Europe was governed by the Christian institutions that had their ‘capital’ in Rome. That means that:

• the unification and codification of the Christian Creed that has been encouraged by the Roman emperors posited the founding axioms on which the creed is build and Aristotle’s metaphysics served as its theoretical foundation.
  

• Catholic Christianity became the worldview shared by all within the confines of the empire. With the advent of Modernity and the nation-state European countries evolved separately and after some 5-8 centuries their worldviews vary greatly indeed. France, Britain, and Germany for example have the same roots but their separate paths gave way to distinct narratives that over the centuries adapted to distinct local cultures.

Societal worldviews ensure societal reproduction


Worldviews are instruments that are used by societies to glue the minds of their citizens around a common understanding of reality.

• The men of power want to keep their power:
  The larger the territorial spread of a kingdom the more difficult it became to ensure its stability. The longer the distances the longer it took for an army to reach a spot of instability and if instability spread to different spots brute force ceased to be an adequate instrument of control. That’s how everywhere the men of power associated with men of knowledge to glue the minds in order to crystallize a feeling of belonging to a same societal entity. But if the worldview is limited to this particular function, of easing the control of populations by the men of power, it easily transforms into propaganda which would imply that the men of knowledge are submitting to the men of power. But such a submission of the men of knowledge to the men of power has never been a historical rule in and of itself. In China, for example before Qin Shi Huang (Shihuangdi) in the first phase of empire as a confederation of kingdoms, the men of knowledge most often assumed the role of the men of power and power was then submitted to knowledge.
  
• Societies need to reproduce over the long haul:
  Societies are the instruments through which living species ensure their survival and their eventual development. When populations grow larger than the Dunbar number the center does not generally hold all the answers and a decentralization is necessary. In other words the men of power never reign over the whole species. In the age of power societies such a decentralization is managed by regional centers of power. Kingdoms or empires and later Nation-states were the particular forms that such regional societies took historically.
  By sharing a common worldview among all its citizens a society is supplying answers to the individuals’ existential questions which helps them to relieve their existential anxiety. Such a reduction in anxiety is helping to foster trust between the individuals which increases the cohesion of the group which in turn facilitates the reproduction of the society over the generations. In the absence of sufficiently evolved languages visual signs were the instruments of choice of the men of knowledge to transfer their worldviews in peoples’ minds thus the emergence of what, during the Renaissance, will be called the “arts”. Sharing a worldview to build-up societal cohesion appears to be the most determinant factor in helping a species to survive and eventually to thrive. And when viewed in this particular light a worldview is definitely of a different nature than propaganda. Worldviews are the essence of societies. Worldviews ensure the effectiveness of societal instrumentality that is necessary to all species, or life forms, in their struggle to perpetuate themselves.

Nature ensures the reproduction of the individuals by tricking sexual relations through pleasure. In other words the individuals are biological entities, that reproduce somehow outside of their conscious will, simply because their biological build-up urges them to satisfy their lust for pleasure. Nature did not give societies the luxury of pleasure to ensure their reproduction. Societies are not biological entities but they are nevertheless evolving entities that also have to reproduce to keep alive. Societies thus naturally develop appropriate strategies to satisfy these objectives. And the vital reason why societies search to reproduce in the first place is because outside of them the individuals have no way to survive. The individuals act like the atoms of their species. They carry their species’ code of life. Societies have thus to be viewed as intermediaries that act to satisfy the perpetuation of both the parts and the whole.


The first ever complex and evolving societies were tribal societies and their reproduction was ensured very consciously by their men of knowledge. Tribal societies thrived most often in difficult climate conditions but they nevertheless reproduced over a very long time-span which is proof that their system of knowledge formation and sharing was highly efficient and satisfied their members. There is no agreement about when the tribal societal model emerged among anthropologists, archaeologists and other specialists who study this societal period of history. Most of them figure that this happened sometimes between 60 and 40,000 years ago. Others figure that their emergence took place sometime between 80,000 and 100,000 years ago. And others still figure that tribes could have emerged as early as between 250,000 and 150,000 years ago.


Tribes were replaced by power societies sometime around 5-6000 years ago in the alluvial plains of some of the larger river systems around the world among which the most important gave rise to the first large scale civilizations: Mesopotamian civilizations along the Euphrates-Tigris valleys, the Egyptian civilization along the Nile valley, the first India civilization along the Indus Valley, the Chinese civilization along the Yellow river Valley and the Yangtze river Valley.




Evolution of the life-span of the different models of human societies


In the opinion of the specialists who study the tribal model of society its life-span lasted at a minimum some 35,000 year.


During the first stage of power societies Early-kingdoms and empires shared religions or philosophies that glued the minds of the citizens around a common understanding of reality which in turn helped the men of power to ensure that their institutions kept the control over their populations. That stage of societal evolution emerged around 4 to 5000 years ago and the last of these original empires, the Chinese empire, collapsed in 1911. So the time-span of the first stage of power societies was at the most 5000 years.


The second stage of power societies started with Early-Modernity in Western Europe sometime between the 12 and 14th centuries when long distance merchants started to idolize the reason that is at work within capital. The nation-state, that is its societal model, emerged later between the 14th and 16th centuries depending on the location. And Modernity appears to have entered its latest stage that initiates the transition to “what comes after Modernity” sometime at the turn to the 21th century. So the life-span of this late phase was at the most 700 years.


This little exercise shows a rapid shortening of the life-span of the different models of complex societies that succeeded one another. These figures are given not as absolutes but as an illustration of a phenomenon of societal life-span shortening: 

These figures leave no doubt about the fact that the more complex societies become the shorter is their lifespan. This testifies to the fact that:

• more complexity leads to more fragility
• more simplicity leads to more robustness.

Worldviews and societal complexity


Humans adopted the tribal model of society all around the world and they also adopted the same tribal worldview all around the world. The substance of the concepts, ideas, and practices of the animist worldview were identical but the local habitat molded its local forms. The resulting differences were thus merely differences in the way of dressing the animist body of knowledge but under the clothes the body was identical. Here follow the most important characteristics of the tribal worldview also called animism:

• Interconnectedness and interdependence:
  In the animist worldview the individuals were considered to be interconnected with everything in the habitat of the tribe as well as all that could be observed on earth or in the skies. In other words tribal minds did not conceive of separations between humans, between humans and animals, between humans and plants, between humans and the earth, between humans and what they observed in the skies. And this interconnection was understood as being an interdependence: all and every entity is interrelated and interdependent with all the other. And so each human individual automatically thought that he was – dependent on the grouping of all his fellow tribesmen, – dependent on his habitat and all entities in it, – dependent on all entities on earth – and dependent on what he observed in the skies. This notion of interdependence necessarily fostered respect for all other entities.
  
• All entities are animated by spirits:
  The communication between entities was understood to be realized by spirits. The spirits were considered to be animating all entities thus the name of the tribal worldview as animism. The role of the tribal men of knowledge was, among other, to capture the communication between spirits in order to help relieve the suffering of their fellow tribesmen by easing the production of their daily lives. And it is in that sense that the tribal knowledge, and the animist worldview derived from it, are considered to have been highly pragmatic systems of knowledge formation and sharing.
  
• A communal perception:     But there is an even more fundamental characteristic. Tribesmen had no notion of being special among the other entitiesand they also had no notion of a human “self” that is separating all the individuals. Their perception was a universal perception of interdependence and among themselves, as humans, their perception was a communal perception. This means that they were viewing everything through the eyes, and interest, of their tribal group. Modern individual minds see everything through the lens of their individual self so they can’t possibly start to comprehend the implications of such a radical otherness in perception.

The communal perception ignored that a personal self could possibly exist. And so happiness was not resulting from the satisfaction of an individual need but more fundamentally by the satisfaction of the group’s needs and regular feasting enhanced this communal perception of the individual sharing in the well-being of the group. All temptations of the ego were furthermore discouraged and sanctioned. The ultimate sanction of an individualistic behavior, like hurting or killing a fellow tribesman, was the expulsion from the group which automatically resulted in death. In such a particular context the group’s worldview was all there was in term of ideation. And so the group, the communal, the society was never in conflict with individual ideas nor endeavors. The result of such a very special arrangement was that the cohesion of the tribal society was always at a maximum and this model of society was thus maximally resilient which explains why it was thriving over the long time-span of tens of thousands of years.





Origins of the tribal worldview


The tribal worldview was the core reason for the tribal societal resilience. But how did a tribal worldview emerge in the first place and how was it later maintained?


To my limited knowledge the answer to this question can’t be found in books. There are indeed no firm ‘scientific knowings’ available about this question. But this does not mean that there is no available knowledge. Animist knowledge was indeed transmitted orally from generation to generation and in substance it goes something as follows. I integrated some scientific knowings in this presentation in order to enhance this oral narrative for Modern minds.


Having reached our present biological form around 300,000 years ago homo-sapiens were still continuing to live in small bands of 10-20 individuals or more at the image of small bands of chimpanzees today. By that time their brain was fully capable of handling abstractions but in real life this capacity, at abstracting recurring phenomena, only strengthened very slowly as the result of a long process of discovery.


The first stage on the path of an emerging worldview followed the observation that ‘knowing’ helps to alleviate suffering. This first stage concluded with the decision by small bands of individuals to delegate the formation of ‘knowledge’ to the one adult individual who was viewed as the least productive. In small bands the individuals were toiling without respite and so the perceived cost of detaching an adult individual from hunting and gathering was seen as extremely high. This explains why they tried to minimize this cost by designating the least productive among them as their “(wo)man of knowledge”.


The second stage evolved into a process of knowledge formation and sharing through visual signs that resulted in a higher productivity in hunting and gathering which, in turn, increased the available resources of the band which ultimately allowed the band to sustain a higher population. This process of increasing population evolved over thousands, or tens of thousands, of years. But it soon appeared that in larger groups the small-band model of governance was no longer working. So groups were forced to experiment new forms of governance and such new forms of governance interacted with the formation and evolution of a new worldview and also with the visual signs that shared the views of the men of knowledge with all. And once the group discovered that it was maximally efficient with a population of approximately 150 it started to divert its population growth into a process of geographic expansion by new groups. This idea of stabilizing tribal populations around an average figure of 150 by diverting population growth into geographic expansion was adapted universally and it ensured a stable reproduction of the tribal model of society over tens of thousands of years.


The third and last stage of development systematized the process of cultural inter-tribal unification and what is most remarkable in the tribal system of knowledge is that it allowed tribal groups to master:

• the process of knowledge formation by the men of knowledge
• the process of knowledge sharing through visual signs
• the process of enhancing emotions through music
• the process of illuminating the meaning of visual signs through dance and trance
• the stabilization of tribal populations, within a given territory around an average of 150 people
• the management of population growth that was absorbed by the creation of new groups occupying new land (geographic expansion + cultural unification)
• the management of the groups’ genetic diversity by periodical rotation, of the women in age of procreation, between tribes (genetic diversity + cultural unification)

By assembling periodically, over tens of thousands of years and within the context of common regional settings, the men of knowledge fostered a boom in knowledge formation that resulted in a progressive – societal evolution – and cultural unification. In that sense tribal societal evolution might have resulted in large scale construction works in order to symbolize the territorial cultural unity. Large scale construction works realized by hunter-gatherers have indeed been discovered, in the last decades, like Göbekli Tepe, that question the traditional academic historical narrative of these last centuries. It was indeed thought that large construction works could only be realized starting with larger power societies. Following the gist of this narrative some researchers have recently started to propose that such large scale works were undertaken with the technological and organizational help of survivors of earlier and unknown civilizations. But this is pure speculation that ignores the fact that tribes evolved through knowledge formation and cultural unification.




Climate change destabilizes the tribal model of society


From 15,000 to 13,000 years ago a climate shift increased the world average temperatures by about 3°C. Then between 13,000 and 11,800 years ago (Younger-Dryas) this was followed by a world cooling of 1 - 2°C on average.

 Geologic temperature record

At the end of the Younger-Dryas some 11,800 years ago, within the span of a few months or years, world temperatures abruptly increased again which was followed by a long era of climate stability. Two theories compete presently to explain such an abrupt climate change: – the hypothesis of a supernova that exploded within the constellation of vela, – the hypothesis of extreme solar flares that irradiated the earth, – the hypothesis of a Laacher See super-volcano eruption.


The abrupt climate change at the end of the Younger Dryas forced tribal societies into a transition toward a new model of society:

• within the span of a few months/years the world average temperatures increased by an estimated 3°C. Ice-core records in Greenland, for example, indicate that temperatures rose 10°C (18°F) within the span of a few years!
• sea and ocean levels burst up by an average of some 60 to 80 meters within a very short time span.
• Population levels fell to bottleneck levels
• the world’s average temperatures then stabilized within a narrow band of plus or minus 0.5 degrees C. Today the Anthropocene is interrupting this 10,000 year long stable climate period.
• the most inhabited areas, in the period of the Younger Dryas, were flooded and people had to flee to higher lands but due to the abrupt nature of the warming population levels dropped dramatically.
• the higher temperatures soon boosted the growth of a luxuriant flora

 Holocene temperature variations

The abrupt climate changes at the ending of the Younger Dryas engaged a societal transition, from tribal societies to power societies, that lasted from 11,000 to sometime 4 to 5000 years ago.




Stark differentiation between civilizations


The increase in temperatures melted the ice caps covering most of Europe and North America. Water and higher temperatures dramatically increased the growth of fauna and flora. Food sources became more abundant in river valleys and easier to acquire and so tribal populations grew rapidly absorbed by a fast geographic expansion by new tribal groups.


This rapid geographic expansion is what engaged the process of differentiation between what would become the Chinese civilization and what would become the civilizations of the Fertile Crescent. But it was the size of the available alluvial plains that played the determinant role in this differentiation:

• Tigris and Euphrates valleys’ alluvial plains: approximately 15,000 km2
• Nile valley alluvial plains: approx. 30,000 km2
• China’s Yangze + Yellow river valley’s alluvial plains: approx. 1,500,000 km2

The absorption of rapid population growth by the geographic expansion of tribal societies had absorbed the entirety of all available alluvial plains in the Fertile Crescent sometime around 7000 – 8000 years ago. From that time on tribal societies lost control over population growth which destabilized their model of society and they soon were in-operational. So local groupings surpassing the tribal average of 150 were suddenly in need of inventing new models of governance adapted to this new demographic situation.


This gave rise to a few thousand years of violent experimentation which finally concluded with institutional arrangements under the control and management of men of power. From local chieftains, to early kingdoms, early empires and civilizations finally emerged around 5000 years ago. Brute force had been the means to get power and to conserve it. This whole process was a fast evolving one and the primary factor in the rapid rotation of the men of power was related to the loss of the animist worldview and to the loss of understanding of the role of worldviews in ensuring the reproduction of society. Brute force was effective to ensure the control of small groups over small territories but when the groups dispersed over larger territories brute force lost its efficacy which led to a period of rapid collapse of new empires that were replaced by newer ones. The instability that this state of affairs provoked called for answers and this is how worldviews were called to the rescue, by the men of power, to glue the minds within enlarging territories. The age of empires should thus be understood as an era of collaboration, between the men of power and the men of knowledge, that served the empire with a new worldview. This strengthened the resilience of the imperial institutions and gave way to the new societal era of empires.


In contrast to the Fertile Crescent the size of China’s alluvial plains was such that the process of expanding tribal population could go on without interruption. The experimentation of new models of power societies was thus undertaken in totally different conditions than in the Fertile Crescent:

• tribal expansion was continuous and the model was never destabilized,
• there never appeared a real urgency to invent a new model of society,
• some experimentation took place at different communication cross-points where some mild population bottlenecks emerged,
• kingdoms appeared a few thousand years later than in the fertile Crescent and when they appeared it was in a slower moving context,
• kingdoms appeared mostly as a symbolization of the cultural unity over a large territory,
• the wise-man or master-shaman was the shaman who was recognized by all his peers as the wisest in the entire territory and he became the symbol of that cultural unity,
• over the centuries, or perhaps millennia, ‘the symbolism of cultural unity’ morphed into ‘the power of men over the cultural unity’ which was followed by the emergence of imperial dynasties around 4,000 years ago.

All this indicates that there never appeared to be a good reason to break with animism and that animism was itself the engine that powered – the expanding territory, – the cultural unification, – the symbolism of unity. It is interesting to note that these 3 factors reappeared, a lot later under the Zhou Dynasty, as the 3 founding factors of the theory of “all under heaven” or Tianxia that explains the emergence of the Chinese civilization and the notion of political sovereignty.


This differentiation between China and the fertile Crescent not only explains, their diverging paths toward an imperial worldview, it also impacted the longevity of their kingdoms and empires and more importantly the longevity of their civilization. China is the last standing among the group of initial civilizations. All the other have collapsed. Or their participating societies were conquered by stronger competitors and their populations assimilated in the societies of the conquerors or their participating societies collapsed and their populations migrated to more prosperous areas.




Modernity is a quasi-worldview


Let’s jump now to Modernity and the nation-state which is the second historical era of power societies. To attentive minds there is no doubt any longer that this model of society is reaching old age. Many factors can be invoked to explain its rapid aging but one of those factors seems to be determinant. I mean the traditional worldview of Christianity was never extinguished by Modernity but, where consumerism converted the whole body social, Christianity was dramatically weakened by rationalism and science. This nevertheless did not raise these to the level of a worldview. Their believers were indeed always limited to the governing elites and their managerial servants in private and public institutions which explains why rationalism and science never were more than a quasi-worldview that never gained a true capacity to glue the minds of all citizens.


In other words being the worldview of the elite rationalism and science never really succeeded to convert the population at large and as a consequence it was left simmering in a void of shared meaning. As I indicated earlier these elites are now being held responsible for all the side-effects that plague Late-Modernity

• falling incomes,
• extreme social inequality,
• disappearing middle-class,
• social isolation,
• loneliness and the feeling of powerlessness
• the great convergence, in Late-Modernity, of all the side-effects of Modernity that is responsible for the 6th mass-extinction of living species

The convergence of all these factors in such a short period of time and the perception, that the elites don’t have answers to the problems they created in the first place, explains why the bulk of Western populations are now distrusting science, rationalism, and power. And this distrust of power and its quasi worldview is why Western populations at large are now embracing demagogues who play the emotional card of the popular memory about better times.


This distrust of science and rationalism takes place in the context of a very weakened Christianity thus exposing Western populations to a void of shared meaning which results in a feeling of insecurity and distrust of the other citizens that now concludes in a largely shared social condition made of loneliness and misery. In other words Western societies have atomized. Their societal cohesion is now near zero which is the exact opposite of the one hundred percent societal cohesion of the tribes of old.


To answer that void, of shared meaning and the complete absence of societal cohesion, and to ensure the continuation of their control over societies; big capital and its servants have been promoting since the seventies the economic ideology of Neoliberalism and the cultural ideology of Postmodernism. And within the span of a short 2-3 decades these ideologies have generated an explosion of consumerism and the rise of ultra-individualism that sets the stage for a new societal era giving free reign to social Darwinism and political barbarity.


The spectacle society was only a short ‘democratic’ interlude that channeled the conversion of Western populations into following the cult of heroic figures transforming their systems of governance into dystopian monsters. When people wake up from the belief in that cult it will be too late to rebel. The cult is already engaged in a new crusade to convert the whole world. The only possible savior now is the rest of the world...




China’s ‘animism+’ and the world


Contrast this Western gloom and doom with China where Traditional Chinese Culture (TCC), or animism+, is alive and well in the minds of all Chinese citizens inside China and outside of China. TCC coheres the individuals into a strong group of like-minded citizens who are hoping and trusting that the competence of their decision makers will continue to ensure them a stable environment and better living conditions.


Such a contrasted differentiation, in term of worldview between the West and china, is provoking a great disconnect between the citizens’ perceptions in the West and in China. This was the subject of my last book “A growing disconnect between East and West”. And this worldview differentiation is now affirming itself as the determinant factor in shaping a different kind of future for Western and Eastern societies which is the subject of this series of articles.


In light of all this the late ‘Trump trade tantrum’ appears no more than the rage of a juvenile fat white schoolboy who is being beaten at his own game by a far-away poor kid who the world instinctively feels is a very smart kid indeed. But while admiring China’s economic success the rest of the world remains nevertheless a bit apprehensive of its otherness. People feel intuitively that this Trump tantrum, and the gangster manner in which it is being implemented, will only intensify the problems of the West by pushing the rest of the world into the arms of China for answers.


The Chinese worldview, TCC or animism+, fosters China’s vision about the future. And its intention is to share with the world community of nations the destiny of humanity In the views of animism+ everyone has to be a winner along the path of humanity’s shared destiny. In the worldview of TCC it is understood that a nation which is losing would poison the shared destiny of all nations and the same goes for losing individuals within their nations and so the rationale to eliminate poverty. In such a worldview ‘win-win’ solutions are the only possible game in town.


How the rest of the world will ultimately perceive China depends on how successful it will be at ensuring that all nations on earth enjoy the fruits of economic development in a peaceful environment. An empire is not equipped for such a task. So the future of China is not to be an empire but more to be like a generous lighthouse-nation: – that thrives for excellence in governance for all to see, – that shares knowledge and resources with the other nations.


Thriving for excellence in governance has always been the ideal of the Chinese nation since its early days more than 5000 years ago. But the nature of the predicament of humanity, as seen in Late-Modernity, is asking for far more from China. To ensure a viable transition from Modernity to what comes after Modernity what will be needed is for China’s actions to shed light on:

• the exemplarity of its excellence in national decision making so that its people feel that they are on a path that will generate the happiness of the generations to come
• the exemplarity of its excellence in fostering and accompanying international decision making so that all nations on earth feel they are on a path that: – remedies the side-effects of Modernity, – helps humanity to share a worldview made of understanding and respect for ‘the other’, – helps humanity to understand the complexity and interdependence of all systems at work on Gaia our earth and in the cosmos, – helps the whole world to respect all societal worldviews while encouraging them to integrate these new ideas of interdependence and systemic complexity.

As I wrote elsewhere the atomization of Western societies indicates that they are now zombie societies rolling further only powered by their force of inertia. But big capital and its servants are not ready to let go of their control. They are indeed engaged in a frantic last ditch effort at imposing their dystopia on the rest of the world in the hope of plundering its resources. But time is not on their side. Soon their societies will have burned their last drop of inertia and they’ll collapse. Western citizens know intuitively that their institutions will not be there for help when the SHTF. They know that they will be forced to cooperate locally in order to survive barbarity. Western citizens share this vague intuition and are frightened that their future might just turn out to be that. And so they start – to build local alternative economic and social systems, – to come out on the streets asking for political change...


In the meantime the rest of the world is full of hope that it will soon enjoy the Western goodies still projecting on their screens. And it somehow hopes that China will be there to help deliver such a shared future to their nations.


Humanity faces an urgency.


The West is momentarily glued in a culture of doom and gloom. And so China’s task will be nearly insurmountable. But the urgency, that is being perceived presently by humanity to answer its predicament, is without any doubt going to stimulate respect for what works and rejection of what does not work. The perception by humanity, and more importantly by the younger generations that there is an urgency, is I believe going to act as a truly powerful bullshit filter. And in such a new context, if China’s actions satisfy the criteria mentioned here above, I trust that humanity will successfully find its way to the new historical era of what comes after Modernity.




A new worldview is needed to answer the side-effects of Modernity


The following should be evident to everybody, and if it is not yet, humanity’s present predicament will make sure that everybody soon enough awakens to the realities of Late-Modernity:

1. those whose life is in front of them, and those whose life is in their rear-view mirror, have a radically different understanding about the side-effects of Modernity. – If you are 60 or older you may think that the side-effects of Modernity will not have the time to impact your own life very much – if you are 15 or 25 there is no doubt that you instinctively understand that you will suffer the full blown consequences of those side-effects.
   The only plausible conclusion, that I can think of, from this observation is that younger generations will inevitably reject the model of society of their parents and grand-parents. In their eyes the side-effects of Modernity are indeed becoming a question of life and death. The only real problem that I see on their path is that the generations of their parents and grand-parents are not willing to abandon the stuff and privileges that they grew used to enjoy. 
2. Those who live in the advanced extended West, and those who live in the rest of the world, have also a radically different perspective about the side-effects of Modernity. The younger generations in the West want radical changes in the way of life of their societies and start demanding that their systems of governance set in motion the process of a more socially and ecologically sane way of life. The younger generations of the rest of the world still want to taste the Western goodies they see daily on their screens and they demand that their systems of governance turn to China to urgently supply them such Western style ways of life. How could we blame them?
   So the contradiction, between what Western younger generations want and what the younger generations of the rest of the world want, could not be starker. But I’m afraid that, if humanity does not get its act together soon, the solution to these contradictions could emerge outside of human agency which means that an end of history is possibly in the cards.

The fact of the matter is that in the present day reality – there is no longer any way to avoid the consequences of the side-effects of Modernity – these side-effects have been encouraged, by Western big capital, to grow for 200 years and are now impacting one another in what can only be called a “great convergence” that is unleashing processes that dwarf human understanding and responses – the processes that have been engaged are now so numerous and have reached such a velocity that they are reinforcing each other in feedback loops that we can even not start to comprehend.


So what to do now?


Simple common sense would want the whole of humanity to act by:

• recognizing the nature of the predicament that it faces
• stopping everything we have been doing and opening our minds to the need for other ways of living
• coming together as a species to conceive a plan with practical answers
• acting together through our societies to implement this plan as best as we can

But I’m afraid that our minds have been captured and are idolizing the reason that is at work within capital and all the bling bling that comes with it. And unfortunately this idol does not care to know anything about common sense...