7. Finding meaning in life
This post addresses the following:
7.1.
on the emergence of societal evolution and art
7.2.
about the mind and thinking
7.3. about truthfulness: the mind and society
______________
My gut feeling is that
I’m first and foremost a painter. As I stated often in earlier
posts I started writing because I was feeling disoriented by what I
saw as pure non-sense being pushed in the face of the Western public.
The art-world is composed mostly of people who talk about art:
gallerists, critics, curators, museum managers, managers of auction
houses, and bureaucrats in charge of art promotion for reason of
propaganda or ‘education’. Others are more focused on purchasing
and selling art-works; they are the collectors and the speculators. I
was always feeling that what these guys push in people’s faces is
pure bullshit and I never could accept to shut-up in the face of such
a monumental societal manipulation.
Writing, for me, is like
a therapy to counter the nausea that I feel rising in me at the
contact of that nonsensical world. Writing allows me to contextualize
the production of all this non-sense and make sense of its existence.
In reaction I suppose, to what I'm discovering, some questions started to buzz in my mind: – what is art ?, –
what is the function of art ?, – what is beauty ?, –
what is it that keeps attracting me, and so many others, to the act
of painting? I was feeling a need to clarify what are the answers
offered by society to these questions. I soon discovered that answers
are rare and valid answers are still rarer. That’s how I started to
think that I had to take the time to devise my own answers.
One of the first things that disturbs in the discourse of the
art-world is that its talking points about art are steeped in pure
formalism and empty talk. At first I was distraught that I did not
find any help from the art-world in answering these questions. But
with hindsight I discovered that all this trouble pushed my mind to
its limits; that means outside of the box. And what I discovered
outside of the box is that I had to go back in time to find out why
and how art emerged in the first place?
7.1.
on the emergence of societal evolution and art
The idea to go back in
time to find out the origins of art slowly gravitated me towards the
study of history. I soon discovered that the further I reached down
the road of history the more confusion I encountered and the more the
narrative was anchored in ideological presuppositions. By the end of
the narrative there was a gaping hole and out of it a voice seemed to
lecture my mind.
The following is what I
remember from that lecture :
“
You
humans are dumbfucks. You are the only species that does not
understand the fact that life is change itself. Change results from
the dance between you the individuals and your societies.
The
individuals of all other species accept the way of nature as it is.
Humans are the only ones who want to negotiate an interpretation of
the working of the universe and its nature in light of their own
understanding. But the fact of the matter is that the individuals and
their societies are the polarities of their species and the dance
between them is what powers their species forward. Powering a species
forward is what you call evolution.
Evolution
starts as a slow process that imprints the universal program of life
in the DNA-RNA of biological cells. Biological cells then assemble in
more and more complex organisms and after a long and tortuous
evolutionary process these organisms evolve into the living species
of your age.
Once
the individuals of a given species attain the threshold of conscious
abstraction they will inevitably encounter a second and more rapid
process of evolution that maximizes the potential of their species by
imprinting the program of societal life in their minds. That’s when
the two polarities of a species will have matured and be ready to
cooperate in a dance that powers their species forward.
The
individuals are by nature curious and hungry for discoveries.
Societies are by nature desirous to ensure their reproduction over
the long haul of many generations of individuals and so they are
apprehensive of change as a matter of principle. In their nature the
polarities are opposed but in their being they strive for win win
outcomes that maximize the complexity of their species through the
adoption of individual discoveries that generate tolerable complexity
outcomes which means outcomes that do not endanger societal
reproduction.
This
outcome is not a given. It results from a bargaining process between
individual discoverers and their society. When both polarities feel
the bargaining process is satisfying they act as willing participants
in change. But when one of them feels the process is unfair the
natural course of societal evolution stalls and the polarities bicker
until one, of different possible outcomes, finally triumphs.
One
possible outcome is that the polarity, that was feeling unfairly
treated, is given satisfaction. Another possible outcome is that the
polarity, that was feeling unfairly treated, is not given
satisfaction and a feeling of ever more unfairness corners it with
the back on the wall. It will then resist by using all means
available to weaken the other polarity which eventually leads to dual
tracks. Or the polarity that feels unfairly treated collapses. Or it
succeeds to bring back the other polarity to reason and the problem
is solved.
If
one of the 2 polarities collapses the 2nd polarity rapidly
fades away. Polarities are dependent on each other and can’t live
on their own. So when a polarity collapses the entity that it
participates to polarize goes extinct. ”
This
feeling of being lectured by a voice coming out of a gaping hole at
the beginning of history, while baffling, is nevertheless what opened
my mind to the role of knowledge formation in unleashing the process
of societal evolution. From that moment on my outlook on life and art
radically changed. I immediately thought that the first action of the
mind, after gaining the capacity of abstraction, must have been to
concentrate on reducing human suffering. And it immediately downed on
me that this same idea is recurring in all great thoughts systems
that accompanied the stabilization of power societies some 5000
years ago.
Knowledge
must have suddenly awoken the minds of our ancestors to the idea of
reducing suffering and of enhancing pleasure. The mind then rapidly
put in motion a life easing process for their small bands under the
authority of an alpha-male. And so without knowing it a process had
been unleashed that would have world shattering consequences:
-
increased capacity of the band to gather food
-
more food resulted in the capacity to feed more mouths resulting in population growth
-
population growth destabilized the small band mode of organization which was in reality the first form of society
-
this destabilization fragilized small bands and gradually the individuals experimented other forms of grouping
-
over thousands, or tens of thousands of years, such an experimentation eventually resulted in the stabilization of a new form of societal grouping which in Modern times we came to call the tribe
-
the tribal model of society and its characteristics were adopted universally. By far the most determinant factor was the size of the tribal grouping with a mean of 150 individuals varying between 100 and 200. The notion of groupings totaling a mean of 150 has been studied extensively by professor Robin Dunbar1 who observed that this principle is still unconsciously being put in application today in all kinds of settings.
-
the tribal model of society institutionalized the role of wo(men) of knowledge and it contractually put them in charge of the knowledge formation and the knowledge storage of the tribe. It was then their obligation to share that knowledge with their fellow tribesmen and in exchange the group satisfied all their needs by supplying them with all the necessary life resources
-
the wo(men) of knowledge appeared behaviorally different in the eyes of their fellow tribesmen which scared them and so they did not socialize with them. The wo(men) of knowledge compensated this absence of socializing within the tribe by socializing with their peers from neighboring tribes which incidentally opened the way to the management of inter-tribal relations: population exchanges to maintain genetic diversity, gifting of goods to the tribes in distress generally kept inter-tribal relations harmonious, cultural unification among tribes prepared the contextual setting for power relations to eventually emerge later on, and so on.
This
transition from small bands to tribal societies was a radical turning
point in the evolution of Homo-sapiens. It originated the process of
societal evolution as a second path in the evolution of our species.
What I found even more remarkable was that societal evolution since
its emergence has always been a zillion times faster than biological
evolution, in driving physical and mental changes in the
individual-particles making up our species and, in generating ever
more complexity in human societies.
But
one of my most disconcerting discoveries was that art had emerged in
the context of the transition from small bands to tribal societies. I
gave an extended presentation of the subject in the “Organic
Art Manifesto”. In short art served as knowledge sharing
instrument with all the members of the group.
7.2.
about the mind and thinking
I
started to write in 2004 and never stopped. Writing forces me to
think. And I soon discovered that there are 2 paths in thinking: –
the rational path undertaken by one’s conscious mind, –
the non-rational path that originates in the subconscious.
The
conscious and the subconscious are not organs or locations in our
bodies. The conscious mind is a process that emerges out of a
‘singularity’ resulting from the working, of what I call the
body’s processing machine which totals the processing power, of the
brain of the gut and of our DNA-RNA. Our nervous system somehow
substantiates this singularity into personal attention. Science has
still not succeeded to explain how this process works out exactly.
But scientists nevertheless agree that such a kind of process is what
fosters awareness.
Awareness
grows into our thinking mind which sets in motion a developmental
path toward increasing consciousness. This path is not given freely.
It requires personal dedication. But we always have to keep in mind
that the knowledge derived by the conscious mind is bound to remain
at all time a small fraction only of the body’s processing machine.
The reason for this is that the subconscious represents the totality
of the processing power of the brain, of the gut and of our DNA-RNA,
taken separately or in combination. And the total power of the body’s
processing machine is thus bound to remain hidden forever from our
thinking mind.
The
working of the conscious mind needs a steady concentration which
requires some effort. Effort is more particularly necessary for
beginners and this explains why most of us abandon the exercise early
on during the learning process. Those who pass a certain threshold of
accumulated knowledge gradually start to experience satisfaction in
the process of thinking and learning. And further down the road they
eventually discover, what I can only call, the aesthetic pleasure of
abstract thinking. That’s when thinking and learning become bliss.
If
the working of the conscious mind might appear difficult to apprehend
the fact is that the working of the subconscious is a lot more
capricious and hence is not conducive to description. The first
experiences are generally accidental. I mean, for whatever reason,
one enters into a state of mind that is not controllable and one
loses her/himself in a mental landscape that seems to make little
sense. Some parts of the landscape can be downright terrifying and
sometimes one can get stuck in an unfamiliar place with snakes or
other animals that admonish you about the way you think or the way
you live. In other words one may be given the mirror treatment and
forced to watch the contradictions in one’s own past behavior. Such
a treatment is downright terrifying and sickening. And after a first
visit to such a place most people will do all they can to never being
captured in it again.
This
is the place where the wo(men) of knowledge voluntarily navigated to
gain useful knowledge to help their fellow tribesmen all along the
timespan of a shared animist worldview. This place gave them access
to their subconscious and opened their perception to the way of the
universe and how it impacts living conditions locally. Navigating the
subconscious is also called opening the doors of perception. It is
where the formation of the animist knowledge took place. Thinkers in
Late-Modernity have all to gain traveling there. But they should
remember that navigating this place has always been fraught with
hardship that in the eyes of observers may appear frightening. That’s
the reason why the wo(men) of knowledge were kept at a distance by
their fellow tribesmen…
The
trip is assuredly hazardous. To make sense out of the experience the
conscious mind has to be able to process it. What I mean to say is
that the conscious mind has to accommodate the visions captured
inside the subconscious by reconciling their insanity with its
rational handling of facts. This reconciliation is the really
difficult part of the subconscious experience. But it is how one
gains new knowledge. The difficulty to master the process of
conscious reconciliation of the subconscious experience is an
intrinsic limitation to the access of knowledge.
Traveling
in the subconscious without conscious reconciliation is a pure waste
of time that furthermore may present some risks for one’s sanity. 2
This is confirmed by the societal outcome that followed the whole
Western underground cultural revolution of the sixties. Tripping
without reconciliation procured a momentary high. But seen from the
perspective of societal evolution it was an absolute waste of time.
Worse
even the legacy of the baby-boomer generation will indeed most
probably be remembered as the gravedigger of Western Modernity. As a
matter of fact my generation did certainly not help to balance the
working of the polarities of our species Homo-sapiens. On the
contrary it blindfolded itself into consumerism and grew fat while
the societal spectacle numbed it in dumbness. But in the meantime the
contradictions between Modernity, and the contextual settings of the
habitat of living species, grew unabated. Today in Late-Modernity
humanity is forced to live with the consequences of this Western
blindfolding to the dance of the polarities of living species.
7.3.
truthfulness: the mind and society
The
books, “A
Growing Disconnect Between East and West” and the
present “What
is going on?”, form
a series that addresses my perception of the world of Homo-Sapiens at
the dawn of this 21st
century. I started this series to
make sense, in my mind,
of the process that generated
our present global societal
madness.
As
I stated earlier I started to write because I wanted to discover the
origins of art. And
while
in the process of
writing about art I
discovered “societal
evolution”
and
how it
has channeled
our species to its present predicament. To
summarize, the
thesis presented in this series, our
present
predicament results from the convergence of the
following two world-changing events :
-
the shift of the center of gravity of the economy world from New York to Beijing unleashes a clash between two societal managing conceptions :
- Western Modernity and its aspiration at universalism in values and systems
- a Confucian model of society and its aspiration at internal harmony and protection from outside aggression to which is added a modern necessity of global governance through multilateral institutions
-
the convergence of the multitude of side-effects of Modernity unleash a maelstrom of forces that destabilize the contextual settings of the habitat of life on earth.
Both
the two world-changing events mentioned here above are understood as
resulting
in great havoc for
life on earth.
The shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world results in an
intractable conflict that finds its origins in irreconcilable axioms
of civilization. And the convergence of the side-effects of Modernity
destabilizes the habitat of life resulting in a process of life
extinction. The
2 volumes of this series convey
a bleak outlook of
the future.
But
what
is unknown
is how and when these
two world-changing events will
be
converging and starting to interact.
I propose 3 scenarios, going from the benign
to the catastrophic, about
how this
convergence will
determine the outcome of
life on earth.
__________
Benign
outcome
The
best outcome would be for the shift of the center of gravity of the
economy-world to take place without too much of an impact from the
convergence of the side-effects of Modernity. In such a first
scenario
we would most probably witness
the following
:
-
Western societies, over the last decades in a context of societal atomization, have been extended to their financial limits which literally renders these societies ungovernable. Their various systems have indeed been loaded with debts and financed with make-believe scams that resulted in historical levels of inequality. The fact is that the weight of a feather is now sufficient to collapse the whole shenanigan. But what is not known is what will act as the feather and at what point of the societal edifice it will impress its weight…
-
In the meantime China, and East-Asia, are gradually leapfrogging the West by building up the most advanced technology driven societal systems. Trade is one of the drivers of this systemic regional build-up which ensures the further interlinking of their systems into the future.
Such a
scenario is presently materializing and could mature in a stable
institutional setting within one to two decades. In this scenario the
converging side-effects of Modernity manifest themselves after the
shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world has stabilized.
The governance-world, at the global level, will then be operated in a
Confucian way. What I mean to say is that, China, the 2 Korea's Japan
Vietnam and to a certain extent the Asean countries, will be in the
driver seat and they will pull the whole world into sharing a common
approach in abandoning Modernity for the new worldview of
After-Modernity.
But the
core idea here is that after these societies stabilize they will be
confronted with rising sea levels that will force them to organize a
migration from the coasts to higher grounds. Life will then center on
local productions and on a local satisfaction of individual and
societal needs. In other words stabilized national and regional
institutions will be forced to bring answers to the necessity arising
from the side-effects of Modernity.
Abandoning
Modernity in such a context means : – rejecting
consumerism, – rejecting materialism, – rejecting
individualism while privileging societal cooperation. This may seem
unrealistic in our present context. But what I envisage here is
something that would take place :
-
after the financial collapse of Western societies sets them on a path of irrelevance
-
after East-Asian societies stabilize a new regional institutional set-up
-
after the center of gravity of the economy-world has shifted to Beijing as the core of an East-Asia regional entity that henceforth pulls the rest of the world in its wake.
Such
a
rejection of Modernism will free the way to new values and new
behaviors : –
consumption will be reduced to the satisfaction of what are called
the objective needs (food, dress, roof),
–
the local group will take precedence over the individual, –
sharing a common worldview will finally terminate the illusion of
individual free-will and this will enhance
the trust between the individuals while boosting the cohesion of the
group.
By
abandoning the systems of Modernity cohesive local groups will
succeed to minimize the future impact of side-effects they have
been initiated
in the past. This
will open the path to a new societal evolutionary
cycle
that
would start somewhere at the level of development of mature tribes…
Not so
benign but not utterly catastrophic scenario
In
a second scenario a first batch of side-effects could complicate the
stabilization of the shift of the center of gravity of the
economy-world. Let’s
take as example of such complicating factors the release of methane
in the atmosphere knowing that many other would fit the bill. Methane
releases are observed
to
presently
increase dramatically in
the waters of the North pole, in
Alaska, in Northern Canada and
in Siberia.
The
fact is that methane
is 84 times more potent than CO23
during the first two decades after its emission in
the atmosphere.
So in
all probability we are going to
witness the
first effects of an abrupt climate change within the coming years or
decades.
In
such
a
scenario the
shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world will
never find
the time to fully
stabilize
which
would irremediably
handicap
the
governance-world. Without
a functional governance-world, at the global level,
it
becomes impossible to take
the
necessary decisions
to mitigate the future impact of climate change and
its interactions with the other side-effects of Modernity. These
side-effects
would then run wild…
In
this 2nd
scenario
collapsed societies will leave humans on their own to fend for
survival. One might think that this is a very bleak outlook and it
surely is. But
at
least our species, the homo-sapiens,
will
not go extinct. In
this scenario a
new societal cycle sets
in that starts somewhere at the level of development experienced by
our ancestors just
before
the transition from small bands to tribal societies…
In
this 2nd
scenario our species will lose the whole body of knowledge that it
acquired along the path
of societal evolution. This implies that the
new societal cycle would
start
at
the level of small bands
before the emergence of societal evolution…
Catastrophic
scenario
In a third
and more radical scenario the effects of an abrupt climate change
collapses the economy-world and radically destabilizes human living
conditions. In such a scenario the governance-world rapidly lays in
tatters and societal systems stop functioning. The individuals are
then left on their own in science-fiction like living conditions.
In this
scenario the contextual settings of the habitat of all living species
is radically altered : – extreme weather conditions
radically expand the desertification of huge tracks of land on all
continents, – agriculture-able lands disappear, –
human population levels collapse, – the daily life
conditions pass the limits of the bandwidth of human survivability
everywhere on earth, – the human species goes extinct. Only
a chance geographic setting, high in some mountain perhaps, could
then possibly keep a pocket of humans alive…
The 6th
mass extinction of living species on earth has been set in motion
over the last decades and dozens of species go extinct already every
day. Over the next decades Homo-sapiens could be one of them. But
there is nothing to worry about for the principle of life itself. The
world counts large number of species4.
This new metric of the University of Chicago means that even if 95%
of all species come to disappear there will always be some
100.000.000 survivors that will continue to thrive and pursue the
agenda of the principle of life on earth which is to increase the
complexity of the systems of living species.
But seen
that, in this new metric, most of the existing species are bacteria
the developmental cycle of life might well be set back somewhere at
the level of development experienced by unicellular organisms
sometime between 1 and 4 billion years ago. Seen that the principle
of life is to increase the complexity of the systems, sustaining
living species, we come to understand that the behavior of
homo-sapiens during Modernity might very well have been a blunder of
universal significance. Shame on Homo-sapiens if this is the scenario
that comes to pass due to its inaction.
__________
The
unfolding of human reality in the near future shall necessarily
follow
a path between scenario 1 and scenario 3 or between a benign outcome
and a catastrophic outcome. There
is just no way to credibly make a more precise forecast at
this juncture.
Too many unknown unknowns separate us from the future. But what is
already certain
is that life tomorrow will
not be better than it is today and
the
probability is very high indeed
that
life conditions tomorrow
will
be vastly worse and possibly downright nightmarish.
It
does not help to downplay any of these scenarios. Covering our eyes
will indeed
not
cancel out the activity of
our
‘body’s processing machine’
at
the contact with the elements. Our
minds will
always
find access to the reality that
is being processed by our
‘body’s processing machine’.
So
we
owe ourselves, our loved ones and
our societies, a
truthful narrative about
the scenarios that face us.
Now
more than ever humanity needs a truthful perspective in order to act
in the most appropriate fashion. Hope is no longer
a realist perception of our reality. What we need now is a fifty
thousand
kilometer high viewpoint that gives us the big picture of where we
stand. We know
that we do not stand
alone. We stand with our society. We
stand with our species. We
are
one of the forms that
the expression of the principle of life on earth has
materialized.
Only
the sharing of such a truthful big picture about
our reality will
have
the power to: –
cohere our personal
visions
and
to, –
boost the cohesion of our societies in
the future.
We’ll
definitely need much of both to confront what awaits us in the
future.
Humanity’s
most pressing need today is to share a truthful grand narrative about
our commonly shared reality. This is what humans from all societies
on earth are yearning for. But big capital and its servants are not
yet ready to let go of their privileges. The world is thus plunged
into a general madness where facts are spurned upon and people don’t
know any longer the difference between reality and make-believe.
______________
Notes:
2 Book
3 of my collection “From Modernity to After-Modernity” (posts
to 230 to 236) is titled divination. It addresses traveling in
the subconscious and the reconciliation by the conscious mind of the
perceived subconscious scenery…
3 See
“Methane:
The other important greenhouse gas”.
This source mentions that methane is 84 times more potent than CO2
during the first two decades after its emission. Other
sources mention that it is some
30 times more potent than CO2, for
a given weight, averaged over 100 years
4 “ To date, about 1.5 million species
have been formally described in the scientific literature, most of
them insects. Proportionally, bacteria comprise less than 1% of all
described species.
Scientists
generally agree that many more species exist than are formally
described, but they disagree about how many there really are. Some
studies have estimated 2 million or fewer, whereas others suggest as
many as 12 million (one recent study even suggested the planet could
be home to a trillion species).
In
a new paper published in The Quarterly Review of Biology (September
2017), researchers from the University of Arizona have estimated
that there are roughly 2 billion living species on Earth, over a
thousand times more than the current number of described species. “
Extract
from “ A
new estimate of biodiversity on Earth
” in phys.org by University of Chicago.
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