painting and thinking: First devastating societal blow in Late-Modernity (19)

7.4.3.2. the transition from Late-Modernity to After-Modernity

This article is 7,500 words long and covers the following :

        7.4.3.2. the transition
        7.4.3.3. a creative life style
7.4.4. cheering life through pragmatism
         7.4.4.1. pragmatism in knowledge
         7.4.4.2. pragmatism in living
         7.4.4.3. pragmatism in societal organization

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Content of Part 7.4.

What follows is an overview of the systemic principles, that govern human life and its societal organization, as they will apply during the transition from Late-Modernity to After-Modernity. It is not intended as a remedy to the collapse of Western societies and Late-Modernity. It addresses what comes after the collapse. And more generally it addresses the question of remedies in the aftermath of the “great convergence” that has started to occur and that will affect the chances of survival of all species on this earth in the decades to come.

In summary in this chapter 7.4.3.2 I give an evolving presentation starting from the general principles about how radical changes in the living context forces the emergence of a new paradigmatic understanding of reality that gradually affirms the narrative of a new worldview or the adaptation of an existing worldview. That new worldview is adapted to the new context and its sharing by the citizens will thus quieten the working of their minds.

I address here under how this operates in the following fields ‒ knowledge formation ‒ economic production ‒ societal governance. I will then follow up by going to the particular in the 2 following chapters ‒ chapter 7.4.3.3. a creative life style ‒ chapter 7.4.4. cheering life through pragmatism.

In terms of method I propose general principles about individual daily life and societal organization as, I think, they will unfold during the transition to After-Modernity. These principles are practical considerations that are derived from the general model of societal evolution that I theorized in my series of articles titled “From Modernity to After-Modernity” (articles 199 to 237 ). Being derived from theory these principles have to be actualized to the contextual settings of After-Modernity. In the presentation that follows these adaptations are given as “answers”. And since these principles relate to human behaviors in the context of their societies I suggest that our descendants will design control mechanisms to ensure their answers are being implemented correctly (1) :

A. Knowledge formation :

a shared worldview :

A worldview sums up the views of the (wo)men of knowledge about the working of reality. Its sharing helps the individual to escape the anxiety that is rooted in unanswered existential questions. How does this work in crisis situation ?

Answer :

Those among the citizens who developed some existential knowledge will gradually propose the sharing of a worldview narrative that is based on approximations of reality that are rooted in the day’s best understanding of phenomena. ‘The citizens, media, and the state, in concert’, or ‘the citizens and other institutions that will emerge in the context of transition’, will be invited to debate the proposed narrative and any valid suggestions will then be integrated in the final version that will be from then on be shared by all. Over time this worldview will adapt to the changing context by integrating replicable memes.

Control

Cultural memes that replicate over 3 generations (or more ?) are integrated in the worldview and ‘the citizens, media, and the state, in concert,’ or ‘the citizens and other institutions that will emerge in the context of transition’, will observe that the application of this rule is effective. Replicable cultural memes actualize worldviews to contextual changes. In light of the precautionary principle the replication is verified over the span of a few generations in order to make sure that a meme does not constitute a danger for the principle of life. If it does the meme is rejected. If no detrimental side-effects are observed, after a given time (3 generations or more) the meme is integrated in the worldview.
the societal wo(men) of knowledge :

Over time local groups will task those among their members who are the most inclined to think about existential questions to act as their (wo)men of knowledge and the group will discharge them of any other chore than to form knowledge answering the problems of the day. Some questions arise :
Answer :

Wo(men) of knowledge are this tiny minority of individuals who in all societal groupings, without being asked for it, are mentally preoccupied by questions that are existential or foundational for the human species.

In Modernity “the reason at work within capital” has always deemed that such Wo(men) of knowledge are useless so they now live on the edge of Modern societies where the propaganda has not completely taken over the thinking and the daily-life of the individuals.

In the failed states of collapsing societies people are left on their own and are grappling to find directly applicable remedies ‒ to quieten their minds ‒ to quieten their stomachs and to protect them from the elements. This is when the Wo(men) of knowledge emerge to serve...

Knowledge relates ‒ to answering existential questions ‒ to synchronizing societal evolution with “the reason that is at work within life”. This contrast with science that has been tasked with the production of knowings that are applicable to the generation of profits. In conditions of societal collapse scientists will be grappling to find remedies as anyone else. For more see “Knowledge versus knowings” and “7.2.4. knowledge is a tool to alleviate suffering”.

Try to imagine how such remedies would apply in the context of a future collapsed US society and its failed state. Knowledge will have to show, within the specific context of the day, how to follow the reason that is at work within life while science will have to provide functional answers to problems encountered in daily life for example how to produce sun generated electricity with the tools and materials available in the context of the day.

Control :

in a situation of chaos the individuals will be trying to cooperate in order to survive. So new forms of ‘societal groupings’ will gradually emerge and in order to reproduce over the generations they will, at some point spontaneously, ask (wo)men of knowledge to help them solidify the cohesion of their group.

So in the early stages of re-grouping, and of re-organizing, daily-life will work things out spontaneously. Only after a minimum of order takes shape will there gradually appear a demand for control. The memory of the side-effects of Modernity will not fade away so easily and to avoid generating new ones some forms of control will most certainly emerge that will address the synchronization of daily activities with “the reason that is at work within life”.

B. Economic production

“the reason at work within capital” short-circuits “the reason at work within life”.

Answer :

there is a necessity to prioritize “the reason at work within life” over “the reason at work within capital”.

Control :

the men of knowledge observe and decide when “the reason at work within capital” steps over the red line

The maximization of profit takes precedence and everything becomes pretext to generate more profits :
- “the reason at work within capital” externalizes all the costs it can and when the practice generates observable problems society is called out to foot the bill.
  
  Answer :
  
  “the reason at work within life” forbids the externalization of costs by “the reason at work within capital”.
  
  Control :
  
  this answer supposes that the men of knowledge have veto power over “the reason at work within capital”.
- operating incomes are increased by expanding the offer of products and services: ‒ vertically by merchandising ever more aspects of peoples daily life ‒ horizontally by imposing the free circulation of capital and goods over borders. This is a description of our present reality. But the practice could very well survive during the transition to After-Modernity.
  
  Answer :
  
  vertically : as a general rule the citizens should be encouraged to self produce all they can by cooperating locally. When “the reason at work within capital” can produce some goods in better quality and at a cheaper cost than local productions it should be allowed to do so. But, as a general principle, local cooperation should at all times remain free to compete and to ensure the quality of life locally is not compromised.
  
  Control :
  
  ‘The citizens, media, and the state, in concert’, or ‘the citizens and other institutions that will emerge in the context of transition’, observe and decide if capital invested productions should, or should not, be let in locally. The notion of local control reduces the chances that capital will ever be able again to manipulate everyone all around as today by corrupting centralized institutions that escape peoples’ control.
  
  horizontally : the national application of the vertical answers is a sufficient response in the sense that goods produced in better quality and at a cheaper price than local productions can be supplied by whatever vehicle that obeys “the reason at work within capital”. The control of the vertical answer will definitely limit horizontal exchanges to what is deemed acceptable locally and this will avoid the drama that followed the delocalizations of industries in the West from the nineteen seventies and onward.
- the vehicles of production that obey “the reason that is at work within capital” are presently owned by private capital holders in the Western liberal world and in China they are ‒ owned privately for local/regional supply ‒ owned by the state for national strategic supplies. What kind of vehicle obeying “the reason at work within capital” would be best in After-Modernity ?
  
  Answer :
  
  “the reason that is at work within life” will at all times force the primacy of local production to satisfy local needs. Only when a need arises, that can not be satisfied competitively locally, will the goods to satisfy it eventually be purchased from outside.
  
  The Chinese idea of local and regional productions being privately, or cooperatively, invested is attractive for no other reason than it puts limits on the drive, by ‘the reason at work within capital’, of the ‘animal spirit’ so that it does not roam out of control as it was all along Modernity.
  
  It would certainly be beneficial for “The reason at work within life” that all productions necessitating larger investments, than what can be collected locally or regionally, should be invested by the institutions representing different regional communities.
  
  Control :
  
  the idea of limiting private invested activities, to the domain of the local and the regional, is to maintain the feasibility of a concerted control on their activities by ‘The citizens, media, and the state, in concert’, or ‘the citizens and other institutions that will emerge in the context of transition’. Any activity that passes the regional boundaries would need to be invested by an association of regional public institutions.

Fernand Braudel (2), and other proponents of ‘economic long history’, rightly posited that capitalism emerged along the Mediterranean through ‘long distance trade’. He also posited that capitalism never emerged in China because private activities were limited within the territory of local and regional markets. All activities spreading further than the regional were indeed at all times a state monopoly.

The people and societies in After-Modernity would be best served to use, what caused the failure of China’s resistance against the West before Late-Modernity, as the ultimate technique to control the ‘animal spirit’ that ‘the reason that is at work within capital’ inevitably unleashes. But this would imply that all societies on earth were following suit otherwise rent seekers would have free rein unleashing their ‘animal spirit’ in colonial adventures at the detriment of those societies that were following “the reason at work within life”.

C. Societal governance :

About geography and institutions : I use the concepts “local” and “regional” in their European Medieval market sense. Markets were the ground from which emerged the institutional set-up. In other words villages and cities did not emerge first. Market preceded the institutional set-up. Markets started spontaneously from hamlets and expanded to villages and later to cities. The same kind of arrangement has been observed at work everywhere on earth.

The distances indicated here are indicative of the territorial principle of markets. In the following examples I work from the hypothesis of a 6 hours market-day sales limit but this could vary considerably primarily for geographical reasons and so the notion of local and regional were adapted to the reality of the local context. Walking is set at 6 km per hour on average.

The local is the earliest market form. It served the needs of villages and meant a walking distance from home to ‘go-sell-back’ during the same day. Considering a long day of 10 hours; 6 hours sales leaves 4 hours or 2 hours to go and 2 hours to walk back. Local in this configuration gives a circle-territory of 24 km in diameter (maximum walking 12 km). It is the village market which will impose the village political institution, the church location, the court location, and so on.

The regional markets served the needs of cities and the merchants spent 3 days of their time, per market, walking and selling. First and last days were reserved for walking while the second, or more days between first and last, was reserved to selling only. Regional in this configuration gives a circle-territory of maximum 96 km in diameter (maximum walking distance of 48 km).

Super-regional fairs appeared in Early 12th century to answer the demands of long distance trade with the Middle-East and the ensuing Intra-European trade. Fairs, were much larger than markets and featured costlier items such as Arab copper ware, Indian cotton cloth, porcelain silk and tea from China, spices from India and South-East Asia, livestock, agricultural tools, and so on. Merchants were walking days and in some cases weeks in a row to reach these fairs. (maximum walking distance was in some cases a few thousand Km). As we have seen earlier these fairs played a determinant role in the emergence of “the reason that is at work within capital”.

institutional settings are given by market areas :
- the hamlet : a circle of short walking distance inside which there are no particular institutions. It is more like a place where everyone knows everyone else and trust is high. If a decision is needed it is being taken at the unanimity. The hamlet is the equivalent of a tribe in the context of power societies and its population varies within limits starting somewhere at 120 and a maximum of 180 people.
- the local village : a circle of some 20-25 km in diameter with market + church + village institutions + court + doctor + …
- counties in Britain or French departments played the regional role before trains and cars disrupted the notion of walking distances.
Answer :

The same kind of institutional distribution should spontaneously reappear after a collapse of societal institutions.

In the chaos following a collapse the necessity to trade will spontaneously reinstate hamlets then villages and later counties or whatever they are being named.

Governance will re-appear locally as the mechanism of decision making in times of chaos as it was during the chaotic transition that followed the “Younger Dryas”. Human grouping is a need experienced by all individuals and it happens spontaneously.

In a period of chaos and institutional break-down the first grouping to emerge is the hamlet at a size that spontaneously adjusts around the number of 150 participants with decision-making at the unanimity and exchanges of goods and services on a case by case base.

Once things stabilize in the hamlets they start to trade among themselves and this expands gradually a trade area the size of a village. Due to their size villages are unable to practice decision-making at the unanimity. Another form of decision making emerges : ‒ a chief takes power ‒ or people decide among themselves how to proceed. Ideally villagers would decide by voting on each matter of concern (direct democracy). The village was the first institution of power that stabilized after the emergence of agriculture some 8-9000 years ago.

When market expansion reaches the regional level a form of representation of the villages at the regional institutional level becomes necessary. Technically, with the web, decisions could be taken by all but it is expected that after an institutional collapse there will no longer be any internet …

Note that the transition from tribal societies to power societies has been fought at the regional level and that the length of the transition was due to the difficulty of stabilizing institutions of power over time. Brute force on its own could not reproduce the institutions over the long haul. This was only successful after the men of power allied with the men of knowledge to glue the mind in sharing a common worldview...

Control :

As long as all participants in the group approve directly all decisions there is no need for control. Control becomes indispensable when people delegate their vote to a representative. By all accounts this is a problem that humanity has not solved to this very day.

7.4.3.3. a creative life style

In times of institutional collapse, and the chaos that follows, atomized individuals by necessity will assemble spontaneously in order to ensure the gathering of the productions needed for their survival and this grouping will spontaneously stabilize around a figure of 150 individuals on average (or mean between 120 and 180) (3). But how will this scenario unfold amidst chaos ?

Answer :

In times of chaos, following the institutional collapse of societies, the individuals will spontaneously assemble in hamlets, or tribes, of approximately 150 individuals. This level of organization will then remain the core institution for a long time to come. We know, from the Dunbar number of 150, that the production-gathering-hunting of goods necessary to satisfy daily life will be organized in a cooperative way and that all individuals participate in the process.

This cooperation in producing daily-life soon becomes the new normal for all participants in the group. Producing in this particular context is not a chore like in Modern societies. It is simple living in the company of others who are known and trusted within a small territory. And in such a living arrangement there is no need for an authority to decide anything. When a decision has to be taken the group decides at the unanimity what should be done.

Having thus framed the natural tendency to assemble in small groups there is another aspect of small groups that appears even more important to get a feel of what daily life under these circumstances might look like. I mean the form, the mood, the way, people start to interact together after a certain time. Having been delving, for a long time in matters relating to the organization of small groups, I imagine the answer to this question will inevitably emerge along the following two lines :

the worldview of the group :

To feel good in their skin the individuals will inevitably search for answers to their existential questions. And the group being small enough for everybody to engage in answers some answers will finally come to be shared by the whole group. Once answers have been accepted by the group, as the worldview of the group, it is easy enough to understand that when a member of the group inquires, about one or another question, the existing agreed upon answer will be communicated to her/him and if there is no available answer the one person who is most attracted by thinking about existential matters will get consulted.

The interesting question that arises at this point is how are groups initially agreeing on these answers ?

Tribal societies inherited a process of knowledge formation that had been emerging, thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of years before their emergence, in the context of small bands that had observed how the application of ‘memorized knowledge’ helped to reduce suffering. The production-gathering-hunting process in small bands needed the participation of everybody. So they charged the least able at these activities to specialize in knowledge formation as a service to the group. This solution was later adopted by all tribes on earth which implies that knowledge formation was the result of some kind of natural polishing over the long haul that, in analogy to polished stones, gives them a feel of being from the same family. What changes are merely the local contextual characteristics (the form) but the polishing gives an identical function and an identical content.

Because this natural polishing over the long haul resulted in a common institution around the whole earth I induce that when we will ourselves be entering a period of long term chaos it is most probable that the resulting worldview of After-Modernity will be fashioned by wo(men) of knowledge as it had been during the transition from small bands to tribal societies. And over the long haul this worldview will integrate the subconscious of the individuals. This implies timescales spanning over, not hundreds of years but, thousands or tens of thousands of years.

the culture of the group :

This relates to the culture in its largest sense of all beliefs and behaviors in a given society in the present moment. We have seen earlier that culture results automatically as an adaptation, in a given context, of the worldview's ideas and values that are being shared largely unconsciously by all citizens. In other words culture is not a product resulting from the expression of the free-will of the citizens of a society. It is more like the unfolding in the present of unconsciously held beliefs and behaviors that synchronize with the particular contextual settings in the present moment. So what interest me here is more the form, the mood, or the music of the culture in After-Modernity.

My thesis in “A growing disconnect between East and West” relates to the disconnection in terms of general feelings that I observed in the present cultures of East and West. My conclusion was straightforward : optimism in the East versus pessimism in the West. But these feelings relate to the working of societies under the paradigm of “the reason that is at work within capital”. After-Modernity will emerge from the fall of this paradigm and the emergence of the new paradigm of “the reason that is at work within life”.

So after the stabilization of the transition, from “Late-Modernity” to “After-Modernity”, we should expect some dramatic changes in ‒ population levels ‒ in life conditions ‒ in access to technology ‒ in belief systems ‒ in models of society and so on. I addressed these questions in “A growing disconnect between East and West. Part 10. Humanity’ future and the role of the artist.” and I revisited this same question in “What is going on ? The crisis of the governance-world + the side-effects of Modernity” and more particularly in “Part 5. art in the maelstrom”, “Part 6. societal collapse” and “Part 7. finding meaning in life”.

At this point the question that is on everyone’s mind, I guess, is “when will this paradigmatic shift occur ?”. It seems evident to me that this transition has already started. My, and others’, writing are proof that we are slowly shifting away from “the reason that is at work within capital” and that we have taken the first steps on the path toward thinking about “the reason that is at work within life”. But there is no good answer as to when will be the turning point because this shift is a process that unfolds over time and too many parameters are at play in this process for anybody to possibly know how long the unfolding will take to stabilize on something new that works.

So let’s come back to what to expect, after the transition, from “Late-Modernity” to “After-Modernity”, in terms of the individual moods or the societal music. First thing that jump to mind is that the individuals’ life and their societies will be radically different from what we know today. Far more different than the difference we observe today between China and the West. And so I think that it would be presumptuous to believe that we even could start to imagine how it will all look like.

Just to give an idea of the kind of intensity to expect, from this transition from “Late-Modernity” to “Early-After-Modernity”, note that this is the 3rd societal turning in the history of humanity. So the shock of this transition is expected to be as intense as it had been during the 2 societal transitions that humanity experienced very deep down in its past during : ‒ the transition from small bands to tribal societies ‒ the transition from tribal societies to “power societies”. So the present transition from Late-Modernity to After-Modernity should better be termed a transition from power societies to what comes after power societies. But as my understanding started from the transition from “Late-Modernity to After-Modernity” I will keep this appellation.

7.4.4. cheering life through pragmatism

Pragmatism in my mind contrasts starkly with ideology. They are like two polar opposites in terms of human individual attitudes toward life. The attitudes these opposites foster can be viewed from a historical perspective which I summarize as follows:

In tribal societies : the worldview was animism or pure pragmatism. This worldview was based on knowledge acquired from the long haul observation of the interactions between all the elements in nature. And humans adapted their behaviors to what appeared to be feasible, what worked, in these observations. We can thus say that it was “the reason that is at work within life” that was driving human attitudes. The same was also observed in the Chinese civilization that inherited animism as its master worldview but the fact is that over the centuries the individualism of the men of power also unleashed some serious aberrations.

In power societies : The worldview was animism in China. In India the Vedas originated Hinduism, Buddhism and other philosophies. From what I know about the Veda’s I got the impression that these texts are like a philosophy derived from animism. But I have to reserve my judgment since I know not enough about the subject.

In the Tri-Continental-Area, that Europeans view as the Middle between them and the far-East, animism was brutally extinguished and replaced by new narratives. These narratives were based on ideas that were not necessarily completely detached from reality but their imagery soon detached them completely. And so these stories or ideologies offered no practical use to their followers about how to reduce their daily suffering or about how to regulate their behaviors so as to maximize their positive returns. These ideologies were pure moralistic plays to control peoples’ behaviors and to guarantee their subjection to the men of power.

But by positioning the follower on the side of his god, who was depicted as the all loving ultimate good, the follower naturally views the difference of “the other” as a sign that she/he is evil. That’s when the moralism of the ideology clicks in imposing him to convert the other or to kill him if he refuses to convert. The US attitude against China today is rooted in this ideology and proves just how little has changed over the last few thousands of years. For more see “The axioms of civilization”.

In Modernity : the traditional Christian worldview was cohabiting for a very long time with “the reason that is at work within capital” but its sharing by the citizens was slowly dwindling principally in the twentieth century. In the second part of the century Postmodernism gave it the “coup de grace” and it entered into desuetude. But Modernity and science never replaced Christianity. They were not fully fledged worldviews. They did indeed not offer a narrative that all people could easily adhere to. For science the situation was even worse in the sense that its narrative is based on a method that questions all present certainties and leaves it open to future better answers.

Without a shared narrative Western societies fragmented and atomized… For more see “Pragmatism versus ideology”.

My views definitely align with pragmatism and, while I don’t subscribe to any particular ideology, I understand that ideologies have nevertheless played a usefulness role of reproduction of societies throughout history. But there is no doubt in my mind that the history of the worldviews of Homo-Sapiens’, and of their societal evolution starting with the transition from small bands to tribes, is definitely not offering a picture of constant progress.

Tribal societies appear without any contest to have been a huge improvement in all fields in comparison to small bands. Their knowledge base, before their destabilization unleashed a transition toward power societies, reached a remarkable level of refinement that modern science just starts to discover. They succeeded to build a way of life based on very long haul observations that modern science just recently started to observe itself.

Knowledge formation, under animism or under science, is an identical process made of ‒ observation ‒ induction or deduction of hypotheses (4B) ‒ verification of the replicability of hypotheses over time. The difference between science and animist knowledge formation resides in the length of time involved in the verification process. In science the verification takes place within a very restraint time span. Biologists, for example, put a vaccine to the test to see if it works and is not too toxic. This is verified within a relatively short time-frame. In contrast the verification by the animist (wo)men of knowledge extended over many generations which means that their conclusions were synchronizing with the rhythms of long natural cycles. The shorter time-frame of the scientific verification implies that it misses the effects occurring over longer time-frames. So we come to better understand why science could not forecast most of the side-effects of Modernity while animist (wo)men of knowledge have been forecasting them since generations past ...

But what amazes me most is how the animist (wo)men of knowledge built a resilient societal way of life based on the synchronization of their societal life with the lessons they learned from their long haul observations of the rhythms of nature and of the skies. In comparison our modern societies appear simply pathetic. Science shows us that our ways of life are extremely fragile. But we seem paralyzed when it comes to adapting our societal behaviors to the lessons that nature teaches our most advanced science about what works and what does not work.

Tribal societies synchronized their activities with the observations, by their (wo)men of knowledge, about the cyclical rhythms of the skies. And we start to intuit nowadays that this could have been the reason behind their long distance migrations. Their intuition about the interconnection of all elements under heaven commanded them to respect all living species. These incredible feats of the animist (wo)men of knowledge put to shame the focus, of Modernity, on the mechanical working of micro-particles and on “the reason that is at work within capital”. Yes we got a lot of stuff out of scientific applications but the happiness was so shallow.

The fact is that these concerns, of power societies and Modernity, have distracted humanity from the evidence that life is its most precious gift. Power societies, and the last iteration of their worldview in the form of Modernity, did not treasure their most precious gift. Instead they have driven us one minute before midnight on the clock of life extinction. In other words our modern mental gymnastics have unlocked the door to the territory of our species' death. This is definitely contrary to pragmatism and definitely not a wise move.

7.4.4.1. pragmatism in knowledge

I think that living your life creatively in the present grounds your mind in the practical matters that relate to answering the technical matters you encounter in your doing. When your mind is absorbed you are doing without acting. And this is true whatever your doing might be : meditation, layering bricks, farming, competing in sport, baby-sitting, gardening, making love, thinking, painting, writing or whatever else.

The trouble starts when you are idle and your mind wanders around and loses track of the here and now. If you are on your own chances are that your mind will get you lost. Animist wisemen thought that people should be encouraged to do what they have to do in order not to be tempted to mix in matters they know nothing about. They saw this as nothing else than trouble. This is among other the reason why these wisemen guarded their knowledge from ignorants and only transmitted it through a secret apprenticeship to the next generations. Knowledge transmission involved indeed secrecy until quite recently.

In Late-Modernity the egotistic illusion of the individuals’ centrality destroyed their capacity to acquire knowledge and so they ended up in the Sisyphean mythology of ‘knowings’ (4). This is why so very few have any inkling left about what is knowledge and why the idiotic ego of most can make them believe that they know better than anyone else about anything.

China largely escaped this trap, for the good reason that, its civilization adopted animism as its foundational worldview. The Chinese axioms of civilization (5) convey thus the wisdom that had been gained over the preceding tens of thousands of years of animistic knowledge formation. Over the last hundred years the countries, making up the territory of the Chinese civilization (6), have all integrated Modernity in order to save the physical integrity of their nations under attack by Western imperialism and colonialism. But in the process they have lost a great deal of their traditional animistic knowledge base. Hopefully they’ll eventually regain that knowledge through their populations newly discovered need for searching into their roots.

This individual need to reconnect to one’s roots is a very healthy one indeed. It denotes a search for meaning to the existential questions that never stop to nag the mind. And the answers one finds in one’s roots are helping to reconnect with one’s traditional national worldview. The more individuals follow this path the more the cohesion of their nation gets boosted and the higher its chances are enhanced to reproduce over the long haul of many generations.

Knowledge, in the ancient pragmatist tradition, is about helping the individuals to reduce their suffering while enhancing their well-being and once this is attained the cohesion of their societies is boosted at a maximum which guarantees their reproduction over the long haul of many generations and this, in the end, is what guarantees the reproduction of the species. This compares with knowings in Modernity which are about helping the capital holders, who finance the research, to generate more profits. These 2 divergent approaches could be caricatured as "life versus capital".

The reproduction of the species is the full realization of “the reason at work within the principle of life”. Knowledge, in the ancient pragmatist tradition, is thus a very potent instrument and its ignorance comes at a very high cost indeed. The cost being that the individuals lose sight of the meaning of life and are left wandering around clueless and lonely.

7.4.4.2. pragmatism in daily life

Knowledge helps the individuals to avoid, or to reduce their suffering, while it enhances their well-being. This is the point where “the reason at work within life” enters into operational mode. Once the mind of an individual is enlightened, about this first of all truths, it submits into acceptance of reality and then it discoverers the overwhelming joy of living fully immersed in ‘non-action-doing’ in the present moment. That’s when the mind of the individual reaches pure tranquility.

Pure tranquility is a state of mental perfection that projects itself in the doing of the individual. What I find most intriguing is that pure tranquility of the mind manifests itself in a most refined form of doing that is pure non-action which the viewer, or the listener or the user, perceive as being most helpful, respectuous, and above all most beautiful.

Painting and thinking have taught me that the viewer’s mind, mine included, is first and foremost attracted by what we commonly call beauty and in this sense we start to understand that the mind’s pure tranquility is a very particular state of mind which automatically synchronizes our doing with the memory of biological evolution that is stored in our biological make-up.

Watch Li Ziqi’s 'non-action-doing' on YouTube

This idea of beauty (7) is implied in the singularity of the mind. It implies indeed that the whole process of cognition is framed by the patterns left by the process of biological evolution in the substance of “the body’s processing machine” (8)

“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. And our nervous system, which ensures the flow of communication between these 3 information processing centers, somehow substantiates this singularity into personal attention.”

In substance what I mean to say is that the biological evolution of life has left imprints in the substance of “the body’s processing machine” about the patterns of “what works evolutionary wise → beauty” and “what does not work evolutionary wise → ugliness” that the “the body’s processing machine” uses as reference to synchronize its analysis and guidance of the individual’s present behaviors. But beauty acts also as an attractor, while ugliness acts as a repulsor, on the mind of the individual and his behavior is thus somehow forced to obey the stimuli impulsed by “the body’s processing machine” which again confirms that our traditional ideas about free-will are far from the real world.

The wisest among the traditional (wo)men of knowledge intuited the interactions between ‒ the pure tranquility of the mind ‒ the synchronization of our doing with our memory of biological evolution ‒ the individual attraction to beauty and her/his repulsion by ugliness. This intuition propulsed their consciousness deep into the working of the principle of life which guided them gluing the minds of their fellow citizens around a common worldview narrative.

It is at this stage of societal evolution that visual representations, music, and dance emerged as instruments of the (wo)men of knowledge to share with their fellow citizens the narrative of the worldview they had derived from the knowledge they had acquired about the working of reality. Europe started to use the appellation “art” to characterize these visual, musical, and dance productions during the Renaissance and this appellation has been confusing the minds ever since.

7.4.4.3. pragmatism in societal governance

The storage in the material substance, that gives the body its faculty to perceive and to compute, of biological patterns, that act as signifying signals on the orientation of human behavior, procures to our species a commonality of understanding about the working of reality. We nevertheless observe that the societal evolution toward power societies divided humanity along two lines :

Those who kept on believing in the primacy of the natural order, including the biological signaling about the working of reality, subordinated societal evolution and the continuum of the cultural field to that natural order and their power societies kept thus sharing the animist worldview that celebrates this natural order

those who erased, the animist worldview celebrating the primacy of the natural order, imposed on their citizens an ideological worldview narrative that was primarily meant to ensure subordination to their power and to ensure the reproduction of their institutions of power over the long haul. But these worldviews failed to supply any signifying signals to help orient daily human actions.

These two lines of societal belief gave way to 2 sets of completely different axioms of civilization and 2 sets of completely different worldviews that ensured the running in parallel of 2 radically different and often antagonistic cultural fields. And so arose a feeling of ‘otherworldiness’ about the other that rendered his behavior and beliefs incomprehensible. This in short is the situation East and West find themselves in today.

Lets observe now how each of these two continuum operate in term of the behaviors of their societies toward one another :

On one side we have the nations forming the Inter-Continental-Area (ICA) whose civilizations Western countries later aped. On the other side of the continuum we have the nations of East-Asia (EA) who followed the civilizational path of China while their worldview gradually diverged along their long historical path.

the nations participating in each one of these civilizations have a good understanding of the others in their group. But the accumulation of worldview divergences along their history puts them often on a conflictual path. This is particularly true in the ICA civilizational group and to a minor extent in the EA group. As examples in group ICA we might cite the war path expansionary move of the Roman empire and the 2 World Wars. As examples in group EA we might cite the war path expansionary move of the Mongolian empire and the Japanese wars of expansion toward the creation “of an East Asian federation or cooperative body, based on traditional pan-Asian ideals of universal brotherhood (hakko ichiu - eight corners of the world under one roof) and an 'Asia for Asians' liberationist rhetoric”. (9)

On both sides nations are governed under a model of power society and they were warring regularly. But one can’t miss the restrained attitude at all times of the elephant in the room that is China. Not only did Han China not expand by defeating its attackers; it were the attackers defeating it who expanded its territory. I don’t know of another such example of imperial expansion by defeat. This is assuredly an anomaly that would gain to be studied in depth.

The explanation of this anomaly, in my mind, resides in the country’s cultural continuum. The Chinese view the different “other” in light of their axioms of civilization that signal the other as being merely one among many, in a reality in constant flux, from whom they may eventually learn something useful for themselves personally or for their nation. And their worldview drills that point further with Confucius writing in “The Analects” ‒ that there is no need to spend time and money on conquering others ‒ that after strengthening one’s own economy the foreigners will bring their money and their knowledge in exchange of their own sharing in the internal richness of the country. Is this not exactly what the new economic strategy exposed by President Xi is all about ?

“China’s move to double down on a pivot away from export-led growth in favour of developing its domestic market reflects a strategic shift by Beijing to prepare for the “worst case scenario” after the coronavirus pandemic, according to analysts.

President Xi Jinping told dozens of top economic advisers in Beijing at the weekend that China was pursuing a new development plan in which “ domestic circulation plays the dominant role”.

“For the future, we must treat domestic demand as the starting point and foothold as we accelerate the building of a complete domestic consumption system, and greatly promote innovation in science, technology and other areas,” Xi said in comments published by the official Xinhua News Agency.
Xi’s remarks suggest that Beijing is moving towards giving up the “great international circulation” strategy adopted in the 1990s that helped fuel its growth to become the world’s second-largest economy.” (10)

At the exception of some rare but spectacular moments of ideological madness, like the cultural revolution, pragmatism has been a constant in China’s governance. The system is build around the idea that the role of societal governance is to ensure the well-being of the people and decision making centers have to on the realization of this core objective.

By contrast the Western governance system is captive of big capital holders who want the state to help them generate the maximum profits. In a system of representative democracy the money, of corporations owned by big capital holders, will buy the votes of the representatives and so democracy is but a name game meant to make believe.

When you listen to Western analysts they joke that Chinese leaders are always afraid that their people could rise up and so they are constantly kowtowing to their demands. As if this was a sign of weakness. Sure Western people’s demands have not to be satisfied propaganda will always succeed to bamboozle them… My skin covers with goosebumps each time I hear this kind of cynical blather.

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NOTES

1.    About the methodology :    ( Diagnostic -- Answer -- Control )
In 3 steps :
    a) in this Chapter 7.4.3. I give the general principles applying to the societal worldview and the daily creative life of the individual.
    b) In Chapter 7.4.4. I try to enter into the mechanics at the existential level of the practical and lived daily experience in terms of pragmatism relating to knowledge and daily life
    c) In Chapter 7.4.5. I try to enter into the mechanics at the institutional level of society in terms of governance and the interactions in the cultural field

2. Fernand Braudel was a French historian who taught at the École pratique des hautes études” in Paris. After the 2nd World War he became the leading figure of the scholarly journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale.
Braudel took his distance with history as a craft narrating a story of individuals. He advocated an overview of world events from a long haul perspective and he reserved his core attention to the emergence of capitalism in Late Medieval and early modern Europe.

3. See the Dunbar number in “7.1.1. two known precedents”

4. About knowledge versus knowings. See “What’s going on. 1.2. science versus knowledge”.

4B. Inductive reasoning, in logic, involves infering knowledge from a particular case and applying it to a more general case. In other words it is a method of reasoning that uses a premise or evidence and applies it to a similar but larger case. This method stands opposed to deductive reasoning which is an approach that provides a formal abstract model of logical reasoning.

5. See “What is going on “ 2.2. the Axioms of civilizations”.

6. The territory of the Chinese civilization expands to Greater China, the 2 Korea’s, Japan, Vietnam.

7. See the book formatting of my series of articles titled “From Modernity to After-Modernity” that relate to art. “Book 2. Theoretical considerations. Volume 5. About the arts. 2.1.1. a biological predisposition for beauty” page 39 and following. This text is the first draft that I published, during the spring of 2016, as articles on my blog “thinking and painting”. This text still awaits editing before I publish it. I link it here because it is perhaps my most elaborate written source about beauty and the arts.

8. See “What is going on ? 7.2. About the mind and thinking”

9. “Japan's Quest for Empire 1931 – 1945”, in BBC History, by Dr Susan Townsend. 2011-03-30

10. “China’s economic strategy shift”, in SCMP, by Frank Tang. 2020-05-25

painting and thinking

2020-08-12

First devastating societal blow in Late-Modernity (19)