The Great Turning (07)

6. ‘separation – rationality – scientific knowings’ / ‘interconnectedness – pragmatism – knowledge’

Content of this article (8000 words)

6.1. Animism = ‘interconnectedness – logic of pragmatism – traditional knowledge’
6.1.1. The reduction of individual suffering
6.1.2. Institutional reproduction of the societal group
6.2. Modernity = ‘separation – rationality – scientific knowings’
6.3. knowledge versus science
6.3.1. About the finality of knowledge and science
6.3.2. About the nature of knowledge and science
6.3.3. science and rationalism versus knowledge
6.3.4. How knowledge got kicked out of the picture


As a matter of fact the whole universe, as well as its operation, are outside the field of our human capability of observation.

Our physical capabilities, and sensors or AI extensions, are limiting our observation to an island amidst the whole. This says nothing about the notion that we could, possibly or not, grasp the essence of the whole at a higher level of individual consciousness.

The fact is that when speaking about knowings, or knowledge, we necessarily refer to a societal undertaking which implies the formation of-knowledge that the individuals can eventually learn and share. We have always to remember that, because the limitation of our physical capabilities, no human system of knowings-knowledge can possibly represent the truth about the whole which does not put in question what I just said about individual consciousness.

Hereunder I distinguish the 3 most influential cultural forms ever, of such societal knowings-knowledge formation, that originated in different contexts and which are at best narrative approximations of what reality is all about (1) :

1. Animism
   
   The traditional animist system of knowledge formation got practiced for some 100,000 years before slipping away after the destabilization of tribal societies and the emergence of power-societies. The paradigm of animism is the belief in ‘interconnectedness – logic – traditional knowledge’.
   
   Remnants of the animist knowledge base are still being shared nowadays by some local communities but we have to keep in mind that these are merely leftovers from a system of societal knowledge formation that disappeared from the face of the earth.
   
   A multitude of groups also emerged, along the path of power-societies, that founded ideological systems rooted in such remnants. But these ideological systems remained circumscribed to small groups and, to the best of my knowledge, none of them succeeded to attain the nature of true “societal systems of knowledge formation”. I mean, as we’ll see here under, at the exception of China.



2. Religions
   
   Part 3 of “The Continuum of the Societal Cultural Field” is devoted to the transition from the tribal model of society to the power model of societal and shows how the stabilization of power-societies, through institutional reproduction, was realized after the men of power associated men of knowledge in their endeavors. In this model there was a separation between the temporal and the ecclesiastic power. But in more recent developments the religious men of knowledge have also started to act as the sovereigns of their nations as in Tibet or in Muslim countries.
   
   In other words before religions got associated to the project of men of power they never succeeded to reproduce their institutions of power over any length of time. It was their association between temporal and ecclesiastic powers that created the conditions necessary for the reproduction of the institutions of power over multiple generations.
   
   Religions are still thriving to this day. Only in Western Late-Modern societies has religious practice fallen out of favor.



3. Modernity
   
   The paradigm of Modernity is “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital” which emerged in the 12th century in Frankish Western Europe and developed into a system rooted in ‘separation – rationality – scientific knowings’.

Hereafter I will focus my attention on the differences between animism, which represents the original traditional system of knowledge formation, and Modernity which is the system of knowledge formation that is trying to conquer the whole world in this Late-Modernity.

 

6.1. Animism = ‘interconnectedness – logic of pragmatism – traditional knowledge’

Humans traditionally believed that they had to satisfy 2 existential objectives. On one side was the institutional reproduction of their group, or society, over as many generations as possible and on the other side was the reduction of their own suffering. And they believed that the most efficient way to satisfy these objectives was by designating some (wo)men of knowledge to specialize in a traditional holistic approach of Knowledge formation at the attention of their society as a whole.

In the tribal model of society each tribe designated one (wo)men of knowledge to satisfy the following 4 missions : — knowledge formation — knowledge sharing with the individuals — knowledge transmission to the next generation — knowledge servicing of the institutional reproduction of the group.

The traditional holistic approach of Knowledge formation pragmatically focused on the inter-relatedness, of the following systemic factors, to gain some understanding of the working of reality :

1. How the interactions between the visible elements of our universe impact the contextual settings in our local habitat



2. How the interactions between all the entities inside the human habitat impact human life



3. How the interactions between human societies and their individual members impact the longevity of societies



4. How the interactions between the individuals impact their well-being as a group



5. How the interactions between body-mind impact the well-being of the individuals

These 5 factors procured a pragmatic ‘vision of the world’ that came to be called animism by early Western anthropologists. Such pragmatic worldviews shaped the responses, of the (wo)men of knowledge, to their need of satisfying the 2 existential objectives of their group.

 

6.1.1. The reduction of individual suffering

 

This kind of pragmatic worldview was rooted in a knowledge base about the elements in the tribal habitat that can treat various illnesses while the knowledge about the body-mind interactions helped to treat individual swings in feeling and mood that impact the body. This medical type of knowledge base grew in sophistication with the experiences gained by each generation of (wo)men of knowledge and it was transmitted to the following generation through a long apprenticeship.

Another approach to reduce stress was divination which addressed the communication with ancestors or the illumination about future events. This technique was used as a complement to herb and mineral treatments to reduce stress, cure some illnesses or to entice the most promising behaviors in term of the reproduction of the institutions.

 

6.1.2. Institutional reproduction of the societal group

 

The pragmatic animist knowledge base about group dynamics was certainly very sophisticated and was based roughly on the following notions :

1. Sharing a worldview to build trust
   
   The sharing of a societal worldview is enhancing the trust between the individuals in tribal groups. This notion has been largely confirmed during this Late-Modernity by extensive studies undertaken by anthropologists and psychologists.
   
   Tribal (wo)men of knowledge used seasonal feasts to share their worldview with their fellow-tribesmen. And the sharing happened through the practice of what we moderns call the arts. Visual signs transmitted conceptual or narrative meaning to the minds. Music transmitted feelings to the bodies that enhanced the meaning contained in the visuals and dance amplified these feelings to the point of generating trances that illuminated the mind to the deep meaning in the visuals. The Volume 4 of this series examines more systematically the origins and functions of the arts.



2. Trust enhances societal cohesion
   
   The higher is the level of trust between the individuals composing a societal group the higher will be the cohesion of that group. Tribal societies were small groups composing an average of 150 individuals. They generally associated with neighboring groups to form what I call cultural confederations which could assemble a few thousand individuals. And they could also momentarily split in smaller functional groups that assembled some 30 to 50 individuals (hunting parties, long distance trade missions, etc… ) (2).
   
   Small groups, the size of tribes, have been observed to assemble spontaneously in the modern context of enterprises, armies, internet chat groups, etc.



3. High societal cohesion eases institutional reproduction
   
   The sharing of a common worldview plays an important role in allowing societal groups to maintain a great cohesion over many generations which is the determinant parameter here. The sharing of a common worldview conveys the feeling to be part of a group of like minded people and this instills trust among the individuals which increases the group’s cohesion.



4. Ease of institutional reproduction prolongs societal life
   
   As long as all the ingredients of societal reproduction are in place the existence of societies get prolonged. The best example of this principal is given by the societal and worldview continuity that characterizes the societal evolution within the territory of present-day Han China where there was continuity all along the transition from the tribal to the power-model of society and until today. This is why China is called the oldest human civilization…
   
   This continuity is still at work to this very day :
   
   
   • 4.1. Continuity of the worldview = animism+
     
     China’s model of power-society inherited the pragmatism of the animist worldview which over time evolved by actualizing its pragmatism with add-ons synthesizing the evolution of the culture of the day. China’s pragmatism evolved thus gradually into something as an animism+ that is still shared today by all Han Chinese through what is called the Chinese Traditional Culture (CTC). CTC regroups different specialized forms like Chinese Traditional Medicine (CTM), Chinese Traditional Arts, Chinese Traditional Martial Arts, Chinese Traditional Food, Chinese Traditional Governance, and so on.
   
   
   • 4.2. Continuity in the “Governance by men of knowledge”
     
     Along its first 2 to 3 millennia China’s model of power-society was governed by the former tribal (wo)men of knowledge who supervised the men of power in charge of the protection of the territory from outside interference.
     
     Gradually a Confucian type education system trained scholars in the arts of governance and the former tribal (wo)men of knowledge were replaced by technocrats and over the last 2000 years these technocrats were selected through a process of examination.
     
     China’s societal, and worldview, continuity contrasts starkly with the rupture that characterizes Western societies and their worldview. But more on that later.



5. Societal longevity eases the species’ longevity
   
   As stated in “the First Principles of Life” societies and individuals are the polarities of species which act as intermediaries between a species and its individual-particles. The species searches first and foremost to ensure its continuity while the individuals are constantly temped to search for change which brings about higher levels of complexity.
   
   Societies that lose sight of “the first Principles of life” enter in a slow process that ends with their extinction. China never lost sight of these First Principles while Western societies, on the contrary, forgot about these and are presently contemplating their demise…

6.2. Modernity = ‘separation – rationality – scientific knowings’

Societal evolution indicates that the tribal model of society was destabilized by an abrupt climate heating at the tail-end of the Younger-Dryas some 11,700 years ago. And this destabilization enfolded into a transition period that stabilized some 5,000 years ago in the institutional reproduction of the first power-societies which initiated the first civilizations. Part 3 of “The Continuum of the Societal Cultural Field” is devoted to this transition, the emergence of the power model of societal organization and of the axioms of civilizations, while Part 2 is devoted to the emergence and development of the tribal model of societal organization.

The most important lesson from the stabilization of power-societies some 5000 years ago is that power through brute force is not effective at reproducing societal institutions. The transition was characterized by the loss of the animist knowledge base about the institutional reproduction of societies and it ended, not because of the men of power, but because the association of the men of knowledge of the most popular religions with some men of power in their territorial area.

In other words the reproduction of institutions of power became possible only after the sharing of a common worldview, by the individuals, stimulated sufficient trust among them to increase the cohesion of a city, of a kingdom, or of an empire to such a level that the individuals were yearning for the stability that comes with the institutional reproduction of a society.

This does not mean that power-societies rediscovered the animist knowledge. It is most probable that they rediscovered, through trial and error, the primordial importance of sharing a common worldview to enhance trust among the individual particles.

Note that it took nearly 7,000 years, in the Tri-Continental-Area, to rediscover this common sense practice ! Meanwhile in the present territory of the Han Chinese this handicap was avoided because its vast alluvial plains allowed for the uninterrupted perpetuation of tribal territorial expansion through the tribal fission-fusion model of population control. Part 2 of “The Continuum of the Societal Cultural Field” is devoted to this differentiation in the transition to power-societies.

The societal paradigm of early power societies was “the belief in the narrative of religion”. Some 3,000 years later, a new paradigm emerged in the land of the Franks in South-Western Europe. That new paradigm was “the belief in the narrative of rationality” which became the paradigm of a new historical era, within power-societies, that came to be called Modernity.

The paradigm of Modernity got initiated by “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital” whose rationality, over the centuries extended to all there is under the sun and by the 18th century it had taken the form of philosophic rationalism out of which would emerge the scientific method.

 

 

6.3. knowledge versus science

It has been observed since the down of time that, faced with the unknown, the minds of the individuals get confronted with existential questions and in the absence of societally shared answers they become anxious, distrustful, of each others and the cohesion of their societal groups fast reaches bottom. Their groups then face extreme difficulties to reproduce their institutions over the long haul of many generations and this is when they get confronted with the specter of their society’s extinction. (3)

It has also been observed that the anxiety of the individuals is greatly relieved or eliminated once they start sharing a common narrative, with their fellow-citizens, about what reality is all about and how it operates. And when all members share a common narrative the group's cohesion reaches its zenith.

As far as the eye can see down the trail of history the traditional animist (wo)men of knowledge were always in charge of the knowledge grounding the narrative of their tribes. This kind of narrative constitutes the group's societal worldview which becomes its commonly shared perception of reality.

Worldviews are rooted in paradigms and we observe the succession of the following paradigms and worldviews along the path of societal evolution :

1. The paradigm of tribal societies was “the belief in the narrative of pragmatism” and their worldview was animism



2. The paradigm of early power-societies was “the belief in new narratives that got composed in the wake of the rupture with animism” and their worldview was religion. China was the exception where animism reproduced in continuity.



3. The paradigm of Modernity is “the belief in the narrative of rationality” that got initiated by “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital” which, around 1970, morphed into “the gamble that is at work in the transformation of debt into capital” and which Western big capital holders now hope to abandon for the higher income streams possibly generated by “the totalitarian transformation of nature into capital”.
   
   In light of this, and with the end of Modernity firmly in our sight, it now appears evident that the paradigm of Modernity, in its successive iterations, is coming to the end of its existence.

New realities are starting to emerge, as a result of the process of societal collapse engaged by the great convergence of Late-Modernity, that will necessarily force a new paradigm in the minds of the individuals to help them form a vision of the new historical era that is in the forming. It is my understanding that the paradigm of After-Modernity, that is unfolding, shall be “the belief in a narrative of pragmatism” that will initiate a new worldview rooted in “the reason that is at work in the the First Principles of Life”.

 

6.3.1. About the finality of knowledge and science

For tens of thousands of years humanity considered the formation of knowledge as a strategy whose finality was to reduce individual suffering while easing the reproduction of societal groups. This incidentally also happened to increase happiness.

With the advent of power-societies religions imposed their narrative to societies and individuals along a first phase that lasted some 3,000 years. In a second phase, starting with Early-Modernity, the long distance merchants’ “belief in the narrative of rationality” expanded to ever larger segments of Western European societies and “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital” expanded into philosophic rationalism and the scientific method.

Being rooted in “the reason” the societal understanding of the concept of “scientific rationality” was necessarily conceived as a service to ensure the generation of profits by those who invest in the financing of scientific research, of technological development, and of the production of goods and services. And whatever might have been the idealist abstraction of the concept the fact is that the societal understanding is always going to triumph which brings us to the inevitable conclusion that science is the instrument of “the reason” that serves capital holders so well.

This is a large brushstroke description, for sure, and evidently this description may come as a shock to many. But the fact is that reality does not embarrass itself with sentiments nor with cheap idealism. The facts are incontrovertible. Science is produced by the activity of scientists who, as individuals, need an income to pay for the bills covering the expanses relating to the daily life of their families.

And the fact is that all the costs related to producing science are covered by corporations and the state. The bulk of a nation’s investments today go to applied research and development in science and technology which is financed directly with the proceeds of big capital holders’ investments or indirectly by the corporations they control. As servants, of big capital holders, public institutions are filling the gaps left in the budgets of scientific institutions which means that they are left with the tab for the bulk of all basic, or fundamental, research that does not directly help to generate benefits for big capital.

Basic, or fundamental science, is a risky business that is not guaranteed to ever result in applications that can be monetized and so corporations shun investing in the production of basic science. Applied science and product development, on the other hand, are preponderantly the fact of large corporations that produce goods and services — which need to be permanently actualized in order to keep up with the competition and to satisfy the demand — which need to be renewed periodically in order to remain in peoples’ attention by being featured in the media.

Corporations recuperate their investments through the sale of finished goods that consumers want to buy. But even that rarely reflects the entire picture. Covid-19 vaccines offer a good illustration of the real state of applied science and product development. Vaccines are normally being developed by applying mature methods that have been thoroughly tested and vetted by basic research institutions specialized in the medical field and largely financed by public grants.

The new mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 should have been no exception to this rule. What was exceptional with the new mRNA vaccines was that they had never really been tested on humans. Their application was thus more than anything else an act of opportunism and a political gamble to appease societal anxiety in the shortest possible time. Pharmaceutical companies used the mRNA process developed by publicly funded research Institutes, like the RNA Therapeutics Institute under the University of Massachusetts Medical School, to develop new vaccines against Covid-19. These mRNA processes enable the extremely rapid application of solutions to unmet biological discovery challenges.

But even if it is common knowledge in the West, that product development is the domain of private corporations, State institutions have been pre-buying vaccines from the pharmaceutical companies as a means to boost their cash-flow. Under the moniker “Operation Warp Speed” (OWS) the US federal government has been funneling money to the accounts of pharmaceutical giants since March 2020. As of beginning of August these companies had banked roughly $10.79 billion as part of OWS3 !

The vaccines to treat Covid-19 were considered to be a national urgency for sure but such a large scale state interference with the working of the market for product development is not exceptional. Public institutions will always find a good justification for interfering in the market at the demand of corporations. And in the end an army of lawyers will redact the texts of state engagements in such a way that they fly out of sight and stay out of the attention of national political observers and of international competitors.

The Neoliberal ideology that drives the functioning of Western markets is peddling the fallacy of ‘state non-interference that’s why Western states and corporations are perpetually involved in such a hide and seek game. Their stated target, for pushing such a fallacy, is indeed to cancel state owned corporations out of the international competition. But the real target is State controlled capital that is judged by Western private capital holders as being a too formidable competitor.

The pretense of non-state intervention is nevertheless radically impossible to sustain, by any state under whatever political system, in whatever the fields of research and more particularly so in the field of basic research. But this impossibility does not refrain Western states to launch furious attacks on the Chinese state for its leading role in impulsing new technologies.

So how do they get away with such a blatant hypocrisy ? It is simple. In its tradition, of a centrally planned state controlled economy, the Chinese state directly finances the basic research undertaken by national institutes and corporations. This is openly recognized and being acted as a first dimension operation. Western countries, for their part, have learned since many years how to circumvent accusations of market interventions by hiding behind the veil of multi-dimensional state organizational charts and other artifices.

In general terms the tactic of Western countries is to make it nearly impossible to understand the flow of money financing R&D. The complexity of the organizational charts is meant to hide the financing of research by state money and so the share of the total dollars spent on research by the different performers does not account rigorously for who their real financiers are. The figures available are furthermore mixing up basic and applied/product research. We are thus confronted to an opaque wall of obfuscation that puts to shame the first dimensional truthfulness of Chinese figures. And China stands thus accused, in the eyes of all, of unfair practices while the real unfairness resides on the side of its accusers who obfuscate the reality of their own practices and so escape the scrutiny of the public and the international competition.

The fact is that basic science does not directly procure applications that can be monetized. That’s why the bulk of basic research is being financed not by corporations but by the state and donations. This evidently runs counter to the propaganda of Western big capital holders and their servants the politicians, state bureaucrats, managers and intellectuals who all participate in diverting the attention to the reality of Western state intervention in the economy.

 

6.3.2. About the nature of knowledge and science

Science generates “knowings”, about bits and pieces of reality, that are aimed at growing the surpluses of invested capital while traditional knowledge generated a holistic narrative about the working of reality that aimed to produce remedies to help generate — individual daily well-being — societal harmony and reproduction over the many generations.

Science is being financed by investors, or by institutions acting as their public servants, with the hope to return them profits. This is why science is limited to the acquisition of “knowings” about very narrow segments of reality that are destined to help investors in reducing the costs of their actual productions or in the development of totally new products.

Science is thus a service at the attention of capital and its public servants. The Covid episode has been a rather convincing illustration for all the people on this earth that science is a service at the attention of capital. The British Medical Journal recently published an article that argues as much :

"The philosophy of critical rationalism, advanced by the philosopher Karl Popper, famously advocated for the integrity of science and its role in an open, democratic society. A science of real integrity would be one in which practitioners are careful not to cling to cherished hypotheses and take seriously the outcome of the most stringent experiments. This ideal is, however, threatened by corporations, in which financial interests trump the common good. Medicine is largely dominated by a small number of very large pharmaceutical companies that compete for market share, but are effectively united in their efforts to expanding that market.

… Scientific progress is thwarted by the ownership of data and knowledge because industry suppresses negative trial results, fails to report adverse events, and does not share raw data with the academic research community.

The pharmaceutical industry’s responsibility to its shareholders means that priority must be given to their hierarchical power structures, product loyalty, and public relations propaganda over scientific integrity. Although universities have always been elite institutions prone to influence through endowments, they have long laid claim to being guardians of truth and the moral conscience of society. But in the face of inadequate government funding, they have adopted a neo-liberal market approach, actively seeking pharmaceutical funding on commercial terms. As a result, university departments become instruments of industry: through company control of the research agenda and ghostwriting of medical journal articles and continuing medical education, academics become agents for the promotion of commercial products." (4)

By making sure that everything in daily life is being priced exclusively by market Neo-liberalism, the apologist ideology of private ownership and the free market, is making sure that science remains firmly focused on servicing capital and its public servants. All other considerations, more particularly the precautionary principle, are evacuated on the ground that they impinge on the free market. Such extremist positions yesterday, for example, led to the rejection of tobacco’s toxicity and today they lead to the rejection of the externalities of Modernity like climate change and other that destroy the habitat of life.

In contrast the finality of traditional Knowledge was always to ensure human daily well-being essentially by reducing the suffering of the individuals while ensuring the reproduction of their societies over the long haul. Starting with tribal societies and along the entire span of societal evolution the men of knowledge strove to understand – the working of the body and mind of the individuals – the interactions between all the elements within their society’s habitat – the interactions of their societies’ habitat with the wider ensembles in the Universe.

Once viewed through this particular angle we come to understand that knowledge relates to understanding the systemic interactions between the following :

1.  the interactions of our universe as a whole with the contextual settings in our local habitat



2. the interactions between all the entities and elements inside our habitat



3. the interactions between human societies and their individual members



4. the interactions between the individuals



5.  the interactions between the body and mind of the individuals .

The nature of science is fundamentally other. Science functions as a service supplied to capital holders, or their representative corporations and states, in order to allow them to increase their profits. Basic research can be said to be different in the sense that it does not address the production of goods. But basic research projects are being evaluated before the decision to finance them and the single most important criteria to unlock financing is the potential opened by the research to help generate new productions of goods and services that can procure a competitive advantage to the country.

Some scientists might consider, for reason of personal attachment to moral or other principles, that their role is larger and more noble but their research is nevertheless always financed or by capital holders or by their servants who expect returns on their investments. And if scientists want to address larger or more noble finalities, than increasing the profits of their financiers, they are most often forced to do so outside of the institutions receiving the contracts and the grants that pay for their monthly wages. But if they do so, fact is that, the nature of their work becomes estranged from the nature of science and their quest becomes more like a quest for Knowledge in the traditional sense.

The mastery by the mind of such knowledge definitely helps to increase human well-being and it is therefore considered to be the highest form of Knowledge which is called wisdom. And the reason why the traditional (wo)men of knowledge strove to attain such a wisdom is because their societal mission was to render knowledge services to their fellow citizens in their search — to reduce their suffering — and to gain pragmatic knowledge to ease their toiling. This was the mission ‘contracted’ with them by their small bands and that mission was ultimately what helped tribal societies to stabilize demographically around the golden number of 150 by the end of the societal transition from small bands. (5)

Wisdom is the mastery in reducing the suffering of the individuals and incidentally it also increased their happiness. Knowledge, trust between the individuals, societal cohesion and societal reproduction were the ultimate goal of the ‘(wo)men of knowledge’. They are all indispensable elements to keep the group on a path of resilience.

Science does not care about societal resilience. It is simply not financed to care about this which ultimately explains why, within the short time-span of a few centuries, Modernity landed humanity in its Late-Modern predicament of extinction.

 

6.3.3. science and rationalism versus knowledge

Traditional knowledge was respected because people had asked for it to be on a pedestal of authority from where they could consult it freely when in need of information relating to their daily lives. But when rationalism and science were forced, on the floor of the market for ideas, they lost the luster and trust that knowledge had always represented in the minds of suffering citizens.

The comprehension, of this differentiation between traditional knowledge and rationalism-science, is necessary to understand the present climate of distrust and rejection of all authoritative statements that is observed in Western countries. There is unfortunately not much literature available on this particular subject which is a shame because it was the catalyst of the present distrust and the chaos that ensued.

The rejection of the authoritativeness of scientific statements originates with the separation by early-rationalist philosophers of, — science — philosophy — art — worldviews, in silos of specialization.

Science and rationalism were without contest at the root of the industrial revolution and they allowed societies to procure an abundance of mass-market goods whose prices had a tendency to decrease particularly over the last 30 years when an abundance of Chinese supplies crashed the prices of daily-use commodities. Herein resides the extraordinary popular success of modernity that for a short time rendered it untouchable to critique.

Science always was at the service of “the reason that is at work within the transformation of money into capital” and it was the combination, of “the reason” and the service procured to it by science, that exploded the production of material goods thus allowing for a population explosion and the rise of an unconditional belief in the illusion of permanent growth. But all this occurred in the context of a finite natural habitat !

Modernity was destined to fall for a lack of a holistic knowledge grounding thinking in “the First Principles of Life” !

1. A finite habitat versus an infinite growth of consumption
   
   A finite natural habitat, by definition, does not tolerate an infinite growth of goods and services to be consumed



2. Infinite growth of consumption was accompanied by a population explosion 
   
   An infinite growth of consumption of goods and services resulted in a population explosion. Humanity has still not left that stage but demographic studies forecast the approach of peak population which will be followed by a falling curve…



3. Growth of consumption and growth of population resulted in severe damages 
   
   No need to be an engineer in earth sciences to understand that an infinite growth of consumption followed by an exploding population would come at the price of rather severe consequences :
   
   
   • 3.1. Available resources :
     
     In a finite habitat the resources needed to produce these goods and services would eventually rarefy. And this is indeed what is happening. All natural resources started to peak one after the other and we are approaching the moment when the energetic resources to sustain the actual world consumption will no longer be sufficient. And for all the talk about alternative sources of energy there is not one, nor any combination of diverse new sources, that could ever replace fossil fuels. At the exception perhaps, of nuclear fusion, if it is not an illusion of scientism …
   
   
   
   • 3.2. Side-effects :
     
     Side-effects of Modernity are multiple. They range from externalities generated by production activities to psychological trauma generated by societal habits that get acquired along the path of peoples’ conversion to “the reason” :
     
     
     • 3.2.1. Externalities :
       
       Since in the silo of economics, “the reason” is the enforcer of human behaviors, the search of profits was bound naturally to force the human hand to externalize as many costs as possible. As a consequence nature eventually gets overwhelmed with all kinds of chemicals, with mountains of garbage, with all kinds of anthropogenic gases, and so on and on...
       
       The costs associated with all these externalities are overwhelming. Anthropogenic gases, for example, are changing the earth’s climate which poses an existential risks for life on earth and a 6th mass extinction has already been set in motion.
       
       One externalization that is making the news nowadays is the fall in mammals’ sperm count that makes leading researchers fear that humans could be without sperm sometime in the next decades (6). Being in woke times the fact, that some of the researchers are politically aligned with the right, motivated some researchers from the left to reject the conclusions that sperm counts are decreasing…7 This woke confusion in the field of sperm counts, is left versus right, and it is the counterpart of the right versus left confusion that is entertained in the field of climate change.
     
     
     
     • 3.2.2. Convergence of diverse factors from diverse side-effects :
       
       Multiple side-effects are converging causing feed-back loops of causes and effects that are simply too complex for humans to comprehend and these feed-back loops are leaving life at their mercy…
     
     
     
     • 3.2.3. Convergence of diverse externalities :
       
       One externality provokes side-effects that can be detrimental to life. Multiple externalities multiply the side-effects in ways that, for many of them, are not accessible to human observation.
       
       CO2 and other anthropogenic gases provoke a heating of the average temperatures at the surface of the earth and in the atmosphere. At a certain threshold, of temperature and humidity, the human body fails and the individual dies.
       
       This factor gets then combined with other factors like air-water-land pollution, the loading of all water on earth with plastic nano-particles, colony collapse disorder, soil exhaustion, the loss of top soil, deforestation, increasing spread of infectious diseases, heavy metals, biogenic-metals and pesticides related diseases, obesity and related diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson and so on and on.
       
       The comprehension of the outcome of such a stew is just out of human reach. But this outcome is already causing untold harm to life and things will only get worse from here.

In light of all this my writing here above, that “Modernity is thus destined to fall for a lack of a holistic knowledge”, does no longer appear as an exaggeration. This is a subject that I have addressed in Volume 1, “Knowledge versus science”, and that I will address more thoroughly in Volume 3 “The Formation of knowledge”.

6.3.4. knowledge got kicked out of the picture

Philosophic rationalism separated, — daily life — knowledge — art — worldviews — economics — nature — and so on, in order to disengage the intellectual inquiry from past holistic approaches of reality. It was hoped that by engaging in the depth of the micro-world scientific knowings would be churned out ‘en masse’ that would generate returns on investments. This is what happened and it unleashed the industrial revolution but it also squeezed science in a close dependency of capital.

And once capital was in charge of financing scientific development science was effectively being muzzled and stuck on a one way track. In other words scientific development was forced to focus primarily on work that could help to ensure the generation of returns for capital holders and this happened without even a mention of this very fact appearing in the public sphere. There were good reasons for hiding the link between capital and science from the attention of the public.

The traditional function of Knowledge which had, been since its inception, to reduce the suffering of the individuals suddenly was gone. The new priority was to ensure a constant flow of returns on the investments realized by capital holders. In other words the finality of Knowledge was suddenly overturned without there ever being a discussion about it.

But ensuring a constant flow of returns on investments has most unfortunately detached human thinking from “the First Principle of Life”. Going forward this detachment ensured a convenient absence of questioning about the side-effects of the externalization costs from the books.

Scientists and philosophers have indeed largely been confined to their silo of abstractions where they lost sight of daily life and its need for pragmatism and so philosophy forgot that its mission is to make sense about what really matters for the species which is life and its lifeblood which is given by the dance of its complementary polarities : — societies — individuals. And without a coherent body of knowledge that is adapted to the contextual settings of the day the artists were confused and soon fell into nothingness.

What I describe here is human life on earth as seen from the distance of heaven. There should be no doubt that some wise (wo)men of knowledge were conscious all along about what was happening. But their critiques were ignored. And today it has become most difficult to find such persons because they understand that the tsunami of Modernity has to come crashing down for something else to possibly take root.

But the enormity of such a conclusion is evidently problematic and difficult to share with society at large and so the few remaining wise (wo)men of knowledge have resigned themselves to live on the margins of their societies from where flabbergasted they silently observe the advancing stages of the cancer of Homo-Sapiens !

Marx considered that Modernity is the most revolutionary progressive force in human history. In that sense he participated in the separation of Knowledge in a field of specialized knowings. His critique, of the social ravages exercised by this force, was the sole aspect of his writing that his followers retained but in their bickering for power they forgot even what that limited aspect, of his thinking, was all about :

• in the case of the Soviet Union, while entering their society into Modernity, the communists muzzled it under a thick layer of mistrusting bureaucracy that finally suffocated peoples’ daily lives



• in the case of Western 'social democracies' socialist parties collaborated with big capital holders which ended with their so called 3rd way and their total surrender to Neo-liberalism



• China, through its heritage of the axioms of the Chinese civilization and its pragmatic worldview, still holds the promise of a reconciliation with “the First Principles of life”. Its priorities, over the last forty-five years, correctly focused on the survival of its nation and Marxism has without a doubt been instrumental in its grasp of “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”.

Only after the country feels satisfied, that the future of its nation is no longer in danger, will it possibly reconcile its national life with “the First Principles of Life”. But there is unfortunately no guarantee whatsoever that these First Principles will not be forgotten along the way !

The separation, of — daily life — knowledge — worldviews — art — economics — nature — and so on, into specialty domains has also been the root cause of the demise of the traditional societal function of art that leaves us now on a trail of 'whatever is art' financial speculation absurdity (8).

That separation killed knowledge in its traditional sense — as the observation of the principle of life — as the interpretation of this observation into the accepted worldview of the time. Let’s remember that a shared worldview had always been considered until then as a must have to maximize societal cohesion which is ‘de facto’ the ultimate condition for societies to possibly reproduce over the long haul.

When specialization took over this grand view of things, this holistic vision, was abandoned as being non-rational and non-scientific. But specialization, while being a lot more efficient at gleaning knowings within a narrow field, forgot about the links and interactions among the multitude of fields that constitute the entirety of the domain of human life.

More damaging even was the separation that this specialization imposed with all there is outside of the domain of human life. This is how knowledge, in the traditional sense of human wisdom, was replaced by 'scientific knowings' and that was the moment when the men of knowledge or the holders of wisdom were superseded by intellectual holders of 'knowings' relating to narrow fields.

George Mobus expressed a similar idea while using the words “partial knowledge” to describe the mass of knowings accumulated by science. And to unify the dispersal of a multitude of “partial knowledge” he promoted systemic complexity, as the study, of interacting systems, forming a new layer of knowledge sitting on top of the narrow scientific specialties of today (9).

I personally prefer the term knowings for the good reason that it more clearly demarcates the essential difference between limited sectorial scientific knowings and the more globally encompassing views, or the wisdom, emanating from the knowledge about 'the whole' and its 'sub-ensembles made of multiple systems'.

The substitution of Knowledge with rationality and science left us all knowledge-orphans or wisdom-dumb. But I think that the artists were those who bore the brunt of that separation. By losing contact with their (wo)men of knowledge story tellers, who passed down to them the state of evolution of the societal worldview, they lost the automatic reference to what had been the content of their works since times immemorial.

The rejection of everything that was rooted in the past suddenly put the artists in charge of the creation of their own content. For a short while they celebrated their newly gained freedom from their story tellers. But with an education solely focused on the use of a technique their minds got stuck in technical matters while remaining empty of the substance that is necessary to devise a content that is adapted to their day.

A short 2-3 decades of effervescence, in trials and errors at the hands of the avant-garde, resulted in emptiness, the grotesque, and then “whatever”. This is when art shifted unmistakably outside of the societal instrumentality that characterized its function since its early emergence, at the origin of societal evolution from small bands to tribal societies, most probably during the Eemian Inter-glacial Period some 125,000 years ago.

This was the moment when the artists got confronted with an emptiness of meaning that left them utterly confused. This confusion opened the door to “whatever is art” and the subsequent financial coup over the art-world by US 3 letters propaganda agencies in cohort with art-merchants. The context of speculation that ensued expanded that confusion ever further driving it into one-way street pathways of communication stunts meant to attract the attention of the media so as to generate free public exposure which in this Late-Modernity is the ultimate criterion of value.

But in the craze of this Late-Modernity a symphony for Knowledge and beauty is rising calling to reconnect with the First Principles of life. This symphony is what keeps me alive !

Notes

1. The Volume 3 of this series titled “The formation of societal knowledge” gives an extensive presentation of this question. I hope that it will be ready for upload sometime by the end of 2023.

The cultural forms of societal knowledge formation were preceded by biological forms. Ant and bee societies, for example, are governed by their biology or better by the processing machines of their individual bodies’ . In contrast, at a certain level of biological development of the human individual body’s processing machine, knowledge formation and societal evolution have been taken over by cultural processes. In other words the conscious minds of (wo)men of knowledge started to impulse a process of knowledge formation...


2. "Optimising human community sizes", Evolution and Human Behavior 39 (2018) 106–111, by Robin I.M. Dunbar and Richard Sosis.


3. See how “HHS Accelerates Clinical Trials, Prepares for Manufacturing of COVID-19 Vaccines”.


4. "The illusion of evidence based medicine", British Medical Journal - 2022-03-16, by Jon Jureidini, Leemon B. McHenry.


5. I covered this aspect of early societal evolution in different places but more importantly in Volume 2 of the series “from Modernity to After-Modernity” that is titled “The Continuum of the societal cultural Field. Part 2. 2.2.2. the centrality of the group imposes certain rules“.


6. "Sperm count drop 'could make humans extinct'", BBC News, by Pallab Ghosh. 2017-07-25.


7. “Study aims to quell fears over falling human sperm count”, Harvard Gazette, by Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite. 2021-05-11.


8. The idea of a separation of knowledge, art, and worldviews was first expressed by Fry Carins in an excellent discussion about art that I was following a few years back on a LinkedIn forum. I did not bookmark that thread and I unfortunately did not find back its path.


9. George Mobus “Principles of Systems Science”.