The West does not accept the inevitability of this natural shift and it acts to prove itself right. In this resides the greatest danger, during these 2020s, for human societies and for our species ! The outcome of this Western generated conflict will decide how humanity implements the necessary remedies to counter the imbalances that Western Modernity has unleashed on the Geo-Bio-Chemistry of the sub-ensemble earth.
The present actions of the USA indicate without any possible doubt that this country is ready to sacrifice most of the world population to ensure the continuation of its Western form of Modernity. In this gamble the development of science and technology take center stage and are slowly imposing a post-humanist and scientist vision of the future that renders working populations superfluous. (1)
The only thing that counts, in that vision, are the non-visible interests of Western big capital holders that are managed by their servant technocrats and their armies of robot-workers.
But this Western strategy defies the nature of societal evolution. It blurs people’s perceptions of what is going on by shedding chaos all around. This chaos sheds such a confusion that the individuals are loosing their sanity and this includes those individuals who participate in the conception and the implementation of that strategy in the first place.
The resulting chaos casts such a madness over the contemporary moment that to keep its mental clarity the rest of the world feels forced to focus on the formation of its daily societal cultures. And it appears evident that the world community of nations is in dire need of :
The present actions of the USA indicate without any possible doubt that this country is ready to sacrifice most of the world population to ensure the continuation of its Western form of Modernity. In this gamble the development of science and technology take center stage and are slowly imposing a post-humanist and scientist vision of the future that renders working populations superfluous. (1)
The only thing that counts, in that vision, are the non-visible interests of Western big capital holders that are managed by their servant technocrats and their armies of robot-workers.
But this Western strategy defies the nature of societal evolution. It blurs people’s perceptions of what is going on by shedding chaos all around. This chaos sheds such a confusion that the individuals are loosing their sanity and this includes those individuals who participate in the conception and the implementation of that strategy in the first place.
The resulting chaos casts such a madness over the contemporary moment that to keep its mental clarity the rest of the world feels forced to focus on the formation of its daily societal cultures. And it appears evident that the world community of nations is in dire need of :
- Synchronizing its different societal worldviews with “the First Principles of Life” so that the individuals can possibly adapt mentally to the painful answers that will be necessary in order to tame the societal destabilization that accompanies “the shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world” and “the great convergence of Late-Modernity”.
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A new societal paradigm that addresses and harmonizes the activities of the world community of nations with the Geo-Bio-Chemistry of the sub-ensemble earth
5.1. Synchronizing societal worldviews with the First principles of life (2)
The individuals are vaguely sensing that better fitting in the whole could gain them some reprieve from suffering. And this reprieve is a strong enticement to engage in societal knowledge formation about pragmatic principles to help live in harmony with the order of the whole.
The “first principles of life” point to a close interdependence between a species and its polarities the individuals and their societies. The polarities themselves have complementary roles in playing out the game of life. The same kind of close interdependence applies equally to the relations between the diverse species and between the individuals of these species.
This constitutes the realm of life on earth. And this principle of interdependence is observed to expand ever further — from, the realm of life on earth that in mathematical abstraction we could call the ensemble earth, to the ensemble constituted by the solar system — from the ensemble given by the solar system to the ensemble constituted by our galaxy the Milky Way — and from the Milky way to U or the whole universe that contains all the galaxies.
What we discover at this point of our reasoning is that everything in the universe is connected with everything else… We might not understand the working of the universe but that does not diminish the cosmic importance of our conviction about the interconnectedness of all things in it.
Having thus set the global context of survival necessity, amidst “the great convergence of Late-Modernity”, it appears that the seeds, of “the reason that is at work in the First Principles of life”, have awakened in the subconscious of the most sensitive among us. And the first of those seeds are now starting to sprout in our minds that will slowly catch the attention of humanity to the urgent necessity of togetherness that is of prime necessity to possibly address “the great convergence of Late-Modernity”.
While the emergence of the new paradigm, of “the reason that is at work in the First Principles of life”, is still operating largely unconsciously it is already alienating large swathes of people, from “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”.
But having said this it would be presumptuous to believe that we possibly could determine with any level of certainty what will be the outcome of “the great convergence of Late-Modernity”. It appears indeed evident that the governance side-effects of Modernity are not going to be left playing-out all on their own. Its physical side-effects are indeed starting to interact ever more ferociously with the Geo-political games that accompany the shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world to East-Asia.
What I mean to say by this is that the present Geo-political conflicts, between the USA who wants to command a unipolar world order and Russia India China and the rest of the Global South who want to guide the Global South on the path of a multipolar world order, are going to appear like trivialities once tipping points, in the interactions between different side-effects of Modernity, will drive humanity on the margins of its bandwidth of life.
When the feeling will start to sink in the minds that humanity is falling outside of its bandwidth of life sustainability we all are going to be shaken into awareness about the triviality of Geo-politics. And a worldwide call will rise suggesting to the inhabitants of this earth that the time has come to shift their worldview along the lines of “the reason that is at work in the First Principles of life”.
“The reason that is at work in the First Principles of life” conveys a simple narrative that is rooted in a vision of the future centering on — life — the place of life in the universe — the place of the individuals of all species in the grand scheme of life :
The “first principles of life” point to a close interdependence between a species and its polarities the individuals and their societies. The polarities themselves have complementary roles in playing out the game of life. The same kind of close interdependence applies equally to the relations between the diverse species and between the individuals of these species.
This constitutes the realm of life on earth. And this principle of interdependence is observed to expand ever further — from, the realm of life on earth that in mathematical abstraction we could call the ensemble earth, to the ensemble constituted by the solar system — from the ensemble given by the solar system to the ensemble constituted by our galaxy the Milky Way — and from the Milky way to U or the whole universe that contains all the galaxies.
What we discover at this point of our reasoning is that everything in the universe is connected with everything else… We might not understand the working of the universe but that does not diminish the cosmic importance of our conviction about the interconnectedness of all things in it.
Having thus set the global context of survival necessity, amidst “the great convergence of Late-Modernity”, it appears that the seeds, of “the reason that is at work in the First Principles of life”, have awakened in the subconscious of the most sensitive among us. And the first of those seeds are now starting to sprout in our minds that will slowly catch the attention of humanity to the urgent necessity of togetherness that is of prime necessity to possibly address “the great convergence of Late-Modernity”.
While the emergence of the new paradigm, of “the reason that is at work in the First Principles of life”, is still operating largely unconsciously it is already alienating large swathes of people, from “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”.
But having said this it would be presumptuous to believe that we possibly could determine with any level of certainty what will be the outcome of “the great convergence of Late-Modernity”. It appears indeed evident that the governance side-effects of Modernity are not going to be left playing-out all on their own. Its physical side-effects are indeed starting to interact ever more ferociously with the Geo-political games that accompany the shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world to East-Asia.
What I mean to say by this is that the present Geo-political conflicts, between the USA who wants to command a unipolar world order and Russia India China and the rest of the Global South who want to guide the Global South on the path of a multipolar world order, are going to appear like trivialities once tipping points, in the interactions between different side-effects of Modernity, will drive humanity on the margins of its bandwidth of life.
When the feeling will start to sink in the minds that humanity is falling outside of its bandwidth of life sustainability we all are going to be shaken into awareness about the triviality of Geo-politics. And a worldwide call will rise suggesting to the inhabitants of this earth that the time has come to shift their worldview along the lines of “the reason that is at work in the First Principles of life”.
“The reason that is at work in the First Principles of life” conveys a simple narrative that is rooted in a vision of the future centering on — life — the place of life in the universe — the place of the individuals of all species in the grand scheme of life :
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The embodiment of life
After the necessary conditions had assembled locally on earth, the implicate order of the whole eventually enfolded its universal potential for life to sprout. The emergence of the first prokaryotic organisms rapidly evolved into different species that eventually transitioned into eukaryotic cells that evolved into more complex species.
From observation, since the dawn of human societal life, we know that all species are similarly driven by the reproduction of the individuals, their societies, and the species and their complexification over time. Species do this by resolving the tension, between societal reproduction and societal complexity. - The narrow bandwidth of life’s sustainability
The potential, of “the Implicate Order”3 of the ”whole”, is infinite but its seeds can only sprout after the right conditions have been assembled in a local sub-ensemble. This is how life emerged on earth and then it evolved within a very narrow bandwidth :
“As strong and resilient as the human body seems in some situations, considered in the context of the cosmos as a whole, it's unnervingly fragile.
Many of the boundaries within which a typical human can survive have been fully established; the well-known "rule of threes" dictates how long we can forgo air, water and food (roughly three minutes, three days and three weeks, respectively). Other limits are more speculative, because people have seldom, if ever, tested them.
… According to a 1958 NASA report, people can live indefinitely in environments that range between roughly 40 degrees F and 95 degrees F (4 and 35 degrees C), if the latter temperature occurs at no more than 50 percent relative humidity. “ (4)
This narrow bandwidth of life sustainability is the physical and biological field of tolerance of life which varies for species to species.
The life of the individuals gets crushed when they step outside the bandwidth of their species’ survivability. This ultimately implies that there are physical, biological, and societal constraints to the search for novelty by living species ! -
Universal Interconnectedness
The interactions of living species, with other species and the local elements in their habitat, procure them directionality which implies the inter-relatedness, and interconnectedness, of all living species and elements in a same sub-ensemble of the whole.
But, on an even more fundamental plane, life is at all times deeply intertwined with — the flow of possibilities originating in “the Implicate Order” of the “whole Universe” — the imperatives originating in the inter-relatedness of all the elements in the local habitat — the physical or biological field of tolerance within the narrow band of life sustainability — the cohesion between the individuals that is necessary to reproduce their society.
Our Earth is one sub-ensemble of “the Ultimate Whole” that is our Universe. This means that, humans are not only interconnected in their absolute need to compromise with each other in order to avoid their Mutually Assured Destruction, but more importantly at the image of good gardeners, humans are also interconnected in their absolute need to cultivate the narrow band of sustainability of life on earth in order to avoid the extinction of the species.
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The societal settlement of differences between polarities → the growth of complexity
The negotiated settlements of conflicts, occurring in the interactions between the two polarities of a species (individuals → change / society → conservation), result in a higher societal complexity which, in turn, boosts the higher complexity of the species and of the whole Universe.
The same is at work in the negotiated settlements of conflicts occurring in the interactions between nations or groups of nations which means that a negotiated settlement of the present Geo-political conflict, between the camp of unipolarity and the camp of multipolarity, would result in a higher societal and Geo-political complexity that would be beneficial for both sides ! -
Growth in societal complexity fosters individual awareness
The growth in societal complexity results from the negotiated settlement of conflicts by the polarities of species. It is one of the two imperious objectives of species : — reproduction of life — complexification of life.
Complexity eventually fosters an individual awareness that later might develop into an enlarging consciousness that contributes to the growing wisdom of individuals and of their societies.
This process of complexification, that leads to awareness, is at work every time societies are confronted with the necessity to find solutions to a problem. In other words, amidst a complexifying context, necessity eventually fosters awareness about life…
The growth in societal complexity, results from the negotiated settlements of conflicts between the polarities of the species. The individuals and their societies are also at the core of the interactions between nations or groups of nations which implies that a negotiated settlement of Geo-political conflicts leads to the growth in global governance complexity.
Societal and Geo-political complexity eventually foster an individual and national awareness that later may develop into an increasing consciousness of the individuals. The process of societal and Geo-political complexification, that leads to awareness, is at work every time societies are confronted with the necessity to find solutions to a problem.
What I’m suggesting here is that, amidst the present complexifying Geo-political context, the necessity to ensure the survival of our species will eventually foster an individual awareness about the triviality of Geo-politics in the face of the higher necessity to keep our societies within the margins of the bandwidth of life. -
Outside of “the First Principles of Life” resides Ugliness
The navigation outside of “the First Principles of Life” results in irrevocable damages to the individuals, their societies, and their local habitat. These damages reflect an ugliness that reduces their chances to reproduce over the long haul.
What works and what does not work over a few billion years, first biologically and later societally, is stored in the DNA/RNA of an individual. These data reflect patterns that instill an intuitive awareness and feeling in the bodies and the minds of the individuals.
When those feelings arise they foster physical and mental vibrations which awake an innate sensitivity, or an early awareness, that attracts the individual towards what works and dejects her or him from what does not work.
Humans have gradually encoded this physical and mental sensitivity in their languages under appellations like “beauty” and “ugliness”. These words arouse individual feelings most difficult to describe but eliciting strong reactions that force choices. -
Acquired consciousness in sub-ensembles reverberates to the whole and participates in the growth of its own consciousness
Individual and societal wisdom generate thinking and behavioral habits that are growing the complexity of species. This reverberates outwards to the whole Universe and participates in the expansion of its consciousness about the evolution of its parts which impacts its awareness about its own wholeness.
This process is expanding the whole into ever higher levels of physical and mental complexity which implies that the universe is somehow alive and, as all life forms, it is thus destined to contract and to die.
Do polarities apply solely to all entities within the whole universe ? Is our whole-universe itself one polarity of an entity in a larger ensemble ? The answers to these questions are unknown and as they are not destined to ease the individuals’ daily life they are basically without any merit.
As in a fractal like thinking process this kind of questions always makes me wonder what bacteria in our guts might be thinking — about us who are the whole in which they are the tiny particles — and how they participate in the life of that whole. Does anyone really believe that our microbiome would be any better off by reasoning about our societies ? -
Life is on a mission
The 7 preceding points imply that the true nature of our life, as minuscules particles of the sub-ensemble earth, has nothing to do with randomness. Life is on a mission to ensure — the growth in complexity of the physical and mental polarities of all entities in the local habitat — the growth and complexity of the species themselves — the growth in complexity of the whole universe.
But the first mission of life is to reproduce over the long haul so that it can satisfy its urge for novelty. This forces species to focus primarily on their local context, on their own reproduction, and on the reproduction of their polarities which explains the strong attraction of the individuals of all species to pragmatism…
The species and the individuals, who for whatever reason go against these 8 universal principles, are condemning themselves to a meaningless life, made of suffering, that puts them on the path of extinction and, in reverse, the species that accords with these 8 universal principles grow ever closer to the finality of the whole which means that they follow a harmonious evolutionary path.
In the present Geo-political context the 8 universal principles, originating in “The reason that is at work in the First Principles of life”, act like a vital compass that eases the navigation of species and societies in the ocean of life. The ideological militant frenzy of Western decision-makers, who don’t give a damn about the anxiety of their own populations, is naturally blind to these 8 universal principles.
Ideological possession seems the most appropriate word to characterize their mental insensitivity. They run around the world shouting that democracy is a Western universal decision making process that best satisfies the interests of the citizens. But they are unable themselves to take in consideration the interests of their own people :
In the present Geo-political context the 8 universal principles, originating in “The reason that is at work in the First Principles of life”, act like a vital compass that eases the navigation of species and societies in the ocean of life. The ideological militant frenzy of Western decision-makers, who don’t give a damn about the anxiety of their own populations, is naturally blind to these 8 universal principles.
Ideological possession seems the most appropriate word to characterize their mental insensitivity. They run around the world shouting that democracy is a Western universal decision making process that best satisfies the interests of the citizens. But they are unable themselves to take in consideration the interests of their own people :
That says all we need to know about Western democracy !“If I give the promise to people in Ukraine – ‘We stand with you, as long as you need us’ – then I want to deliver. No matter what my German voters think.” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock at the “26th Forum 2000 Conference” in Prague. August 31, 2022. YouTube @1:24:52.
5.2. A new societal paradigm to fit human life in the Geo-Bio-Chemistry of the sub-ensemble earth
Today the community of human nations faces a moment of truth. To survive the totalitarian dystopia of the hegemony of Western Modernity that is being controlled by Western big capital holders and their institutional servants, the human species needs alternative narratives to the paradigm of Western Modernity.
We need a new paradigm that could expand into a vision of reality driving societies on a path of physical and cultural sustainability and the individuals on a path of contentment. And the fact is that something like this starts to be vaguely perceived as a necessity in the north as well as in the south.
But what is a paradigm ?
Thomas Kuhn writes in “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” that revolutions in science result from a shift in the paradigm of an epoch. And he adds that a paradigm is the shared perceptual consensus in a given epoch about the matrix of reality :
Kuhn furthermore considered that the theories, and the rationality at work in different periods, are not comparable because their paradigms are incommensurable which means that their worldview is rooted in incompatible approaches that share no common ground nor any standard of comparison :
People in different epochs share indeed different approaches to reality (worldviews) that instill their own rationality and their own truth and in this sense :
Kuhn leaves no doubt that worldviews are shared narratives which are viewed as expressing the truth about reality and as such the competition among them can’t be resolved by proofs.
To get to the crux of the notion of societal paradigm, that I have in mind, lets rapidly compare how knowledge fared under the paradigm of Modernity and under the paradigm of animism.
The paradigm of the animist (wo)men of knowledge was pragmatism which is the ability to minimize the suffering of the individuals while maximizing the success of their endeavors. These (wo)men of knowledge specialized in a system of knowledge formation that focused on the observation of the celestial spheres over the long haul of tens of thousands of years. That’s how they discovered that the surface of reality is patterned. And they made it their task to decode these patterns and to superimpose their codes on the reality observed in the habitat of their tribes.
Practiced over tens of thousands of years this kind of superposition, of the moves by the celestial spheres on top of the changes occurring in their local habitat, procured them robust pragmatic responses to all kinds of questions arising in the minds of their fellow tribesmen. And these celestial patterns, and their implications for life in the local habitat, got transmitted orally, and in secrecy, from generation to generation. This is how they grew in a vast body of pragmatic knowledge.
In the wake of the destabilization of tribal societies in the Tri-Continental-Area, at the tail-end of the Younger-Dryas, a rupture occurred with that body of pragmatic knowledge which got definitely lost during the retreat of tribal groups fleeing the violence of men of power.
The tribal (wo)men of Knowledge had been sharing for tens of thousand of years the pragmatic responses, induced by this body of knowledge, with their fellow tribesmen. And so formed gradually a worldview that, during the 19th century, got called animism by Western anthropologists. This vast body of pragmatic knowledge had remained at all times secret and helped the tribal (wo)men of Knowledge to satisfy their obligations towards their fellow tribesmen which consisted in the following :
The paradigm of Modernity illuminated the minds of the early Frank merchants and it shifted their attention from the paradigm of Christianity which was rooted in a shared religious belief that the Roman empire had imposed, as the official religion, during the 4th century.
Religious narratives helped to stabilize the institutions of power-societies and these power-societies evolved into a civilizational realm. The religious narrative of Christianity had been imposed by the Roman empire to its citizens. And after its fall the Western church spread its narrative among the Franks living in Northern and Western Gaul while participating in the reproduction of Western European institutions of power.
A few hundred years later after their illumination the Frank long distance merchants started to venerate “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”. And after some 5 to 6 centuries of financial successes Western European merchants had gained the mental assurance to port “the reason” to the altar of academic correctness for further spreading to all fields of human life in the form of rationalism, science, and ultimately in the form of the technological scientism that today bullies Western Late-Modern societies into post-humanism.
The paradigm of Christianity ensured the mental bondage of the citizens of the Roman empire and later of the Medieval powers that were controlled by the church of Rome. In contrast the paradigm of Modernity fostered a rationality that served capital accumulation. And to generate returns on their investments big capital holders, and their servants, acted as the masters of science by financing its operational costs. Science was thus made captive of “the reason” since the get go which explains that this capture was never seriously contested.
Scientists need cash to live and most of them do not mind where the financing of their activities originates. But cash in return procures the authority, to the supplier of the funding, to decide what kind of research should be undertaken. Since the start science was thus essentially a service to big capital holders to help them generate ever more profits.
Such an instrumentalization necessarily leads to short term relative conclusions that compare poorly with the conclusions reached, over the very long haul observation, of animist wo(men) of knowledge. The very poor judgment of science is confirmed by the side-effects of Modernity that caused the human predicament of “the Great Convergence of Late-Modernity”.
But the paradigm of Modernity got hidden under a thick layer of obfuscating abstractions that idolized individualism and materialism. Science and philosophy have been celebrating the individual creativity and the special cognitive capacity of artists and of scientists while economics celebrated the rational behavior of the economic actors. This is the subterfuge that justified Europe’s celebration, of individualism materialism and rationality, as the forces that unleashed the European Enlightenment, philosophic rationalism, the scientific method, and the industrial revolution.
The materialism, of “knowings about bits and pieces of reality”, was after all the sole matter that interested capital holders and their servants. These “knowings” have been known since the industrial revolution to help them generate fabulous returns on their investments. But European minds got nevertheless swamped in these obfuscating abstractions and in the meanwhile the paradigm of Modernity remained a non-entity during the whole of Modernity !
The paradigm of power societies is the cultural and societal equivalent of mathematical theorems. It was derived from the prime societal worldviews that eventually eased the reproduction of the institutions of power over the long haul.
In other words the paradigm of power societies put an end to the long transition from tribal societies to power societies after which it initiated the synchronization of the contextual settings of civilization-states with the continuum of its societal cultural field.
And the fact is that contextual settings, conflicting with the societal cultural continuum, are first detected by those who are detached from a daily application of the existing paradigm. As Thomas Kuhn mentions in the quotation here above “...the men who, being little committed by prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, are particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game…”.
Societal paradigms expand into foundational systems that fix the ontology of the knowledge formation grows upon them. That’s how the field of mathematics, ontologically, is abstract rationality for its own sake just like “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital” is another abstract rationality for its own sake in the field of commerce and industry which gradually displaced the religious paradigm of belief in a narrative that got imposed by power.
Societal, or cultural paradigms, occupy the entire field of the cultural continuum that animates the evolution of societies within a given civilizational realm. They are the substance that fixes the ontology of the knowledge formation of any given society.
After rupturing with animism, some 10,000 years ago, the societies in the Tri-Continental-Area elaborated religious narratives. And those narratives that got retained by the men of power got eventually imposed to the citizens of their empires. While not following the same developmental path the Roman empire, sensing the growing risk of its collapse, by the end of the 4th century made Christianity its official religion in the hope that it would solidify the cohesion of its society. But the corruption that had set in earlier was so advanced that the empire definitively collapsed barely a century later.
By the 12th century the paradigm of Western Christianity was faced with the new paradigm or Modernity, “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”, that emerged in the minds of Frank long distance merchants. Over the following centuries that new paradigm slowly forced a new reading of reality to the urban populations. Paradoxically that new reading got encouraged and in many instances it was even initiated by progressive Christian clergymen like Thomas Aquinas who argued that human reason expanded the realm of divine law.
But all this changed in the 18th century with the expansion of the paradigm of Modernity into philosophic rationalism, the scientific method, and the political militancy of liberalism which were the 3 legs of the European Enlightenment.
But Western European intellectuals have unfortunately imposed their misreading of the origins of the Enlightenment to Western societies at large :
But European intellectuals failed to understand that all these factors originated in the ideological abstractions of individualism, materialism, and rationalism were the outcomes of the application, of the paradigm of Modernity, in the daily life of ever larger sections of Western European populations.
To better situate how the paradigm of Modernity fashioned a system of knowledge formation that is rooted in “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital” there is no better way than to compare the formation of scientific knowings with the formation of animist knowledge.
Animist induction from very long haul observation differentiates from short term scientific observation and deduction of knowings. This differentiation points to an irreconcilable difference of essence that separates the process of “Animist Knowledge Formation” from “the scientific method” :
We need a new paradigm that could expand into a vision of reality driving societies on a path of physical and cultural sustainability and the individuals on a path of contentment. And the fact is that something like this starts to be vaguely perceived as a necessity in the north as well as in the south.
But what is a paradigm ?
Thomas Kuhn writes in “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” that revolutions in science result from a shift in the paradigm of an epoch. And he adds that a paradigm is the shared perceptual consensus in a given epoch about the matrix of reality :
“A paradigm is a basic framework of assumptions, principals and methods from which the members of the community work. It is a set of norms which tell a scientists how to think and behave and although in science there are rival schools of thought there is still a single paradigm that all scientists accept uncritically.” (5)
Kuhn furthermore considered that the theories, and the rationality at work in different periods, are not comparable because their paradigms are incommensurable which means that their worldview is rooted in incompatible approaches that share no common ground nor any standard of comparison :
“What man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conception experience has taught him to see.”
People in different epochs share indeed different approaches to reality (worldviews) that instill their own rationality and their own truth and in this sense :
“The competition between paradigms is not the sort of battle that can be resolved by proofs.”
Kuhn leaves no doubt that worldviews are shared narratives which are viewed as expressing the truth about reality and as such the competition among them can’t be resolved by proofs.
To get to the crux of the notion of societal paradigm, that I have in mind, lets rapidly compare how knowledge fared under the paradigm of Modernity and under the paradigm of animism.
5.2.1. The paradigm of animism
The paradigm of the animist (wo)men of knowledge was pragmatism which is the ability to minimize the suffering of the individuals while maximizing the success of their endeavors. These (wo)men of knowledge specialized in a system of knowledge formation that focused on the observation of the celestial spheres over the long haul of tens of thousands of years. That’s how they discovered that the surface of reality is patterned. And they made it their task to decode these patterns and to superimpose their codes on the reality observed in the habitat of their tribes.
Practiced over tens of thousands of years this kind of superposition, of the moves by the celestial spheres on top of the changes occurring in their local habitat, procured them robust pragmatic responses to all kinds of questions arising in the minds of their fellow tribesmen. And these celestial patterns, and their implications for life in the local habitat, got transmitted orally, and in secrecy, from generation to generation. This is how they grew in a vast body of pragmatic knowledge.
In the wake of the destabilization of tribal societies in the Tri-Continental-Area, at the tail-end of the Younger-Dryas, a rupture occurred with that body of pragmatic knowledge which got definitely lost during the retreat of tribal groups fleeing the violence of men of power.
The tribal (wo)men of Knowledge had been sharing for tens of thousand of years the pragmatic responses, induced by this body of knowledge, with their fellow tribesmen. And so formed gradually a worldview that, during the 19th century, got called animism by Western anthropologists. This vast body of pragmatic knowledge had remained at all times secret and helped the tribal (wo)men of Knowledge to satisfy their obligations towards their fellow tribesmen which consisted in the following :
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Guiding their tribes on the path of a “gift economy” which de facto fostered peaceful egalitarian relations among tribesmen and also with the neighboring tribes.
In the normality of “the Reason”, and rationalism, this notion of a gift-economy appears something strange that conflicts with the mental vision of a normality that is rooted in individualism, in materialism, and in competition.
In contrast to the normality of Western Modernity, a “gift economy” is rooted in the living community and in the perception of the animation, and the interactions, of all the individuals and elements in the habitat which implies their cooperative interaction. - Guiding their fellow tribesmen into cultivating a profound trust in the community that resulted in levels of societal cohesion that are no longer fathomable to us Moderns.
- Guiding their fellow tribesmen to collect the resources necessary to ensure the health of their bodies and minds and thus treating their health holistically by harmonizing the activities of their bodies and their minds.
- Guiding their fellow tribesmen in managing the level of their population (Dunbar number) by splitting their tribe when their population grew over a high threshold or by fusing with another group when their population fell under a low threshold.
- Guide their fellow tribesmen in the management of the conflicts between individuals and between tribes.
5.2.2. The paradigm of Modernity
The paradigm of Modernity illuminated the minds of the early Frank merchants and it shifted their attention from the paradigm of Christianity which was rooted in a shared religious belief that the Roman empire had imposed, as the official religion, during the 4th century.
Religious narratives helped to stabilize the institutions of power-societies and these power-societies evolved into a civilizational realm. The religious narrative of Christianity had been imposed by the Roman empire to its citizens. And after its fall the Western church spread its narrative among the Franks living in Northern and Western Gaul while participating in the reproduction of Western European institutions of power.
A few hundred years later after their illumination the Frank long distance merchants started to venerate “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”. And after some 5 to 6 centuries of financial successes Western European merchants had gained the mental assurance to port “the reason” to the altar of academic correctness for further spreading to all fields of human life in the form of rationalism, science, and ultimately in the form of the technological scientism that today bullies Western Late-Modern societies into post-humanism.
The paradigm of Christianity ensured the mental bondage of the citizens of the Roman empire and later of the Medieval powers that were controlled by the church of Rome. In contrast the paradigm of Modernity fostered a rationality that served capital accumulation. And to generate returns on their investments big capital holders, and their servants, acted as the masters of science by financing its operational costs. Science was thus made captive of “the reason” since the get go which explains that this capture was never seriously contested.
Scientists need cash to live and most of them do not mind where the financing of their activities originates. But cash in return procures the authority, to the supplier of the funding, to decide what kind of research should be undertaken. Since the start science was thus essentially a service to big capital holders to help them generate ever more profits.
Such an instrumentalization necessarily leads to short term relative conclusions that compare poorly with the conclusions reached, over the very long haul observation, of animist wo(men) of knowledge. The very poor judgment of science is confirmed by the side-effects of Modernity that caused the human predicament of “the Great Convergence of Late-Modernity”.
But the paradigm of Modernity got hidden under a thick layer of obfuscating abstractions that idolized individualism and materialism. Science and philosophy have been celebrating the individual creativity and the special cognitive capacity of artists and of scientists while economics celebrated the rational behavior of the economic actors. This is the subterfuge that justified Europe’s celebration, of individualism materialism and rationality, as the forces that unleashed the European Enlightenment, philosophic rationalism, the scientific method, and the industrial revolution.
The materialism, of “knowings about bits and pieces of reality”, was after all the sole matter that interested capital holders and their servants. These “knowings” have been known since the industrial revolution to help them generate fabulous returns on their investments. But European minds got nevertheless swamped in these obfuscating abstractions and in the meanwhile the paradigm of Modernity remained a non-entity during the whole of Modernity !
5.2.3. paradigms are at the root of societal knowledge formation
“Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change. And perhaps that point need not have been made explicit, for obviously these are the men who, being little committed by prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, are particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game and to conceive another set that can replace them.” (6)
The paradigm of power societies is the cultural and societal equivalent of mathematical theorems. It was derived from the prime societal worldviews that eventually eased the reproduction of the institutions of power over the long haul.
In other words the paradigm of power societies put an end to the long transition from tribal societies to power societies after which it initiated the synchronization of the contextual settings of civilization-states with the continuum of its societal cultural field.
And the fact is that contextual settings, conflicting with the societal cultural continuum, are first detected by those who are detached from a daily application of the existing paradigm. As Thomas Kuhn mentions in the quotation here above “...the men who, being little committed by prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, are particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game…”.
Societal paradigms expand into foundational systems that fix the ontology of the knowledge formation grows upon them. That’s how the field of mathematics, ontologically, is abstract rationality for its own sake just like “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital” is another abstract rationality for its own sake in the field of commerce and industry which gradually displaced the religious paradigm of belief in a narrative that got imposed by power.
Societal, or cultural paradigms, occupy the entire field of the cultural continuum that animates the evolution of societies within a given civilizational realm. They are the substance that fixes the ontology of the knowledge formation of any given society.
After rupturing with animism, some 10,000 years ago, the societies in the Tri-Continental-Area elaborated religious narratives. And those narratives that got retained by the men of power got eventually imposed to the citizens of their empires. While not following the same developmental path the Roman empire, sensing the growing risk of its collapse, by the end of the 4th century made Christianity its official religion in the hope that it would solidify the cohesion of its society. But the corruption that had set in earlier was so advanced that the empire definitively collapsed barely a century later.
By the 12th century the paradigm of Western Christianity was faced with the new paradigm or Modernity, “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”, that emerged in the minds of Frank long distance merchants. Over the following centuries that new paradigm slowly forced a new reading of reality to the urban populations. Paradoxically that new reading got encouraged and in many instances it was even initiated by progressive Christian clergymen like Thomas Aquinas who argued that human reason expanded the realm of divine law.
But all this changed in the 18th century with the expansion of the paradigm of Modernity into philosophic rationalism, the scientific method, and the political militancy of liberalism which were the 3 legs of the European Enlightenment.
But Western European intellectuals have unfortunately imposed their misreading of the origins of the Enlightenment to Western societies at large :
- The Renaissance changed the focus from the traditional reverence of the religious supernatural to man’s use of nature to satisfy his needs
- The reformation and the ensuing religious disorder, in some locales, viewed man’s use of nature as a god given privilege
- The “Thirty Years War” signaled the end of centuries of mistreatment at the hands of monarchies and the church
- The rise of rationalism opened the path to the industrial and the Scientific Revolution
But European intellectuals failed to understand that all these factors originated in the ideological abstractions of individualism, materialism, and rationalism were the outcomes of the application, of the paradigm of Modernity, in the daily life of ever larger sections of Western European populations.
To better situate how the paradigm of Modernity fashioned a system of knowledge formation that is rooted in “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital” there is no better way than to compare the formation of scientific knowings with the formation of animist knowledge.
Animist induction from very long haul observation differentiates from short term scientific observation and deduction of knowings. This differentiation points to an irreconcilable difference of essence that separates the process of “Animist Knowledge Formation” from “the scientific method” :
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Animist knowledge versus scientific knowings
Animism shaped a pragmatic knowledge base by observing over the very long haul, of tens of thousands of years, the unfolding of the movements of the celestial spheres and of the elements in the local habitat. And unsurprisingly this long haul observation necessarily fostered the same kind of answers all around the world. That’s why animism was a global belief system whose substance was uniform around the world but whose form varied with the variations in the local contextual settings of the human habitat.
In contrast Modernity forms scientific knowings by momentarily observing the particular unfolding of interactions among some elements and their context. But because this particular unfolding of elements is not validated, over the very long haul, science recourses to a stratagem that, at least, superficially puts to rest the need of a validation over the long haul. The scientific stratagem is the scientific method or the repeatability of an experiment here and now.
The essence of the difference between scientific repeatability and animist long haul observation resides in their time-frame : repeatability in the present versus the long time-span of thousands of years of observation !
Both approaches start with observation. But the scientific stratagem gives only a certainty of repeatability in the short term. In other words the scientific validation does not give access to the observation of repeatability over the long haul nor does it give access to the long term consequences of what is being observed in the now :
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1.1. Long haul observation
Long haul observation detects patterns of repeatability that inform the re-occurrence of particular natural phenomena in the local habitat. This explains why tribal populations, as well as wild animals, had the reflex of fleeing the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami7 while the tourists and the locals, who were steeped in Modernity, perished ! -
1.2. Science is blind to long haul observation
The time frame of scientific repeatability, through experimentation or observation, is restricted by its financiers to the short time-span of their interest that resides in generating surpluses from their investments. And while it is blind to the long haul observation, in which is rooted the application of the precautionary principle, science does not take any responsibility for the consequences of its blindness !
The mRNA vaccines to counter Covid-19 have made this evident once more lately…
The animist process of knowledge formation is undeniably of a more fundamental nature than the scientific approach. It is what motivated the Kogi people, in the nineteen-eighties, to come out of their hiding from the modern world in order to inform “their little brothers” that if they continue to destroy our habitat humanity is very soon going to go extinct (8). -
1.3. Animism and science serve different ends
The more fundamental nature of the animist method of knowledge formation related to the tribesmen entrusting their wo(man) of knowledge. Trust excluded anything else than pragmatism. This was the way of “tribal-societies” before the emergence of “power-societies” and agriculture.
Since the emergence of agriculture and power-societies tribes have constantly been fleeing in more remote corners of the world where they lost ever more — of their inherited memory of their body of knowledge — of the bio-resources of the earth.
Comparing today’s tribal remains, with the tribes before agriculture and power-societies, is therefore a dishonest proposition.
In contrast, to the knowledge of the animist (wo)men of knowledge of yesteryear, the mission of the scientists is, for at least 95% of their productions, limited to the instrumentality of “knowing tricks” that momentarily allow its purveyors of funds to generate higher returns from their investments.
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1.1. Long haul observation
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Two radically different approaches
Animism and science are rooted in two radically different paradigms. From the perspective of societal evolution one inspires trust. The other, over its short life-span, has succeeded to inspire suspicion ! Societal evolution is about the conciliation between : — how best to ensure the reproduction of society — how to harness the creativity of individual thinkers to inject more complexity in societies.
In other words societal evolution is about keeping the two polarities of species (individuals and their society) in a state of balance. This inevitably requires a strong bond between the individuals and their society. Late-Modernity has made us first hand witnesses of the human predicament in which science had played a determinant role. Knowing the direct responsibility of science in our present predicament it is difficult not to come to the conclusion that it is not worth the trust, nor of the individuals nor of societies. No surprise thus that its implementation is fomenting distrust.
But this does not imply that we should throw science in the garbage bin. We better force its re-orientation from servicing capital holders to servicing life…
The differentiation between Animism and science leaves no place for doubt. Our ancestors were definitely on the right track while science is merely rooted in an abstraction that became a fad which merely lasted the blink of an eye, on the scale of societal evolution, before its inventions bequeathed “the predicament of late modernity” to humanity.
Our ancestors, who most of us Moderns view as primitives, survived the very harsh and unstable climate conditions of recurring cyclical cycles of glaciation. They survived because they adhered conscientiously to the laws of nature and to the rules of biology that governed their bodies. Once biological evolution had completed the addition, to their brains sometime 300,000 years ago, of the Neo-cortex they gained the capability to induce abstractions from their observations. This eventually allowed them to initiate a process of knowledge formation sometime 130,000 years ago or perhaps even earlier.
What is important to remember, for us moderns, is that knowledge for our primitive ancestors had to have pragmatic uses. Knowledge that did not have pragmatic uses was considered superfluous and was discarded.
The emergence of power societies in the TCA ruptured with this pragmatism. In a first phase, starting some 5,000 years ago with Early-Empires, knowledge had morphed into a religious instrument to consolidate power institutions.
In a second phase, starting some 900 years ago, Frank long distance merchants converted to “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”. And so emerged the paradigm of Modernity that gradually developed into a rationalist system of knowledge formation.
In both of its power-society phases, religious and modern, knowledge got separated from its holistic nature and got instrumentalized to serve special interests. Because the consolidation of power institutions in East-Asia got realized by the animist men of knowledge the pragmatism of animist knowledge formation survived in what is called the Chinese Traditional Culture and its scholastic of the Dao.
We saw here above that ontologically the field of mathematics is abstract logic for its own sake while ontologically the field of culture, by synchronizing the present contextual settings of a society with its cultural continuum, is shaping societal evolution.
In “The Continuum of the Cultural Field” I examined how societal paradigms are fixing the ontology of knowledge and culture :
- The paradigm of tribal societies, and animism, was pragmatism or the focus on the ability to minimize the suffering of the individuals while easing their daily lives. Pragmatism was thus the paradigm of tribal societies.
- The paradigm of power-societies, and religions, is “belief in a religious narrative” which was instrumental to the reproduction of power institutions. The paradigm of power-societies justified the privileges of the men of power
- The paradigm of Modernity is “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”. This reason is in essence the rationality of capital that is at the core of rationalism and science.
- The predicament of humanity is “the Great Convergence of Late-Modernity” which is now forcing humanity to adapt its worldview to “the First Principles of Life”.
Notes
1. “The rise of the useless class”, TED, by Yuval Noah Harari who is advisor to Klaus Schwab.
2. The First Principles of Life are prime which means that societal worldviews, that contradict these First Principles, eventually go extinct while collapsing their societies and causing a lot of unnecessary suffering for the individuals. See “Modernity 02. 5.2.1. the First Principles of Life”. Most of the material of this chapter is taken from “Modernity 02. 5.2.3. The worldview of After-Modernity” and I edited it for the present circumstance.
3. The implicate order : see “Wholeness and the implicate order” by David Bohm. The implicate order means that a field covering the whole universe is being nourished with potential by the ultimate ensemble. Life is such a potential. In other words the potential enfolds from the whole but it unfolds as an emerging phenomenon once all the ingredients, assembled in a sub-ensemble, interact…
4. "What Are the Limits of Human Survival?", Live Science, by Natalie Wolchover. 2012-08-10.
5. "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, University of Chicago Press, by Thomas Kuhn.
6. "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, University of Chicago Press, by Thomas Kuhn.
7. "Did Animals Sense Tsunami Was Coming?", National Geographic, by Maryann Mott. 2005-01-04. "Ancient Tribe Survives Tsunami", CBS, by Neelesh Misra and Rupak Sanyal . 2005-01-04.
8. The Kogi people have been retreating ever higher in the mountains, of the Sierra Nevada in Northern Columbian, since the Spanish invasion of the 16th century. They avoided all contacts with Modernity until the nineteen-eighties when they came to the conclusion that Modernity is destroying life on earth… “From the heart of the world. The Elder brothers’ warning”, 1990 TV documentary for the BBC, by Alan Ereira. "The Kogi: An Urgent Call from Guardians of the Heart of the World", Cultural Survival Magazine, by Atossa Soltani and Evelyn Arce. 2014-03.
“We are now living outside of the laws of nature where nature is now turning against man and becoming the enemy. Climate change is the consequence of the fact that man is operating outside the laws of life and laws of nature, law of the balance of the world. And doing so will destroy the balance.” --Kogi
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