Foreword to "Societal Knowledge Formation".

This is a first post related to the book "Societal Knowledge Formation" that I'm presently writing.

I'll try to give a monthly extract of parts of the book that I personally find particularly interesting. The present post is the foreword to the book.

 

The idea of societal knowledge formation begs to be situated in the wider context of the evolution of Homo-Sapiens.

By 300,000 years ago biological evolution (1) had created the conditions for the eventuality of a societal emergence of systemic knowledge formation in small bands of hunter gatherers. This eventuality materialized most probably during the Eamian Interglacial Period that lasted from 130,000 to 115,000 years ago. But the resulting population explosion destabilized the small band model of society which forced a transition toward a new model that would be compatible with growing population levels.

Archaeologists have unearthed an abundance of artifacts, dating from around 100,000 years ago and earlier, that suggests such a historical turning point had occurred. These artifacts are remains of a thriving material culture which had systematized the process of knowledge formation that had originated in small bands. Over tens of thousands of years this tribal knowledge formation eventually accrued into a vast body of knowledge that came to be known under the appellation of animism.

But, at the tail-end of the Younger-Dryas some 11,700 years ago, a new bout of abrupt climate warming, boosted the flora and fauna and the tribal population exploded destabilizing its model of society. This was followed by a 6,500 to 7000 years long transition from the model of tribal-societies to the model of power-societies. The new institutions of power-societies finally succeeded, some 5000 years ago, to reproduce over the long haul of many generations which originated the realm of different civilizations.

In the Tri-Continental-Area this societal evolution matured after the men of power associated with men of knowledge who had a large following of believers. In contrast East-Asian tribal societies, and animism, had slipped imperceptibly into power societies. This is the subject of the Volume 1 of the series "From Modernity to After-Modernity".

Wisdom implies the recognition of our incapacity to access the existential implication, of the working of the whole universe, for us small particles living in one of its sub-sub-sub-ensembles. The recognition of this incapacity eliminates the possibility of ideological certainties thus freeing the wise-man to focus on what really matters for the species :

• The reproduction of societies guarantees the species’ reproduction


• The alleviation, of the individuals’ suffering, eases their drive to novelty, and boosts the societal potential to reach higher levels of complexity which acts as the energy powering societal evolution and the evolution of the species.

The fact is that knowledge and wisdom generate a completely different outcome than rationalism and science which emerged during Modernity.

Knowledge and wisdom supply a body of pragmatic teachings that alleviate individual suffering while easing the reproduction of societies and of the species. In contrast rationalism and science procure knowings, about bits and pieces of reality, that increase the profits of the big capital holders, and their servants, who finance the operation of science.

Western European power-societies inherited, from the Tri-Continental-Area, the societal paradigm of belief in a religious narrative that later shifted into “the reason that is at work in the transformation of sterile money into a process of dynamic capital accumulation” which originated ‘rationalism–science’. ‘Knowledge–wisdom’ in contrast was initiated by the tribal paradigm of animism. This begs a conceptual clarification :

1. Societal paradigms
   Societal paradigms are the ontological roots that fixed the systems of meaning sustaining the different models of societal knowledge formation which succeeded each other along the path of human societal evolution.


2. Societal systems of logic
   Different societal paradigms generate different societal systems of logic that are also called knowledge. Societal paradigms act in the same manner as the paradigm of mathematics which is pure abstract logic for its own sake. The foundation of the abstract logic of mathematics is given by non-proven axioms that open the path to the construction of its logical structures. Similarly non-proven axioms of civilizations were the foundation of societal systems of logic that sustained the evolution of the field of culture of the different models of societies which succeeded each other along the path of human societal evolution. I suggested, in the Volume 1 of this series, that this process was an integral part of “the Continuum of the societal Field of culture”.


3. Each system of logic has its own rationality
   The implication, of the existence of different societal systems of logic, is that each one of them has its own rationality and we observe that the rationality, of the different models of societies which succeeded each other, operated along the following lines :
   
   
   1. 3.1. The paradigm, of tribal societies, was pragmatism and its societal system of logic was given by the sharing of a common animist worldview that focused on alleviating individual suffering while easing the reproduction of the societal group over as many generations as possible which guaranteed the reproduction of the species.
      The rationality derived from such a system of societal logic has always privileged the continuity of society and the species. Continuity implied the sharing, by all members of tribal groups, of a coherent worldview rooted in a holistic system of knowledge formation which rested on a precautionary approach to the adoption of novelty.
      Precaution was rooted in the outcome of the long haul observation, by the (wo)men of knowledge, of the following :
      
      • 3.1.1. The movements of the heavenly spheres and their cyclical patterns
      
      
      • 3.1.2. The long haul observation of the interactions between tribesmen, and all other entities, in the habitats
      
      
      • 3.1.3. The superposition of the interacting patterns in the habitat, on top of the heavenly cyclical patterns, generated new patterns that informed about coming climatic and weather variations, about the seasonal earthly cycles, and so on…
   
   
   2. 3.2. The paradigm, of early Western power-societies, was the belief in a religious narrative and its societal system of logic was given by the justification of the privileges of the men of power and the necessity to reproduce their institutions. The rationality derived from such a system of societal logic has always privileged the continuity of authoritarianism, midst societal inequality, in order to ease the reproduction of state institutions.
      In early Chinese power-societies the paradigm was animist pragmatism and the societal system of logic was given by the shared belief in animism that offered a common vision about how to ease the production of daily life and about how to maximize the efficiency of the societal organization. And the rationality derived from such a system of societal logic has always privileged the satisfaction of the citizens' various demands in order to balance social relations in a state of harmony that eases the reproduction of state institutions.
   
   
   3. 3.3. By the 12th century, in Western Europe, the paradigm of Modernity was “the reason that is at work in the transformation of sterile money into a process of dynamic capital accumulation” and the societal system of logic was given by the abstraction operating in "the reason".
      The rationality derived from such a system, of societal logic, has privileged the accumulation of capital since the emergence of the paradigm of Modernity.
      And the envy of the success of capital holders fostered the emulation of "the reason" whose rationality gradually expanded the realm of its application to everything. This is how "the reason" expanded, from 1150 to 1750, into philosophic rationalism, science, classical economics and the ideology of liberalism.

All this forms the general context in which we have to situate the societal process of knowledge formation.

This approach has the advantage to relativize the absolutism of the concept of rationality, that the European Enlightenment bestowed on it, by comparing it to its historical variants. And the fact is that this exercise in comparison is without appeal. The outcome of the application of the rationality of Western Modernity is “the Great Convergence of Late-Modernity” :

1. Side-effects : — societal atomization, — climate change, — the poisoning of land water and air, population explosion, acidification of the oceans, and so on…


2. Destabilization of the governance-world :
   
   
   1. 2.1. Internal destabilization of Western societies :
      Societal atomization has killed the unity of Western nations and as a consequence they are no longer able to successfully undertake any large scale enterprise like a world-war or a re-shoring of an industrial base or the management of emergencies like a Covid epidemic.
   
   
   2. 2.2. Western destruction of its hegemonic world order :
      In their adolescent psychological state Western nations are refusing to accept the natural evolution of Western Modernity for the only reason that the center of gravity of its economy-world is shifting outside of the realm of their civilization.
      But societies do not have the free-will to oppose the nature of societal evolution. The shift of the center of gravity of Western Modernity, to East-Asia with China at the core, is the natural outcome of the silent Neo-liberal revolution that Western big capital holders, and their institutional servants, have initiated in the 1970’s. This silent revolution is now concluding with Western societal atomization and hyper social inequality !
      The fact is that the Western adolescent temper tantrum is gradually destroying the world-order built in the wake of the 2nd World War which assured the Western hegemonic governance of the world ! The unfortunate consequence of this temper tantrum is that the world is on the verge of a World War that could turn nuclear…


3. The Great Convergence of Late-Modernity :
   
   
   1. 3.1. Convergence of the side-effects of Modernity :
      The convergence of those side-effects implies interactions among them that increase the speed of their unfolding which accelerates the occurrence of tipping points into new states of equilibrium from which there is no return.
   
   
   
   2. 3.2. A destabilized governance-world brings us closer to nuclear annihilation…
   
   
   
   3. 3.3. Convergence of side-effects + destabilized governance-world → impossibility to address both in a logical way… This is the predicament of humanity in this Late-Modernity !

The Great Convergence implies the ending of Western Modernity with a mass extinction that could possibly take Homo-Sapiens out of the picture ! Does this qualify the rationality of Modernity as an exceptional form of rationality or does it disqualify it ? 

Notes

1. The first draft of this 3rd volume, of the series “From Modernity to After-Modernity”, was given in 12 articles published, during the 2013-2014 winter, on my blog “Painting & Thinking” that got canceled by Weebly in the early days of the cultural effervescence that slowly overwhelmed Western societies in their present propaganda rage. I formatted these articles in book form during the year 2018 and 2019. But since their writing my thinking had evolved greatly and I had thus to rework the material in its final form which I plan to terminate by the end of 2025. Once terminated this series will thus have taken me over 10 years.