A given set of contextual settings forces a given future

The following quote was copy-pasted from the introduction of "Knowledge Formation. 6.2. A given context forces a given future" starting on page 570 and following.

This 1,150 page book will be available on my website this 27th of August.

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Obviously the future does not fall from the sky. It is resulting from the arbitration between the multiple determinant factors that are competing in the present. In other words the competition, between the multiple determinant factors in the present, is what shapes the context out of which the future emerges.

But where do these determinant factors competing in the present come from ?

These determinant factors emerge necessarily out of the context that shaped up in the past. In other words  the arrow of time is forming the long haul history that shapes the context out of which emerges the determinant factors that compete in the present.

Notwithstanding what some might be saying, the fact is that it is possible to visualize “the context out of which something emerges”. Let’s take an example to illustrate this. The emergence of mushrooms gives the dirt in which they grow as the context that makes their emergence possible. Mushrooms do indeed not emerge anywhere as per a miracle. Their emergence results from the combination of a series of factors and no mushroom will ever emerge outside of such a specific combination of factors which forms their contextual setting. Each species of mushrooms obeys its own specific context that always entails the presence of — some organic matter at a given biochemical composition, — in given conditions of temperature, humidity, light — and spores that feed on that organic matter when its conditions are right.

 

 

 

While its context may be more complex the same principle of emergence applies to the principle of life

• Unicellular organisms
  
  Unicellular organisms emerge out of a given context that is composed of — a given chemical soup submitted to — the right amount of energetic forces. Some add a 3rd condition to these 2 which is that — the seeds of life emerge on earth in a process of panspermia (1) or of spontaneous emergence. The fact of the matter is that the specific context in which life emerged on earth is still not well understood.
  
  There is no reason to believe that this mechanism uniquely occurred on planet earth. The earth is one among trillions of planets out there. What would be the probability that life did not emerge on another planet ? I would venture to say that this probability is zero. The idea that our planet earth would be so special, as to be unique in its life carrying capacity, to me this idea simply does not fly. History should have accustomed us by now to the idea that such a kind of exceptionalism, or”centrism”, is an illusion that we eventually awake from one day or another.


• Multicellular organisms
  
  Multicellular organisms emerged when multiple unicellular organisms joined together as a result of their facing the necessity to adapt to a threshold of chaos within their specific context.
  
  In other words, at a given time, a set of determinant factors, competing to substantiate the future, forced one cell to join another cell in order to survive and their joining or cooperation, after being replicated over the generations, resulted eventually in a more complex organism.
  
  The same kind of process was then repeated further an incalculable, near infinite, number of times which... eventually resulted in the appearance of the genus Homo from which later emerged Homo Sapiens in their present form.
  
  

When looked at from the perspective, of the principle of life, one can’t but be overwhelmed by the thought that this whole process is like a gigantic chain growing ever newer links that generate higher and higher complexity. Life is indeed a principle that feeds increased complexity.

This does not mean that the evolutionary steps of each species are always steps forward on the chain of complexity. It simply means that what results, from the interactions between the species themselves and between the species and their context, is bound to conclude in a higher complexity within the initial context that... later eventually materializes in mutations that jump the principle of life itself to whole new levels of complexity.

What all this means is that the principle of life imposes prudence as the general rule of governance of each species. 

This brings us back to the present. Biological evolution has been paralleled by societal evolution. And the present phase of societal evolution is “Late-Modernity” which emerged out of the context of “High-Modernity” and “High-Modernity” emerged out of “Early-Modernity”.

When we talk about Modernity it is the Modernity that emerged in Europe in the 12th century and that by the end of the 20th century had expanded to the whole world. Semantically this Modernity that has expanded to the whole world is a Western-Modernity.

While Western-Modernity has many of the characteristics of a societal worldview it is in reality an evolving “quasi-worldview” (2) that acts like a living organism shaping the societal character of the historical era of Modernity which was juxtaposed to the earlier era of the religious worldview that characterized the first phase of power-societies in the Tri-Continental-Area and in the Roman empire.

But, as a quasi-worldview, Modernity is not in any way substantiating a sustainable societal life. We have been indoctrinated to believe that the rationality, which is at work within the process of capital accumulation and expanded into philosophic rationalism and science, is procuring the truth about human existential reality. The fact is that this reason originated in the transformation of sterile money into a process of capital accumulation. The objectives of this reason are thus primarily materialistic and they were forced in the minds of Frank long distance merchants, by an improbable convergence of factors, sometime during the 1st part of the 12th century. These long distance merchants rapidly observed that the strict application of this reason brought them good fortune.

The prospect of gaining a fortune often conflicted with "the First Principle of Life" that were at the core of the traditional formation of knowledge by societies. But the prospect of a fortune was so powerful that these conflicts were ignored while being kept hidden out of sight. That’s how the pathogenic character of the quasi-worldview of Western-Modernity created the conditions for a mass extinction of life on earth without nearly anyone noticing. That is to say a few individuals noticed but their voices did never succeed to attract a significant attention.

In other words, by omitting the systemic reality of "the First Principles of life" from the narrative of its quasi-worldview, the reason that is at work in the transformation... expanded into philosophic rationalism and science. And in consequence Modernity has encouraged, or at the least tolerated, the seeds of pathogens to grow and overwhelm the culture of its societies (3) with all the consequences that we start to observe today in Late-Modernity.

I define the fields that substantiate human societal culture in the historical era of civilization in the Volume 1. “The Continuum of the societal Cultural Field. Part 1. Clearing conceptual confusion“. 

 

 

Here follows a sketch of the determinant parameters of “The Continuum of the societal Cultural Field".

• The archetypal model of society
  
  The evolution of societies is characterized by a cyclical model of societal development in 4 phases going from :
  
  
  • An existing society grows its population level, and its culture, and this results in its complexification.
    
    At the time of the emergence of power-societies about 5,000 years ago the world population was in the range of 20 million. By the time of the industrial revolution in 1750 it had grown to about 800 million and, according to the United Nations, it has reached 8 billion in November 2022.
    
    
  • A complex society is fragile and history shows that it usually destabilizes under the impact of an abrupt climate heating which history has shown to be conducive to a rapid population growth.
    
    
  • The citizens of a destabilizing society experiment, through trial and error, a new model of organization that is better adapted to their contextual settings. History shows that this kind of experimentation has spanned over millennia.
    
    This was the case during the transition from small-bands to tribal societies some 130,000 to 120,000 years ago and it was again the case during the transition from tribal to power-societies some 11,000 to 5,000 years ago.
    
    
  • This trial and error experimentation eventually results in the adoption of a new archetypal model of society. An archetype is a recurrent principle like a symbol, a motif, a mythology, or a model of society that reproduces horizontally over the whole world and vertically through the very long haul of time. By archetypal model of society I mean thus a model of society that is adopted worldwide and is applied over the very long time-span of many millennia.
    
    A new archetypal model of society is gradually being adopted all over the world. But this means that its gradualism allow for the coexistence of a new archetypal model with older models over extensive time-spans. This is how power-societies have coexisted with tribal societies since their emergence about 5,000 years ago. A new archetypal model of society is being gradually adopted by ever more societies all around the world. And the societies, adopting a new archetypal model, have been observed to develop their own cultural field starting from the constrains imposed on them by the interactions of this archetypal model with the local contextual settings.
  
  
• The societal paradigm
  
  As I indicated, in the Volume 1 “The Interactive Continuum of the Cultural Field of Societies”, the interactions of the archetypal model of society with the local contextual settings have been observed to force a given societal paradigm which varied as follows between East-Asia and the Tri-Continental-Area :
  
  
  • The Chinese “Power Confederation” inherited its societal paradigm from the “Tribal Cultural Confederations” that it had united under its helm. This paradigm imperceptibly slipped into the paradigm of the "power Confederation".
    
    The continuity of animism fixed thus the societal paradigm that imposed the ontology of the Chinese societal system of logic and of its system of knowledge formation. That paradigm reads as “Pragmatism in the alleviation of peoples’ suffering and in the easing of the production of their daily lives”.
    
    
  • The societal paradigm in the Tri-Continental-Area and later in the West reads as “the assembly of citizens by force and the reproduction of the societal institutions by the citizens’ sharing of a common religious worldview”.

• The foundational societal worldview and its spreading in a “Civilizational realm”
  
  After a long transition away from tribal societies the power institutions of empire, kind of, miraculously stabilized and perpetuated over the generations. Imperial stabilization was reached after the men of power started to rely on the men of knowledge to devise the foundational narrative about what reality is all about. Axioms were then derived from these foundational narratives that, after numerous repetitions over the long haul, got stored in the body’s memory or the subconscious memory.
  
  The application of these axioms supplied the necessary lever to the men of power to ensure the institutional perpetuation of their societal control over the generations.
  
  Different contexts eventually resulted in the application of vastly different axioms.
  
  So in China the continuity of the master axiom, founding Animism, was complementary polarities that procured the power-confederations with an existing and rich knowledge base while in the Tri-Continental-Area the rupture with Animism fostered the necessity of inventing a new story to glue the minds… It so happened that the stories selected by their empires were religious stories.
  
  An empire, or the societies that survived its eventual collapse, then cultivate a historical worldview on top of their axiomatic principle of knowledge formation. A worldview is a narrative, describing the general contours of what reality is all about, that is shared by all citizens within the territory of a given society. Such a worldview is then actualized by synchronization with the society’s daily culture which comprises all ideas and behaviors within that given society.
  
  Civilizations emerged after a long and chaotic transition from tribal societies to empire that spanned over 7,000 years. Only when the men of power started to collaborate with the men of knowledge were axiomatic foundations devised that eventually stabilized power societies in their imperial forms while ensuring their reproduction over the generations.
  
  Civilizations are observed to spread their axiom, if necessary by force, to the four corners of their territory and their axioms and worldview were adopted widely by all their citizens. This is how axioms about knowledge formation came to form the foundations of civilizational houses upon which walls and roofs were later erected.
  

  “Once established those axioms of civilization are soon forgotten by the conscious memory and then reside nearly exclusively in the individual atoms' subconscious which is the reason why so few people are aware that they exist at all”.

  Civilizational axioms vary widely from one geographical context to the next due to the necessity for societies to adapt to the reality of the following two factors :
  
  
  • The size of the Chinese alluvial plains procured them the potential to apply the tribal fission-fusion principle of population control in Continuity.
    
    As we saw this is what distinguished the transition from tribal to power-societies in China and in the TCA. The size of their alluvial plains later procured them their potential agricultural development which in turn defined the size of their populations and by extension defined their economic, cultural and military strength.
  
  
  • The adjacent areas of a territory shape its character.
    
    If a territory is narrow and is situated at the intersection, between different inhabited areas like in the societies of the TCA, it necessarily was marred by regular traffic which implied conflicts and ruptures while if the territory is large and isolated from other inhabited areas its societies will live in relative peace which suggest continuity over the long haul.
    
    These two factors forced the historical differentiation in the societal evolution of China and the Tri-Continental-Area. Over the Millennia these factors have indeed crystallized different models of thinking about reality and also different models of society which explains our present persistent perception of their otherworldliness. In light of the future probabilistic outcome of societal evolution, it is my firmly held belief that we should approach the 2 factors, of — size of alluvial plains — position toward adjacent areas, from the comparative history of different civilizations.

• The “Historical worldview” of societies
  

  “...from their given axioms the member societies of a civilization evolved further worldviews. Worldviews are like grand narratives built upon initially accepted axioms. They act like psychic glues that bind the minds of their citizens around a same set of general ideas about reality and are then affirming the necessary societal cohesion that ensures the reproduction of their societies”.

  Historical worldviews constitute something akin to the walls and roofs of the societies participating in a common civilizational house. These worldviews procure to these societies’ their perception of the substance of what reality is all about. And so worldviews necessarily flavor and color the daily ways of doing and thinking of their citizens which form their societal daily culture.
  
  Worldviews are being maintained, and eventually made to evolve, by the men of knowledge within their societies. These were the (wo)men of knowledge in tribes, the priests or the scholars in empires, the merchants/capital holders and their agents the scientists and the intellectuals in the Modernity of Western Nation-States.
  
  With High-Modernity the traditional European men of knowledge have been pushed aside to procure a level playing field to the scientists, and the rationalist philosophers, who unknowingly acted as the agents of the long distance merchants and capital holders.


• The “Daily Culture” of societies
  
  Daily culture is substantiated by the forms taken by the diverse ways of thinking and doing in the present of a given society and as such it acts like the decoration of the societal walls and roofs that form its worldview.
  

  “Culture in its broad definition relates to the ensemble of all present beliefs and doings of a society's citizens. This necessarily includes all economic, social and, cultural forms taken by their daily behavior. Culture is not static. It evolves and some elements of this evolution eventually solidify and are then integrated as add-ons or extensions to worldviews and at a certain threshold of installed cultural add-ons and extensions the worldview starts to change. Those cultural add-ons are not a threat to the worldview. On the contrary they are smoothing the worldview in the eyes of the citizens by adapting its substance to changing times”.

  Foundational axioms glue the minds of all citizens within a given civilizational territory around a common principle of knowledge formation.
  
  Such a codified foundation within a civilizational territory allowed different societies to differentiate in term of culture according to their particular context. And so over centuries of cultural add-ons societies that initially had identical worldviews would eventually see their worldviews fork in different projects.
  
  The integration of cultural add-ons in the worldview was traditionally the role of the (wo)men of knowledge but with their exclusion during the emergence of High-Modernity we assist at the following :
  
  
  • The worldview is no longer maintained and it is thus gradually eroding from the minds of the individuals as is the case in the Late-Modernity of Western societies.
    
    
  •  Cultural add-ons are no longer arbitrated.
    
    The culture of the day increasingly affirms waves of hyper-individualism that marketeers and propagandists are surfing on to commodify daily consumption by inserting the minds in the cultural molds that are serving the capital holders and the men of power…
    
    Worldviews have traditionally acted as the ideation that structures the life of societal organisms which taken together form a species. And the life of these societal organisms is being actualized into the present as their daily culture. Worldviews are larger than daily-culture. They procure to societies their life meaning which form their shared narrative, and as such they are the part of the essence of culture. And so we come to better understand that culture does nothing more than to adapt the present ways of thinking and doing of the individuals, of a given society, to the new clothes or forms that emerge from the present context.

This societal model, that originated with the transition to a new archetypal model of society, got fatally weakened by philosophic rationalism and science, during High-Modernity, and it finally got canceled by the interactions between Postmodernism and Neo-liberalism. Hyper-individualism gave way to societal atomization and the erosion from the individuals’ minds of the traditional feeling of belonging to a society. I call this stage of societal evolution “the death of societies” and Late-Modernity is indeed the last phase of Modernity that ends with its passing away.

Rationalism and science have no answer to this deadly societal sickness. By favoring the short term considerations, arising from the capture of the minds by “the reason”, in the form of materialism and individualism these societies ignored the systemic complexity of the universe that governs the principle of life, which traditionally was known as nature or the Tao. These societies are thus incapable of observing the descent of their Modernity into the abyss. It was the human hubris of conquering nature that put mankind on a path that is antithetical to the systemic reality of the universe and its principle of life.

I indicate in Volume 5, “Governance and societal evolution”, that the evolution of living species is given by the interactions of their polarities — the individuals — their societies. When, for whatever reason, the interactions between individuals and societies favor one over the other these interactions ends up being in a state of imbalance and decay sets in that is a direct threat to the health of both polarities.

More fundamentally an imbalance in the polarities of a species often leads to fatal health problems that conclude in its extinction. This materializes when all the societies of this species have collapsed... In Late-Modernity humanity faces what I call “the great convergence” of the multiple crises that have been unleashed, — by power, — by Modernity, upon the systemic reality of the principle of life. The Great Convergence puts our species at risk of extinction. But being probabilistic by nature the future remains nevertheless open…

Notes

1.   Panspermia

“How life originated on earth is a question that people have pondered for ages. Theories abound, from those based on religious doctrine, to the purely scientific, to others that border on science fiction. One possibility that hovers on this border is the panspermia theory, which suggests that life on Earth did not originate on our planet, but was transported here from somewhere else in the universe. While this idea may seem straight out of a science fiction novel, some evidence suggests that an extraterrestrial origin of life may not be such a far out idea”.

Citation from “Origin Of Life: The Panspermia Theory” , in Helix Online, by Sonaali S. Joshi. 2008-12-02. 

2. Modernity as a quasi-worldview.

Modernity is not a worldview in the traditional sense because a worldview relates to a holistic narrative about what reality is all about. Modernity does not give a narrative about what reality is all about but a more restrictive narrative about one principle of human action that is founded in “the reason that is at work in the transformation of sterile money into a dynamic process of capital accumulation” that later extended to philosophic rationalism which is an extension of “the reason” to all aspects of life.

In other words the facts generated by Modernity are not the ultimate truth about human existential reality. These facts have indeed been generated to satisfy the sole concerns of capital holders and the implication is that the facts of Modernity have been successfully imposed in a first stage to all citizens in Europe and later to all citizens on earth. 

But as a matter of fact nor Modernity, nor science which is its active method of inquiry, are offering a narrative about what reality is all about... and in this sense Modernity can’t answer all the existential questions that pop up in peoples’ minds. This is why Modernity is not a real worldview and has to be viewed as a quasi-worldview. Being a quasi-worldview means that the sharing of Modernity can’t cure the existential anxiety that afflicts most people in advanced Modern societies; societies that have reached the stage of Late-Modernity. 

This in turn explains why, when life conditions toughen people flock to older worldviews like religions, or whatever sects are active in their local environment, to find relief from their anxiety. This failure of Modernity to quieten peoples’ anxiety was the context by excellence, or the fertile ground, in which hyper-individualism would eventually flourish that caused societal atomization which, as explained earlier, signifies that such societies are on their way to collapse. 

 

3. See the Volume 5 of the series "The transition from Western-Modernity to After-Modernity" titled “About governance and societal evolution” that is scheduled to be published by the end of 2025.