Future societal evolution

The following quote was copy-pasted from the introduction of "Knowledge Formation. 8.2.2. Future societal evolution" starting on page 1,104 and following.

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

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The essence, and function of life, foster an innate awareness, in the individuals, that their society is evolving in a certain direction. But this does not imply any precise knowledge about its direction nor if its outcome is determined inflexibly. In contrast the individuals have no clues about the destination of their societies for the good reason that the outcome, — of the Whole — of its sub-ensembles — and of its parts, is an open construction site that is propelled by the unfolding of the course of the whole universe which is eventually amended by the drive for more complexity of the individuals, not in an anthropological fashion, but in the sense of the real life of the individuals, of any living species, living anywhere in the Whole.

As we have seen earlier the urge, for novelty, of an active minority, of individuals, generates conflicts that inevitably call for the negotiated settlement, of what is the level of increasing societal complexity, that is acceptable by the polarities of their societies. Such negotiated settlements, under the arbitrage of state institutions, are operated between : — the strong societal force of the innovators — the weak societal force of the silent majority.

The role of societal institutions is defacto to act as neutral arbiters that have to keep the dance of the polarities of their species in alignment with the goals of their society and with the tolerance of these goals by the biological evolution of the individuals. As we have observed earlier the primary goal of society is the conservation, of the individuals and of their society, through reproduction and, if this objective is satisfied, the auxiliary goal of society is to satisfy the urge of life for more complexity.

Unfortunately, for all of us, Western-Modernity completely ignored, and then forgot, about this societal function, of neutral arbitration, by the societal institutions. We Homo-Sapiens are now confronted with the predicament that this ignorance has unleashed on life on earth… 

1. A new societal paradigm in After-Modernity → The First Principles of Life

I exposed my vision about societal evolution and the societal paradigm of After-Modernity in “6.2.3.4". Necessity to clarify our conceptual framework” and I wrote the following about “the First Principles of Life” :

“We have seen earlier that all individual particles are interconnected and that their interconnectedness forms an ensemble that evolves its own rules of the game. The ensemble’s rules reflect to the parts their view of the world. That view may be transmitted consciously, subconsciously, or may be engaged by a particular Geo-bio-chemical state or other.

From the perspective of the particles their biological and societal evolution eventually sets them on the path of knowledge formation which gives them access to the “Working Principles” of the ensemble they belong to. Human individuals are vaguely sensing that better fitting in the whole could gain them some reprieve from suffering. And this reprieve of suffering is a strong enticement to engage in societal knowledge formation.

After discovering that the truth about U, or the whole universe, is unattainable we start to understand that certainties are merely ideological illusions and knowing that illusions generate suffering we start to focus on the pragmatic principles of living in harmony with the order of the whole.

I have tried, over the last 10 years, to summarize these pragmatic principles in what I call “the First-Principles of Life”.

“In philosophy and science, a first principle is a basic proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption.”

In light of this definition “The First-Principles of Life” are basic propositions, or assumptions about life, that can’t be deduced from any other assumptions.

I laid out my vision of 8 “First Principles”, that harmonize human life with the “Working Principles of the whole universe”, in “6.2.3.4.3. Dynamics of the First Principles of Life”. By “First Principles” I refer to assumptions about life that can’t be deduced, nor induced, from any other assumptions.

1.1. Philosophic implications of the “First Principles of Life”

In what follows I focus on the most systemic parameters of “the First Principles of Life” whose philosophical implications are determinant for life :

1. Universal Interrelatedness

   All elements in an ensemble, and its sub-ensemble, are inextricably interrelated. The interrelatedness of ensembles, sub-ensembles and their parts is the essence of the reality of the Whole.
   

   “We have seen earlier that all individual particles are interconnected and that their interconnectedness forms an ensemble that evolves its own rules of the game. The ensemble’s rules reflect to the parts their view of the world. That view may be transmitted consciously, subconsciously, or may be engaged by a particular Geo-bio-chemical state or other.” Source 6.2.3.4.3.

   The interactions of living species, with the local elements in their habitat, procure them local directionality but life remains nevertheless at all times bound to the universal field in which flows the infinite range of possibilities originating in “the Implicate Order” which is implicit in the interrelatedness of the “Whole”, its subsystems, and their parts.

2. The universal principle of interrelatedness implies that the potential, of all things, figures in the essence of the whole

   The interrelatedness of the “Whole”, its subsystems and their parts, necessarily implicates the potential of whatever can emerge anywhere within the Whole. In other words whatever can emerge in the Whole is a potential that is contained in its essence.
   
   But it is only after all the necessary conditions have been assembled locally, into a planetary habitat, that the universal potential of life, for example, can materialize in a biological process. The principle of interrelatedness implies indeed the inheritance by all sub-systems and their parts, of their character and their potential, from the whole. In other words what is not inherited as a potential can not possibly emerge even if all the necessary conditions have been assembled locally. These conditions would indeed remain inert or sterile.
   
   The emergence of life, for example, was inherited as a potential by all sub-ensembles of the Whole. This inheritance means that all the possibilities, that are acted in the essence of the Whole, are a potential of its sub-ensembles. But life, for example as one of these possibilities, emerges eventually, into one or different species, only after all the necessary conditions have been assembled locally that satisfy its inherited potential.
   
   And the interactions between the polarities of these species, individuals and their societies, will then power their evolution.

3. The necessity of continuity through reproduction

   As strong and resilient, as the human body and mind seem to be, they appear unnervingly fragile in the context of the cosmos as a whole. This means that life is unfolding in a very narrow band of survivability indeed :
   

   “Many of the boundaries in 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.” (1)

   The tolerance, of the biology of life, ceases when the individual steps outside, of its narrow band of sustainability, which implies that there are biological constraints to the search for novelty and the generation of more complexity by living species !
   
   This is the meaning of the 2nd among the “First Principles of Life”. The first priority of all species is to ensure their continuity. So the search for more complexity is an auxiliary priority. And the fact is that life stops with the death of the individual, the collapse of a society, the extinction of the species. It is thus evident that any dream, other than life in the present, is necessarily bound to play out as a second fiddle... It is for this reason that I concluded that the primacy of life is “continuity through reproduction”.

4. The settlement of conflicts between polarities → the growth of complexity

   The interactions between the two polarities of a species, individuals → change / society → conservation, drive their negotiated settlements about the adoption of novelties by their society. This process participates in the growth of the species and of the whole Universe’s complexity.
   
   The 5th among "the First Principles of Life" addresses the conflicts between polarities from a gaming perspective in which the societal institutions act as arbitrators between two societal forces that have antagonistic goals :
   
   
   • The weak force, of the silent majority, is urged to conserve the status-quo. 
   
   
   • The strong force, of an active minority, is urged to produce novelty that will will increase the cultural complexity of society (culture in its largest sense).

5. The urge for complexity fosters individual awareness

   In 4 we saw that the urge for societal complexity necessitates the negotiated settlement of conflicts by the polarities of species.
   
   Repeated negotiated settlements eventually foster an individual awareness that later eventually develops into an increasing consciousness which may eventually contribute to the growing wisdom of the individuals and of their societies. I exposed the process leading to the emergence of individual awareness in “7.3. The brain and the mind”. This process is at work every time societies are confronted with the necessity to find solutions to a predicament. In other words necessity fosters the process leading to the awareness of the individuals…

6. Outside of “the First Principles of Life” ugliness reigns supreme

   The navigation outside of “the First Principles of Life” results in unworkable thinking, behaviors, and actions that result in irrevocable damages to the individuals, their societies, and their local habitat, and this plunges their perception into ugliness which most probably reduces their chances to reproduce over the long haul.
   
   In contrast the navigation, within the norms of "the First Principles of Life", guarantees workable thinking, behaviors and actions, that are beneficial for the life of the individuals, of their societies and of their habitat. This is what confers them an aesthetic aura that procures a feeling of pleasure which most probably augments their chances to reproduce over the long haul.

7. The expansion of the whole universe, and its parts, into ever higher levels of physical and mental complexity signifies that they are alive

   Individual and societal wisdom generate thinking and behavioral habits that are being reflected outwards to the whole Universe. This participates in the expansion of its consciousness about its wholeness and about the evolution of its parts. This process is expanding the whole and its parts 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.

8. Life is on a mission

   What this long chain of causality implies is that the true nature of the particles’ life 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 in complexity of the whole universe.
   
   But life has first to reproduce over the long haul, in order to satisfy its urge for novelty, which forces species to focus primarily on their local context and thus the strong attraction of living species to pragmatism. But this is unfortunately something that has largely ignored in Western thinking.

1.2. The ultimate sense of the individual’s life

Sketching the systemic parameters, of “the First Principles of Life” deeper into their abstraction, we get the following :

1. The law of general interrelatedness implies that whatever can emerge in reality exists, as a potential, in the essence of the Whole.


2. The narrow band of life’s sustainability limits the viability of complexity to what is compatible with the “continuity of life through reproduction”.


3. Societal institutions negotiate settlements, of the conflicts between the individuals and their society, that re-conciliate the conservation of the status-quo with the urge for novelty. This results in a higher complexity that is aesthetically pleasing for the good reason that it is fundamentally sustainable.


4. The search, for more complexity, fosters individual awareness which eventually leads to higher levels of consciousness that foster aesthetic pleasure.


5. The expansion of the whole and its parts, into ever higher levels of complexity, implies that the universe is somehow alive and that it is on a mission. From the perspective, of the infinitely small human particle, this is probably the most far reaching proposition, about the ultimate sense of the place of the individual in the Whole, and this is what imparts the highest aesthetic quality to this proposition.

In its essence life calls for the recognition and the acceptance, of 2 determinant facts, by the individuals and by their societies :

1. The whole is alive, and its universal potential is unfolding its ultimate life purpose, which will forever remain beyond human comprehension


2. The urge of the individuals, of whatever species anywhere in the universe, is limited by the following :
   
   
   • The narrow band of life’s sustainability limits the urge, for more complexity, to what is compatible with the “continuity of life through reproduction”.
   
   
   • Societal institutions negotiate settlements, of the conflicts between the polarities of species, that reconcile the continuity of life with change in higher complexity. This fosters individual awareness, and the prospect of higher levels of consciousness, which is an intrinsically pleasing aesthetic process.

The acceptance, of these 2 facts of life, leaves no other alternative than to adopt a pragmatic approach to living that focuses on the alleviation of suffering and on the easing of the production of daily life. Pragmatism also implies that the satisfaction, of such an approach to living, is accomplished by a model of societal organization that is compatible with the contextual settings of the moment.

1.3. Surfing on the flow of changing contextual settings

We saw, in the first 2 Volumes of this series, how different archetypal models of societies were forced on humanity by the evolution of the contextual settings of the habitat of life on earth. This basically proves that human free-will, at the individual and at the societal level, was completely absent in humanity’s adoption of its different archetypal models of societies ! The fact is that the context imposes the adaptation, of the forms of societal organization, to its hard reality and any resistance, caused by the human illusion of free-will, is bound to end in tears.

The wiser approach, for living species, is to recognize their changing contextual settings and to surf on their flow. And, lo and behold, the vast majority of species are doing just that. They seem to find supreme contentment in surfing on the flow of their changing contextual settings. The only known systematic exception is the Homo-Sapiens species that seems unable to find contentment in this wise approach.

But this statement is a generalization, of the human behavior in the present moment, that does not resist the reality of human behavior along its long haul history. Before the emergence of Homo-Sapiens, and perhaps also of its cousin species, the species of the hominin lineage had undoubtedly not gained any determinant advantage over the other animal species. Western-Modernity has always considered that the big brains of Homo-Sapiens conferred a radical biological advantage to our species that places it in the exceptional position of being the most advanced species. But is it not more accurate to say that, the extermination of life by the Homo-Sapiens, is instead signaling their utter immaturity ?

1.4. The idea of exceptionalism has no merit

I would venture to say that the idea of human, or of white Suprematism, is merely a dangerous ideological illusion, that has blinded our species to the hard reality of the principle of life as is summarized in the 2 concluding propositions laid-out here above.

The biological evolution of the primates, that originated Homo-Sapiens, was a process spanning tens of million years :

“The oldest known primate fossils are approximately 55 million years of age, with our earliest primate ancestors potentially diverging from other placental mammals during the Cretaceous period, over 80 million years ago. The brains of vertebrate mammals contain many specialized systems, each with its own dissociable, but partially interlinked, evolutionary history.

As primates evolved, the hominin lineage has experienced multiple events that have increased brain size, culminating in a rapid volumetric expansion across the ˜25 million years that separate us from macaques and the ˜6 million years since our divergence from chimpanzees and bonobos, our closet living primate relatives.

Among animals, absolute brain and body sizes characteristically share a predicable allometric relationship. In modern humans, however, the brain is about fivefold larger than would be expected in a typical vertebrate mammal.” (2)

By the end of the process, of brain evolution, the human coefficient, or its allometric relationship, of brain mass to total body mass had grown far larger than the coefficient that would be expected from any primate with the same body mass :

“Although elephants and whales have larger brains than humans, allometric scaling analyses have demonstrated that humans are the most encephalized of all mammals, with a brain that is more than three times larger than would be expected for a primate at the same body mass. This disproportionate growth of the brain in the human lineage is a relatively recent phenomenon, having increased dramatically in the past 2.5 million years. Although it is apparent that large brain size is a hallmark of human cognitive and cultural evolution, consensus is lacking on the selection pressures driving encephalization. Among the hypotheses put forward, it has been proposed that the complexity of social interaction, with a greater focus on cooperation and learning from others, as well as deception, might have played a role.” (3)

Being the most encephalized of all mammals got interpreted as a sign that humans had shifted evolutionary-wise, from an automatism of natural instincts a characteristic of the animal stage of development, to the rational control of thought and the expression of free will that was viewed as the characteristic of a “Western sapience stage of development”.

This belief was merely the result of a blindfolding that originated in the anthropocentrism of Western-Modernity and its white prejudice against other skin colors ! But today there is a growing awareness all around our earth, that Western-Modernity is ending with a predicament and that the impact of this predicament will disproportionately fall first on the shoulders of the younger generations of the non-Western-world !

This realization evidently shatters the ideological illusion that justified 500 years of oppression and exploitation by European countries and their Western geographic extensions. The time has definitely come to reset the Western ideological clock to the reality that the West represents less than 15% of the world population.

And now that, China has proven that after all “there is an alternative to liberalism”, and that Russia has proven that the Western military power is no more than a paper tiger, the non-Western-85% have suddenly found the courage to say no to the pillage of their resources and to say no to the diktat of the fading Western hegemony. 

2. A new societal system of logic focusing on the primacy of life

Each human group has inherited “a system of societal logic” that is rooted in the 3 components of its cultural field : — the archetypal model of society — the societal paradigm — and the societal foundational worldview.

Most of our present power-societies are furthermore participating in civilizational realms that had been initiated by empires. The Western civilization for example regroups all Western European countries and the geographic expansions that they gained through force during the colonial period. The Chinese civilization regroups the Peoples Republic of China, Taiwan, North and South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and other border regions.

But before digging further in the subject, of this chapter 8.2.2.2, I want to refresh our memory with the nature of “the system of societal logic” and how it fits in “the cultural field of societies”.

2.1. The context of the cultural field of societies

The following table sketches the diverse components, that interrelate, in the context of “the cultural field of societies”.

The 3 factors at play, in the societal system of logic, remain fixed during the entire time-span of societies while the interrelatedness, of both their historical-worldview and their daily-culture, is animating their constant evolution.

The interrelatedness, of these components, is synthesized hereafter :

2.1.1. The societal system of logic

The system of logic of societies has 3 components that remain unchanged along their entire existence. These 3 components are : — the archetypal model of society — the societal paradigm — the societal foundational worldview.

1. The archetypal model of society

   Societies emerge amidst the context, of the archetypal model of society of their time, and they adopt its particular forms of organization which will have a decisive impact on the formation of their daily culture. This general rule is nevertheless being applied unequally. Some societies are early movers while other move later. The adoption of a new archetypal model of society is thus realized over an extended period of time.
   
   Because the Enlightenment of High-Modernity occurred in Western Europe its academic institutions had a near monopoly on science that lasted nearly 2 centuries. This is notably the case with historical studies. But this near monopoly came at the cost of spreading false beliefs. Indeed, the self-centeredness of Western Europe led its scientists to focus exclusively on their own history, and in the process, they captured the civilizations of Greece, Babylonia, Sumer, and other as the heritage of their own civilization.
   
   The European study of civilizations, from roughly 1700 to 2000, furthermore concentrated near exclusively on the Tri-Continental-Area (TCA). Other civilizational centers were simply ignored. Their equivalent importance, to TCA and Western civilizations, only struck the academic world and the media after the investments in research, by Southern countries, had started to accumulate factoids about their own past that contradicted the traditional European vision. Western studies had described empires as assemblies, of the diverse societies of a same regional area, whose central governance forced the adoption of a common religious belief by the people living in their territory. In the absence of comparative studies Western researchers failed to detect : — the historical succession of 3 archetypal models of societies — the adoption by societies of a societal paradigm and of a foundational worldview. The Western historical approach failed thus to detect the system of logic of societies. This failure allowed them to force the universality of the Western model of societal development on the rest of the world.
   
   Such a truncated vision of history unfortunately reigned hegemonic over the last 3 to 4 centuries. As a result everybody shared the belief that empires had adopted new religious foundational stories while the adoption of an archetypal model of society, of a societal paradigm, and of a foundational worldview were simply ignored. Fortunately studies about ancient China are demonstrating that the rise, of the new archetypal model of power-societies, did not exclude the continuity of the animist paradigm, and of the animist foundational worldview, from the earlier archetypal model of tribal-societies.
   
   The impact of the recent research by Southern countries was then further boosted by the comprehension of the fact that the evolution of the physical contextual settings of the earth are often abrupt, life changing, and destabilizing for the existing archetypal model of society.
   
   The initiation of the last 2 Inter-Glacial-Periods (Eamian and Holocene) are good examples of changes of this nature :
   
   
   • The archetypal societal model of small-bands got destabilized sometime between 130,000 and 115,000 years ago which forced the experimentation, on the African continent, of larger societies that eventually concluded with the adoption of the archetypal model of tribal-societies all around the world.
   
   
   • The archetypal model of tribal-societies got, in turn, destabilized by an abrupt heating at the end of the Younger-Dryas which forced the experimentation, of larger societies, that eventually concluded with the adoption of the archetypal model of power-societies all around the world.
     The adoption by societies, of the archetypal model of power-societies, of societal paradigms and of foundational worldviews, resulted in the launch of empires that formed civilizational realms. This means that the institutional reproduction of power-societies eventually concluded with the formation of empires governing over large territories with the help of foundational worldviews. In other words it was the reproduction of a power-society with the help of a foundational worldview that launched its civilizational realm.
     This process of institutional reproduction materialized along the lines of an abstract model of power concentration that worked along the following lines :
   
   
   Villages, in the TCA, were eventually taken over, by chiefs who eventually assembled multiple villages under their authority through force and cunning, sometime between 11,000 and 10,000 years ago.
   
   In China the spread and assembly of villages was initiated some 4,000 to 5,000 years later than in the TCA and, as laid out earlier, the reasons for their spread and assembly were entirely different than in the TCA.
   
   Chiefdoms eventually assembled the territory, and the populations of multiple chiefdoms, which resulted in early-kingdoms
   
   Kingdoms eventually assembled the territory, and the populations of multiple kingdoms, into a vertical assembly of imperial institutions.
   
   Such a vertical assembly of institutions was headed : — or by a chief — or by a king — or by an emperor, but it had first to be accompanied by the spread of an horizontal cultural field to make its institutional reproduction possible.
   
   Civilizations shared the following with the citizens inhabiting their territory :
   
   
   • The archetypal model of power-societies consecrated the differentiation, of a minority of men of power and men of knowledge, from the people and this led to a systematic social inequality that stood in stark contrast with the systematic equality practice by the earlier archetypal model of tribal-societies
   
   
   • The axioms of the foundational worldview of the empire got gradually imprinted in the subconscious mind of the individuals. It is useful to remember here that the subconscious mind is nothing else than the nervous system’s biological memory.
   
   
   • The essence, of the historical societal worldview shared by the men of knowledge, was given by the axioms of the foundational worldview. And these axioms got imprinted in the subconscious while the daily formalism, of the historical societal worldview, was imprinted in the conscious minds of all with the help of images and other visual signs.
   
   The spread of civilizational realms, under the archetypal model of power-societies, is something that is largely unknown today even by academics who are specialized in history or in political theory ! This explains the extremely relaxed reference to the word civilization, that is so prevalent nowadays, in the assertion of ideological arguments justifying a differentiation with strategic opponents on the Geo-political and Geo-strategic playing field. I’ll delve deeper in this subject in the Volume 5 that is titled “Societal Evolution and societal governance”.

2. The societal paradigm

   Two new archetypal models of societal organization emerged, over the last 120,000 years, tribal and power societies. As I wrote here above the Western scientific hegemony, of the last 3 to 4 centuries, was rooted in the rupture, observed in the empires of the TCA, with the beliefs and ideas of their “primitive” predecessors which forced the invention of new religious narratives. This principle was imposed as a societal truth that applies to the whole world. But in reality it was merely a local reality in the TCA that later expanded to Western Europe.
   
   Studies, about the transition in China from a tribal to a power-society, now demonstrate that the paradigm of the fading tribal model, which was “animist pragmatism”, was imperceptibly re-conducted in continuity by its power-confederation of kingdoms regrouping villages and tribes. This paradigm was re-conducted by the centralized empire instituted, by Qin Shi Huang, about 2,200 years ago. And the same continuity was observed to have occurred for the foundational animist worldview and its axioms.
   
   The Chinese continuity, in societal paradigm and foundational worldview, was perhaps a civilizational exception. But it could as well be the case, that the exception was the rupture with the paradigm and the foundational worldview of tribal-societies in the Tri-Continental-Area and in Western-Europe. Due to my lack of knowledge, about the empires in other regions of the world, I personally can’t make a valid comparison with the practices of these other regions.
   
   For the sake of clarity I have to add that a paradigm is not necessarily adopted consciously. It may very well have emerged imperceptibly, amidst the trial and error reproduction of the new institutions, as happened in China. What appears certain is that, as early as 10,500-10,000 years ago in the TCA, the (wo)men of knowledge had taken the conscious decision to rupture with the tribal model of society, and with its historical worldview, as is strongly suggested by the burying of the Tepe’s of Anatolia under a thick layer of dirt about 10,000 years ago.

3. The foundational worldview

   The 5,000 to 6,000-year long transition, from tribal to power-societies in the TCA, was due to the violent rupture with the tribal model of society and its animist worldview. The association of the men of power, with men of knowledge commanding a large following, is what finally ensured the consolidation of the reproduction of the institutions of power in the city-states of Sumer and in the Empires that followed them in the TCA.
   
   The end of the transition was thus attained by adopting a new foundational worldview to ensure the reproduction of the institutions of power. And because Western Europe focused on the cultural inheritance, of their own Roman empire from the empires of the TCA, they concluded that the adoption, of a new religious foundational worldview, was a general rule that applied to the whole world. But, as mentioned in 2, recent studies and archaeological digs in the countries of the South, more particularly in China, are discovering that the historical rules forged by Western scientists are not universal after all.
   
   The fact is that the local and regional contextual settings are determinant in the adoption of an archetypal model of society, of a societal paradigm and of a foundational worldview. As mentioned earlier it was the differentiation, in the surface of alluvial plains in China and the TCA, that forced a differentiation in their societal paradigms and their foundational worldviews.
   
   The Volume 1 “The Continuum of the Cultural Field of Societies” focuses more particularly on this differentiation.
   
   
   

2.1.2. Two types of synchronizations are animating the unfolding of the field of culture

Two components of the cultural field are continuously synchronizing, — the historical worldview of societies — the daily culture of societies. Both the daily culture, and the historical worldview, are synchronizing with the other giving thus 2 types of synchronization that animate the evolution of the cultural field.

 

1. The historical worldview of societies

   The empires, in the TCA and in Western Europe, forced a foundational worldview to all the people living within their territory. The Roman empire’s designation of Christianity, as its official worldview, is a good illustration of this general rule.
   
   China followed a different path. The population of the traditional geographic core, of the Chinese power-confederation, was considered being ethnic Han and the Han continuously shared the animism+ of the “Chinese Traditional Culture”. The unification of the power-confederation was basically a follow-up of the model of the “Tribal Cultural Unification” that had been initiated by the (wo)men of knowledge during their retreats in the underworld since times immemorial.
   
   But paradoxically, after the unification under a central system of governance of the participating regions in the power-confederation, the country’s territorial expansion got realized solely by foreign powers during their occupation of the Chinese territory !
   
   In other words foreign occupying powers abandoned the past model of Han cultural unification while expanding the country’s original territory, by some 150% to 200%, through absorption of their own territory into the Chinese empire that they governed ! But the animism+ of the “Chinese Traditional Culture” remains alive and well among the Han who represent about 92% of the country’s total population.
   
   This history is important because it shows that the further national unification, under a centralized Chinese governance, was a political unification by foreign forces who over the centuries added different societal cultural fields to the Chinese field. Tibet and Mongolia adhere to Tibetan Buddhism, which is a branch of Vajrayana, or Tantric Buddhism, that integrated elements of traditional Tibetan Bon animism, while the population of Xinjiang is largely Muslim.
   
   These non-Han regions still represent some 60% of the total territory of China and have been recognized the special status of “autonomous regions” that are “self governed” under the authority of China’s central government.
   

   “By the end of 1998, five autonomous regions, 30 autonomous prefectures and 120 autonomous counties (banners) had been established, as well as 1,256 ethnic townships. Among the 55 ethnic minorities, 44 have their own autonomous areas, with a population of 75 percent of the total of the ethnic minorities and an area of 64 percent of the area of the whole country.” (4)

   In the West the historical worldview of societies originated in the guardianship by the Western Christian Church, over the common trunk of their societal system of logic, that sustained the cultural field of a common civilization. In contrast different historical worldviews are being shared in different regions of China. But the centralized governance system impulses the animism+ of the “Chinese Traditional Culture” over the whole territory which, to a certain degree, unifies these different worldviews. This is possible for the good reason that most of these worldviews are themselves expansions on the common trunk of animism.
   
   The Islam of Xinjiang is perhaps the sole exception where a TCA type “religion of the word” is being practiced. But, over the past decades, the centralized governance has been mitigating this reality by focusing on Xinjiang’s ultra rapid economic development that boosted consumerism and other secular practices and values. This is now proving to be very effective at containing the religious belief that Western countries count on to destabilize China !
   
   In whatever model of cultural field, the Western or the Chinese, the historical worldviews and the daily culture are evolving along the lines of the same 2 types of synchronizations represented by the red arrows in the graph here above :
   
   
   • The individual perceptions, of the present contextual settings, synchronize with the historical worldview and the outcome is the contemporary or the daily culture. As the synchronization is constant, from one present moment to the next, it unfolds the evolution of daily-culture. 
   
   
   • Many cultural memes are emerging in daily-culture but very few of them are sticking and replicating over the long haul of generations. The synchronization of the historical worldview integrates, in its narrative those memes that replicate over the generations, thus animating its evolution. I refer to generations, as the length of this cycle, but this is only for the convenience of the appellation. There is indeed a need for more in-depth study of this cycle.
   
   
   • The evolution, of the historical worldview of societies, is the substance of societal evolution. But again I’m in the dark about the systematic length of this societal cycle. What is a certainty is that both the daily cultures and the historical worldviews, of countries originating in a common civilizational realm, have been differentiating over time. It is well known that the countries, in the realm of the Chinese civilization, shared the same components, of the Chinese societal system of logic, for more than 2,000 years and probably a lot longer, while the countries in the realm of the Western civilization shared the same components, of the European societal system of logic, since some 800 to1,000 years at the most. The result, of the span of their sharing, leaves no place for doubt.
   
   
   • The longer span of sharing, in the Chinese civilizational realm, occasioned a deeper differentiation than in the countries in the Western civilizational realm. As an illustration the contemporary differences between China and Japan appear to be vastly more profound than the differences between France and Germany.
     



2. The daily culture

   I refer to the daily culture of societies in its largest sense of the totality of the thinking, behaviors, and actions of all their citizens. In such a vision there is no separation between their economic, social, and cultural endeavors and when viewed from the perspective of multiple societies their differences, in economic or social endeavors, appear more like cultural differences than economic or social differences. The daily-culture is the component, of the cultural field of societies, that is most familiar to us because we are constantly immersed in it so that it became our daily normality. And, when leaving for another country, we instinctively feel that its daily-culture is conflicting with our daily normality. This is something all of us are well acquainted with. But few among us comprehend the dynamics that support our daily normality.
   
   The daily-culture of a society emerges as the outcome of the synchronization between the perception of its citizens, about the present contextual settings in which they live, and the historical worldview of their society. In other words the citizens’ perception, of their contextual settings, is adapting to, or rendered compatible with, their shared vision of the world. Such a synchronization is constant and occurs unconsciously meaning that it is managed by the brain and the nervous system.
   
   

2.2. The changing context of Late-Western-Modernity destabilizes the system of logic of its power-societies

As we have seen earlier the societies, that converted to Western-Modernity, were governed along the lines of the archetypal model of power-societies and had furthermore inherited its cultural characteristics : — differentiation between a privileged power-knowledge-elite and the mass of citizens — the emergence of individualism, or the individual primacy of the men of power, over the mass of citizens and over society at large — the emergence of social inequality and poverty.

Each of these power-societies had also converted to the societal paradigm of power. In the TCA and Western Europe this paradigm reads as “the assembly of citizens by force and the reproduction of the societal institutions through the sharing a common religious worldview by the citizens” while in China it reads as “pragmatism, through knowledge formation, alleviates individual suffering and eases the production of daily-life”.

The foundational worldviews of these societies furthermore varied to the tunes of their local contexts. The societies of the TCA and the West ruptured with tribal animism while adopting new religious foundational worldviews. In China continuity prevailed through reproduction of the “Tribal Animist Worldview” and its “Tribal Cultural Unification” model of territorial expansion. A few thousand year later these societies also converted to the societal paradigm of Western-Modernity, that reads as “the reason that is at work in the transformation of sterile money, debt, or nature into a dynamic process of capital accumulation”. The question arising now is “what will be the outcome in China of the digestion of Western-Modernity ?“.

<2>Notes

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1. "What Are the Limits of Human Survival?", Live Science, by Natalie Wolchover. 2012-08-10.  
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2. "Beyond Cortex: The Evolution of the Human Brain", © 2022 American Psychological Association, by Rowena Chin, Steve W. C. Chang, and Avram J. Holmes.
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3. "Human brain evolution writ large and small", Progress in Brain Research. Volume 195, Chapter 11 - 2012, by Chet C. Sherwood, Amy L. Bauernfeind, Serena Bianchi, Mary Ann Raghanti, Patrick R. Hof.
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4. "White Paper 1999: Ethnic Minorities Policy in China", Permanent Mission of the People's Republic of China to the UN , by the Information Office of the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China. Beijing 1999-09. <2>

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