This 1,150 page book will be available on my website this 27th of August.
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The real value of knowledge resides in its capability to enhance the well-being of the individuals which facilitates the march of their societies towards more complexity. And a higher societal complexity eventually projects its refinement further to the whole species. That's why the production of knowledge has always appeared to be such an important driver of human societies.
The corollary, of this pragmatism in knowledge formation, is that knowledge that does not improve or protect the lives of the individuals and their societies, is of no use to their species. Such knowledge is detached from “the First Principles of Life” and the fact is that, when life gets tough for the individuals and their societies, the knowledge that is of no use to a species always ends up being discarded.
Evolution is indeed not only a process of mutation and change; it is also a cleaning process that discards what is non-essential to the life of a specie. The gluing of the citizens' minds, in order to enhance the cohesion of their society, is the perfect example of what pragmatism is all about and the Artificial Intelligence, that promises a post-humanist paradise, is the perfect example of a technology that will get discarded by “the First Principles of Life” after the great convergence of Late-Modernity shakes societal life into collapse.
Speaking about pragmatism does not relate to how we apply a doctrine or an ideology into present daily life as was largely implied in past theories about pragmatism. The pragmatism I'm talking about here addresses what the human species considers to be the essence of life and how societies act to ease the being of the individuals by minimizing their suffering.
The individuals and their societal groups constitute the complementary polarities of species. And the evolution of a species is given by the sum of all interactions between their polarities. These interactions result in the specie's existential answers to its contextual settings. So the pragmatism I have in mind here relates to how individuals and societal groupings act to maximize their well-being by reducing individual suffering. And all this is encoded in “the First Principles of Life” (1).
But we should always remember the fact that well-being can eventually enter negative territory when an imbalance in the interactions between individuals and their group takes place or when societies separate from “the First Principles of Life”. So when I refer to pragmatic knowledge this relates to the perception by individual minds about what actions are working, and what actions are not working, in the context of their habitat.
Here is a first attempt at a classification of the parameters of pragmatism for the human species and I suggest that it is also largely valid for any other living species albeit after being expressed in the specific terms of their different contexts.
The corollary, of this pragmatism in knowledge formation, is that knowledge that does not improve or protect the lives of the individuals and their societies, is of no use to their species. Such knowledge is detached from “the First Principles of Life” and the fact is that, when life gets tough for the individuals and their societies, the knowledge that is of no use to a species always ends up being discarded.
Evolution is indeed not only a process of mutation and change; it is also a cleaning process that discards what is non-essential to the life of a specie. The gluing of the citizens' minds, in order to enhance the cohesion of their society, is the perfect example of what pragmatism is all about and the Artificial Intelligence, that promises a post-humanist paradise, is the perfect example of a technology that will get discarded by “the First Principles of Life” after the great convergence of Late-Modernity shakes societal life into collapse.
Speaking about pragmatism does not relate to how we apply a doctrine or an ideology into present daily life as was largely implied in past theories about pragmatism. The pragmatism I'm talking about here addresses what the human species considers to be the essence of life and how societies act to ease the being of the individuals by minimizing their suffering.
The individuals and their societal groups constitute the complementary polarities of species. And the evolution of a species is given by the sum of all interactions between their polarities. These interactions result in the specie's existential answers to its contextual settings. So the pragmatism I have in mind here relates to how individuals and societal groupings act to maximize their well-being by reducing individual suffering. And all this is encoded in “the First Principles of Life” (1).
But we should always remember the fact that well-being can eventually enter negative territory when an imbalance in the interactions between individuals and their group takes place or when societies separate from “the First Principles of Life”. So when I refer to pragmatic knowledge this relates to the perception by individual minds about what actions are working, and what actions are not working, in the context of their habitat.
Here is a first attempt at a classification of the parameters of pragmatism for the human species and I suggest that it is also largely valid for any other living species albeit after being expressed in the specific terms of their different contexts.
1. Pragmatism enhances the mental and material well-being of the individuals
Pragmatism, focused the attention of traditional human societies on the alleviation of suffering which is also observed to be the primary concern of all species. Initially the satisfaction of this concern was primarily an answer to a biological need.
Human small-bands alleviated the individuals’ suffering by delegating the function of knowledge formation to one of their least able individuals. Such a specialization had the advantage of maximizing the groups’ knowledge formation while preserving its physical capabilities to answer the biological needs of the individuals.
Tribal societies preserved this tradition and the individuals gained a lot of free time that they used to enrich their cultural lives. This is how the satisfaction of the alleviation of individual suffering expanded to the satisfaction of cultural needs. The first example that comes to mind is the sharing of a common worldview, by the members of the groups, which answers their existential questions and ultimately eliminates their anxiety.
By alleviating individual suffering the satisfaction, of biological and cultural needs, became a determinant parameter of biological and cultural evolution. And over time its appeared that cultural evolution became the driver of the 2 forms of societal evolution that I describe in “8.1.3. The two forms of Societal evolution”.
But, in their eagerness to satisfy the privileges of a small minority, power-societies lost track of the tradition of pragmatism in knowledge formation. The target of knowledge formation suddenly morphed into the reproduction of the institutions of the men of power and the popular acquiescence to the privileges of the small minority of men of power which engaged a process of social inequality.
The shift of the societal paradigm, from the pragmatism of knowledge formation that served the alleviation of the individuals’ suffering to the reproduction of the institutions of power, engaged humanity on a path of mind manipulation through propaganda that is culminating in this Late-Modernity with the sheer incapacity of most individuals to distinguish between facts and lies.
2. Pragmatism enhances the sustainability of societies
The sustainability of the habitat, of species, is most crucial to preserve their capabilities to answer the biological needs of their individuals. Societies set up systems to supply the individuals with the conditions to produce what they need to satisfy their biological needs (food, clothes, roof,…) and the same goes for their cultural needs.
The fact is that the satisfaction, of individual needs, is not so much dependent, on the exercise of individual free will, it is more like the outcome of the societal context that societies can modulate if they so desire.
2.1 The role of societies is first and foremost to create the best conditions for the satisfaction of the individual biological and cultural needs.
If the individuals can not satisfy their needs, because the public resources or the commons are being routed to satisfy the privileges of a small minority, the individuals will naturally feel unsatisfied and they will eventually react forcefully against such a societal set-up.
In Late-Modernity Western societies are largely plagued by such ills. The incomes of the great majority have been plateauing or falling, over the entire span of the last 50 years, while the fruits of the national productivity have been routed, in their near totality, to the 1%. The resulting inequality has reached shocking historical extremes that are now threatening the further existence of these societies.
To counter the risks, of societal instability and meltdown, politicians are being paid, by big capital holders, to set up totalitarian decision-making processes that are man-powered by technicians. And the technicians argue that, to keep societies from falling apart, it is imperative to silence the populations !
The instruments the technicians use to achieve this objective are multiple : — propaganda as news to manipulate the minds — dilution of social and other rights that had been gained over the past century — systematic spying on the citizens — militarization of police services — etc…
2.2 The role of societies is secondly to procure peace of mind to the individuals by sharing a common worldview that satisfies all existential questions
If the minds of the individuals come under stress, due to the societal worldview's unsatisfying answers to their existential questions, the individuals will not only be unsatisfied they will also grow restless in their search of satisfying answers and this will directly lead to the fragmentation of their societies by a multiplication of group-think lines of thought.
If individualism is furthermore exacerbated, as it has been all along Late-Western-Modernity, group-think itself will dilute into societal atomization which is when the individuals start to think that they know better about anything than anyone else. This is the tipping point when societies are ready to collapse under the impact of whatever circumstantial destabilizing force.
3. Enhancing the sustainability of the activities of species in their contextual environment
The narrative, of the societally shared worldview, has to ensure that our present activities as a species leave a habitat, to the following generations, that is as good or better than the habitat servicing the present generation.
This has to be understood as an absolute condition for the perpetuation of the species. The destruction of a species' habitat, by one of its generations of individuals, has to be understood as a condemnation of its descendants to their demise. At this gauge, I'm afraid there is no milder way to say this, Western-Modernity in its Late age is condemning the next generations to live the agonizing experience of the species’ extinction !
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