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.
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
2023-03-06
Foreword to "Societal Knowledge Formation".
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.
2007-08-24
Nourished by the sap bubbling from our civilizational roots.
It's like a given for all of us that people of different civilizations are and behave very differently. We all inherited stereotypes about "the other" but once we start to better know people from another civilization it seems that those differences are fast melting away. In "the other" we discover a human as ourselves. But is this the real thing happening or is it only a mirage given by the picture of our perception in our heads? In this post I posit that civilizations imprint a subtle code of behavior within societies that reflects upon individual attitudes.
2007-08-07
Loss of certainty and the purpose of life?"
________________
"Christianity is the great liquidator of traditional society, calling individuals out of their tribes and nations to join the ekklesia, which transcends race and nation." writes a proud Spengler.
2007-05-31
Rationality versus religion, a non-sense debate.
To make any sense about religion and rationality, it seems to me that, we have first to situate them in a societal evolutionary perspective and I'm afraid that the question has to be viewed from within the more globally encompassing framework of what is humanity and how it does operate. What I mean to say is that the reproduction and then the evolution of humanity (as an ensemble) necessitates a balancing mechanism in order to keep in check its polarities: societies and individuals.
Individuals tend to push the envelope of individualism which leads to change while societies tend to preserve, at any cost, the existing against such change.
With the start of civilization physical force appeared insufficient to keep in check populations scattered over always enlarging territories. When the men of power awakened to this reality they understood that the only way out for guaranteeing the reproduction of their power over their subjects was to find some psychic glue, in the form of the sharing by all of a common worldview, and impose it on their subjects.
In the Middle-East the men of power recoursed to religion as the shared worldview. But the religions of the word got their biggest boost from the Roman Emperor Constantine's decision to impose Christianity as the official religion of the empire. This is what made Christianity to become the shared worldview of all in Europe and of all in Europe's outposts around the world.
Force here is to observe that in other geographic areas the men of power did not recourse to religion but used the existing animist philosophies of life: Hinduism, Taoism, ... to unite their subjects.
What is slowly starting to sink in our consciousness is that:
1. individuals can't survive without belonging to societies
2. societies can't survive without the sharing by the individuals of a common worldview.
Animism, religions, philosophies and rationality are "worldviews".
In Western late-modernity religion can only be considered as a reliquary of history while science and rationality are the "worldview" of the men of knowledge of modernity. What I mean to say here is that to each particular period of history in each particular area of the world corresponds a given reality and a given "worldview" and it just makes no sense to try to re-apply today the worldview of past conditions.
On the doorstep of post-modernity we vaguely sense that the worldview of modernity, rationality, will necessarily be overtaken by a more globally encompassing knowledge system... The philosophy of rationality was derived out of the application of the logic of capital along several centuries. It laid the groundwork for the blooming of science that radically swept away past conceptions about reality but, in the end of the day, we are forced to observe that science left us in a societal quandary.
Tt appears clearer every passing day that the belief in science as the ultimate discoverer of reality was no more than adolescent certitude. The overwhelming immensity of our universe starts only to sink in our consciousness but it already let's us perceive the impossibility for science to ever come to the end of its quest for understanding. This means that we are bound, in essence, to remain in the dark about the nature of the whole in which we are such tiny particles... But this does in no way diminish the fundamental jump in the quality of our observations and deductions that science helped us to reach along these last centuries. This only brings us back to our senses from our adolescent dreams.
At this point two factors impose themselves to our attention:
1. Science is not a complete system of understanding, in other words, it can't offer us all the answers and, it is by now proven scientifically that, it never will. From this we know that science could never bring us a satisfactory story about reality for all to share.
2. For reasons that are still not well understood science, as the worldview of modernity, has been left to fight for credibility on the societal "level playing field" with all kinds of charlatans. The men of power under modernity did not further impose any worldview on their subjects. In other words the separation of power and knowledge under modernity left both isolated in their specialization and each went it alone along their own way.
Even if we make abstraction of this separation of power and knowledge, we have to recognize that the body of knowledge accumulated by science is nothing but a very complex system that can only be approached through many, many, years of studies without ever a chance of an end in sight. Such a system does not exactly qualify to be reduced into a simple story that could be given to all for sharing.
For reasons that I wrote about, in my book Artsense and in articles in Crucial Talk, I believe that our future shall witness a radical departure from the present and that post-modern societies will be given to share a new worldview answering the conditions of those particular times.
Under the aegis of "necessity" the knowledge level playing field, where the complex system embodied by science is left to compete for attention with all kinds of simple "foundational" stories, has a high probability to be superseded in a foreseeable future by a re-convergence of power and knowledge. My writing and my painting are entirely focused on the new knowledge that, I think, is bound to spread in the future. The power aspect is not a concern of mine but I nevertheless think that power shall eventually be involved, at a certain stage, in the spreading of that knowledge...Technorati tags: art, modern art, art theory, visual art, worldviews, society, power
2007-05-02
Soulless science and rationalism
Alan Finder had an interesting piece this morning in the NYT: "Matters of Faith Find a New Prominence on Campus": Peter J. Gomes has been at Harvard University for 37 years, and says he remembers when religious people on campus felt under siege. To be seen as religious often meant being dismissed as not very bright, he said.
No longer. At Harvard these days, said Professor Gomes, the university preacher, 'There is probably more active religious life now than there has been in 100 years'. "
What's going on?
Science and rationalism have never offered a simple and all encompassing worldview answering the many foundational questions that each of us hears popping in his mind at one or another moment in his life. Where does the universe come from? How do I fit in the wholeness of the universe? What is life? Is there life after death? And so on.
It is not as if it were impossible to find credible answers to those questions from a rationalist or scientific standpoint but fact is that only those who accumulated a vast body of scientific knowings can possibly find such credible answers out of rationalism. That means that the vast majority of students and should I say the vast majority of citizens do not have the means to find such answers through rationalism.
But living without shared certainty in your head about those foundational questions can be distressful, for, you will never find peace of mind and you will also never fully sense the warmth and security offered by a participation in a group or society.
Individuals, at the image of atoms, are components of the grouping they belong to. Atoms of iron unrelated to other atoms of iron are nothing. It's the iron indeed that confers them an existence. The same goes for human individuals. We can't possibly exist by or on ourselves. It's the grouping we belong to that confers the viability of our individual existence. And the belonging to a grouping is, first and foremost, a question of psychic bonding with the other members. This is realized through the sharing of a common worldview that acts as a gluing of the individuals into the group.
The sharing of such a worldview is also what ultimately assures the reproduction of the group and its development.
It is as if life, or humanity for that matter, were only springing into existence when their polarities are interacting: on one side the group, the society and on the other the individuals. The contradictions between those poles appear as generating the energy that drives their unity to change, to evolve, down the line of time.
Take out the sharing of a common worldview (belief system) by the individuals or give them latitude to believe in whatever they want and the contradictions between them and the group they belong to fade away thus reducing or eliminating the production of energy that is necessary to power the evolution of the unity they belong to. That's when the grouping starts to disintegrate. The same mechanism would equally be at work if society were covering the whole space of life. This would indeed suffocate the individuals to their death.
The Wolfram Demonstrations Project gives an excellent visualization of the "Yin Yang" that perfectly illustrates my comments: "variations of the classic Chinese symbol that animate the motto of Niels Bohr: Contraria non contradictoria sed complementa sunt. (Opposites are not contradictory but complementary.)"
In fact Yin-Yang are no opposites as suggested on Wolfram.com they are indeed acting more like the polarities of any unity.
Let's say for the sake of convenience that white represents society and black represents the individuals. What we see, from Wolfram's visualization, is that when black covers the full space of the unity represented by the circle then there remains no white which would mean the total disappearance of society...
For the Chinese the Tao of life is to avoid all excesses and harmony is to be found in the middle-ground where the 2 polarities find their maximum breathing space. The dynamic visualized by Wolfram's demonstration shows the range of movements that changing conditions possibly can follow within any given unity along the span of time. In some periods the white of society can be dominant but if society were to represent the whole of humanity then there would be absence of black meaning no individuals any longer... and by definition that would also represent the death of society. In other periods the black of individuals can be dominant but if it were to represent the whole of humanity then there would be absence of white meaning no society any longer... and by definition that would represent the death of the individuals. What this shows us is that all white or all black are an existential impossibility.
The ill-feeling experienced by many individuals in late modernity could thus be understood as a natural mechanism, biological perhaps?, of rejection of the atomization of their societies that on Wolfram's visualization corresponds to an ever increasing blackening of the circle...
Late modernity concludes with such a societal atomization and the fact is that societies really appear starting to disintegrate. On one side the individuals follow their own belief system that is formed as their life goes by but on the other side they also feel more and more ill at-ease and experience a growing yearning for sharing a common worldview with others. This is what Alan Finder's article is all about and, by the way, it is also what many Chinese are experiencing nowadays after the chaos unleashed on them by the excessively rapid entry of their country into modernity...
Understanding the societal need for a strong worldview to be shared by the individuals is one thing. But we better be aware that past worldviews, if they possibly could satisfy the individuals, never will they satisfy their societies. Today's conditions on the ground, in terms of established knowings, are different from the time when those past worldviews emerged. And so societies that would be driven by hegemonic past-worldviews are bound to lose out to those that succeed to devise worldviews out of present realities. Their citizens will indeed find it difficult to admit, adjust, and surf on the waves of their time while the citizens of societies that will succeed to adopt a worldview adapted to the present times will assuredly be better equipped to let the waves of our present reality carry them forward.
No longer. At Harvard these days, said Professor Gomes, the university preacher, 'There is probably more active religious life now than there has been in 100 years'. "
What's going on?
Science and rationalism have never offered a simple and all encompassing worldview answering the many foundational questions that each of us hears popping in his mind at one or another moment in his life. Where does the universe come from? How do I fit in the wholeness of the universe? What is life? Is there life after death? And so on.
It is not as if it were impossible to find credible answers to those questions from a rationalist or scientific standpoint but fact is that only those who accumulated a vast body of scientific knowings can possibly find such credible answers out of rationalism. That means that the vast majority of students and should I say the vast majority of citizens do not have the means to find such answers through rationalism.
But living without shared certainty in your head about those foundational questions can be distressful, for, you will never find peace of mind and you will also never fully sense the warmth and security offered by a participation in a group or society.
Individuals, at the image of atoms, are components of the grouping they belong to. Atoms of iron unrelated to other atoms of iron are nothing. It's the iron indeed that confers them an existence. The same goes for human individuals. We can't possibly exist by or on ourselves. It's the grouping we belong to that confers the viability of our individual existence. And the belonging to a grouping is, first and foremost, a question of psychic bonding with the other members. This is realized through the sharing of a common worldview that acts as a gluing of the individuals into the group.
The sharing of such a worldview is also what ultimately assures the reproduction of the group and its development.
It is as if life, or humanity for that matter, were only springing into existence when their polarities are interacting: on one side the group, the society and on the other the individuals. The contradictions between those poles appear as generating the energy that drives their unity to change, to evolve, down the line of time.
Take out the sharing of a common worldview (belief system) by the individuals or give them latitude to believe in whatever they want and the contradictions between them and the group they belong to fade away thus reducing or eliminating the production of energy that is necessary to power the evolution of the unity they belong to. That's when the grouping starts to disintegrate. The same mechanism would equally be at work if society were covering the whole space of life. This would indeed suffocate the individuals to their death.
The Wolfram Demonstrations Project gives an excellent visualization of the "Yin Yang" that perfectly illustrates my comments: "variations of the classic Chinese symbol that animate the motto of Niels Bohr: Contraria non contradictoria sed complementa sunt. (Opposites are not contradictory but complementary.)"
In fact Yin-Yang are no opposites as suggested on Wolfram.com they are indeed acting more like the polarities of any unity.
Let's say for the sake of convenience that white represents society and black represents the individuals. What we see, from Wolfram's visualization, is that when black covers the full space of the unity represented by the circle then there remains no white which would mean the total disappearance of society...
For the Chinese the Tao of life is to avoid all excesses and harmony is to be found in the middle-ground where the 2 polarities find their maximum breathing space. The dynamic visualized by Wolfram's demonstration shows the range of movements that changing conditions possibly can follow within any given unity along the span of time. In some periods the white of society can be dominant but if society were to represent the whole of humanity then there would be absence of black meaning no individuals any longer... and by definition that would also represent the death of society. In other periods the black of individuals can be dominant but if it were to represent the whole of humanity then there would be absence of white meaning no society any longer... and by definition that would represent the death of the individuals. What this shows us is that all white or all black are an existential impossibility.
The ill-feeling experienced by many individuals in late modernity could thus be understood as a natural mechanism, biological perhaps?, of rejection of the atomization of their societies that on Wolfram's visualization corresponds to an ever increasing blackening of the circle...
Late modernity concludes with such a societal atomization and the fact is that societies really appear starting to disintegrate. On one side the individuals follow their own belief system that is formed as their life goes by but on the other side they also feel more and more ill at-ease and experience a growing yearning for sharing a common worldview with others. This is what Alan Finder's article is all about and, by the way, it is also what many Chinese are experiencing nowadays after the chaos unleashed on them by the excessively rapid entry of their country into modernity...
Understanding the societal need for a strong worldview to be shared by the individuals is one thing. But we better be aware that past worldviews, if they possibly could satisfy the individuals, never will they satisfy their societies. Today's conditions on the ground, in terms of established knowings, are different from the time when those past worldviews emerged. And so societies that would be driven by hegemonic past-worldviews are bound to lose out to those that succeed to devise worldviews out of present realities. Their citizens will indeed find it difficult to admit, adjust, and surf on the waves of their time while the citizens of societies that will succeed to adopt a worldview adapted to the present times will assuredly be better equipped to let the waves of our present reality carry them forward.
2007-04-30
This religious story of science.
Since long I sense that the more knowings (parcels of knowledge) I accumulate the more evident it becomes how little I really know about the whole of reality. What I mean to show is that a large accumulation of knowings does not necessarily preclude knowledge. Here follows an awakening call from particle physicists and cosmologists that seems to say just that.
"Twenty years ago most physicists would have said, on the basis of 450 years of science, that they believed that there's only one allowed law of nature that works, that ultimately we might discover fundamental symmetries and mathematical principles that cause the nature to be the way it is, because it's always worked that way. So that is the way science has worked. But now because of this energy of empty space -- which is so inexplicable that if it really is an energy of empty space, the value of that number is so ridiculous that it's driven people to think that maybe, maybe it's an accident of our environment, that physics is an environmental science -- that certain fundamental constants in nature may just be accidents, and there may be many different universes, in which the laws of physics are different, and the reasons those constants have the values they have might be -- in our universe -- might be because we're there to observe them. " (Lawrence Krauss in THE
ENERGY OF EMPTY SPACE THAT ISN'T ZERO in Edge Magazine 7.6.06)
We have been dream-talking in "Western Late Modernity" about a science that would explain everything and make us at the image of the gods in religious foundational stories. But such a faith in science is no more than a naive religious-type belief in a very poor story. I have this feeling that what humanity is most urgently in need of presently is not to be found in the stars nor in sub-atomic particles but in its own substance, the balancing act between its polarities, individual and society. If societies collapse science shall murmur bye bye to the individuals... and this poor religious-like story of science shall then simply vanish with the individuals who created it in the first place.
Science is radically revolutionizing our understanding of reality and this causes an enormous stress on the individuals who feel at a loss faced with the disintegration of their traditional belief systems while not being able to understand the new scientific paradigm. Furthermore the equalization of life styles between the North and the South that has been initiated by globalization is fast destabilizing every society on earth. In the presently growing chaos wrought upon us, by the interactions between the productions of science and of globalization, what is most urgently needed is a worldview uniting the individuals around the idea of bringing about a livable, and possibly a better, future for their children. Such a worldview will not reject science. On the contrary it will integrate science into a more globally encompassing system of thought that shall be derived from the holistic vision projected by the diverse philosophies and religions of the people of the earth.
Change, and more particularly societal change, comes out of necessity. Whatever idealist intellectuals may think about societal change; will-power on its own has never shaped societal change. Leninism may have given the illusion for a short time to the contrary. But barely seventy years after having imposed their will-power on the Russian society necessity found its way around state force. What I want to say is that, while there is a credible argument to be made that late modern societies are in a dire need of some sort of glue (worldview) to bind their individual atoms in order to avoid collapsing into atomization, imposing a worldview that was shaped under past conditions has just no chance to work. Religions and philosophies that were shaped over past centuries, if not millenia, do not answer present necessities and recoursing to them to stabilize present societies would only end up in the collapse of those societies a little later at the image of what happened not long ago to Leninist controlled societies.
Necessity is out there banging on our doors. The present-day necessity is for answers to the deluge of problems that is flooding out of the side-effects of modernity: climate change, poisoning of water, air and foods, decreasing rates of Gross Domestic Happiness (GDH), deforestation, mass extinction of species and so on. The more time passes and the more those side-effects of modernity appear indeed to threaten the very foundation of life on earth.
Modernity was founded on the recognition and respect, over the centuries, of the logic of capital. In short, money invested in a venture becomes capital and people soon understood that they needed to follow the logic inherent to capital, for, not recognizing this logic was immediately sanctioned by a decrease of capital's monetary value that could possibly lead to the total extinction of that monetary value. Merchants and bankers were first to recognize and respect the logic of capital and found themselves antagonized by the clergy and the aristocracy who followed the edicts of the scriptures. The contradictions of the logic of capital and the edicts of the scriptures paved the way for the ideological contest between rationality and belief. Respecting the logic of capital was thought a rational behavior while belief in religious stories was gradually thought of as irrational. We all know the outcome. But force is to observe that in as short as a few centuries the logic of capital and rationality brought us on the brink of life extinction...
In our present-day peculiar societal reality the role of art is to give visual signs of the coming postmodern worldview for all to share.
Easy said is it not? But where to start?
Knowledge is the answer and this starts with the accumulation of knowings about science and philosophy and then the understanding of our present-day times and how we personally fit in the time. Only the works of those artists who make the effort to go through such a process of learning have a chance to remain of interest in the eyes of those who will be living a century from now. "Whatever", sharks or drippings, shall have vanished from their memory.
"Twenty years ago most physicists would have said, on the basis of 450 years of science, that they believed that there's only one allowed law of nature that works, that ultimately we might discover fundamental symmetries and mathematical principles that cause the nature to be the way it is, because it's always worked that way. So that is the way science has worked. But now because of this energy of empty space -- which is so inexplicable that if it really is an energy of empty space, the value of that number is so ridiculous that it's driven people to think that maybe, maybe it's an accident of our environment, that physics is an environmental science -- that certain fundamental constants in nature may just be accidents, and there may be many different universes, in which the laws of physics are different, and the reasons those constants have the values they have might be -- in our universe -- might be because we're there to observe them. " (Lawrence Krauss in THE
ENERGY OF EMPTY SPACE THAT ISN'T ZERO in Edge Magazine 7.6.06)
We have been dream-talking in "Western Late Modernity" about a science that would explain everything and make us at the image of the gods in religious foundational stories. But such a faith in science is no more than a naive religious-type belief in a very poor story. I have this feeling that what humanity is most urgently in need of presently is not to be found in the stars nor in sub-atomic particles but in its own substance, the balancing act between its polarities, individual and society. If societies collapse science shall murmur bye bye to the individuals... and this poor religious-like story of science shall then simply vanish with the individuals who created it in the first place.
Science is radically revolutionizing our understanding of reality and this causes an enormous stress on the individuals who feel at a loss faced with the disintegration of their traditional belief systems while not being able to understand the new scientific paradigm. Furthermore the equalization of life styles between the North and the South that has been initiated by globalization is fast destabilizing every society on earth. In the presently growing chaos wrought upon us, by the interactions between the productions of science and of globalization, what is most urgently needed is a worldview uniting the individuals around the idea of bringing about a livable, and possibly a better, future for their children. Such a worldview will not reject science. On the contrary it will integrate science into a more globally encompassing system of thought that shall be derived from the holistic vision projected by the diverse philosophies and religions of the people of the earth.
Change, and more particularly societal change, comes out of necessity. Whatever idealist intellectuals may think about societal change; will-power on its own has never shaped societal change. Leninism may have given the illusion for a short time to the contrary. But barely seventy years after having imposed their will-power on the Russian society necessity found its way around state force. What I want to say is that, while there is a credible argument to be made that late modern societies are in a dire need of some sort of glue (worldview) to bind their individual atoms in order to avoid collapsing into atomization, imposing a worldview that was shaped under past conditions has just no chance to work. Religions and philosophies that were shaped over past centuries, if not millenia, do not answer present necessities and recoursing to them to stabilize present societies would only end up in the collapse of those societies a little later at the image of what happened not long ago to Leninist controlled societies.
Necessity is out there banging on our doors. The present-day necessity is for answers to the deluge of problems that is flooding out of the side-effects of modernity: climate change, poisoning of water, air and foods, decreasing rates of Gross Domestic Happiness (GDH), deforestation, mass extinction of species and so on. The more time passes and the more those side-effects of modernity appear indeed to threaten the very foundation of life on earth.
Modernity was founded on the recognition and respect, over the centuries, of the logic of capital. In short, money invested in a venture becomes capital and people soon understood that they needed to follow the logic inherent to capital, for, not recognizing this logic was immediately sanctioned by a decrease of capital's monetary value that could possibly lead to the total extinction of that monetary value. Merchants and bankers were first to recognize and respect the logic of capital and found themselves antagonized by the clergy and the aristocracy who followed the edicts of the scriptures. The contradictions of the logic of capital and the edicts of the scriptures paved the way for the ideological contest between rationality and belief. Respecting the logic of capital was thought a rational behavior while belief in religious stories was gradually thought of as irrational. We all know the outcome. But force is to observe that in as short as a few centuries the logic of capital and rationality brought us on the brink of life extinction...
In our present-day peculiar societal reality the role of art is to give visual signs of the coming postmodern worldview for all to share.
Easy said is it not? But where to start?
Knowledge is the answer and this starts with the accumulation of knowings about science and philosophy and then the understanding of our present-day times and how we personally fit in the time. Only the works of those artists who make the effort to go through such a process of learning have a chance to remain of interest in the eyes of those who will be living a century from now. "Whatever", sharks or drippings, shall have vanished from their memory.
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