What’s going on here ? (9)

4. determinant side-effects of Modernity

From a very long haul perspective the present re-balancing of world affairs appears as the rebuilding of the governance-world in the wake of a category 5 economic hurricane that swept the whole world of its postmodern pipe-dream fantasies. In contrast in the aftermath of the great convergence of all the side-effects of Modernity there is a very high probability that nothing will be left to rebuild. In the most innocuous of all possible scenarios only a small number of humans will survive who eventually will be forced to start a new cycle of “societal evolution” in order to survive.

What’s going on here ? (8)

3.8. emergence of A new world order 

The day, when international transactions will be paid for with a new world currency, will be recognized in history as the day a new multilateral world order will have succeeded to bury the short uni-polar reign of the American empire. This new multilateral world order will have East-Asia as its core and Beijing will act as its center of gravity.

The present  post addresses the following:

4.1. community versus empire

4.2. Western prospects
4.3. Western Modernity is out, what comes next ?

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Organic art = the patterns of life (6)

5.  After-Modernity and the prospects of an artistic awakening

Over the last 50 years a great convergence has slowly been taking place, between – the crisis of the governance-world – and the multitude side-effects of Modernity, that is evolving into a drastically new living environment.

This convergence will result in a radical drop of the world population and life will be forced to re-organize locally in small groups surviving under the reign of necessity. Their most vital priority will be the reproduction of their societies over the long haul and to ensure this the minds will be glued by new foundational narratives grounded in myths fixing the memory of what caused the fall of Modernity.

Modern knowledge will rapidly be forgotten and visual signs will thus become the vehicle of choice to share knowledge with all. That’s how the historical nature of art returns with a vengeance … 

Organic art = the patterns of life (5)

4.  Western Late-Modernity sows the seeds of After-Modernity

Long ago it downed on me that there is no way to untangle the arts from societal evolution and its economic, political or geo-political aspects. All are intertwined and their interconnections are what creates the reality of what happens in our present societies.

Understanding our present implies that we get a handle on the evolution of these interconnections from the past, to the present, to the future.

Only when we understand our present can we feel the ways of our species in the future and then we adapt our being accordingly in the present …

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Organic art = the patterns of life (2)

1. The nature and function of art over the last tens of thousands of years


In my last article I wrote “ Life is a rare gift in the universe but our power societies, and more particularly the quasi-worldview of Modernity, lost touch with this evidence. Now that we start to grasp the fact that this gift could be taken away we come to appreciate that it is the most precious thing we ever had. ”

Since the principle of life is the most important thing we ever had would it not be logical to derive all our ideas and actions about how to live from this principle ?

The first question that arises is then ‘what is life? ‘.

What’s going on here ? (3)

2. the cultural context forces human thinking and actions

The present post covers:

-  the introduction of this part 2

-  and its first chapter 2.1. Axioms of civilizations.

Next week’s post will cover:

-  chapter 2.2. Societal worldviews 
-  chapter 2.3. Culture 
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The War With China is Already Under Way

"The only acceptable status for China is as a distinctly lesser power. To ensure such an outcome, administration officials insist, the U.S. must take action on a daily basis to contain or impede its rise. "

How societies work & the role of worldviews and art

In my last post I tried to brush a rapid sketch of the profound mental disconnect between the West and China. In the present post I’ll brush an even more rapid sketch about how large societies function; it lays the foundations upon which, in my next 3 posts, I’ll build a more in-depth comparative analysis between the present and the future of Western and Chinese societies.

______

Center of gravity of the economy-world and worldviews

This article is a sketch of the general context of the present moment we find ourselves in the world. It comes as a conclusion of my short series “the disconnection in perceptions between East and West”. I'll follow this sketch with 2 more posts addressing – the realities on the ground in China and the West, – their future prospects in view of their present realities.

Is America still a nation?

This 4th of July Patrick Buchanan asked if America is still a nation (1).

This question touches a raw nerve and our minds ache.
What will we do without America?

Imaginings of the future. Rational abstractions reached by the thinking mind…

1.  Past trends that help to understand the present:

 

Our present mood shapes our reading of the future.

 Does it matter if Chinese and Western perceptions about societal reality are growing further apart?  Whatever people may be thinking the fact is that this disconnect is going to have a decisive impact on how humanity's future will unfold and so I believe that those whose minds are still open and curious about the fate of humanity better watch carefully.

A growing disconnect between Chinese and Westerners

What is going on? People's perceptions in China and in the West are so absolutely out of sync nowadays that I feel the urge to write about this disconnect. Generally speaking people in China are very optimistic about the future and they trust their political decision makers while in the West people are generally pessimistic and they totally distrust their political decision makers as well as the other elites of their societies which renders them weary about the future. Am I the only one to be shocked by the intensity of this growing disconnect?

From Modernity to After-Modernity (34)

Book 3. Divination

1. the future emerges in a given context

1.1. The quasi-Worldview of Modernity

1.1.2. Power ideologies mold the minds

In “Book 2. Volume 1. About the formation of human knowledge. 1.1. The context.  I defend the thesis  that the nature of reality is largely inaccessible to humanity (1). I further wrote that “We better recognize, early on, the fact that the whole universe is immensely vast; so vast that its true nature is inaccessible to human reason. … Inaccessibility implies the unknown and humans don't like unknowns. They have no problems with unknown "unknowns" for the good reason that unknown "unknowns" simply don't pop up in their consciousness but they feel utterly ill at ease when faced with known "unknowns" such as those nagging questions resulting from the inaccessibility of the whole universe to the human mind. Such known unknowns become obsessions that drive people in the throat of anxiety from where they search to escape at all costs. This is how societal groupings, along our entire history, have been seen coming in the picture by proposing approximations of reality, and of what the unknown is all about, to be shared by their citizens in order to sooth their anxiety. When shared by all citizens such approximations crystallize in a societal view of the world or a worldview that all consider as being the truth of the matter and this rewards those societies with higher levels of cohesion which, in turn, facilitate their reproduction from generation to generation.”

From Modernity to After-Modernity (32)

Book 3. Divination


1. the future emerges in a given context

Obviously the future does not fall from the sky.

The future 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.

From Modernity to After-Modernity (19)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations
Chapter 4. About societal governance and societal evolution


4.7.2.4. The Chinese empire

I mentioned in “4.7.2.3. The transition from tribes to empires. A. What is an empire?” that the word “empire” is a European construct and that the understanding of the concept in the European acceptance is not adapted to all contexts. But more to the point; the way Europeans have defined the concept around the exercise of power has no place in the Chinese context and more particularly in its early phase of unification and centralization 

From Modernity to After-Modernity (18)

 Part 2. Theoretical considerations
Chapter 4. About societal governance and societal evolution

4.7. About the institutions of governance (part 2)



I touched very briefly on the subject of Chinese governance in "4.6.3. Societal reproduction – Individual communion 2. China unified its early kingdoms along the Yellow River some 3000 years BC under the '3 sovereigns' and the '5 emperors' ". What follows is an expansion on the content of that text.

From Modernity to After-Modernity (16)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations
Chapter 4. About societal governance and societal evolution



4.6.  Twenty determinant 'individual-society' interrelations  (Part 3)

The graph that follows illustrates the dynamic that forms the reality of species. Each living species has two polarities: societies (positive) and individuals (negative). The interactions or the play between these polarities is what creates the reality of species.