The perspective of the 5,000 year old grandmother of all nations. Part 2. An impetuous adolescent USA gets isolated in its corner of the world

Western decision-makers seem to be stuck, in a highly chaotic bout of delusion, absolutely impervious to the facts on the ground of our planet earth. 

 

This is how the Global times recently summarized this Western chaotic bout of delusion : 

 

The perspective of the 5,000 year old grandmother of all nations. Part 1. An adolescent is sowing Chaos all around !

Before I retreat, for something as a full year in hibernation, to edit the volume 3 of my series "From Modernity to After-Modernity" that is  titled "Societal Knowledge Formation", I would like to share my interpretation of China's perception, as the 5,000 year old grandmother of all nations on earth, about humanity's present state of affairs.

You can read the extensive version of this summary in "Modernity 02", or in "The Great Turning". 

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Total digital variations grew to 4396 paintings

In between writing... here is an update on my digital variations. 

I selected 4 variations, from each of the series terminated as of today, to let you see their evolution over time.

The links bring you to the full galleries corresponding to each particular series.

Click on the images to get a larger version (1200 x 800 px).  Have a great surf.

The ebook "The Great Turning” is online.

 

I just uploaded the ebook “The Great Turning”. It is a compilation, and edited version, of my series of 10 articles under the same title. “The Great Turning” examines the contemporary through the lens of my recently published book “Modernity”.

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10. A new worldview in After-Modernity

The historical combination of the societal disintegration of the West, with China’s economic rise to the top spot, have initiated the hope in the Global South of a potential liberation from Western hegemony. But, notwithstanding this potential, it is already a mathematical certainty that lifestyles comparable to the present ones in the West will never become available in the Global South !

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9. The Fall of Modernity

At first sight one might think that what is at stake, in these two-thousand twenties, is the rejection of Western hegemony which, the large majority of citizens by now know is entirely geared toward privileging the biggest Western capital owners, their Multi-National corporations, and their armies of servants : — state bureaucracies and their units of force — the intellectuals and scientists — the managerial class — the professionals in charge of those technologies that sustain the systems of state and corporate institutions.

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8. The Russian operation in Ukraine is a rallying cry against uni-polarity (1)

At the image of a train, whose engine has stopped running for lack of energy but that continues to move powered solely by the force of its physical inertia, a society, that is atomized, loses the existential power conferred to her by the initiative of her citizens, but it continues to move forward for some more time powered by the sole force of its societal inertia.

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7. Western resistance to the shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world to East-Asia

Over the last decade the center of gravity of the economy-world has been shifting extremely rapidly to east-Asia. But, as the graph hereunder illustrates (1), that shift is in reality no more than a return to the historical normality of these last 2,000 years.

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6. ‘separation – rationality – scientific knowings’ / ‘interconnectedness – pragmatism – knowledge’

Content of this article (8000 words)

6.1. Animism = ‘interconnectedness – logic of pragmatism – traditional knowledge’
6.1.1. The reduction of individual suffering
6.1.2. Institutional reproduction of the societal group
6.2. Modernity = ‘separation – rationality – scientific knowings’
6.3. knowledge versus science
6.3.1. About the finality of knowledge and science
6.3.2. About the nature of knowledge and science
6.3.3. science and rationalism versus knowledge
6.3.4. How knowledge got kicked out of the picture

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5. The expansion of the paradigm of Modernity into philosophic rationalism and science

As I wrote in Part 3 “the pragmatic common sense of the long distance merchants ensured the thriving of 'the reason' but this came at the price of subduing its development as a worldview”. This implies that by leaving “the reason” unspoken, in its fundamentalist Christian context, it was given the chance to thrive.

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4. how did Modernity arise ?

 

 

Modernity did arise with the emergence of the paradigm of  “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”.

 

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3. The Continuum of the societal cultural field

This title is also the title of the first volume of my collection “From Modernity to After-Modernity” and I summarized the gist of this volume in “Part 6. The cultural continuum” of my “synthesis” of the collection's 5 volumes.

Hereafter I first give a 4 points contextual condensation of the process that is at work in “the continuum of the societal cultural field”. Then I use this 4 points condensation to illustrate the formation of daily culture in the West and in China and how the result is such a contrast of different visions, mental representations, and perceptions that, due to our failure to understand the mechanisms of daily culture formation, remain most often irreconcilable.

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2. A new lease on life for the unipolar world ?

The prospect of an ending of Western hegemony implies that the days of Western prosperity, by sucking the resources of “the others”, are coming to an end and this means the following : 

Peasant Pelosi goes to Taiwan

 

 

 

 

 

 

A tale at the end of Western modernity. 

 

 

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1. How the West created the conditions of its downfall ?

The end of Western hegemony was predicated by the class-war mindset of Western big capital holders, and their institutional servants, who could not fathom that the social-wellness of the nineteen-fifties and sixties was foundational to the Western economic boom of the time.