From Modernity to After-Modernity. (24)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations 
Chapter 5. About the arts

Dear readers I'm really sorry for this late publishing of the last articles in this series.  A software glitch left me stranded in Beijing and I could not find a way to access Blogger. There are 3 more posts to complete the publishing of what I wrote along the last winter. I'll post them weekly as I did in the past.
I wish you all a great summer. I'll be back publishing next November.
Best,
Laodan

5.3.4.3. Numerous contemporary ideas about the future.


People generally agree that modernity has yielded a series of bottlenecks but they widely disagree on their future outcomes for human societies. The range of future possible outcomes varies along the line between the following two extreme beliefs:

• the belief in technological singularity
• the belief in the collapse of modern civilization.

From Modernity to After-Modernity. (23)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations 
Chapter 5. About the arts

5.3.2.2.  China.

China and the countries in the TriContinentArea ("Middle-East: in Western European parlance) experienced a radically different transition from tribal societies to empire. In one word the countries in the TriContinentArea, as well as those that later adopted one of their worldview like Europe and its colonially forced geographic extensions for example, experienced a rupture with their tribal and animist past. China on the other hand experienced continuity. I exposed the reason for this radical divergence in “4.7.2. About the emergence and development of China's institutions of governance".

Rupture means that empires discard anything relating to tribes and develop a new governance structure and a new worldview from scratch. Continuity means that empires grew organically by adopting animism and by growing it further with add-ons.

This rupture versus continuity principle implies two radically different paths for the arts in Europe versus China.

From Modernity to After-Modernity (22)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations 
Chapter 5. About the arts

5.2.3. From biological evolution to societal evolution

What I propose here is that biological evolution has been a first mover in the process of the evolution of life. It has bestowed on us our biological characteristics in a process of natural selection that operated over hundreds of millions of years. Furthermore the near infinite chain of its successful mutations have imprinted patterns in our biological code that act as a predisposition of the individual to prefer beauty over ugliness, love over hate, cooperation over competition, winning over losing and so on.

From Modernity to After-Modernity. (21)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations
Chapter 5. About the arts

5.2. The origins of the arts.

It is my contention that to have a valid conversation about the arts we have first and foremost to understand how and why they emerged in the first place. The arts are indeed not a given and they also did not fall from the sky. Nature has no patience with things that are of no use to it and very fast it discards such un-useful things. So logic implies that a human demand must have arisen, sometime and in a given context, for the usage of the arts. They must indeed have emerged as a valid answer to a human necessity in a given context. That’s what I want to address here.

From Modernity to After-Modernity. (20)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations
Chapter 5. About the arts


Dear readers,

Technical problems prevented me from publishing my last series of posts over the last 4 weeks. The problem is finally solved.
I'll now be publishing, the 5 final posts of this winter series, on the coming Fridays...
Sorry again for the interruption.

Laodan

From Modernity to After-Modernity (about chapter 5)

 Part 2. Theoretical considerations
Chapter 5. About the arts

Hello to my regular readers and to everybody else,


As of my post last Friday my writing this winter already generated 560 book pages.  I started working on the last chapter, this chapter 5, but will pass this week's publication because I was exhausted and needed some time to put my ideas together. This chapter should be the culmination of this winter's writing so I feel I need to get it right.

This is how I presently envisage the architecture of this text:

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 (17)

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

4.7. About the institutions of governance

4.1 to 4.6 were devolved to the 25 interactions and feedback loops between the most determinant parameters shaping individual and societal life. These interactions constitute the backbone of an analytical framework that helps to analyze and to understand the working of societies and how to operate them the most efficiently. I completed a succinct analysis of these 25 interactions in 4.6. It reads like a “philosophy of life and societal governance” that is being derived from one initial axiom which says that the life of species is given by the play, or the dance, between their two polarities: societies (assemblings) and individuals (particles). The knowledge, about the operation of their polarity-plays, acts like a handle that reveals the future.

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.

From Modernity to After-Modernity (15)

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


4.6.  Twenty determinant 'individual- society' interrelations  (Part 2)

The graph that follows illustrates the dynamic that shapes the life of species. Each living species has two polarities: societies (-, feminine) and individuals (+, masculine). The interactions or the play between these polarities is what generates the reality or the life of species.

From Modernity to After-Modernity (14)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations

Chapter 4. About societal governance and societal evolution



4.6.  Twenty determinant 'individual- society' interrelations  (Part 1)

The graph that follows illustrates the dynamic that shapes the life of species. Each living species has two polarities: societies (-, feminine) and individuals (+, masculine). The interactions or the play between these polarities is what generates the reality or the life of species.

From Modernity to After-Modernity (13)

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



4.5. Five polarity-plays between individuals & society

I initially introduced the idea of polarities in my presentation of “The axioms of civilization”. It explains why China projects such an otherworldliness in the minds of Westerners whose own minds unconsciously form all their judgments and ideas to the tune of dualism. Later in my presentation about Consciousness” (01,  02,  03) I made the idea of polarity-plays, first explained in “The axioms of civilization”, the foundation of a broader approach than the narrow materialist view of neuroscience that is based on the brain-mind dualism. Neuroscientists believe indeed that the mind is a creation of the brain which then cranks out higher levels of consciousness. This idea is not wrong per-se but what is wrong is to make that idea the only thing there is to the matter. Other factors than the brain are determinant in the formation of consciousness like its interactions with systemic reality, with increased complexity, with reproduction, etc...

From Modernity to After-Modernity (12)

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

Political theory has always addressed the exercise of power by referring to the opinions of European classical thinkers about that subject. Nowadays political scientists particularly focus on Modernity and the Nation-State which are also European constructs. With the globalization of the reach of capital, that was put in motion in the 70ths through the actions of various international organizations, that European model of political theory is being imposed all over the world as if it was the sole truth of the matter about things relating to political science.

But the fact is that Europe represents no more than 5% of the world population. Adding to that 5% the geographical extensions it imposed on natives, along the initial phase of merchant capitalism (1), this 'European cultural domain' still counts no more than 10% of the world population. A question then arises. Why is the field of societal governance, which is what political theory is all about, so blind to the historical experience of such great countries as China (18.8% of the world population) and India (17.6% of the world population) (2)?

From Modernity to After-Modernity (11)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations
Chapter 3. About culture, worldviews, civilizations

3.  Culture, worldviews, civilizations

I  started book 1 of this series with a presentation about the most important concepts that frame my personal thought process. Chief among them is societal evolution that is deeply ingrained in cultural change and more particularly in the elements of cultural change that make it into the worldview of society.

I have furthermore dedicated some chapters of book 1 to the history of worldviews 1 & 2 and civilizations 1, 2, & 3. My intention in this chapter 3 is not to rehash the content of these earlier posts. I want now to address how these concepts interrelate and more particularly I want to address how culture acts as the catalyst of the evolution of worldviews, and of societies at large, in ways similar to genes that succeed to implant their mutations in the human genome.

From Modernity to After-Modernity (10)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations
Chapter 2. About the formation of consciouness

2.9. Lessons about the process of consciousness

Brain, mind, and consciousness are subjects that are not very well understood by science to this very day. Different approaches are competing for attention but none is truly satisfactory. In my personal search to make sense of consciousness I borrow elements of some of these approaches while integrating them in a holistic or set theory vision that is animated by the idea that the dance between polarities is what creates the reality of any entity.

The subjects are so vast and fraud with so many ideological a priori that I feel it is necessary to start by clarifying the context that shapes our perception.

From Modernity to After-Modernity (09)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations
Chapter 2. About the formation of consciousness



2.3.  The mind and 'Increased Complexity'

I'll start with an update of the graphs I gave in my last post.


A.    visualization of the cycle of life

Where do I stand with my "grand project" ?

2015/12/15

I terminated the first 4 columns with each 5 paintings (if one can say that a painting is ever terminated). Here is the full view. The paintings are stitched together in the Gimp (open source version of photoshop) and not taken in one shot because my present painting place is not big enough to position all the panels together while leaving me the distance to shoot the whole damn thing. This explains the 'dark-light' differences between panels. The whole thing has a better flow that on this picture but that was the price to pay to share this work with my readers. What I hope to share is the dynamic that runs between thinking, painting and writing (please click on images to get their large version).

From Modernity to After Modernity (08)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations
Chapter 2. About the formation of consciousness


2.  About the formation of consciousness

Species are an assemblage of a mass of individual particles that live in groups which are also called societies. The particles have a very short lifespan while their societies last the life of many generations of individual particles. Societies themselves are also mortal and collapse from time to time to be annexed by, or annexing, other societies and forming a larger unit or splitting in smaller units. Societies, or groupings, are the natural form of organization of all species for the good reason that an individual on his own soon dies without reproducing. Preservation of the individual integrity and his reproduction are thus the reasons why individuals are assembling in groups. From the dawn of the principle of life, when life emerged, immediately appeared the necessity to reproduce individual life over the generations in order to ensure the continuity of the species. This principle is the essence of human groupings or societies and societies are natural instruments that ensure the reproduction of species.

From Modernity to After Modernity (07)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations
Chapter 1. About the formation of human knowledge 



1.5. Conclusions (2)


1.5.5. Science and animism have different finalities

Humanity has witnessed three forms of knowledge formations along the path of its long history: animism, religion-philosophy and modern rationality.

From Modernity to After Modernity. (06)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations

Chapter 1. About the formation of human knowledge 

1.6. Conclusions (1)

Let me start by sketching the most salient traits of the history of knowledge formation as I reported on it in my last 4 posts.

From Modernity to After Modernity. (05)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations
Chapter 1. About the formation of human knowledge 




1.4.4. The civilization of China  = animism+

I have laid out in some detail, in my posts “The axioms of civilizations” 01, 02, 03 and 06, 07, 08 (2) the passage from animism to power societies and how China and the West were made to take radically different civilizational paths. I then went on to describe how their conceptual foundations ended up being pole apart. What follows is a further development of the content of those posts and more particularly the formation of knowledge under the Chinese empire. So it could be useful, but not absolutely necessary, to start reading those posts before engaging any further in the present one.

From Modernity to After Modernity. (04)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations

Chapter 1. About the formation of human knowledge

1.4. power societies

The widely shared model about the formation of empires tells us that following the emergence of agriculture sometime 12,000 years ago the sum of societal practices and knowledge that had been accumulated and transmitted from generation to generation over the preceding 100,000 years or so by tribal societies gradually disintegrated. This disintegration of the tribal model spread over a few thousand years and was paralleled by trials and errors in setting up power societies. This process that spanned roughly 7-8000 years culminated, some 5000 years ago in Sumer, in Egypt, and in China, with the institutionalization of empires that reproduce over the generations which is what gave rise to civilizations.

From Modernity to After Modernity. (03)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations

1. About the formation of human knowledge

1.3. non-power societies = tribes & animism

Tribal societies were societies without power and animism, or the tribal worldview, was shared by all. Tribesmen were free and equal individuals; free and equal women and men who willingly shared the views offered by their Man of Knowledge

From Modernity to After Modernity. (02)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations

1. About the formation of human knowledge

1.2. The historical context

Notwithstanding what believers in empire say (1) we do not create reality. We have to discover it. In other words the reality of the universe is not a creation of humanity. It exists independently of humanity.