Humanity’s future and the role of the artist

This series of posts about “the disconnection between the West and China” centers around societal evolution, and more particularly, the present shifting of the center of gravity of the economy-world from the US to the territorial expanse of the Chinese civilization in North-East Asia. In the preceding posts we have seen how this shift is due to the interactions between the following factors:

Tentative Visual Encyclopedia of art

How to understand art?

Through reason with words?

Or through images of the thing itself?

The communist party ‘owns’ China

In the Peoples Republic of China the communist party literally owns the institutions of state and no interference in the decision making of these institutions is accepted by any group of interest. This is quite different from the West where lobbies write the laws relating to their interests. What this means is that the communist party has an absolute control over the way society functions. Now this does not mean, as most Westerners believe, that China is a dictatorship. Individuals and economic actors are participating in the decision making process by giving their ideas and opinions about what should be done. During this consultation phase civil society debates with the representatives of the party and the state about solutions and the media also relays these debates. Once the consultation phase concludes civil society retreats and lets the party and state institutions formalize the decisions and their implementation. And once the rules of the game have been formalized everybody is expected to participate in their implementation.

Big capital holders own Western ‘democracies’

In democracies a few families own controlling stakes of the capital that is invested in strategic sectors of the economy. This gives them, for example, the control over the media and ensures them the power to shape public opinion. And so the political decision making process is rendered captive of a public opinion that is being constantly framed around the interests of big capital holders.

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.

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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.

Restarting to blog

To my regular readers "welcome back" and to new readers "welcome".


Recapitulation

Since I stopped blogging over a year ago let me start with a recapitulation of my past blogging activity.

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?