Difference between revisions of "Holotopia"

From Knowledge Federation
Jump to: navigation, search
m
m
Line 400: Line 400:
 
<p>Of various consequences that have resulted from this historical error, we shall here mention two. The first will explain what really happened with our culture, and our "human quality"; why the way we handle them urgently needs to change. The second will explain what holds us back—why we've been so incapable of treating our <em>systems</em> as we treat other human-made things, by adapting them to the purposes that need to be served.  </p>  
 
<p>Of various consequences that have resulted from this historical error, we shall here mention two. The first will explain what really happened with our culture, and our "human quality"; why the way we handle them urgently needs to change. The second will explain what holds us back—why we've been so incapable of treating our <em>systems</em> as we treat other human-made things, by adapting them to the purposes that need to be served.  </p>  
  
<!-- XXX
+
<p>To see our first point, we invite you to follow us in a one-minute thought experiment. To join us on an imaginary visit to a cathedral. No, this is not about religion; we shall use the cathedral as one of our <em>ideograms</em>, to put things in proportion and make a point.</p>
  
<p>To see the first, we invite you to a simple, one-minute thought experiment. We invite you to follow us on an imaginary visit to a cathedral. No, this has nothing to do with religion; we shall use the cathedral as one of our metaphorical images or <em>ideograms</em>, to help us see things in proportion and make a point.</p>  
+
<p>What strikes us instantly, as we enter, is awe-inspiring architecture. Then we hear the music play: Is it Bach's cantatas? Or Allegri's Miserere? We see sculptures, and frescos by masters of old on the walls. And then, of course, there's the ritual...</p>
 +
<p>We also notice a little book on each bench. When we open it, we see that its first paragraphs explain how the world was created.</p>
 +
<p>Let this difference in size—between the beginning of Genesis and all the rest we find in a cathedral—point to the fact that, owing to our error, our pursuit of knowledge has been focused on a relatively minor part, on <em>explaining</em> how the things we perceive originated, and how they work. And that what we've ignored is our culture as a complex ecosystem, which evolved through thousands of years, whose function is to <em>socialize</em> people in a certain specific way. To <em>create</em> certain "human quality". Notice that we are not making a value judgment, only pointing to a function.</p>  
  
<p>What strikes us, as we enter, is the architecture, which inspires awe. We hear the music play: Is it Bach's cantatas? Or Allegri's Miserere? There are frescos by masters of old on the walls. If the cathedral of your choice is the St. Peter's in Rome, then Michelangelo's frescos are near. And there is the ritual...</p>
+
<p>The way we presently treat this ecosystem reminds of the way in which we treated the natural ones, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. We have nothing equivalent to CO2 measurements and quotas, to even <em>try</em> to make this a scientific and political issue.</p>  
<p>There is also a little book on each bench. Its first paragraphs explain how the world was created.</p>
 
<p>Let this difference in size—between the beginning of Genesis and all the rest—point to the difference in the importance of the roles of the factual or "objective" information—and the one that is <em>implicit</em> in everything else we call "culture"—whose role is to create (let's call it that) a <em>symbolic environment</em> by which our <em>socialization</em> takes place. By which our inclinations to feel and think in a certain way, and our values and our "human quality" are created. We are making no value judgment, and you should not do that either. We are only pointing to a role or a <em>function</em>.</p>  
 
  
<p>What happens with this function when we, considering the <em>worldview</em> to be the point, replace the worldview of the tradition with the "scientific" one? Who becomes responsible for our <em>socialization</em>? The answer is obvious. A superficial look around will suffice to see just how much our contemporary <em>symbolic environment</em> is a product of advertising—whose function is to give us the kind of "human quality" that will make us consume more, so the economy may grow; and not to help us become the kind of people who will <em>make things whole</em>. But explicit advertising is, of course, only a tip of an iceberg, through which our <em>socialization</em> is takes place.</p>  
+
<p>So how <em>are</em> our culture, and our "human quality" evolving? To see the answer, it is enough to just look around. To an excessive degree, the <em>symbolic environment</em> we are immersed in is a product of advertising. And explicit advertising is only a tip of an iceberg, comprising various ways in which we are <em>socialized</em> to be egotistical consumers; to believe in "free competition"—not in "making things <em>whole</em>".</p>  
  
<p>So the first reason why we need to abandon the "reality myth" is that it it alienates us from a lion's share of our cultural heritage—and makes us abandon the creation of culture and "human quality" to <em>power structure</em>. </p>  
+
<p>By believing that the role of information is to give us an "objective" and factual view of "reality", we have ignored and abandoned to decay core parts of our cultural heritage. <em>And</em> we have abandoned the creation of culture, and of "human quality", to <em>power structure</em>. </p>  
 +
 
 +
<!-- XXX
  
 
<p>The second reason is the role in which "constructed reality" plays within the <em>power structure</em>. </p>  
 
<p>The second reason is the role in which "constructed reality" plays within the <em>power structure</em>. </p>  
Line 447: Line 449:
 
<p>But if information and knowledge should now liberate us—as they did our ancestors following Galilei's time, then once again our <em>doxa</em>—and the very relationship we have with information that holds it in place—will need to change.</p>   
 
<p>But if information and knowledge should now liberate us—as they did our ancestors following Galilei's time, then once again our <em>doxa</em>—and the very relationship we have with information that holds it in place—will need to change.</p>   
  
 
<!-- XXX
 
  
 
<h3>Remedy</h3>  
 
<h3>Remedy</h3>  

Revision as of 05:14, 10 August 2020

Imagine...

You are about to board a bus for a long night ride, when you notice the flickering streaks of light emanating from two wax candles, placed where the headlights of the bus are expected to be. Candles? As headlights?

Of course, the idea of candles as headlights is absurd. So why propose it?

Because on a much larger scale this absurdity has become reality.

The Modernity ideogram renders the essence of our contemporary situation by depicting our society as an accelerating bus without a steering wheel, and the way we look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it as guided by a pair of candle headlights.

Modernity.jpg Modernity ideogram


Scope

"Act like as if you loved your children above all else",
Greta Thunberg, representing her generation, told the political leaders at Davos. Of course those people love their children—don't we all? But what Greta was asking for was to 'hit the brakes'; and when our 'bus' is inspected, it becomes clear that its 'brakes' too are dysfunctional.

So who will lead us through the next and most urgent step on our evolutionary agenda—learning how to update the systems in which we live and work?

Both Jantsch and Engelbart believed that "the university" would have to be the answer; and they made their appeals accordingly. But they were ignored—and so were Vannevar Bush and Norbert Wiener before them, and the others who followed.

Why?

It is tempting to conclude that the academia too followed the general trend, and evolved as a power structure. But to see solutions, we need to look at deeper causes.

As we pointed out in the opening paragraph of this website, the academic tradition did not develop as a way to pursue practical knowledge, but (let's call it that) "right" knowledge. Our tradition developed from classical philosophy, where the "philosophical" questions such as "How do we know that something is true?" and even "What does it mean to say that something is true?" led to rigorous or "academic" standards for pursuing knowledge. The university's core social role, as we, academic people tend to perceive it, is to uphold those standards. By studying at a university, one becomes capable of pursuing knowledge in an academic way in any domain of interest.

And as we also pointed out, by bringing up the image of Galilei in house arrest, this seemingly esoteric or "philosophical" pursuit was what largely enabled the last "great cultural revival", and led to all those various good things that we now enjoy. The Inquisition, censorship and prison were unable to keep in check an idea whose time had come—and the new way to pursue knowledge soon migrated from astrophysics, where it originated, and transformed all walks of life.

We began our presentation of knowledge federation by asking "Could a similar advent be in store for us today?"

Diagnosis

Here is why we felt confident in drafting an affirmative answer to this rhetorical question.

Early in the course of our modernization, we made a fundamental error whose consequences cannot be overrated. This error was subsequently uncovered and reported, but it has not yet been corrected.

Without thinking, from the traditional culture we've adopted a myth incomparably more disruptive of modernization that the creation myth—that "truth" means "correspondence with reality". And that the role of information is to provide us an "objectively true reality picture", so that we may distinguish truth from falsehood simply by seeing what fits in.

The 20th century science and philosophy disproved and abandoned this naive view.

Einstein-Watch.jpeg

It has turned out that there is simply no way to open the 'mechanism of nature' and verify that our models correspond to the real thing!

How, then, did our "reality picture" come about?

Reality, reported scientists and philosophers, is not something we discover; it is something we construct.

Part of this construction is a function of our cognitive system, which turns "the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience" into something that makes sense, and helps us function. The other part is a function of our society. Long before we are able to reflect on these matters "philosophically", we are given certain concepts through which to look at the world and organize it and make sense of it. Through innumerable 'carrots and sticks', throughout our lives, we are induced to "see the reality" in a certain specific way—as our culture defines it. As everyone knows, every "normal human being" sees the reality as it truly is. Wasn't that the reason why our ancestors often considered the members of a neighboring tribes, who saw the reality differently, as not completely normal; and why they treated them as not completely human?

Of various consequences that have resulted from this historical error, we shall here mention two. The first will explain what really happened with our culture, and our "human quality"; why the way we handle them urgently needs to change. The second will explain what holds us back—why we've been so incapable of treating our systems as we treat other human-made things, by adapting them to the purposes that need to be served.

To see our first point, we invite you to follow us in a one-minute thought experiment. To join us on an imaginary visit to a cathedral. No, this is not about religion; we shall use the cathedral as one of our ideograms, to put things in proportion and make a point.

What strikes us instantly, as we enter, is awe-inspiring architecture. Then we hear the music play: Is it Bach's cantatas? Or Allegri's Miserere? We see sculptures, and frescos by masters of old on the walls. And then, of course, there's the ritual...

We also notice a little book on each bench. When we open it, we see that its first paragraphs explain how the world was created.

Let this difference in size—between the beginning of Genesis and all the rest we find in a cathedral—point to the fact that, owing to our error, our pursuit of knowledge has been focused on a relatively minor part, on explaining how the things we perceive originated, and how they work. And that what we've ignored is our culture as a complex ecosystem, which evolved through thousands of years, whose function is to socialize people in a certain specific way. To create certain "human quality". Notice that we are not making a value judgment, only pointing to a function.

The way we presently treat this ecosystem reminds of the way in which we treated the natural ones, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. We have nothing equivalent to CO2 measurements and quotas, to even try to make this a scientific and political issue.

So how are our culture, and our "human quality" evolving? To see the answer, it is enough to just look around. To an excessive degree, the symbolic environment we are immersed in is a product of advertising. And explicit advertising is only a tip of an iceberg, comprising various ways in which we are socialized to be egotistical consumers; to believe in "free competition"—not in "making things whole".

By believing that the role of information is to give us an "objective" and factual view of "reality", we have ignored and abandoned to decay core parts of our cultural heritage. And we have abandoned the creation of culture, and of "human quality", to power structure.