Difference between revisions of "Holotopia"
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<h3>Diagnosis</h3> | <h3>Diagnosis</h3> | ||
| − | <p>Two substantial changes | + | <p>Two substantial changes developed during the last century, in the core <em>determinants</em> from which the academic tradition took shape. One of them was pragmatic, the other one fundamental.</p> |
| − | < | + | </blockquote>The pragmatic change is in the role that the academic tradition has in our society. </blockquote> |
| − | < | + | <p>As Stephen Toulmin pointed out in "Return to Reason", from which the above excerpt was quoted, the academic <em>system</em> took shape in a culture where the Bible and the tradition had the prerogative to tell the people what to believe, what values to serve and how to behave. As the image of Galilei in house arrest might suggest, they held onto this prerogative most firmly!</p> |
| − | < | + | <blockquote>It was by a historical accident that the academic tradition assumed those <em>a much larger roles</em> in our society.</blockquote> |
| + | <p>The academic tradition acquired its new role, of curating the very relationship we have with information and with knowledge, by first discrediting and then replacing the Church and the tradition.</p> | ||
| − | < | + | <blockquote>The fundamental change is in the way <em>in which we conceive of</em> information and knowledge, and of the very meaning of "truth" and "reality". </blockquote> |
| − | <p> | + | <p>In the academic tradition and our society at large, it was generally considered as self-evident that "truth" means "correspondence with reality". And that the purpose of information is to give us real or true knowledge—of reality as it truly is.</p> |
| − | <p> | + | <p>This assumption, however, can no longer be rationally or academically maintained.</p> |
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[[File:Einstein-Watch.jpeg]] | [[File:Einstein-Watch.jpeg]] | ||
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| − | <p>It has turned out that <em>there is simply no way</em> to open the 'mechanism of nature' and verify that our models <em>correspond</em> to the real thing!</p> | + | <p>It has turned out that <em>there is simply no way</em> to open up the 'mechanism of nature' and verify that our ideas and models <em>correspond</em> to the real thing!</p> |
<p>How, then, did our "reality picture" come about?</p> | <p>How, then, did our "reality picture" come about?</p> | ||
| − | <p>Reality, | + | <p>Reality, the 20th century's scientists and philosophers found out, is not something we discover; it is something we <em>construct</em>. </p> |
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[[File:Bourdieu-insight.jpeg]] | [[File:Bourdieu-insight.jpeg]] | ||
</p> | </p> | ||
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| + | <!-- XXX | ||
<p>The second story is about sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and his "theory of practice"—where Bourdieu provided a conceptual framework to help us understand how <em>socialization</em> works; and in particular its relationship with what he called "symbolic power". Our reason for combining these two stories together is to suggest that we humans exhibit a similar turf behavior as Odin—but that this tends to remain largely unrecognized. Part of the reason is that, as Bourdieu explained, the ways in which this atavistic disposition of ours manifests itself are incomparably more diverse and subtle than the ones of horses—indeed as more diverse so as our culture is more complex than theirs. </p> | <p>The second story is about sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and his "theory of practice"—where Bourdieu provided a conceptual framework to help us understand how <em>socialization</em> works; and in particular its relationship with what he called "symbolic power". Our reason for combining these two stories together is to suggest that we humans exhibit a similar turf behavior as Odin—but that this tends to remain largely unrecognized. Part of the reason is that, as Bourdieu explained, the ways in which this atavistic disposition of ours manifests itself are incomparably more diverse and subtle than the ones of horses—indeed as more diverse so as our culture is more complex than theirs. </p> | ||
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| + | <p>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 performed by 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?</p> | ||
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| + | <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> | ||
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| + | <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> | ||
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| + | <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> | ||
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| + | <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> | ||
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| + | <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> | ||
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| + | <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> | ||
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| + | <p>To see our second point, that reality construction is a key instrument of the <em>power structure</em>, and hence of power, it may be sufficient to point to "Social Construction of Reality", where Berger and Luckmann explained how throughout history, the "universal theories" about the nature of reality have been used to <em>legitimize</em> a given social order. But this theme is central to <em>holotopia</em>, and here too we can only get a glimpse of a solution by looking at deeper dynamics and causes.</p> | ||
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| + | <p>To be able to do that we devised a <em>thread</em>—in which three short stories or <em>vignettes</em> are strung together to compose a larger insight.</p> | ||
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| + | <p>The first <em>vignette</em> describes a real-life event, where two Icelandic horses living outdoors—aging Odin the Horse, and New Horse who is just being introduced to the herd where Odin is the stallion and the leader—are engaged in turf strife. It will be suffice to just imagine these two horses running side by side, with their long hairs waving in the wind, Odin pushing New Horse toward the river, and away from his pack of mares.</p> | ||
Revision as of 10:07, 20 August 2020
Contents
HOLOTOPIA
An Actionable Strategy
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 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 the political leaders 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. Changing the system, on the other hand, is well beyond what the politicians have the power to do, or even conceive of.
The COVID-19 crisis too is demanding systemic change.
So who, what institution or system, will lead us in "changing course" by changing the systems in which we live and work—our collective mind to begin with?
Both Jantsch and Engelbart believed that "the university" would have to be the answer; and they made their appeals accordingly. But the universities ignored them—as they ignored Bush and Wiener before them, and others who followed.
Why?
It is tempting to conclude that the university institution too followed the general trend, and organized itself as a power structure. But to see solutions, we need to look at deeper causes.
We readily find them in the way in which the university institution developed. The academic tradition did not originate as a way to pursue practical knowledge, but to freely pursue knowledge for its own sake.
And as we pointed out in the opening paragraphs of this website, by highlighting the iconic image of Galilei in house arrest,
it was this free pursuit of knowledge that led to the last "great cultural revival".
The ethos of the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is deeply woven into the academic system and tradition—and for good reasons, as we have just seen. At the universities, we consider ourselves as the heirs and the custodians of a tradition that has historically led to some of the most spectacular evolutionary leaps in human history. Naturally, we remain faithful to this tradition; and we do that by meticulously following the interests and the processes of mathematics, physics, philosophy, biology, sociology and other traditional disciplines.
We, however, asked:
Can the academic tradition once again ignite a cultural revival?
The key to the answer, the pivotal point of change or "the systemic leverage point" is, as we shall see, the academic self-perception—and that's what we'll focus on.
Diagnosis
Two substantial changes developed during the last century, in the core determinants from which the academic tradition took shape. One of them was pragmatic, the other one fundamental.
</blockquote>The pragmatic change is in the role that the academic tradition has in our society. </blockquote>
As Stephen Toulmin pointed out in "Return to Reason", from which the above excerpt was quoted, the academic system took shape in a culture where the Bible and the tradition had the prerogative to tell the people what to believe, what values to serve and how to behave. As the image of Galilei in house arrest might suggest, they held onto this prerogative most firmly!
It was by a historical accident that the academic tradition assumed those a much larger roles in our society.
The academic tradition acquired its new role, of curating the very relationship we have with information and with knowledge, by first discrediting and then replacing the Church and the tradition.
The fundamental change is in the way in which we conceive of information and knowledge, and of the very meaning of "truth" and "reality".
In the academic tradition and our society at large, it was generally considered as self-evident that "truth" means "correspondence with reality". And that the purpose of information is to give us real or true knowledge—of reality as it truly is.
This assumption, however, can no longer be rationally or academically maintained.
It has turned out that there is simply no way to open up the 'mechanism of nature' and verify that our ideas and models correspond to the real thing!
How, then, did our "reality picture" come about?
Reality, the 20th century's scientists and philosophers found out, is not something we discover; it is something we construct.
