Holotopia: Convenience paradox

H O L O T O P I A: F I V E I N S I G H T S

The Renaissance liberated our ancestors from preoccupation with the afterlife, and empowered them to seek happiness here and now. Their lifestyle changed and their culture blossomed. What will the next "great cultural revival" be like?

We may approach the same question also from another angle. Combined together, the first four insights show that the spontaneous evolution of the academic tradition has brought it, and us with it, to a new turning point—beyond which it continues by removing from us the people the burden of the narrow frame, which made us misunderstand and damage culture. And by empowering us to combine whatever is relevant in human experience, from all time periods and geographical locations and cultural traditions, and create basic insights that can illuminate our evolutionary 'way'.

By highlighting the trials and tribulations of Galilei and Socrates, as founding fathers of science and the academia, we pointed out that providing knowledge for "evolutionary guidance" (by liberating us from power-laden myths and from the delusion of the senses, through devotion to truth, empirical insights and rational analysis) is what the academic tradition is really all about.

To the four example results of such an undertaking, we are now adding the convenience paradox as fifth. Already the power structure insight showed how culture can be used as a medium of power-motivated socialization. By combining it with the socialized reality insight, we could see that the societal 'order of things' we've been socialized to accept as "the reality" can be just a product of power structure. We begin to see our liberation from such myths as a core political issue. The convenience paradox insight undertakes to remove another cognitive obstacle, which is a delusion of our senses—which emphasize instant causes and effects, and obscure the long-term ones.

We don't seek knowledge and wisdom to orient our basic choices because we believe that we already know the answers, that we can experience them directly.

The convenience paradox insight is that convenience is a useless and deceptive value—which by inhibiting the development of culture, and of "human quality", hinders us from pursuing the goals and directions that are the most rewarding, and most germanely human!

When convenience paradox is understood, it becomes obvious that we have indeed no clue about the life's most important and interesting question:

What values, and what goals, are really worth pursuing?

Imagine a culture where the convenience paradox is a basic culture-supported facts, as the Newton's Laws are.

The convenience paradox insight is a beginning, not an end. Beyond it is the pursuit of knowledge, and of human cultivation—leading to a true blossoming of our potential. In no epoch before has the heritage of the world traditions been available to a single human population. And in no other epoch has this population matured epistemologically and technologically to the point of being able to take true advantage of the humanity's cultural welth.

We should not be a single bit surprised if it turns out that a cultural change of a similar scale is ahead of us, as the change in our understanding and transforming the natural world, which science and technology have enabled for us.

What points of reference and what sources will become relevant? What new insights will emerge?

We here point to the breadth and the depth of possibilities by a few examples.