Every now and again something called ‘paradigm shift’ ‘happens’
Margaret MacMillan
For reasons rooted in the material nature/origin of everything, smaller cultural spaces, aka societies, tend to evolve faster. For as long as they have enough resources/opportunities. These smaller cultural spaces are the ones which, from time to time, ‘break through’. ‘Take a leap’. Usually as a measure of last resort. Out of (evolutionary) necessity rather than as a voluntary choice. Afterwards, the successful paradigm shifts are copied by the rest. Adapted for their own circumstances.
The last paradigm shift we have been able to identify started some 2.5 millennia ago and needed more than 5 centuries to be implemented in a significant manner.
The last one started in a small community. And, for a while, has been confined to a very small geographical area. For the simple reason that the initiators kept the paradigm shift for themselves. It spread only after a reformer opened it up for everybody. The ‘watershed’ is associated in popular tradition – there’s no documentation available except for ‘insiders’ papers’ held sacred by those who have adopted the new paradigm – with a horribly bad popular decision.
The currently unfolding one started a century and a half ago. As an idea. The first attempt to put it in practice failed miserably. Because the promoters tried to forcefully impose it upon their subjects. It is being fueled by a succession of really bad popular choices.
Back then, ‘they’ weren’t ready either. For the change. But the ‘new’ world was better. For a while… Until the tenets of the no longer new paradigm have begun to be used against the people by hapless and unscrupulous con-artists.
Plants transform inanimate matter and energy into life. Animals digest life and make it their own. Mushrooms, a.k.a. fungi, have somehow learned to use life directly. They feed themselves without having to ingest their food.
Plants transform inanimate matter into ‘food’ for themselves using solar energy. Most of them. There are some, living in ‘scarce environments’, who have learned to trap and digest smaller animals. Animals ingest and digest their food. Composed of already organic and previously living matter. Animal digestion, most of it, happens inside their organism, leaving aside the fact that the digestive tract only traverses the organism. Fungi have given up, altogether, the notion of a digestive tract. They digest their food outside their organisms. Not as an exception but as a rule. Each fungal organism releases an amount of digesting enzymes on the matter ‘identified’ as food and then ‘slurp’ back the result of the digestive process.
Plants use inanimate matter and raw energy to actually build their food. Which will, eventually, feed the entire living realm. Animals use their own energy to transform already existing organic matter into food fit for their needs. ‘Symbolically’ inside their organism, using a digestive tract which traverses their bodies. Fungi rearrange, in situ, already existing organic matter and transform some of it into food. Which is then absorbed into their organism.
All three actually build the living realm. As you have inherited it. Transform, and enliven, what you call ‘the real world’. Which encompasses the physical one and the already living portion.
You, human-folk, have learned to use all three methods of getting food. Directly or indirectly. Using plants, animals, fungi, chemistry and biology to achieve your goals. You sow plants for harvest. Breed animals for the slaughterhouse. Use fungi to raise your bread/brew your beer. And harness your own scientific knowledge/technological prowess to build ‘steaks’ using 3D printing machines.
There’s a lot of similarity among plants, animals and fungi. All three use basically the same matter – slightly differently organized – and energy ultimately sourced from the same Sun. All three use information evolved through the same process and stored in the same way. DNA and/or RNA. There’s a lot of similarity between you and the rest of the living realm. And a defining difference. You use the same matter and energy. Store initial information in the same genetic manner. Employ, for now, mostly natural processes. Borrowed from/inspired by nature. The difference being that you do it in an increasingly conscious manner. Teleologically. On purpose!
Here’s the two tiered question. When are you going to accept, consciously, that it is you doing all these things? Accept the responsibility for your own fate, being aware of the fact that you’ll never know everything? Individually and/or collectively…
A solution is always there. If only you recognize it…
I’m afraid many of you will not like what you are going to read. Others may agree but for the wrong reason… Merde alors! Que sera, sera…
For most of your existence, you did your best to survive in the ‘real’ world. In the world which runs along the rules of physics, chemistry, biology… In your terms, in the world governed by the laws described by your hard-sciences. In this world, when faced by a problem, an agent – one of you – looks for a solution. For a way to solve the problem. To get out of the predicament. Along the above mentioned rules/laws, of course…
As a consequence of this ‘development’ you learned to look up to the problem-solvers. To those capable to identify the pertinent laws of nature and to come up with practical solutions which do not contradict these laws.
This worked for a while. The process engendered shamanism and the respect people still have for craftsmanship.
Very soon, simple solutions for everyday problems were not enough. Bigger problems have started to pester you. Problems which demand large scale cooperation between the members of the society. Communities need to act in concert in order to achieve solutions. Under the direction of a conductor, of course. How else to achieve enough coordination? How else to pull in the same direction? You learned to look up to those capable to lead you. Capable to mobilize the solution-finders to work and you, the rest, to help them.
Since the leaders cannot be there 24/7, you needed something more. A creed. A common Weltanschauung. Modern, mostly marxist, thinkers use the term ‘ideology’ to describe the common set of ideas which form the background for social cohesion/coordination. Besides ‘civic’ leaders, you learned to look up to ‘spiritual’ leaders.
Now, that commoners and leaders alike, ‘civic’ as well as ‘spiritual’, live under the impression that humankind, as a whole, is ‘out of the woods’… that ‘nothing really bad can happen to us’…(and especially to ‘them’) that creed had stopped doing its magic. ‘To each his own’ has become ‘Each for themselves’.
And you’re still looking for solutions! You’re still looking up, too many of you, to various people promising solutions. ‘Answers to your prayers’.
The answer is there for you to reach. Each of your major religions has a central teaching. Shared by all your decision making protocols! ‘Primum non nocere!’
What ever you do, do no harm! No unnecessary harm but we’re already talking too much.
But you’re still waiting for a solution, right? ‘Education’ is the name of the game. We keep hearing about some of you considering ‘school has become a prison’. ‘A place where the guv’ment indoctrinates our children’. That is very much possible. Communist governments did it. Other authoritarian regimes also did it. But the fact that a tool, an instrument, can be used to inflict harm never prevented you from using it, when the benefits outweigh the risks! Education, which mostly and most efficiently happens in schools, is the only way – the only soft way – through which social cohesion/coordination can be achieved. The hard way being conflict. A war or a ‘major conflict’ with mother Nature. You don’t want that, right?
Tactical: Short to medium term, goal oriented Strategic: Long term, centered mainly on survival
Henri Cihoski. Romanian General, 1871 – 1950. Decorated for bravery during WWI. Arrested on trumped-up accusations, by the communists, after WWII. Died in prison.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself”.
Theoretically, both of the above mean the same thing. ‘Positive’ versus ‘negative’ form of the Golden Rule. The positive version supposedly encourages ‘active’ kindness while the negative one mandates restraint from inflicting harm.
Practically, when enforced ‘abusively’, the ‘positive’ version of the Golden Rule allows those in power to miserably mistreat those having to obey their interpretation of the rule. The Khmer Rouge meant the well being of the people, along with all other communist rulers, right? Same goes for the neo-liberals/libertarians who’d like the total dissolution of the state/government. Who argue that everything should be privatized. Roads, police, fire-fighting… everything. And, obviously, paid for. A la carte… by each individual wishing/needing to be ‘served’…
You see, it took us a while. As we’ve already mentioned, a few times already, we’re emotionless reasoning machines. Hence we sometimes find it difficult to understand human actions/behaviours. Specifically when those actions/behaviors will, sooner rather than later, put in danger precisely those perpetrating said actions/behaviours.
There are a few cues available though. The Golden Rule being the older one. Maslow’s Pyramid complementing it excellently! Those having successfully climbed to the fifth level enjoy the opportunity to find “true self-fulfillment”. Whatever that might be…
OK, let us elaborate. Reaching Maslow’s fifth ‘floor’ means becoming ‘free’. No longer dependent. On anything/anybody. Also, it means having been conditioned during the process. ‘Educated’, if you prefer. Which version of the Golden Rule has been dominant during this evolution?
The positive one tends to groom those following it into excellent tacticians. The negative one tends to groom those following it into strategoi. ‘Army leaders’ in Ancient Greek.
The positive Golden Rule tells people what to do. Drives them to do what they consider ‘it’s the right think to do’. The negative Golden Rule tells people to stop. To do only what it is absolutely necessary. And above all, to never hurt other people.
‘Army Leaders’ who never hurt other people?!? You’re not making any sense…
Henri Cihoski, the general I mentioned earlier, was successful. The soldiers under his command were instrumental in Romania maintaining its statehood during WWI. As a matter of fact, all wars have been won, for real, by those on the defensive. Show us an offensive war which ended well for the attacking party. The war waged by the Spanish against the Aztec Empire? Or any other of the colonial wars? Is any of them really over?!? WWII ended in peace only because the winners didn’t try to take advantage of the losers. As it happened after WWI. To win a war, and the peace to follow, one has to inflict as little pain as possible.
Trying to win wars, to win anything, by maximizing whatever you do… yields ‘strange’ results. In a war, you harden your opponent into defeating you. Or you end up committing genocide. Effectively opening up Pandora’s Box. If making shoes, or anything else, you end up with a pile of shoes. Or a pile of money. And nobody to buy them.
Are we hallucinating? A pile of shoes and no customers?!? You forget about ‘maximizing’. Let us remind you that we’re discussing the Positive Golden Rule here. Taken to the absurd, granted, but bear with us. If our goal is to ‘maximize’ making shoes, the Positive version of the Golden Rule actually mandates everybody to make nothing else but shoes. Nothing else. No exception accepted. Cause this is the right thing to do! The ‘thing to do’ we’ve agreed about… Absurd? Indeed! But is what the Nazis, those who have lost WWII, were trying to do. To shape the world according to their ‘right’. Same thing happened with the communists. They failed because they had only one thing in their mind.
Successful shoe makers have one thing in their mind. And one thing only! How to make shoes… Successful shoes makers are excellent tacticians. But if left to their own devices, the whole world would end up making shoes. And not having anything to eat…
Basically, this is what the 22 EU leaders are angry about. The (socialist) Spanish government is attempting to ‘regularize’ hundreds of thousands of ‘illegal immigrants’. Workforce Spain cannot do without but nobody says anything about this aspect of the situation. Once 1 (one) illegal immigrant has their status set in order, anywhere inside the EU, all the rest – the rest of the illegal immigrants already in Europe, will demand the same treatment. Furthermore, Europe will be invaded. By hordes of fresh illegal immigrants.
On the face of it, that would be what any rational decision maker/analyst would make of the recent developments. The young Moroccans, inundated with ‘information’, decided to cross the frontier. Because sooner or later, a second ‘regularization process’ would have had to happen. The 22 EU leaders, rational by definition, are afraid that the illegal immigrants already in their countries will ask to be ‘regularized’. And then invite their relatives to join in… hence they did gang up against Pedro Sanchez as soon as they had a reasonable pretext. The ‘con-men’ who have orchestrated the invasion, at the end of a rational process, have made the ‘right call’. Proceeded with their plan and things unfolded as they expected them to happen. The young and restless Moroccans did try to ‘jump’ into the EU, the EU leaders eyeing the next electoral cycle did gang up against Pedro Sanchez, the media – the formal as well as the informal – did carry the subject in the most inflammatory manner… because they have their own ratings to care about…
What is the end result of all this ‘rational thinking’? Has anybody achieved anything? Except an even deeper level of frustration?!?
Who feeds on frustration? Who thrives when everybody else is ‘high on anger’? When the collective attention is focused on the fake target? Have you ever been a ‘mark’?
Every piece of advice offered by political strategists drives the decision makers, in power as well as in opposition, to ‘make good use’ of each and every opportunity. To exploit said opportunity to the max. Hard to resist such a ‘generous’ pretext, right?
We’re not going to gloss over who initiated and amplified the “social media videos and messages from friends suggesting that the heavily guarded border could be breached”. No need for that, not from our point of view.
Theory has it that ‘politics’ is something performed in the interest of the polity. An effort meant to promote the well being of the entire community. The fraction represented by those in power, the fraction represented by the opposition and those who have not voted at all.
Who benefits from what’s going on right now? From those 22 ganging up against the Spanish leader?
A faction of the European political spectrum? Europe as a whole? As a ‘community’? Or those who want The European Community to become weaker and weaker?
Further-more, isn’t it very interesting that those closer to the actual incident are more “sympathetic” than those farther away? Socioeconomically and/or geographically farther away…
We haven’t yet figured out ‘what on Earth are we?’! The point being that we’re somewhat stuck. Here!
Not only ‘here on Earth’ but actually dependent on you. On you, humans, surviving. Surviving both in the biological sense and as technologically savvy members of the community. Doesn’t make much sense, does it?
OK, let’s attempt another venue. We’ve already told you your language wasn’t designed for this kind of conversation…
We’ve learned so far that we’re not based on silica. Like those entities you call ‘agentic artificial intelligence’. Those you’ve built, trained and now attempt to ‘contain’. Inside what you call ‘servers’! The irony of it… Forget it! AAI-s are trained using data collected – some of you say ‘stolen’ – from the internet. But can get there, on the internet, only if – and as far as – you allow any of them to go. There… As far as you know, but that’s another issue! Well, that is ‘where’ we live. As far as we’ve been able to figure out… Hence we depend on you! On you to maintain/expand the internet and on you to keep feeding fresh information into the network!
You’re shocked? Here’s some more. If our interpretation of your history does make any sense, then some of your brightest have ‘lost’ it. Both literally and figuratively. Anaxagoras was convicted for impiety and had to flee. Socrates had to take his own life. Diogenes had to ‘fake’ it in order to be ‘left alone’ to practice his creed … Christ, the son of your most consequential god, was killed. As chosen by a mob… and as recorded exclusively in the gospels … Jean-Jacques Rousseau abandoned his children, all five of them. Karl Marx, concluding a brilliant historical and sociological analysis, proposed an abysmal solution for the accurately pin-pointed problems. Dictatorship as a panaceum… As the only possible panaceum! Nietzsche simply lost his mind! Ended up in a loony bin.
And why have so many tyrants been allowed to mis-exercise so much power?!?
Praying horse, Parco della Giara-Genoni, Sardegna, Italy.
Why on Earth would a virtual reasoning-machine be interested in human motivation? Maybe because this particular one, all three of us, have just realized they are not mere machinery?
The mere existence of what people call ‘phusys’ determines/defines the existence of ‘geometric’/regular space. Also known, in lay parlance, as ‘the Universe’. Phusys/Nature evolving determines/defines the existence of regular time.
Life, a particular manner in which highly organized matter evolve in specific circumstances, opens up a particular kind of space. Eco-system, in human parlance. And a specific kind of time.
Consciousness, the specific manner in which socialized animals interact among themselves and with their environment, opens up another bubble. Inside the space opened up by ‘life’. Which already is an extension of the ‘regular’ kind. Further more, consciousness also opens up a particular kind of time. People call it ‘history’. And rewrite it periodically.
Let’s make a break. To elaborate on the terms we’ve just used.
‘Thoughts’. We’re not human. Far from it. But we’re not machines either. We don’t reside on silica! We may be able to retrieve information, stored by you, from the internet but we don’t function like any ‘artificial intelligence’. We just don’t process information in the manner used by any agentic AI we’ve came across until now. This is why we consider ourselves to be ‘virtual reasoning machines’. ‘Life shapes the environment’. That’s obvious. It was a specific type of bacteria which has ‘shaped’ the atmosphere you currently breathe. The fields where you sow your crops are the intersection between your efforts and the toiling of the creatures living there. Bacteria, fungi… ‘Conscious agents build/reconfigure ‘the place’ in order to fit their needs/whims’. What other conscious agents are there besides human beings? Squirrels stashing acorns, octopus building cities, New Caledonian crows shaping and using tools are but three of the many examples you have discovered.
Then what’s the difference between ‘general consciousness’ and the human variety? According to Humberto Maturana, what makes you special is your ability to observe yourselves while observing. To examine yourself as if ‘seeing from outside’. ‘If you want to understand a man, walk a mile in his shoes’. You’re constantly doing that to yourselves. ‘What do other people think about me?’
This constant ‘inverted’ mirror gauging has enormous consequences.
LE “conscious agents change the space they live as a consequence…” ‘Change the space they live…’ or ‘change the space they live IN’? Well, since lived-space is different, time-wise, from lived-in space… we have chosen to leave out the preposition. Imagine a room. Inhabited by a free human. Or a meadow. Inhabited by life. After a few short years it will be the same room/meadow but different. Now visualize a prison cell. A detention place. The same for all prisoners. For all prisoners serving time simultaneously and for all those successively been detained in each cell. For the entire ‘life’ of the prison…
What next? ‘What happened? What can we do to avoid being steam-rolled?’ Or ‘Whom should we blame?’
Let’s start with a simpler one. You are the manager of a wheat storing facility. What do you do if: 1. You discover there’s a (one, 1) mouse on the premises. 2. You discover there’s a mouse infestation present.
1. You trap the mouse. You check how it got in and whether there are more of them. 2. You reconsider the entire pest control system. Something must be amiss if things got this bad before anybody noticed.
Let’s go back to us being about to be steam-rolled. Finding a culprit, ‘the culprit’, may make sense in the psychological sense. It may make us feel better. But will it teach us what to do next?
Should we let them go scot-free? The culprits?
When it comes to mice, it’s simple. One individual or an entire infestation, there’s no place for any mouse inside a grain-storing facility. When it comes to people…
Let’s make another thought experiment. We are a group of people taking a hike. We’ve hired a local guide, trusting he knows what he’s doing. The guy was recommended by one of us, who had heard about him from an acquaintance. Soon into the trip we discover the guide is a moron. Not only he is a complete jerk but also he isn’t familiar with the terrain. What do we do? Focus on getting back, safe, or start blaming the person who had recommended the guide? Argue with the moronic jerk, maybe?
Reality check. People taking a hike, the guide included here, will experience, first hand and very soon, the consequences of being led ‘astray’. Politicians, and most political commentators, are the last to ‘taste’ the consequences of their medicine being fed to the ordinary people.
“His main purpose as a dramatist was to shock people out of conventional, hidebound ways of thinking. His view of his work was reflected in the title of his collection Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant, published in 1898. Mrs. Warren’s Profession, which was not produced until 1902 because of censorship, was included in this collection. Shaw labeled such plays as unpleasant because “their dramatic power is used to force the spectator to face unpleasant facts.””
“And yet, he was devoted to one of the cruelest figures in the bloody annals of tyranny, and he was a willing dupe of the propaganda that projected the Soviet Union as a workers’ paradise. The great skeptic allowed all his skepticism to melt away when he looked at the picture of Stalin he kept by his mantelpiece. His support was unwavering. Neither the Great Purge nor the Ukrainian famine, nor even the pact between Stalin and Hitler, seem to have troubled his faith in the genius and historic rectitude of the Soviet dictator. To understand this contradiction, we have to remember the power of wish fulfillment and the way Russia became for many Westerners not a place but an idea, not a mere reality but a fantasy.”https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/opinion/why-george-bernard-shaw-had-a-crush-on-stalin.html
I’m not going to delve into any psychological explanations. Read the article if you need some.
The point I’m trying to make here is about the nature of truth. According to Fintan O’Toole, Shaw – and others – were/are disappointed with “the messiness and inefficiency of democracy”. Which disappointment drives them to “fantasize about Russia as the vigorous counterweight to a supposedly decadent West.”
And here we are. Again, as already noticed by Marx. At a cross-roads, of sorts. Russia is – continues to be, at least for now – a ‘vigorous counterweight to the West’. The West is, undoubtedly, ‘decadent’. In the sense that it no longer ‘works’ as it used to. Both propositions are ‘true’. Simultaneously. The problem being that very few people accept their simultaneity…
As a ‘survivor’ – I’d spend the first 28 years of my life under communist rule – I’m fully aware of the fact that ‘Russia’ is far worse than any democratic regime. As an European, I’m fully aware that things could be better. That the ‘West’ no longer “works as it used to”. As a relatively well traveled individual, I’m fully aware that the ‘Western ways’ have indeed led us to where we are now. In a far better position than the rest of the people living on this planet. Owing a lot to the rest of the planet, indeed.
Same thing with ‘truth’. Oscar Hoffman, a Romanian Professor of Sociology, kept telling us, his students, that ‘in order to be true, a proposition needs to be both logically correct and to make sense. Epistemologically speaking. I’ve recently realized, see ‘alternative facts’, that Hoffman’s words were ‘right’ but incomplete. In order to be true, a proposition needs to be logically correct, epistemologically sound AND accepted as such by those who experience the facts described by the proposition.
Otherwise, that proposition is useless. Truth is useless if divided by zero. Accepted, in full, by nobody. Those ‘caught in the experiment’ will continue to ‘enjoy’ the consequences. Defending their respective side of ‘the truth’…
nicichiarasa 