"May we live in interesting times"
I can’t remember who said the statement above, but it definitely seems to be relevant today. As we look around the world we live in a few observations can be made. One, the world at large is beset by many problems. As people look into these problems, they are finding that most of these problems are related. Two, many of our problems don’t seem to fit into old frameworks. Old theories don’t seem to explain things. The maps that guide us into the future seem to be distorted.
The anthropologist A.F.C. Wallace calls these internal maps "the mazeways." We look around and see old familiar forms falling apart. One just has to glance at the daily paper to read about the problems. War, crime, inflation, pollution, unemployment, the list goes on and on. What is troubling about all these phenomena is that the old, tried and true solutions do not work anymore. It seems as if old solutions make our problems worse. In other words, as Korzybski said, "the map is not the territory." Our internal maps instruct us to act a certain way. In the past this "way" might have been appropriate, but reality is always changing. The old ways of thought are good for a time, but as time moves on we may find ourselves rigid, static, and fearful. Eventually, the evidence becomes overwhelming. Change is imminent
This is a recurring cycle in history. A society starts off with new ideas. These ideas become the vision for the majority of the people. There is a common consensus that all will work out. The future always looks brighter. As time moves along though, certain anomalies keep popping up. People begin fragmenting into different parties. The synergy so necessary for a healthy society, starts to loosen. Everyone perceives their needs to be different from everyone else. This leads to many breakdowns. In government, powerful special interest groups become the norm. The future looks increasingly darker.
In his book The Image of the Future, Fred Polak, a Dutch futurist, wrote that our images of the future play a crucial part in what shapes our society takes. In healthy societies, the images were positive. When there were weak images, the culture was decaying. He ended by saying, ‘bold visionary thinking is in itself the prerequisite for effective change."
With a positive vision of the future, crisis opens the door to understanding. Problems become opportunities to which we can open to new ways of seeing, to visualize new maps, maps that fit the new territory. This new territory is much different in many ways. It will take cooperation in all spheres of life. In this way humans will be able to work together to solve our many problems.
The above essay is a brief description of the context we are in. It is a ever-changing world. We are at a crossroads. We need a restructuring of the way we tend to view the world. Humankind is going to have to let go many of its past assumptions. Failure to change these basic assumptions can only lead to more problems.
The positivity of cooperation instead of competition is the solution to many of the current problems our species faces, such as climate change, economic distress, energy and environmental problems and the negativity of war as a solution to terrorism. Their are better solutions to all of our problems if we work together and get rid of our polarizing stances in our political discourse.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree. However I think that given our current mental state, even something as basic and natural as cooperation can seem radical. My question is do we attempt to change the masses or do we start our own communities. What is the method of change? Political? Environmental? Social? How????
DeleteA lot of the problems with the ideas of our time (capitalism, organized religions, science, etc.) are due largely to the complete fear of change, causing them to warp slowly into exactly what they were against.
ReplyDeleteConsider:
-Christianity from Jesus preaching love to hatred of homosexuals
-Punk rock from intellectual youth to a consumerist culture
-The sixties counterculture movement into yuppies
-Organic farms into mass corporate bought off enterprises
-Capitalism from a theorized system to bring profit into a system of enslavement
-Science from an open minded thirst for knowledge into a closed minded jargon
-Individuality into selfishness
They start as revolutionary ideas and become systems to which there is no conceivable alternative (to the masses). This process is coupled with indoctrination to make the population believe that they need all this garbage. The future does not look to positive.
Even on an individual level. Say someone grows up, and at the age of nineteen does not want to leave home. They have become too comfortable with the idea of free food, a house, and a family. It is very possible that they won't grow as a human unless they step out of there comfort zone. Nonetheless they remain, and slowly they lose every reason they had for staying there. Eventually the thought of change is so terrifying that they remain, even though it is sucking away there life force.
This has happened on a major scale with every system, simply because once it is a system, people have to apply unhinging laws to it rather than think of new changes. These systems plague every facet of our life, and the majority of people are indoctrinated into all of them before age 7. Therefore you cannot attack capitalism without attacking every other system, or in a sense the actual person. Until we step out of every zone of comfort, we cannot evaluate if anything exists positively or negatively.
I am taking an ethics class right now. One of our discussions dealt with the problem of amoralism, or a person without morals. The general idea was that if a person were to live this way, then they could not make any judgments about anyone else's behavior. This is because judging someone else's behavior requires a framework, or standpoint of some kind, which is not amoral.
DeleteTherefore, I agree with your point about the disability to evaluate whether anything exists negatively or positively without stepping outside of a comfort zone. Many people believe that their opinions are valid without ever knowing a single things about the subject which they are judging. Part of the reason everybody has such a negative opinion is because they stereotype and never step out of their comfort zone to try and understand.
Take, for example, the Christians versus the gay people. Many Christians will demonize gay people without even knowing that half of their friends are attracted in some way to the same sex. How many of them have actually talked with a gay person and realized that he or she is human? Likewise, gay people are quick to judge all Christians as terrible, hate preaching individuals, when in fact many Christians live their lives in a non-discriminatory manner.
Or how about the current issue with nuclear power in Iran? A lot of people want us to keep our hands out of the area and let them be. They care about human rights and that America should focus on its own issues. On the other hand, many believe that intervention is needed because they care about American lives and the possiblity of nuclear war, which is an issue for America all the same. Both sides are trying to minimize human loss the best way they know how. They both care about people.
Perhaps I am being too optimistic, but I think when it comes down to it, stepping out of one's comfort zone is part of the key to alleviating the negativity we see in our culture.
Good points. We could write books about all this. A background to the idea of amoralism is the structure behind a society in many ways determine the behavior. In the beginning of the modern era there was a separation between the economic and the moral sphere. Adam Smith came up with the idea of an "invisible hand" which said that individual greed would lead to social benefits. The humanities were co-opted in many ways and religion was co-opted. Smith and others looked at the values that would enable the market economy to work better and defined them as human nature. Values such as greed, avarice, acquisitiveness. This I would call a historical principle. " every society tends to make a virtue of of its necessities."
DeleteThat's interesting. 'Every society tends to make a virtue out of its necessities.'
DeleteI have to think about that one.
I'd like to comment specifically on the paragraph dedicated to Fred Polak's idea.
ReplyDeleteI find it fascinating that he made the connection between pessimism about the future and a decaying society. The reason being is that I know so many people who believe that the future is going to be worse than the present. I hear people talk about fixing America constantly. It's not hard to walk into a bookstore and not see at least three books trying to explain how America has to recover what's been lost. And my personal favorite 'That's the problem with this country'.
I'd like to point out a connection that I've made between the people who say these things and their behavior. I've found that those who are pessimistic and try to explain how hell is coming to Earth are often the least likely to do anything about it. They tell you that America is no good and then proceed to live in society and not do anything about it.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's ok to point out problems, but if people stopped being so negative and problem oriented and started being more positive and solution oriented, then I garuntee a lot more would get accomplished. It does not have to be large scale. If enough people were to see this way at once, any problem could be solved quickly and efficiently.
Very smart Sean. We are told communism and sociallism are bad, but when we look at the outcome in China we see a very stable economy, albeit with some personal problems for those in the lower classes; and in Venesuela the cost of gasoline is only $0.12 per gallon.
ReplyDelete