Work in Progress - Call to Action

General
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Last weekend I went to a potluck that was a Bahá’í devotional. It involved readings in a circle, most of which were literary, on the theme of nature. After the readings, people got to share whatever we were feeling. At that potluck was an Ojibwa woman who referenced this:

That’s one version of what metahistory looks like from an indigenous POV. The challenge that entices me is to tell a pan-human story. For that to work, the story must somehow be both unitary and differentiated all at the same time. Ultimately, I can only imagine that project coming together generations from now - but there is a current in the flow of events that draws my fantasies into it …

On a nuts and bolts level, in Ultrasociety, Peter Turchin describes how in the Pleistocene humans were thin on the ground, environmentally challenged, and generally egalitarian and collaborative. That’s our evolutionary baseline. Once climate warmed and stabilized in the Holocene, it was game on for civilization. Very much as Graeber and Wengrow argue in The Dawn of Everything, settled agricultural life was in no wise an improvement over nomadic lifestyles. Indeed, by the time we got to tyrannical god-kings with literal pyramids of sacrifice, it was all pretty miserable for everyone not at the top. So why did civilization spread, despite its obvious drawbacks?

Turchin tells a simple story of the Darwinian evolution of culture. Larger groupings with better weapons had cultural survival value. Why did the West go WEIRD? For all of Turchin’s reasons. (WEIRD and McGilcrist’s left-brain dominant basically describe the same psychological tendencies). So in the rear view mirror, that’s how we all got to where we are. All of us have indigenous nomadic ancestors in deep time. All of our families got dragged into the civilization machine at one time or another. What differentiates one people from another is mostly when they got dragged in and what those circumstances were. At this point (with just few tribal exceptions around the edges), getting sucked into civilization is a near-universal human story line.

This story has a turning point, however, in the Axial Age, when god-kings tumble and prophets in multiple cultures promote ethics and virtue over dominance through oppression and slaughter. If there is a “progress” story in the last couple thousand years, it’s the slow unwinding of god-king hierarchies into something closer to primordial egalitarianism. Of course, there were profound asymmetries in how this played out in different parts of the world. At the same name European culture was advancing egalitarian thinking about social contracts and human rights, it was busy enslaving everyone else!

In the current situation, it’s fortunate that indigenous perspectives are still available from those not yet fully ingested by the civilization machine. It’s fortunate because such peoples remind us who we all once were, and who was might become again, if we can fill the hollow shell of technical accomplishment with values more rooted in the life and love.

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I like your framing of Renaissance, return to source. Yeah :+1:

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My current reading has given me a new outlook on more recent turns between left and right brained approached. First I read a biography of Spinoza. He lived at the peak of Christianity in Europe. His Jewish family fled the inquisition in Portugal to the more tolerant Netherlands. Spinoza questioned the metaphysics and beliefs around the absolute truth of the bible. He believed God was found in nature and that rationality was the way to truth and a better life. For this he was exiled from the Jewish community and suppressed by the Christians. Yet he persisted in his support of the Cartesian revolution. He saw the need for more Blue World in a flawed Red World society built on superstition and persecution.

Contrasting this is Notes From the Underground by Dostoevsky where the author exposes the Nihilism of the pure rationality that has swept over Russia. The author bashes the “Crystal Palace” with the phoniness it creates. People strive toward meaningless goals that will provide fleeting satisfaction. Boredom causes irrational actions to affirms one’s agency. Doing nothing becomes a logical choice. Here, society has pushed too far into the left-brain and has only pushed further since.

In this context, we should strive for what is missing - Red World connection and meaning-making. However, like McGilchrist says, we need to keep rationalism as means to serve the right-brain’s desires. History shows this is a delicate balance to maintain, especially with the left-brain’s overconfidence and power seeking. Are there examples of societies that did this well?

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McGilchrist likes Athens of the Periclean Age, the Roman Republic, and the Renaissance. I’m reading Master and His Emissary right now, but I’m not finding any very convincing analysis for why culture swings one way or the other at any given time.

Sorokin has a somewhat similar model, with the balanced sweat spot being Integral (Idealistic). In your terms, Sensate is too much Blue World, Ideational is not enough Blue World. Integral (Idealistic) is the right mix. What I like about the article below is it offers a plan for how individuals can strive for balance also. Culture in Crisis: The Visionary Theories of Pitirim Sorokin | Satyagraha

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Exactly, we need the right balance. As you say, it’s not just about developing the missing element (red world), but also developing the left brain, as McGilchrist, Vervaeke do (and we might also add Wilber, Heidegger etc), to a position where it can clearly recognise its own limits. This recognition of limits - similar to Kant’s critique of reason - on the one hand opens up the necessary space for integration with embodied, indigenous ways of being, and also on the other hand clears the way for a wise development of reason, science and technology within those limits.

The vision that’s coming to me is of a monasticism (whether Western- or Eastern-inspired) in which deep spiritual community is combined with deep rationality - and a meta-culture allowing for some communities and individuals to explore one hemisphere more than the other, without losing appreciation of the importance of both.

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I like your formulation quite a bit.

In reply to @SilentShaun earlier, the question came up about finding civilizational balance. Desirable as that might seem, the pragmatics of balancing an entire civilization are daunting! As a practical matter, finding personal balance sounds like a more achievable goal. Also, as your calls for a new sort of monasticism reflect, personal balance may be more accessible through the support of communities of practice. Or through networks of communities of practice, some of whom may be focused more on “Red World” and others more on “Blue World”, but not so much they can’t communicate with one another. That sort of differentiated, yet connected, network seems most plausible to me going forward.

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how does that compare with Castalia, the quasi-monastic community in Hesse’s Glass Bead Game (Glasperlenspiel)?

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Great question. I’d really like to reread that book and find out. (And also to clarify, the monastery idea was more of a hazy ideal rather than a concrete proposal).

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My interest in neo-monasticism is among other things, very pragmatic. Imagine some relatively bad versions of metacrisis collapse do indeed occur. People are going to need to concentrate residence on available land to guarantee access to food. The spiritual side comes into play in groups like that, because there will need to be shared values - likely supported by music and ritual - if only to assure peace in the community. “Rugged individual” types will likely get banished or worse, because that sort of egotism is toxic when survival itself requires cooperation.

In reference to the Magister Ludi question, I don’t see much connection. What I’m describing is no game.

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I’m not understanding the lack of connection here, @RobertBunge — isn’t the point of Hesse’s Glasperlenspiel exactly to highlight the question of the value of purely intellectual endeavour in a world potentially in crisis? The book is exactly not extolling the value of playing games per se. Again, aren’t the values of music and ritual in a sense embodied in the Glass Bead Game itself?

I still rate it as a great book, worth reading — I should re-read it sometime, too. No wonder it earned Hesse the Nobel Prize.

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I’ve never read that particular work by Hesse, so it’s likely best not to make too much of what I’m gleaning from the summarizes. Let’s just say that the summarizes sound dreamy, and my recent work is aimed more at the gritty, nightmarish world that may well be upon us. (I found myself quoting Churchill twice in my recent paper, and that’s no accident. The entire theme of the work is Churchillian it its sense of both threat and resolve.) Hesse in Switzerland during the Hitler era feels different to me.

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Try it, you might be pleasantly intrigued.