“New Windows onto New Worlds” by Richard Hames
Epistemological Pathologies
The civilizational worldview is as natural to us as the air we breathe. We are unconscious of any other framework. And while some of us may resist certain facets of this worldview at an instinctive level we still respond autonomically to its general principles – an implicit framework guiding meaning-making and which we assume to be just a normal part of being human. In effect it is the life-condition we discern experience each day of our lives and in which we are immersed from birth.
This worldview has endured at least since feudal times and possibly much longer. Along the way it has been reified by sundry beliefs related to human purpose and capability tested by competing ideologies and sustained by five moral impulses.
These theories ideologies and impulses have been progressively moulded into a set of deeply ingrained tenets defining what the majority of humanity believes to be real and consequently incontrovertible truths concerning the human condition:
1. A ruling power elite serviced by a cooperative yet subservient underclass of slaves or serfs
2. Wealth and power acquired by the elite at the serfs’ expense and protected via (state) political military or policing mechanisms
3. An all-encompassing religious or mythical structure (in which the elite are commonly depicted as representatives of a deity or divine beings) typically used to manufacture consent
4. An industrial war machine viewed as a crucial often principal driver of the economy and in which all aspects of production are controlled by the elite (through such things as language access and skills acquisition etc.)
5. Sport entertainment education and media are used as a social distraction in ways that help maintain compliance within the social order
6. Nature and the environment are exploited as a “god given” right
7. An irresistible narrative within society based upon competition indifference and scarcity – rather than cooperation empathy and abundance.
This set of seven attributes does not imply a universally applicable monist integrity. On the contrary our worldview is a chameleon changing its tone color and intensity according to its surroundings or in a social context its culture. But the critical thing to appreciate is that this worldview was invented by us. It is a social construction and as such can be remodeled – if that is what we want.