Over the last 5,000 years the ambiguities of linear written narratives and convenient interpretations have played a big role in amplifying social power gradients. The story of infinite economic growth and technological progress portrays a completely delusional and scientifically impossible world, which not only ignores biophysical limits, but also human cognitive and emotional limits. Nurturing the human capacity to extend trust to each other, and engaging in the big cycle of life as part of an ecology of care beyond the human is the biggest challenge of our times.

The institutions and accepted cultural practices of the modern world are traumatising the entire planet. The polycrisis, which is the modern human predicament that we are all living through, can be illustrated with three short cultural narratives:

1. A timely indigenous commentary on WEIRD culture from the US.
2. The effects of the one-dimensional “logic” of global capital can be understood by looking at the overall cultural and ecological impact on the small island nation of Nauru.
3. The effects of the arbitrary anthropocentric cut-off points of the bell curve in the social realm can also be understood by looking at the overall cultural and ecological impact on a small island nation such as Tuvalu.

These narratives illustrate the cognitive and emotional blindspots that are baked into “normality”.

The profound life destroying impact of the modern human obsession with measuring, and then reducing the dimensionality of all problem spaces to the one-dimensional metric of financial capital can hardly be overestimated. The classic novel Flatland comes to mind. Flatland illustrates the confusions and the loss of meaning created by reducing 4 dimensional spacetime to 2 spatial dimensions and the dimension of time, i.e. a reduction of a 4 dimensional problem space to 3 dimensions.

The semantic chemical building blocks of the biological world we inhabit contain thousands of dimensions. If we add emergent phenomena at larger levels of scale, we live in a world of millions and billions of semantic dimensions. We all have our own unique way of making sense of the world, from the perspective of the relational ecology of care that surrounds us.

And yet, we live in a world where human social affairs, across all levels of scale, are dominated by a one-dimensional metric. Some still recognise that there is “life out there” beyond finance, but our minds have been warped by the extensive exposure to a one-dimensional metric.

Language

Over the last 5,000 years, linear written language and convenient interpretation have played a big role in amplifying social power gradients.

In Aotearoa a group of Maori scholars have produced an excellent 400 page report, comparing the English and Maori version of the Treaty of Waitangi, meticulously uncovering all the linguistic techniques that were used by the British Crown to create and then maintain the illusion of a partnership between equals.

Written language is frequently used to distract from the ambiguities of linear narratives, creating wriggling room for convenient interpretations, especially when key details can be hidden by exploiting the semantic blind spots created by the translation between two very different languages.

Stepping back, looking across all empire building civilisations, the collective learning disability induced by powered-up social relationships can be traced to the following ways of systematically distorting and dismissing lived experiences:

• Oversimplification by reducing complex problem spaces to a much lower (one!) dimensional space. This is the commonality across all pyramidal systems of power – there is one perspective that dominates over all others.
• Inducing a systemic power differential by distorting the oversimplified one dimensional metric with the notion of “interest”. This is the religion of economics.
• Watering down the precautionary principle via cognitive blind spots created by the arbitrary “normalising” cut-off points of the bell curve in the social realm. Example: entire island nations completely get ignored until they are doomed. Their local existence is deemed “insignificant” in relation to what happens in the so-called “real”, i.e. the big “normative” world where all decisions are made. This is the scientism that is blooming in the era of big junk data.
• Systematically exploiting the ambiguities of linear narratives by nominating a convenient “authority” for interpretation. For a current example, we only need to look at the way Julian Assange is treated by the British Crown. I remember growing up in a world that had Soviet dissidents. This century the United States are producing American dissidents. Power always corrupts. The Anglosphere is “leading” the world in legal engineering and perception management.
• Systematically exploiting cognitive blind spots created by translations between different languages, again by nominating a convenient “authority” for interpretation. Aotearoa is a poster child for this approach. This goes hand in hand with implicit assumption that some languages are more “primitive” than others.
• A misguided focus on “winning” arguments rather than engaging in omni-directional learning to better understand each other. This is the bullying that is taught in busyness schools, i.e. the powered-up “art” of marketing, sales, and corporate power politics. The most honest conversation that I have had on this topic was with a former technology investor who describes busyness schools as “places that train people how to become a bad person”. My own attempts at educating MBA students in the neurodiversity paradigm were also disillusioning and traumatising.
• There may be further distorting factors that can’t be traced to a combination of the above. Your lived experience is much appreciated!

None of this is new. The Daoists knew as much from lived experiences with powered-up empires over 2,500 years ago. The elements above are the cultural foundation on top of which it becomes possible to establish a “science” of ABA, which deserves to be renamed to Applied Behaviourism and Arm twisting.

To make sense of the world, to stay tethered to human scale, to survive, to adapt, and to thrive together, the salient question in categorising beliefs is not the question of truth versus fiction, but the question of trustworthy versus not trustworthy. This in turn is a human scale context specific cultural question.

I want to focus on two interconnected cultural topics – imagination and trust. The way we approach these two topics shapes human lived experiences – and thus the kinds of cultural practices that will emerge and the cultural practices that will fade into the background over the coming decades, with implications for the amount of human and non-human suffering that is unfolding.

Imagination

Human imagination is an essential part of human life and human culture. Without it we would not be human.

The presentation The Truth About Fiction – Biological Reality & Imaginary Lives by Joseph Carroll is a useful tool for a WEIRD audience, to remind culturally well adapted people that human imagination is an essential part of human culture.

If our imagination is limited to cartoon characters and entertainment that mimics our current culture or runs through dystopian scenarios, then that is the contracted sphere of discourse and the self fulfilling prophecy of denial and despair in which we exist and navigate into the future.

What can expand our sphere of discourse is mutual trust, so that we can jointly imagine a radically different future that does not violate biophysical limits.

If we focus our imagination on minimising the human and non-human suffering that lies ahead, without discounting the scientific facts about ecological overshoot, global inequities, rapid global heating, the material constraints we will hit within the coming decades, and the growing mental health crisis, then we can avoid the most dystopian scenarios.

In terms of overall philosophy, I am aligned with Vandana Shiva, trusting the collective intelligence of the living planet more than any human intelligence. This amounts to an explicit acknowledgement of human limitations, a commitment to strengthen our integration into local ecosystems, and a commitment to weakening our dependence on powered-up institutions such as capital, corporations, and national governments.

Looking ahead: At worst, we can hospice modernity on our way out over the next few generations. At best, after a period of population decline, radical energy descent, and co-ordinated retreat from uninhabitable parts of the planet, bringing human imagination back down to Earth may allow a smaller number of humans to develop a diverse ecology of gentler cosmolocal cultures that play a nurturing, life giving role within the planetary ecosystem.

A world where there is infinite economic growth, with no concern for biophysical limits nor for human cognitive and emotional limits, is a completely delusional and scientifically impossible world, the result of atomised imagination, crippled by fear and denial of death.

An ecology of care beyond the human, where there is less suffering and more shared understanding, love, compassion, and ecological wisdom at human scale, is not only scientifically possible, it is also within the reach of our collective imagination, the result of gratitude for a big regenerative cycle of life far beyond human comprehensibility.

Capitalism has all the characteristics of a cult. The discovery and mindless exploitation of fossil fuels has allowed human cultures to become infected by a global mono-cult, which we see reflected in the pathologisation, dehumanisation, and marginalisation of neurodivergent, disabled, and indigenous peoples. Addictive pyramid schemes have replaced the cyclical nature of living systems with a delusional progress narrative.

Beyond focusing our collective human capacity for imagination on collaborative niche construction at human scale, and recognising our human scale cognitive and emotional limits, I would like to see human ambitions dialled down to cosmolocal sharing of lived experiences and to potentially reusable knowledge via a decentralised knowledge commons, along the lines of Open Source Software and Open Research, with no commercial interference in the categorisation and accessibility of knowledge.

Of course that goal is completely beyond my “control”! So I don’t worry about it at scale, and instead focus on doing what I can achieve within in my own small ecology of care, trusting that evolutionary forces far beyond the human are taking care of the living planet at larger scales.

A simple one-liner such as “think globally, live cosmolocally at human scale, within your cognitive and emotional limits, and don’t get distracted by ideological pyramid schemes” is not far off the mark.

Mutual trust

The evolution of the capacity for language and culture deepened the human capacity for shared understanding, mutual trust, and mutual aid.

Social arrangements that involve enduring structures of hierarchical social power are best understood as an abstract cultural parasite that feeds on the human capacity for language and culture. Powered-up interactions (i.e. misunderstandings and conflicts that are not resolved via de-powered dialogue, greater levels of shared understanding, and compassion) result in cognitive dissonance, mistrust, and and eventually manifest in relational trauma, weakening the ecology of care, and externally, the adaptability of the cultural organism relative to other cultural organisms.

The human capacity to extend and appreciate trust at human scale is part of our evolutionary heritage, Nurturing this capacity, and learning how to engage in the big cycle of life as part of an ecology of care beyond the human is the biggest challenge of our times.

The history of civilisations has shown us again and again that mutual trust does not scale to super human scale institutions.

Like “maturity” and “reality” and “progress”, the word “technology” has an agenda for your behavior: usually what is being referred to as “technology” is something that somebody wants you to submit to.  “Technology” often implicitly refers to something you are expected to turn over to “the guys who understand it.” This is actually almost always a political move. Somebody wants you to give certain things to them to design and decide. Perhaps you should, but perhaps not. This applies especially to “media”.

– Ted Nelson, from The Myth of Technology

Intersectional solidarity

We are catalysing intersectional solidarity via quarterly participant driven NeurodiVerse Days of Solidarity, which provide a safe space for neurodivergent, indigenous, and otherwise marginalised people to engage in omni-directional learning and mutual aid.

Open Space

Whoever comes is the right people.
Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
When it starts is the right time.
When it’s over, it’s over.

Join us in April 2024, and we will keep you informed about the specific events and activities that emerge based on the submissions and ideas we receive.

• About
• Latest Posts

Jorn Bettin

Knowledge archaeologist by day and neurodivergent anthropologist by night at S23M

The more we help each other to question in ways we otherwise wouldn’t – and correspondingly discover new insights about the world and ourselves, the more we are able to learn from each other, and the more we start to understand each other. The gift that we all bring to the world is the (re)generative potential of all the trusted relationships that we co-create.

Latest posts by Jorn Bettin (see all)

• Gaia loves making senses - December 19, 2024
• Autistic human animals – a factor in cultural metamorphosis - November 27, 2024
• The ability to relate deeply is the inability to conduct transactional busyness - November 22, 2024