Off the deep end

# 4010

If we don't go off the deep end, we will never get there because probably the answer is not in the shallow end. We have been trying these too long and all too obviously, failing.

So these are thoughts while working on Srokin and civilization

Our normal Western Civ mode is to build up[ from the ground, atom by atom, putting pieces together (break the problem into parts and solve one at a time(. Think Pyramids¹ or the tower of babble. Building up is never going to reach the whole because the whole has qualities that the parts do not (or at least we don’t anticipate them, thinking the parts by themselves will get us there if we even think about the while, so focused on parts are we.

The problem for us is that our culture has been thing-oriented like putting together Lego blocks. We like to think it is like a crossword puzzle, complex and non-linear but contained in a discoverable frame we can discover if we need to. Bottom-up never seems to reach everyone but encourages us to work in silos. Climate like a giant fog sweeps over us and we can’t act.

The alternative view is to start from the whole (we experience the universe as a whole) and build down. This would give a leverage point where we can deal with climate. So who builds down? Belief in a universe, god, the whole - all in some ways that allow the emergence of a command - nature wants, god commands.. So it is a coherent religion (we don’t have one at the moment. So what is needed to deal with climate is a coherent system with very widespread belief - what Sirokin calls a civilization. Civilizations² by their nature are broad containers within which people naturally believe. Things and energy for us. Such systems allow for the emergence of commands. God says, Allah says You must do this "cut fossil fuels and in the ensuing disruption renew your dependence on each other.” In the West and in the US in particular, belief in god was almost universal well into the 19th century. Many of us remember people who were accepting the naturalness of a god's presence. Gone under the pressure of economy.

The emergence of a new god/belief system is probably not going to happen (though what does happen to the group in a crisis of food shortages, burnt landscapes, and mega-deaths is unknown) but I am concluding that the third level in Marvin Harris’ three-level system, belief structure (riding on social structure (the state) riding on infrastructure (the material things of society) is not going to be reached in time, but it is the only possible path to get the leverage to demand change. So building civilization and looking for and supporting emerging belief systems is the path forward, Deep end indeed, but we must.

The belief structure is the needed path to get the civilizational leverage to turn climate approaches into an actionable whole.

To rephrase, states are collections of families with rules and regulations, not reaching out to belief. Avoiding belief. which leaves us with a fragmented system not capable of coming up with system-wide plans. The way is to stop trying to build up but start building down. No ladder necessary. Each of us has lots of experience of the whole

I started looking at imagination with Toynbee, Sorokin, Spinoza Goethe, and others and this is as far as I've come.

1. The pyramids were a set of projects for the dead king to reach heaven, hence the pyramidal structure of a stairway to heaven, the biggest about one million 40-ton stones. The ultimate surplus strategy to support labor.

2. Many are already on the path. Toulma\in, Sheldrake, Scchmacht\tenburger, Bergson, Feyerabend, , Whitehead. Enough to declare a movement and nudge these folks to get out of their academic rabbit holes.