How did we come to believe that we are part of a machine?
I think that our "Fall" is found in the Semitic inheritance of western culture. The great founding myth is that God set man above nature. The Judeo/Christian/Moslem idea of an external God, man above nature and the triumph of a book over experience has I think set us off on a journey of separation from whom we truly are.
The book over experience is a particularly dangerous idea. Julian Jaynes has made the case that when we learned to write we also lost our connection to the intuitive. Over time reason triumphed over innate understanding. In short, as we became enthralled with our intellect, we became clever but lost our wisdom. So today mothers worry about child rearing, read many books, but are closed to their innate wisdom.
What book is she reading? Does she need a book to do better? How does she learn about how to raise a child?
The advent of the press, stem printing and then mass education has lead to the triumph of the book and the written word. The 20th century has been the culmination then of 5,000 years of struggle between reason and wisdom. The final blow was the triumph of the engineering model where everything is made up of pieces instead of nature's iron law which is that everything is made up of a whole.
Wisdom has lost - for now.
But you say - our use of reason is central to the success of our species. Oh really. What great scientific breakthrough has emerged from the force of reason? Name one. I can't. All the great breakthroughs have begun intuitively.
I use my reason for all the big decisions in my life you say. Oh really. So you used your reason choose your spouse, buy your house, take your job. If we are honest we can recognize that we use our intuition first and then we rationalize the call. I have been involved in many business mergers. I assure you that there was only a veneer of reason. Mergers are all about ego and emotion. War and war fighting is an art. Great software is an art. Great art is well - art.
We have fallen in love with reason and most of us listen only to its incessant chatter in our heads. We have lost touch with our innate self and we have lost touch with how we and nature really work. Instead we build rational fantasies based on the idea that everything can be decomposed into parts and understood and built in an engineering template.
So the process of separation has accelerated.
We worry about finding the work life balance. But for all of time until recently the two were one. We think that we have "evolved" so that we do not need to live the social structures (Magic Numbers) that are essential for human health, learning, happiness and economic success. Every being has a social and economic pattern that is designed to maximise the health of the system. Wolves live in socio economic packs of a certain size that are related to the prey herd. The prey herd lives in relationship with the local plant structures and its herd health is governed by its relationship to the wolf pack. All are connected to the watershed. All sustain and help each other. We "think" that we can escape our own socio/economic structures and our own relationship to the "whole" that is required to support us.
Many people now accept that we are biologically linked by inheritance to primates. I bet it is a struggle though to accept that we are also related culturally. That all primates have primary social patterns in common that drive health, happiness and economic success. Here is a troop of baboons. They are opportunists like early man. The troop is not a random structure. Baboons don't have to read books about organizational design to know what works best for them. And nor do we.
Nature is all about patterned relationships. We now regret the idea of single parents but somehow think that this may be cultural destiny or even progress. After all if we only had access to a daycare spot, it would be fine.
Soon I will talk about nature's patterns and some that are truly human
Technorati Tags: Culture, Daycare, Intuition, Julian Jaynes, Magic Numbers, Patterns, Reason, Religion, Tribe
