Thanks for writing this, it clarifies a lot. I truely appreciate how you highlight that the 'infrastructure for collective sense-making has historically been so taken for granted until it began to fail.' It’s like we never notice the operating system until it crashes. How do we even begin to debug this societal system? Such a sharp and timely insight.
There has never been a single epistemological framework. Our subjective frame of reference is a kaleidoscope of options, typically swayed by where the individual 'sits' on the rationality-faith axis. But in this historical context we avoided chaos. Not any more. Universal 'truths' derived from a pretense of objectivity are collapsing one by one. Not necessarily the laws of physics, but certainly second-order artefacts - long-term weather models, neural networks, public heath policy - anything which can be hijacked by vested commercial interests, and consequently supercharged into political leverage. When facing criticism or calls for accountability, these special interests employ tropes such as "conspiracy theorists", but this pushback - like any well-worn antibiotic - is loosing efficacy. Consequently trust simply melts away. The will to restore the equilibrium between rationality and faith is too weak (because there are too few who see the crisis), and I'm too much of a pessimist to see a way back.
How do you have a conversation about social organization without the ability to differentiate, the ability to tell the difference between what is and what is not true? It seems that's the entire point of the Eastern tradition, to focus on truth as it arrives from the physical moment, before the unconscious and all the other forms of illusion have a chance to take hold. That's why I ridiculed Judith Butler, because she represents the West's latest detachment from the moment.
You clearly put a lot of thought and effort into this and I applaud you, but I am concerned that the question of how we know what we know is being seen through the lens of societal organization rather than going back to the primary question of, how do we know what we know? For me, that's the place to begin because it informs how we go about building our social systems what journalism in science. Directly answering the question of epistemology, for me, is the first step in figuring out the best ways to socially organize, the best way to create meaningful feedback loops so that our systems seek balance. Unfortunately, here in the West, we've become so sidetracked by theory and I'm afraid we've lost our way back home. I say, more Confucius and less Judith Butler.
Thanks for writing this, it clarifies a lot. I truely appreciate how you highlight that the 'infrastructure for collective sense-making has historically been so taken for granted until it began to fail.' It’s like we never notice the operating system until it crashes. How do we even begin to debug this societal system? Such a sharp and timely insight.
There has never been a single epistemological framework. Our subjective frame of reference is a kaleidoscope of options, typically swayed by where the individual 'sits' on the rationality-faith axis. But in this historical context we avoided chaos. Not any more. Universal 'truths' derived from a pretense of objectivity are collapsing one by one. Not necessarily the laws of physics, but certainly second-order artefacts - long-term weather models, neural networks, public heath policy - anything which can be hijacked by vested commercial interests, and consequently supercharged into political leverage. When facing criticism or calls for accountability, these special interests employ tropes such as "conspiracy theorists", but this pushback - like any well-worn antibiotic - is loosing efficacy. Consequently trust simply melts away. The will to restore the equilibrium between rationality and faith is too weak (because there are too few who see the crisis), and I'm too much of a pessimist to see a way back.
How do you have a conversation about social organization without the ability to differentiate, the ability to tell the difference between what is and what is not true? It seems that's the entire point of the Eastern tradition, to focus on truth as it arrives from the physical moment, before the unconscious and all the other forms of illusion have a chance to take hold. That's why I ridiculed Judith Butler, because she represents the West's latest detachment from the moment.
You clearly put a lot of thought and effort into this and I applaud you, but I am concerned that the question of how we know what we know is being seen through the lens of societal organization rather than going back to the primary question of, how do we know what we know? For me, that's the place to begin because it informs how we go about building our social systems what journalism in science. Directly answering the question of epistemology, for me, is the first step in figuring out the best ways to socially organize, the best way to create meaningful feedback loops so that our systems seek balance. Unfortunately, here in the West, we've become so sidetracked by theory and I'm afraid we've lost our way back home. I say, more Confucius and less Judith Butler.
That's a good question, but Confucius is entirely about societal organisation not epistemology. Hegel might be a better way in.