How we came into this shit and how we get out.

A History of our culture.

Have you ever asked yourself, why the world is, as it is? Why we humans do, what we do? Why we think, what we think? Why especially we are in our current position, so highly developed but still so stupidly ferocious? 
Some say, the very core of man is evil, but that appears to me like a cowardly excuse, which we use to project our guilt to someone else. 
Instead I believe, that there is a broadly objective and rational explanation for our “creation” up to this point. For all, that surrouds us. Our sociopolitical structures like governments and states. Economic entities like firms, international trade and money. And of course our cultural achievements like human rights, peace treaties and charity projects. But as well rassism and greed, world wars and religious terror. All our progression, all our regression, can be traced back to the one single property that only evolved in us some 70 000 years ago: The Imagination, housed in our prefrontal cortex. 
Only this very property allowed us to develop abstract religions, societies and technolgies.

It doesn’t take much contemplation to realize, that most of the achievements stated above only exist in our heads. National borders are just as ficitional as platform 9 3/4. Sometimes coincidentially located on rivers or mountain ranges, there is no actual physical apperance that would clearly show us the change from Germany to France for example. Human rights are without a doubt useful, but the thesis that we are all equal is, as controverse as it sounds, genetic nonesense. And at last, the value of money only exists, because of our mutual trust in it. Money is an empty carrier of trust.

It’s hopefully obvious that a society as sophisticated and developed as ours is ultimately based on one single ability. Our ability to believe things, to understand things and to create things, that only exist in our heads. One could say we live in an fictional world, that has little in common with the reality of physical laws.

In the following analysation I want to point out how imagination is our biggest chance and at the same time our biggest danger. Of which the latter is unfortunaletly more imminent.

The beginning of our “downfall” lies only 10 000 years in the past. Namely at the neolitic revolution, commonly known as the agricultural revolution. This seems trivial first, but as I am going to point out, we can find the biggest and most important change in the history of humankind in exactly that era. Not necessarily technological, but rather cultural. 
Because with the beginning of agriculture our relationsship to nature changed fundamentally, which led us to a disastrous conclusion. We began growing our own food, when we wanted, what we wanted and how much we wanted. Instead of being dependent ond the whims of nature, we told ourselfes, we are now our own lord. In this very moment we can observe historically what is culturally known as the creation story. It’s not that with the neolitic revolution humankind was born. However, a specifically human idea came into beeing: That we are the crown of creation, that the world was made for us. To be ruled and developed by us. Before we lived in accord with nature. So to say as a part of gods creation (whether one is religious or not). We lived in accord with the law of life, that, deeply rooted everywhere, holds up the natural balance. This law is inevitably existent and omnipresent like the law of gravity. It’s decides wheather one lives or dies, it decides over proliferation and annihilation, but still, it is not good or evil, because such a rating doesn’t exist outside of our imagination. Every apple falls and hits the ground. Sometimes we like that, sometimes we don’t, but we have to accept it. Regarding the law of life we believe otherwise. We haven’t formulated this law in equations, which has a simply reason: Since the agricultural revolution aka. the creation of our culture we tell ourselves, that this law doesn’t apply to us. After all, we are not animals, who just live. We are humans, the crown of creation. Godlike, as most religious keep telling us in one way or another.
Even if you don’t believe that you are the crown of creation, there is still this feeling in everyone of us that we are different in some way, created with a different skillset to live differently. We justify to intervene in far reaching functions of the natural balance and extinct dozens of species every day, just because we think we know what is good and what is evil for the world. That knowledge is not the knowledge we Sapiens developed over the course of three million years of evolution. It’s totally new and solely based on our belief that the world is made for us. Hence, what is good for us has to be good for the world. This understanding bears an ultimate problem in itself, because like the law of gravity one cannot just ignore a natural law, especially not if it’s not even known. 
Take the pioneers of human flight for example. They jumped off high cliffs with their machines and for a while they believed they overcame the law of gravity. But like us, they are just falling towards the ground. They saw it by simply looking down, we see it by looking around and seeing the destruction we cause. As we all know, the pioneers of flight learned to do better. But they managed to fly only after they fully understood the law of gravity, and, other than they first thought they didn’t overcome the omnipresent law, they could only fly in perfect accordance with it.

Instead of searching for our contemporary equivalent, though, our culture does everything in it’s power to make us feel content where we are. We know what is good and bad, why find some abstract ultimate law, if it is that simple? 
The “culture” of every other species comprises the knowledge they gathered over millions of years of evolution. What was good for them, was kept, what was bad for them was abandoned. The biological properties were developed in this evolutionary pattern and so was there behaviour. We, on the other hand, abandoned most of our evolutionary knowledge of what is good and bad for us. For we believe now that we know what is ultimately good and evil. The knowledge we use to justify our acting in this world. 
This new “wisdom” is suprisingly static, as it doesn’t allow revision. What is good for our growth is the good. What is bad for our growth, is the evil. Period. A classification that only exists in our own imagination. Nature doesn’t know good and evil.

New scientific discoveries show time and again, what happens if we disobey the law of life: 
Nothing actually got better since we took “rule” over the world. The hunter-and-gatherers were the society with the best nutrition in human history. They were the most leisured society as well, with an average “working day” of three to six hours of actual hunting and gathering. 
But they lived like animals, we tell ourselves, dependent on the whims of nature. This isn’t an adequate life for us humans as we are made to be different, right? 
But is a life of 10 to 14 hour workdays, culturewide malnutrition and epidemic diseases more adequate? A life, that only follows the goal, to have more the next day, than we had yesterday? A life that in the process of this insane growth-paradigm neglects the existence of any other species? 
We currently live a life that never supported our real needs, but only the ones we create. Not to mention the destructive traces we leave in the environment. 
Is all this acceptable, just because its “independent”? 
If you get the opportunity to travel back into pre-evolutionary times, with all the skills and properties the humans had back then, would you take the leap of faith? Probably not, right? 
Even if you would ask a homeless person in unaccaptable living conditions, it would be improbable that he accepts the invitation. I ask myself: Why? Why is a life, that’s factually better then ours, so badly disliked? 
In my opinion, we can see the underlying, omnipresent influence of our culture, which keeps telling us, that we were made to rule the world, not to live in dependet accordance with it. 
It’s a static paradigm deeply rooted in our culture and therefore in every one of us.

Doesn’t that sound familiar?

Enough of the abstract philosophizing for now. A much better graspable and understandable sign of the same disease (aka. stagnant culture) is to be found on another scale. Namely, in our sociopolitical and economical development. 
When you go to a history, economics or politics class today you get the impression that all of history up to this point happened in order to create the system we have today. Politically, every system up to democracy is devalued as just another try on the way to the “perfect” democracy. 
Economically, every marketform failed, till we came up with the glorious free-market system. 
If these assessments are ultimately right or wrong, is not in my hand to judge. But the understanding, that we are at the final stage of development, makes us tend to forget a fundamental truth: We don’t only read history these days, we also write it.
But this doesn’t align very well with our belief that we are the final stage of evolution; As humans biologically and as citizens culturally. Scientifically we know that we are neither nor. Evolution does not have a purpose, nor a goal. It is ultimately senseless, from a ration point of view. A fact that we can’t appreciate in our understanding as the crown of creation.

To face the problems, though, that are coming towards us, like the ground towards the pioneers of flight, we have to change our attitude regarding cultural development. We have to apply a system, that all the species out there use, which exist in accordance to the law of life. A specific type of evolutinary development that promotes what works and abandons what doesn’t. Some of you might have spotted the similarity already, but the method I am talking about is not fundamentally new. It is actually widely used these days, however not to the extent that equals it’s full potential. The method is called: Scientifc approach.

The Scientific Method is important.

Ignoramus et Ignorabimus is the underlying principle of the scientific method. It translates to: We do not know and we will never know. In this simple quote, we find the reason for the unlimited power of this method and at the same time the reason for it’s discrepancy with religions and cultures. It simply contains the statement, that no knowledge is absolute. Every finding is merely another step in an evolution with out end, and especially without a goal. A fact is a fact only as long as it is not falsified by a new experiment. This approach of “questioning” contradicts completely with the static paradigm of our culture, but it is what has enabled our unprecedented technological development in the last few decades. So far, however, we failed to apply this method to communications and discussions outside of technology; be it cultural, political or economical. 
These fields, it appears, are captivated under the rule of mother-culture. My primary example being, again, the economy. Numerous severe financial crisis showed us that our system in the current implementation doesn’t really work. Time and again, though, those crisis’ were “solved” with the same old approaches, which only caused bigger problems. They call themselves economic scientists, but in their aversion of change in their theory they are similar to old school religious preachers. Now they spent more time telling us that crisis are normal, so are indebtedness, inequality and insecurity. All this marketing work, instead of accepting that the underlying theory failed.
Approval rates with the undertakings of governments are plummeting, so is the trust in the system as a whole. Those problems are not solved though, they are looked at funny from above. Democracy sold itself to a selected few.
Our culture puts emphasis on our connection to the past, instead of seeing the opportunities of the future. That way, culture restricts our potential with absurd traditions that have little to do with the rationality we preach. 
The discrepancies are obvious everywhere. And still, they are treated with a complacency inadequate of their scale.

What I find especially fascinating about the scientific paradigm, is that it is so similar to the evolutionary workings we see around us. Often coincidentially new things are discovered and are either verified as in useful, or falsified as in obsolete, in following experiments. The darwinistic system of the “survival of the fittest” translates into the scientific system as the “survival of the truth”: What works will persevere, what doesn’t, will be abandoned. Against such a logic-rational evolution the arbitrariness of our static culture has no chance whatsoever. And still, it seems to survive. The base of the manipulation is too deeply rooted in our system.

Change is possible — forward not backwards

Eventually, we need a new paradigm which will replace our crown-of-creation attitude. For that to work we do not have to return to our pre-evolutionary life as hunter-and-gatherers, as many think. We just have to live in accordance with the community of life, by complying to the universal law, like every other species on this planet, whether flora or fauna.

What I demand is not some abstract spiritual change, it is relatively straight forward and clear, but still so hard to achieve. I demand, that the scientific paradigm is applied to all areas of our lives. Unprejudiced analysation of new ideas and rational, experimental revision of exisiting systems, cultures and worldviews. What is good for us, we can take on for us. What is bad for us, we abandon. That way we adjust to the evolutionary manner of our environment. Bit by Bit we let go of the deception, the world was made for us, because it doesn’t help us out. You say, such a change is not possible? We can never achieve this? Well that, I say, is the misinterpreted loss-aversion of our culture. Pure fiction. Let’s tackle this problem, where we can have an impact for sure: within ourselfes! 
Explore your own worldview under the scientific usabiliy aspect. What attitudes are static and obsolete? What hinders you from accepting and living new, beneficial findings? If we just apply this thinking comprehensively enough, we can finally use the ability, that made us become what we are now. Our ability to imagine, that we imprisoned within the cage of culture for so long. I invite you to dream multidimensional. Dream as far as you possibly can. Not only along the straight lines of our culture, but in every imaginable direction. And when you arrived in your darest dreamland, whether technical, political or social, than recognize: This is not a utopia far away, but rather a goal in tangible proximity. What we can imagine, we can achieve, as long as we comply to the laws of nature. The very notion of “utopia” indicates the static understanding, which to give up, we should make our big project.

To finish where I initially started: We are the first generation, that thanks to scientific analysation fully recognizes that the way we lived since the creation of our culture was the wrong one. A way, build on the lies, that we tell ourselfes time and time again. Let’s now go together on the way, that is opened by our imagination, instead of using this unique ability to justify our failing. It could be the biggest change since the beginning of our history. A change that beginns with every single one of us and a change that will never be completed… Our imagination is limitless.

For more visit: https://animusmove.wordpress.com/

Written by Maximilian Franz, Copyrights reserved.