Where We Have Been, Where We Are, Where We Might Be Going
A fast-paced summary of the situation we find ourselves in from the vantage point of the Unified Theory of Knowledge.
Humanity needs to wake up to the situation we find ourselves in. It is a kairotic time between worlds that requires us to make a fundamental shift in how we make sense of ourselves and our modes of being. The Unified Theory of Knowledge (UTOK) provides a way to place ourselves on a coherent map of cosmic coordinates and help us decipher where we have been, where we are, and where we might be headed.
In terms of where we have been, the UTOK provides us with the Tree of Knowledge (ToK) System, which is a new map of Big History that charts cosmic evolution on the axes of time and complexity. Its novelty is found in the fact that it effectively identifies four different planes of existence (i.e., Matter, Life, Mind, and Culture), and it aligns these dimensions with four broad domains of science (i.e., the Physical, Biological, Psychological, and Social).
Via the Periodic Table of Behavior, the Unified Theory of Knowledge shows how modern science maps how the pure energy singularity differentiated into the four forces and foundational particles, then into atoms, then molecules, as well as stars and galaxies at the macro-scale. Then, approximately four billion years ago, we see the emergence of cells and the dimension of Life. Then, approximately 500 million years ago, we see animals and the dimension of Mind. Finally, there is the appearance of human persons and the dimension of Culture.
The UTOK solves the problem of psychology by offering a metatheoretical system that horizontally aligns the key insights of B.F. Skinner and Sigmund Freud and places them in the proper vertical arrangement, giving rise to a coherent picture of the physical, biological, psychological, and social dimensions of complexity. It also identifies the problems associated with defining behavior and mental processes and shows how to properly interrelate the domains of a) overt mental behavior; b) neurocognition; c) phenomenology, and d) self-reflective processes of reason-giving and justification.
In terms of positioning ourselves in the 21st Century, the UTOK provides the clearest theory offered to date regarding the emergence of human self-consciousness and the evolution of the Culture-Person plane of existence. It allows us to effectively divide the evolution of cultural consciousness into four phases. From 50,000 to 5,000 years ago, we see the evolution of the oral-indigenous cultural code. As Tyson Junkaporta narrates it in his influential book, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The World, the oral indigenous sensibility is characterized by personal connections, a deep appreciation for context along with a sense of embeddedness in relations, nature, and across time. In addition, there is an embodied emphasis on cooperation and sharing rather than competition and acquisition and seeking markers of status that elevate one above others.
From 5,000 years ago to 500 years ago, we see a dramatic shift in human cultural codes and sensibilities. Civilizations emerge which far outstrip the Dunbar number of personal connections, and thus require radically different modalities to coordinate the behavior of human persons. Large-scale systems of justification emerge, such as the code of Hammurabi. The sixth king of Babylon developed a set of laws that were carved on a massive seven-and-a-half-foot stone in the shape of an index finger that is dated to 1754 BCE. Consisting of 281 laws, it includes the famous “eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth” aphorism and deals with matters of punishment, trade regulations, wages, liabilities and other forms of law and social contract, much of which was differentiated by social status, such as whether the act under consideration was committed by a person who was a slave or free or was a man or a woman.
Approximately five hundred years after the Bronze Age collapse, we see the emergence of the Axial Age. This is crucial because it is the period when most of the great religions and philosophical traditions that are very much alive today day (i.e., Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, the origins of the great Abrahamic traditions, and the Greek Philosophers) have their roots. Many people and institutions remain primarily anchored to traditionalist sense-making systems that emphasize what Steve McIntosh calls “Heritage Values” that connect one to one’s national, cultural or religions tradition.
Approximately 500 years ago, another great transformation in our systems of justification emerged. An intellectual arc can be traced from Copernicus to Galileo and Descartes into Newton and Darwin, such that natural philosophy broke off from formal Greco-Roman Christian systems of understanding and became “modern empirical natural science” and thus can be referred to as traditional MENS knowledge. Rather than justifying knowledge based on description, coherence, and intersubjective agreement, the epistemology of science emphasized empiricism defined as objective observation, measurement, experimentation, induction to best explanation with deductive elimination of falsifiable competing explanations. A deterministic matter-in-motion view of the universe directly challenges the traditional dualistic worldviews, the echoes of that struggle still very much with us, residing at the very core of the conflict between traditional and modernist sensibilities.
Modern empirical natural science required a fundamental shift in philosophy, which we see in the works of first the empiricists of Hume and Locke and then in the first true modern philosopher, Immanuel Kant. We also see the explosion of political philosophies that are enacted in the French and American Revolutions. Engineering advances were closely intertwined with the exploding knowledge of matter in motion, and the industrial revolution was launched, embraced by class liberal values of freedom and progress and put into motion by a massively powerful capital labor engine and the invisible hand of economic markets that would literally transform much of mother earth into human material culture. The modern capitalist engine would result in us becoming, from the vantage point of other species, a ruthless consumptive virus that would spread into every corner of the globe.
Despite the remarkable power of the Enlightenment to cultivate progress, the modernist sensibility has serious limitations and blind spots. Nietzsche knew that modernity had killed God in dangerous ways and that there would be ongoing tensions between those who embraced the dualistic worldviews of the wisdom traditions and those who saw the progress of man in his machines. His insights and warnings were largely confirmed by the horrors of the two world wars and the tragic experiments in the totalitarian regimes of the Nazis and communists.
As the brutal oppression via racist categories became seared into human consciousness by the revelations of the holocaust, movements for universal human rights, civil rights, and feminism were sparked across the West. Central to these movements was the notion that White heterosexual Christian men had dominated other social categories and colonized the world in unjust ways that needed to be corrected. Traditional forms of modernist, empirical, natural science systems of knowledge were implicated as being tied up on supporting white European “MENS” knowledge. This critique was supported by the linguistic turn in philosophy, and then by the post-structuralists, like Michael Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Paul Feyerabend. In a complementary manner, the sociologists Berger and Luckmann charted just how much of reality is “socially constructed”. This powerful conception helped set the stage to blur the boundaries between objective scientific knowledge and social or normative systems of justification that were fully dependent on cultural context, history, and power relations.
The last 50 years have thus seen the emergence of the postmodern sensibility. It challenges the authority of traditional MENS knowledge and highlights how it is structured to support certain cultural codes and social categories and threatens both other humans who are situated differently, as well as mother earth. The postmodern sensibility is one of care, championing the environment and social justice causes, and the promotion of diverse and historically marginalized voices.
The postmodern critique is not the only force that is strongly deconstructing the modernist way of life. Perhaps foreshadowed by Mary Shelley, traditional MENS knowledge grounded the seeds for the growth of artificial intelligence and the fast-rising Digital landscape. A radically new form of information processing and communication, this medium carries a powerful message: the digital virtual horizon is fraught with tangled paths and potentials that could lead either to heaven or hell.
Indeed, we know traditional MENS knowledge is clearly inadequate, as it carries with it the Enlightenment Gap and the problem of psychology. This is the blind spot in sense-making that stems from the failure to achieve the right relation between both matter and mind and social and scientific knowledge. By properly situating scientific knowledge in relationship to social epistemology and by solving the problem of psychology, the UTOK allows us to fill in the missing pieces and generate a consilient picture of the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities.
Such is the situation we find ourselves in. In the vernacular of the UTOK, we are tunneling into the 5th Joint Point, the cosmic coordinates on the ToK System where the line between the Culture-Person complex adaptive plane of existence merges with artificial intelligence and the landscape of the Digital medium. This tidal wave of technological change is intersecting with an Age of Confusion. As modernity shows is failings, a postmodern wave of confusion is resulting in a spreading meaning and mental health crisis that we must awaken from.
To shift course from the self-terminating consumptive path, we must cultivate a new Wisdom-Oriented metamodern sensibility that allows us to appropriately frame MENS knowledge as grounding our understanding of where we have been, but not where we are headed. That is, we need to move forward with a WOMENS knowledge framework, one that shifts our primary mode of relation from social influence into the process of cultivating relational value.
Such is the frame of understanding that is required to birth a truly metamodern sensibility, one that can transcend and include the oral, traditional, modern and postmodern values, insights, and limitations. Understanding humans as primates embedded in the natural world, and persons in the Cultural world, we can now see more clearly the nature of our tendencies toward investment, influence, and justification. And rather than living in our justifications, we can make a fundamental shift and awaken to them. In so doing we can see that we, of course, need the wisdom from the oral, traditional, modern and postmodern sensibilities to guide us through and allow us the values and sense-making capacities to hold ourselves, technology and mother earth in proper balance. By including and transcending the sensibilities that have come before us and emphasizing relational value over social influence, we will be well-positioned to remember the future and be on the right side of history such that future generations will see us as good ancestors that worked to enhance dignity and well-being with integrity for all.
