One of the many fascinating things I find about these articles is how much your writing resonates with the work (well, personal research because of a special interest) I’m doing in anti-racism/anti-colonialism as it relates to worldviews and governance.
The friction between the Atomised Unit and the Shared Field goes right to the core of Western European Enlightenment ideologies. The entire intellectual project of that era was, in essence, an exercise in finding, isolating, and codifying the "correct" discrete units to master a reality that had previously been understood (even within Western Europe) through more relational, holistic, or cosmic frameworks.
Westphalian sovereignty is obviously a wrong unit, and so much of ongoing global conflict is based on retaining this uniquely Western European solution to a 17th century Western European problem, and falsely believing it still applies today and ever should have been thought to apply outside of Western Europe. Western European linear time causes people to mistake these geologically and chronologically unique concepts as “modern” when they clearly are not.
I did my recent regular thing and fed all of this into Gemini to have it go through other Western European “Enlightenment” ideologies, and not surprisingly it gave a list of other wrong units.
1. Cartesian Dualism (The Division of Mind and Matter)
2. Baconian Reductive Materialism (The Scientific Revolution Model)
3. Utilitarianism (The Moral Architecture)
4. Bureaucratic Rationalization & The Rule of Law (Universalism)
5. The Concept of "Progress" via Dominion (The Teleological Unit)
When we look at Individualism, Westphalian sovereignty, Cartesian dualism, and Lockean property rights together, we see a single coherent architecture: the architecture of partition.
And as I'm regularly realizing, Capitalism isn't the only Western European economic theory that has many of these problems baked into them.
Even for concepts discussed by Marx, we should probably look more directly at the non-European inspiration rather than remaining in the silos of "Enlightenment" and Eurosupremacist thinking.
(Sorry -- this was meant to be a small "wow, amazing" reply...)
Thank you, as always, for sharing and contributing. ❤️🫂
As far as ‘Western’ thought, I don’t always say it overtly, but a lot of my work is influenced by the Dao and the many writers who have written their commentaries.
To illustrate the difference in ‘east’ v ‘west,’ without straying into Orientalism, just look at what Chinese people say about AI / LLMs v the ‘west.’ Mind blowing.
Thank you so much for for the suggestions of where to do some reading next.
I've found it interesting how much more synergies there are with Eastern Asian worldviews and Eastern "Turtle Island" worldviews (What the peoples around where I live call this continent, translated to English).
One of the many fascinating things I find about these articles is how much your writing resonates with the work (well, personal research because of a special interest) I’m doing in anti-racism/anti-colonialism as it relates to worldviews and governance.
The friction between the Atomised Unit and the Shared Field goes right to the core of Western European Enlightenment ideologies. The entire intellectual project of that era was, in essence, an exercise in finding, isolating, and codifying the "correct" discrete units to master a reality that had previously been understood (even within Western Europe) through more relational, holistic, or cosmic frameworks.
Westphalian sovereignty is obviously a wrong unit, and so much of ongoing global conflict is based on retaining this uniquely Western European solution to a 17th century Western European problem, and falsely believing it still applies today and ever should have been thought to apply outside of Western Europe. Western European linear time causes people to mistake these geologically and chronologically unique concepts as “modern” when they clearly are not.
I did my recent regular thing and fed all of this into Gemini to have it go through other Western European “Enlightenment” ideologies, and not surprisingly it gave a list of other wrong units.
1. Cartesian Dualism (The Division of Mind and Matter)
2. Baconian Reductive Materialism (The Scientific Revolution Model)
3. Utilitarianism (The Moral Architecture)
4. Bureaucratic Rationalization & The Rule of Law (Universalism)
5. The Concept of "Progress" via Dominion (The Teleological Unit)
When we look at Individualism, Westphalian sovereignty, Cartesian dualism, and Lockean property rights together, we see a single coherent architecture: the architecture of partition.
And as I'm regularly realizing, Capitalism isn't the only Western European economic theory that has many of these problems baked into them.
Even for concepts discussed by Marx, we should probably look more directly at the non-European inspiration rather than remaining in the silos of "Enlightenment" and Eurosupremacist thinking.
(Sorry -- this was meant to be a small "wow, amazing" reply...)
Thank you, as always, for sharing and contributing. ❤️🫂
As far as ‘Western’ thought, I don’t always say it overtly, but a lot of my work is influenced by the Dao and the many writers who have written their commentaries.
To illustrate the difference in ‘east’ v ‘west,’ without straying into Orientalism, just look at what Chinese people say about AI / LLMs v the ‘west.’ Mind blowing.
Thank you so much for for the suggestions of where to do some reading next.
I've found it interesting how much more synergies there are with Eastern Asian worldviews and Eastern "Turtle Island" worldviews (What the peoples around where I live call this continent, translated to English).