“We must be careful not to believe things simply because we want them to be true. No one can fool you as easily as you can fool yourself.” Richard Feynman.
A question I have asked often of my readers is, “do you want to thrive or simply survive?” And if left to our own innate inner nature’s, would we revert to barbarism or to our better angels? When I was young, at school I had to read William Goldman’s Lord of the Rings (1951) in which a group of school boys are marooned on a tropical island. In the book the boys revert to savage barbarism. It is the myth that our society imposes upon us that without strict authoritarian control we are just savages lurking below the veneer of civilization. This I think is one of the reasons we allow ourselves to controlled by the dominant hierarchy – a fear of others and that the hierarchy will keep us safe.
An interesting alternative to the Goldman fiction book is the true 1966 tale of a group of six school boy’s castaway on a small rocky island near Tonga in the Pacific. In this real story, the group collaborated and formed an egalitarian team that actually thrived for 15 months. Indeed, Captain Warner, of the ship that rescued them quoted in his memoirs: “by the time we arrived, the boys had set up a small commune with food garden, hollowed-out tree trunks to store rainwater, a gymnasium with curious weights, a badminton court, chicken pens and a permanent fire, all from handiwork, an old knife blade and much determination.” What Warner concluded, “Life has taught me a great deal, including the lesson that you should always look for what is good and positive in people.”
In a previous post (Framing for Positive Communication and Interactions- How language creates our thoughts and frames our behaviors and well-being {August 2018}) I introduced ideas by Cognitive Linguist George Lakoff on how metaphors structure our beliefs and hence our lives. According to Lakoff, our society is tempered by two main competing ideologies, Conservative and Progressive approaches that form two quite different and polarized worldviews. Each can be explained by comparing it to a parenting approach that forms the broader mindset of beliefs into adulthood – the ‘Strict Father’ versus the ‘Nurturing Parent’ – and how when those metaphors are thought of as nation and government within the framework of parenting, then conservative politics corresponds to the strict father model, while progressivism corresponds to the Nurturing Parent. Of course, both fall in a continuum from extreme to moderate on one and then cross over to moderate and extreme on the other.
Keeping it simple: The strict father model believes in a dangerous world in which the child must be strictly disciplined though reward and punishment to behave correctly (for their safety) with a duality of right and wrong morals. Radical self-reliance and independence are part of this model and disdain for any who do not demonstrate strict discipline. The Nurturing Parent model believes in being nurtured with “roots in the ground and wings to fly” through effective role-modeling and enforcement of boundaries, which encourage personal freedom and respect for inherent intelligence, all the while being guided by a supporting authority. The belief being that this instills confidence and more willingness to cooperate with others. Of course, moderates of both models will demonstrate attributes of both with a dominant preference for one or the other.
If you think back to the 1960s, especially in Europe and North America, there were the radical conformists (e.g., traditionalists) and radical non-conformists (e.g., Hippies). Think about the mindsets that were prevalent and which fit one model or the other. Traditionalists believed in big business and ‘Self-Indulgent Materialism’ with closure of feelings and suspicion of ‘the other.’ Hippies meanwhile encouraged deep and peaceful roots in an Earth based mindset and accepted self-connection, communal living, experimentation (of all things!) and discussion of both feelings and thoughts and mutually healthy boundaries towards strangers and friends.
Part of the problems is that we confuse our individual worldview as reality – it is merely a set of beliefs that we have in how the world works and therefore, everything is viewed though that worldview lens (see posts Old Euro-Worldviews gone amok – Trying to Change Beliefs {April 2018}, and Richard’s Research on Worldviews and why he is optimistic about a transformation {June 2018}). Once we can readily accept that other worldviews exist and then find common ground, meaningful conversation can begin. But it does demand Critical Thinking, which as I always say can be harmful to one’s dogmas. The strict father model discourages free thinking and tends to support a hierarchy process, while the Nurturing parent model encourages free thinking and a more collaborative process. Despite the attempts of the Hippies, the world still runs predominantly on a strict father model in both politics and religion, and almost demands ‘Enforced Conformity’ with penalties for those straying outside the lines.
Graham Hancock talks about the problem of Enforced Conformity as it relates to academia, but I think it is true for society as a whole – just think of the hard polarizations we have at this time. “Imagine a world where good, honest, hardworking, inquisitive scientists live in fear of ruining their careers, perhaps even of losing their jobs and incomes, if they investigate certain subjects that have been judged by a dominant [academic] elite to be ‘taboo.’ Is such a climate of fear-based conformity likely to result in good science that breaks new ground? Or is it likely to keep science stuck in a rut, endlessly refining and reconfirming established models while rejecting any evidence that suggest those models might be wrong or in need of fundamental revision? These are not rhetorical questions, because it turns out that this ‘imaginary’ world is the very world we live in today. Science in the twenty first century does not encourage scientists to take risks in their pursuit of ‘the facts’ – especially when those facts call into questions long-established notions about [scientific dogma’s]”Graham Hancock.
At this time, change is happening. The hierarchy’s solutions seem to me to be extreme and dogmatic and will further erode personal freedom. Sustainability is talked about but it seems to be more and more a hierarchical centralized governmental approach, which I suspect would become more and more totalitarian in nature. What we need is not just more corporate policy tweaks and increased governmental regulations, but a complete and Systemic Change in how we live and interact with each other. We have to end the ‘Self-Indulgent Materialism’ of the consumer worldview and think more about community and equity as a central process and not just a topic to throw around at political rallies.
We have given power and authority to hierarchies to run our lives for too long. These hierarchies live on a self-preservation model to show they are necessary, hence the increased draconian rules to safeguard us – but save us from what? Their inability to manage increasing complex social and scientific problems they created in a desperate attempt to save society as it was – anything as long as it gets us back to ‘Normal’ I keep hearing. But normal before wasn’t working very well was it, except for a few tens of millions. We currently have Faustian bargains based on a perspective that humanity is a malevolent species and needs controlling. I don’t believe this and believe and trust in the better angels of who we are. The hierarchy wants you to believe in a Lord of the Flies kind of scenario of social disintegration if we run our own lives. But don’t forget, the real-life situation was that the boys readily collaborated and thrived without any hierarchy at all. WE need to believe in ourselves and our ability to create a better world based on our own innate intelligence, and it is this that scares the hierarchy and why they are struggling to maintain control.
0 Comments