Patterning Instinct

* Book: The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning. By Jeremy Lent. Prometheus Books,2017

URL = https://www.thealternative.org.uk/dailyalternative/2017/7/25/thepatterninginstinct

Description

"Taking the reader on an archaeological exploration of the mind, The Patterning Instinct offers a glimpse into the minds of a vast range of different peoples: early hunter-gatherers and farmers, ancient Egyptians, traditional Chinese sages, the founders of Christianity, trail-blazers of the Scientific Revolution, and those who constructed our modern consumer society.

The book identifies the root metaphors that cultures have used to construct meaning in their world from hunter-gatherer times to today’s global civilization, and demonstrates how these have affected the course of history. Uprooting the tired clichés of the science/religion debate, it shows how medieval Christian rationalism acted as an incubator for scientific thought, which in turn shaped our modern vision of the conquest of nature.

Shining a light on our possible futures, the book foresees a coming struggle between two contrasting views of humanity: one driving to a technological endgame of artificially enhanced humans, the other enabling a sustainable future arising from our intrinsic connectedness with each other and the natural world. This struggle, it concludes, is one in which each of us will play a role through the meaning we choose to forge from the lives we lead." (https://www.thealternative.org.uk/dailyalternative/2017/7/25/thepatterninginstinct)

Review

Joe Brewer:

"He offers three scenarios for how to frame the future trajectory of Earth:

(A) One where we have massive ecological collapse and are never able to recover to present levels of knowledge or complexity again;

(B) Another like the movie Elysium where techo-elites gain the ability to "upgrade" themselves with their massive wealth, effectively creating two separate species of human with the rest of humanity living in squalor;

(C) The transformation of cultural values and worldview needed to enact the Declaration of Universal Human Rights alongside a parallel Declaration for the Rights of Nature that leads us toward planetary sustainability.

I anticipate that all three scenarios will play out in partial expression... that collapse of the present hyper-consumption system based on exploitation of nature and wealth hoarding is inevitable. And yet there will be lingering islands of massive wealth for some elites to explore their own "ego porn" of self-improvement.

At the same time -- and this is where the Culture Design Labs come into the picture -- there will be "seeds of transformation" in small and medium-sized communities around the world that manage to stay connected as a global network to work toward ecological restoration and planetary healing. Eventually, if we work really hard, there is a chance that the network of ecological healers grows to the planetary scale. This is something that may require several centuries as we'll need to undo extreme climate change (if that is possible) and restore ecosystem health through active stewardship and restoration for entire bioregions of the Earth.

My forecast is for surviving through collapse, where a new emergent system eventually takes hold and has a glimmer of hope (but merely a glimmer!) of preserving or restoring societal complexity over the span of several centuries." (Facebook, aU

Review by Pat Kane at https://www.thealternative.org.uk/dailyalternative/2017/7/25/thepatterninginstinct