Holotopia: Socialized Reality
Contents
H O L O T O P I A: F I V E I N S I G H T S
Socialized Reality
Without even noticing, we adopted from the traditional culture a myth incomparably more subversive than the myth of creation. This myth now serves as the foundation on which our social institutions, our worldview and our culture have developed.
Scope
We have come to the very crux of our proposal. We are about to zoom in on the relationship we have with information. And the way in which truth and meaning are conceived of; and socially constructed.
That was what changed during the Enlightenment; and a comprehensive change followed. Could a similar advent be in store for us today?
Our proposal
Truth and meaning today
Although our proposal does not depend on it, we offer a brief sketch of the corresponding status quo to give it context.
"Truth", it seems to be taken for granted, means "correspondence with reality". When I write "worldviews", my word processor complains. Since there is only one world, or "reality", there can be only one ("true") worldview—the one that corresponds to "reality".
Meaning, it is assumed, is the test of truth. Something is "true" if it "makes sense", i.e. if it fits into the "reality puzzle". "This makes no sense" means "this is just nonsense"; hence it cannot be true.
The purpose of information, it is assumed, is to tell us "the truth"; to show us the reality as it truly is. If this is done right, the ("true") pieces of information will fit snuggly together, like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle; and compose for us a "reality picture".
The meaning of "truth"
All truth in our proposal is truth by convention: "When I say X, I mean Y." Truth, understood in this way, is both incomparably more solid (a convention is incontrovertibly true), and incomparably more flexible (a written convention can easily be changed).
Truth by convention is completely independent of what's been called "reality". We offered it as a new 'Archimedean point', which can once again empower knowledge to 'move the world'.
The meaning of "meaning"
<p>Meaning is, by convention, strictly "in the eyes of the beholder". Information, by convention, reflects not reality but human experience. And experience (we avoid the word "reality"), by convention, has no a priori structure. Rather, it is considered and treated as we may treat an ink blot in a Rorschach test—as something to which we assign meaning; by perceiving it in a certain way.The meaning of "information"
Information is, by convention, "a system within a system", which has a number of functions within the larger system (or systems).
"A piece of information" is not a piece in the reality puzzle. It is, as Gregory Bateson put it, "a difference that makes a difference". Hence we can create what "a piece of information" might be like—to fulfill new and yet unfulfilled purposes.
An example might be a piece of information that conveys the "aha experience" – namely that something can be seen and understood in a certain specific way. The piece of information may then have the scope–view–federation structure, where a way of looking at a phenomenon or issue is offered (a scope, created by convention), alongside with a view that may result from it, and a federation by which this view continues to live and "make a difference"– by being justified or negotiated, and by eliciting suitable action. An example is what is going on right here.
The views thus created do not exclude one another, even when they may contradict each other. "Models are to be used, but not to be believed." There is more than one way to perceive a theme of interest or situation. Each of them is legitimate if it follows from a justifiable way of looking, and useful to the extent that it tells us something that we need to know.
The holoscope ideogram serves to explain how the holoscope, or information, is to be used: A cup is whole only if it is whole from all sides. A view of our contemporary situation, such as the one the Modernity ideogram provides, shows us this situation from a specific angle—and suggests where attention, and action, are still needed.
Another example of "a piece of information" is a gestalt—an interpretation of the nature of a situation as a whole. "The cup is cracked" is an example of a gestalt; another example is the Modernity ideogram. A gestalt points to a way in which the situation may need to be handled.
View
We must emphasize once again, before we continue, that the crux of our proposal is a relationship or an attitude. What we are offering is not a solution, but a process, by which the solutions are to be continuously improved. We are not proposing a better 'candle', or even 'the lightbulb'—but a praxis by which information, and the way we handle it, are continuously recreated.
Hence what we are about to say is offered as an initial prototype—whose purpose is to serve as an initial proof of concept; and to prime the process through which its continued improvement is secured.
"Reality" cannot help us distinguish truth from falsehood
The "correspondence with reality" is a truth criterion that cannot be tested in practice.
Instead of guarding us from illusion, it itself tends to be a product of illusion.
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By rendering the socialized reality insight, we have attempted to combine together in an accessible way a number of specific insights that were reached in 20th century science and philosophy—which now demand the kind of change we are proposing:
- "Correspondence with reality" cannot be applied in practice, because it cannot be verified
- Instead of guarding us from illusion, "correspondence with reality" tends to be a product of illusion
- What we call "reality" is one of a number of possibilities, created and selected through complex interplay between our social and embodied cognitive processes
- "Reality" has always been, and must be seen as, an instrument of our socialization—by which the existing power structure is legitimized, and the people are kept in obedience to it. This socialization to accept a shared "reality picture" is not only an instrument of the power structure—but it should rightly be considered as its integral part
Socialized reality and cultural revival
Having failed to liberate our worldview from socialized reality, our socialization has during the Enlightenment only changed hands. While earlier we were socialized to be pious and obedient subjects to the king, we are now socialized to be compulsive consumers; and to vote for policies that are against our best interests.
Galilei is once again in 'house arrest'—but he's kept there by new power structures.
Especially relevant for cultural renewal are the cultural consequences of the change of foundations for truth and meaning, which the Enlightenment brought. The reality myth was of course in place also while Galilei was still in house arrest. But it had a different purpose—the "reality" of the Scripture served to keep in place a myriad values, customs, rituals, mores... which constituted the culture. By "discovering" that the Bible was not telling us "the truth"—we found a way to throw away all the functions of culture, without having to place anything back. Hence the very mechanisms by which the culture is reproduced were disrupted.
The recreationof those mechanisms is, of course, a core element of the Holotopia project.
The Mirror ideogram
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