I am currently reading Yuval Harari’s 2011 book Sapiens, and in it Harari argued (probably not the first one to do so) that it was not our species’ capability for language or thinking alone, but our capability to construe social constructs such as tribes, Gods and states, and with them co-operate in a large scale, that allowed us to seize the planet from the other homos, such as the neanderthals and erectus that were walking around some 100000 years ago. This got me thinking about today and how we are in a process, I would argue, of redefining or totally unraveling some of the central social constructs that have shaped the way in which we have been able to build the world that exists today.
When I look around today, I would say that currently there is going on a sort of iconoclasm, where previously central concepts such as nationhood or manhood are being obliterated, because, as the thinking goes, they are social constructs, and as such they are deemed not true, and as such meaningless and to be abolished. This is easily seen with the concept of gender or sex becoming murkier and murkier as the years go by. But on a larger scale democracy, progress, science and even the truth are being questioned all the time. Now, this of course is what postmodernists have argued since the latter half of the 20th century about the corrosion of the universalist narratives. But I would like to ask can our species survive this kind of obliteration of our previously common myths, if they really are the basis of our co-operation, now that we have realized that the things we believed in are not really true at all.
In Sapiens Harari argued that because of these myths our species was able to bond with larger groups than the immediate circle of people we know, and co-operate with them. Harari gives the example of two catholics who, without knowing each other previously, can go on a mutual venture because they share the same beliefs and values, and as such they can trust each other to some extent without a long standing personal relationship. In contrast the chimpanzee without social constructs can trust only those he knows personally. These myths of course, have been the basic building blocks of the societies of the world always. In the middle ages what kept the serfs in their fields was not only the physical power of the knights, but also the serf’s belief in the divine order of things and the belief in the legal contract of serfdom. All fictions. There had obviously been peasant rebellions from time to time, but the enlightenment changed the scene, because now instead of trying to return to some golden age of the past where the nobles were just, the whole society was to be reorganized. So what made the peasants rise in the 18th century was not only the dire situation of France’s economy, but also the narrative of liberty for all. A fiction. Similarly in the 19th century, it was the belief in the nation that rallied millions of people under one flag to work together, and obviously against those deemed not part of the nation. A fiction. At the close of the cold war and the fall of communism the nation was replaced with globalism and the belief in the end of history, where free market capitalism and democracy would unite the whole world. Painfully obviously a fiction. When one narrative that kept the world together was fading, we always supplanted it with another.
But now that we have realized that these narratives we tell each other are never really true, but literally figments of our imagination, and that in them lies the power structure of contemporary society, can we ever construe a new believable narrative to unite us all? If you look at the world today democracy for example seems to be less and less believable. China and Russia are not even trying, and the west is losing faith too. But is it losing faith because democracy itself is somehow unworkable, or because the narratives that unite the people of a state are becoming unbelievable?
So what do you think will be the myths of tomorrow, or is the whole analysis untrue, and we do not need these myths to function as large scale societies? Will we construe myths of our common humanness upon which we can rally together? Will the Internet bubbles burst and our societies fall into civil war between the various narratives of “alt-right” vs “SJW”s or what ever, or are we poised to succumb to totalitarianism again, where the strongman will tell the masses that what they really want, and the purging those deemed not wanted? Am I making sense or just spouting trivialities or nonesense?
When I look around today, I would say that currently there is going on a sort of iconoclasm, where previously central concepts such as nationhood or manhood are being obliterated, because, as the thinking goes, they are social constructs, and as such they are deemed not true, and as such meaningless and to be abolished. This is easily seen with the concept of gender or sex becoming murkier and murkier as the years go by. But on a larger scale democracy, progress, science and even the truth are being questioned all the time. Now, this of course is what postmodernists have argued since the latter half of the 20th century about the corrosion of the universalist narratives. But I would like to ask can our species survive this kind of obliteration of our previously common myths, if they really are the basis of our co-operation, now that we have realized that the things we believed in are not really true at all.
In Sapiens Harari argued that because of these myths our species was able to bond with larger groups than the immediate circle of people we know, and co-operate with them. Harari gives the example of two catholics who, without knowing each other previously, can go on a mutual venture because they share the same beliefs and values, and as such they can trust each other to some extent without a long standing personal relationship. In contrast the chimpanzee without social constructs can trust only those he knows personally. These myths of course, have been the basic building blocks of the societies of the world always. In the middle ages what kept the serfs in their fields was not only the physical power of the knights, but also the serf’s belief in the divine order of things and the belief in the legal contract of serfdom. All fictions. There had obviously been peasant rebellions from time to time, but the enlightenment changed the scene, because now instead of trying to return to some golden age of the past where the nobles were just, the whole society was to be reorganized. So what made the peasants rise in the 18th century was not only the dire situation of France’s economy, but also the narrative of liberty for all. A fiction. Similarly in the 19th century, it was the belief in the nation that rallied millions of people under one flag to work together, and obviously against those deemed not part of the nation. A fiction. At the close of the cold war and the fall of communism the nation was replaced with globalism and the belief in the end of history, where free market capitalism and democracy would unite the whole world. Painfully obviously a fiction. When one narrative that kept the world together was fading, we always supplanted it with another.
But now that we have realized that these narratives we tell each other are never really true, but literally figments of our imagination, and that in them lies the power structure of contemporary society, can we ever construe a new believable narrative to unite us all? If you look at the world today democracy for example seems to be less and less believable. China and Russia are not even trying, and the west is losing faith too. But is it losing faith because democracy itself is somehow unworkable, or because the narratives that unite the people of a state are becoming unbelievable?
So what do you think will be the myths of tomorrow, or is the whole analysis untrue, and we do not need these myths to function as large scale societies? Will we construe myths of our common humanness upon which we can rally together? Will the Internet bubbles burst and our societies fall into civil war between the various narratives of “alt-right” vs “SJW”s or what ever, or are we poised to succumb to totalitarianism again, where the strongman will tell the masses that what they really want, and the purging those deemed not wanted? Am I making sense or just spouting trivialities or nonesense?
But is it really a myth if 'thats mine' is so instinctive? And it is... Stealing and property proliferate throughout nature.
