SECTOR 1:00 – Culture, Art and Myth
Culture, Art and Myth
Culture Art and Myth are the product of or are expressions from transcendent or spiritual experience, as well as how human society perpetuates its knowledge from one generation to another. The communication between people has power when it seems to ring of divine knowledge, an inspiring artistic presence, or an unforgettable story that wants to be repeated.
The creation of a Sustainable Culture is nothing but the (re)emergence of a paradigm of responsibility, caring, and connection. Old ways of taking care of the land and the sea may be useful, but many things have changed. Even in the case of a knowledge base capable of integrating modern society, technology and environmental conditions with systems of understanding and human society, such that a Sustainable Culture is possible, there still remains the challenge of communicating this knowledge and understanding from a small circle of people to the broader societies. Thus, there is an urgent call for new art forms and new stories, a new mythology about taking care of in protecting the planet and its people. Each of the first six vmeme worldviews holds significant limitation for effectively establishing and maintaining cultural paradigms of sustainability. For instance the acheivist paradigm will consistently value personal material benefit over stewarding collective resources. Even the affiliative worldview has it's achilles heel. This final reactive way of being attacks those parts of the achievist approach which it chooses to shun because of its particular green/hippie new age/socialist value system. We need sound economic systems to build Sustainable Culture. In fact a Sustainable Culture is nothing but the true meaning of a sound economic system, based on an economics that refuses to treat the environment as infinite source of resources and an infinite sink for waste products of economic activity, as do those 'economists' trained Ivy League towers, and who have recently been wrecking the US and world economies. These behaviors in the fiction of the Corporation as an entity with rights comensurate with a living creature are the reason for the powerful reaction among those holding the affiliative perspective.
2012 Varadaan (Ben Lipman)
Culture, Art & Myth: Individual
Culture art and myth at the scale of the individual will be internalized experience, because this sector is a communication between peoples. Thus an individual may become inspired through some transcendent experience and then become a generator of new cultural content, and if this resonates strongly with others may then influence the evolution of human society. In fact human cultural evolution could be described as occurring from two vectors: one being the injection of an individual experience into popular culture, such as the appearance of a new powerful spiritual teacher who influences others, and the other are rising from mutual interaction among peoples, such as may emerge when groups interact after the presence of such a powerful spiritual teacher. We could say the former having the quality of transmission, which may actually be more in the sphere of sector twelve, while the latter is a recapitulation of the spiritual experience, ultimately resulting in the formation of a new religion. Similarly in the domain of artistic content, the genesis is the work of an inspired Artist, and again, the Inspiration experience may be long more in sector twelve, while the experience of the art by others, commentary about the art and related discussion all belongs in sector one.
Culture, Art & Myth: Family or Group
The scale of family and small group, transmission communication and maintenance of particular cultural ideas can be particularly coherent, as parents tended to imbue into their children if they are particular value systems. Interestingly here we see a tendency for transmission of vMeme's, with the possibility of ongoing evolution and deepening sophistication of worldview as generations progress through time.
Culture, Art & Myth: Village
Village groups will tend to be a mixture of cultural and value systems, some considerably more coherent than others, but in general, when there is good communication within a particular group, there will be considerable alignment on many cultural, artistic and mythic forms. This may be more true in traditional societies. In modern times the disconnection among family groups even when living within collected village contexts means less coherence at this village scale. In a sense the dystopia of modern times is the fractured village. A recent TV series called 'Weeds' starts with an excellent explication of how modern suburban life in the United States is nothing but parody of an authentic and wholesome village reality.
The expression "it takes a village to raise a child"is the perfect synopsis of how important meaningful Village relationships among family groups is critical to the establishment and maintenance of Sustainable Cultures. There may be nothing more important in our time then to create a new this ancient human form of society. It really takes a village to raise healthy whole children, and nothing else can truly heal those adults raised in the dystopic, scattered, market driven society we all know too well. Thus we need the affiliative approach, but at a deeper level of sophistication that acknowledges the importance of all other seemingly less sophisticated worldviews. We are all tribal, we all seek conformity, we all have an egotistical streak, most of us have been taught to compete and achieve, and in our hearts we all wish to return to our childhood world of magic and wonder.
Culture, Art & Myth: Bioregion / Region
Human cultural patterns tends to have certain consistency on a regional basis. We now live in a different period of human history when there is a blending of regional cultural idiom with themes flocked among regions with similar climate, soil type and so forth. Successful long-term human tribal may depend upon great creativity as developed systems of one region solves significant problems of other similar regions, be they on different continents. Meanwhile great sensitivity will be required during such an unprecedented large-scale experiment, to protect various fragile ecosystems, precariously positioned species, and their dependant food-webs. A Sustainable Culture will not be built on one cultural formula. On the contrary successful solutions will require ongoing, evolving problem solving on every level of human society, and perhaps most particularly collective action on larger regional scales, such as to combat pests, pathogens, the effects of changing climatic patterns, and various as yet unforeseen conditions and events.
Permaculture is an example of specific solution sets to particular climate/environment conditions. Typically, architecture as a solution to environment and habitation, is also beholden to regional trends of fashion, regulations, and availability of materials. Language, which imbues a particular cognitive sat from which ideation can occur, is typically specific to a particular region, if not i in a general way, then by dialect and other elements such as vocabulary that reflect specific regional location. The concept of bioregion is important because it includes the concept of an environmentally bound region such as a watershed. While human culture and mythology may be constrained within such an eco--region, it may not be so. Meanwhile, in the face of massive climate change, adaptation, while having somewhat universal qualities, will tend to be localized regionally in the particularities of response, partly because of local resources, lore, knowledge and other cultural constraints such as politics, caste and economics.
As we look forward at an emerging and evolving quilt of regional Sustainable Culture solutions, there will need to be attention to local conditions, particular environmental needs, while drawing generously upon creativity found throughout the world. Specific recent developments during climate talks are indicating that those elements of human culture finding themselves more fortunate in terms of resources may be providing assistance to those regions more affected and more vulnerable during what appears to be a period of significant environmental change due to human activity.
Culture, Art & Myth: World
Without any doubt the largest impact on human culture globally has been the emergence of the World Wide Web. Just as this project is an attempt to make available ideas about this most important topic: supporting the emergence of Sustainable Culture, many similar projects and other information resources on the Internet are part of the journey. Some elements found today in this global information pool are contrary to this general objective, such as marketing campaigns promoting ideas of consumption that cannot be sustainable on a large scale. For instance many worry about the impact of an entire Chinese population having one car per household. Meanwhile, with the Internet, dialogue about such concerns can travel around the world. In a sense the Internet enables a global conversation, which ultimately brings more democracy (Sector 9), and ultimately greater consensus about our collective human destiny. There may be no force greater for human cultural evolution than this remarkable resource for information exchange. The emergence of a successful Sustainable Culture worldwide will depend upon nothing other than the kind of remarkable cultural evolution we are seeing because of the Internet.