Excerpt from The Patterning Instinct: Can We Transform Our Society for a Flourishing Future?

[논둑길맨발로]

The Patterning Instinct

A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning


https://www.jeremylent.com/the-patterning-instinct.html

자본주의적 인식 유형(cognitive pattern)

자본주의는 이기적으로 자신의 재정적 이득을 추구함으로써, 각 개인이 사회의 더 큰 이익에 기여하고 있다는 매혹적인 계율로 경쟁 이념들을 물리치고 승리했다. 소비주의의 출현과 함께 자본주의는 사람들의 삶에 환각적인 새로운 목표를 주입하였다. 자본주의는 사람들에게 공산품의 소유와 과시적 소비를 통해 삶의 공허함, 무의미 함 또는 소외감을 치유 할 수 있다고 약속했다.
"그 처방"이 아무리 일시적일지라도, 누구나 열심히 일하고 헌신적인 노력을 통해 더 많은 물건을 구입할 수있는 더욱 많은 돈을 벌어 쾌락의 쳇바퀴에 탑승할 수 있다고 설파한다.

Our modern world is the result of the runaway success of one of the most powerful cognitive patterns in history. Capitalism triumphed over competing ideologies with its seductive precept that by selfishly pursuing their own financial gain, each person was contributing to the greater benefit of society. With the advent of consumerism, capitalism instilled an intoxicating new purpose into people’s lives, promising them that their feelings of emptiness, meaninglessness or alienation could be cured through the possession and conspicuous use of manufactured goods. No matter that the “cure” was only temporary: through hard work and dedication, one could earn more money to purchase even more goods, thus stepping on to the hedonic treadmill.

궁극적 수혜자는 인간이 아니라 기업
This pattern has become so embedded into the global construction of meaning that most people accept it without question. Those fortunate enough to possess more money than others gain more in the short-term on the treadmill of temporary satisfaction. However, the ultimate beneficiaries are not human at all, but rather the conceptual creations called corporations, which exist collectively to transform the human experience and the natural world into the monetized economy, regardless of the ultimate effect on humanity as a whole.

자본주의적 소비주의가 성공한 배경에는
신과 자연으로부터 분리된 근대인간의 공허함이 있다
How did this cognitive pattern achieve such success? We’ve seen that, beginning with the “mind-cure” movement of the late nineteenth century, a consumption-based ideology served to redress a lack of meaning in people’s lives, replacing an inner void resulting from the uniquely Western mode of dualistic cognition with the consumerist frenzy of capitalism.


자본주의의 정신병리현상
A mad world: capitalism and the rise of mental illness

https://www.redpepper.org.uk/a-mad-world-capitalism-and-the-rise-of-mental-illness/


비자본주의 문명에서의 인간의 본 모습
In more integrative patterns of cognition, such as traditional Chinese thought or indigenous cultures, a person’s relationship to their community and the natural world satisfied the drive of their patterning instinct to find meaning in life.
In the prescientific Christian era, as in Islamic civilization, the belief in a transcendent God infused meaning into people’s lives, even though it led to the bifurcated experience that continues to cause so much suffering. However, in our mainstream modern value system, the separation from the desacralized natural world – created by the Greeks, systematized by Christianity and endorsed by science – is complete.
Where does this leave us? Is there a way our civilization can somehow be steered to achieve a sustainable path for humanity’s future – a path where progress might mean something other than re-engineering humanity and consuming the earth?


공공재의 비극과 자본주의의 이데올르기적 트랩

공공재의 비극
This self-defeating collective dynamic, known in economics as the “tragedy of the commons,” highlights a crucial flaw in capitalist ideology: the notion that it is inevitably beneficial for society when each person seeks to maximize his own gain.

자연자원은 무한하다는 환각
Underlying this notion is an even more fundamental defect of classical economic theory: the assumption that nature is inexhaustible. When the framework of modern economics was developed in the 18th century, it seemed reasonable to view natural resources as unlimited because, for all intents and purposes, they were. Economists therefore treated minerals, trees, and water as commodities to be sold at a price that was simply the cost of extracting and marketing them. As we’ve seen, the experience of the past fifty years has proven that assumption to be wrong. In the words of systems theorist Kenneth Boulding: “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”

이데올르기의 트랩
In spite of this obvious and fundamental flaw, classical economic theory continues to be used around the world as the driving force for decisions made by corporations, policy makers and governments. How can that be? Environmental historian J. R. McNeill offers an explanation: “When an idea becomes successful, it easily becomes even more successful: it gets entrenched in social and political systems, which assists in its further spread. It then prevails even beyond the times and places where it is advantageous to its followers.” This is another form of lock-in: ideological. “Big ideas,” McNeil observes, “all became orthodoxies, enmeshed in social and political systems, and difficult to dislodge even if they became costly.”


대변혁의 시작
자본주의의 기계론적 분자론적 세계관의 극복

A Great Transformation would need to be founded on a worldview that could enable humanity to thrive sustainably on the earth into the future. In place of root metaphors such as nature as a machine and conquering nature, the new worldview would be based on the emerging systems view of life, recognizing the intrinsic interconnectedness between all forms of life on earth, and seeing humanity as embedded integrally within the natural world.

새로운 세계관의 핵심 세가지
소유보다는 삶의 질
나보다는 우리
환경의 지속가능성
Three core values emerge from this worldview. The first is an emphasis on quality of life rather than material possessions. In place of the global obsession with defining progress in terms of economic output and material wealth, we would begin to prioritize progress in the quality of our lives, both individually and in society at large. Secondly, we would base political, social and economic choices on a sense of our shared humanity, emphasizing fairness and dignity for all rather than maximizing for ourselves and our parochially defined social group. Finally, we would build our civilization’s future on the basis of environmental sustainability, where the flourishing of the natural world is a foundational principle for humanity’s major decisions.


Metcalfe의 법칙과 연대의 확산
Hawken points to Metcalfe’s Law, which states that the usefulness of a network grows exponentially when its connections grow arithmetically. In this way, the collective action of small groups of individuals can potentially become a global force to countervail the massive corporate networks that currently dominate global civilization. The global culture emerging from the internet offers humanity a view of itself as an interconnected whole, inviting people to see themselves as part of a web of life encompassing the entire world.

All of a sudden, the gradual shift in ideas becomes an avalanche when those who are most comfortable sticking together find themselves in a rush to join in the new way of thinking. In the age of the internet, this tipping point can conceivably be reached much more rapidly than in the past.

유엔의 새로운 위상과 역활
공정경제 수호와 자연의 권리선언
What would the latter part of this century look like if our global civilization took the path of a Great Transformation? It’s likely we’d see a reorganized United Nations, with powers to enforce a more responsible approach to our global commons, such as the oceans, the atmosphere and the environment. When corporations and governments make investment decisions, they’d explicitly factor the externalities of the natural world into their cost/benefit analyses. While there would still be massive income inequality between rich and poor nations, that gap would be decreasing as a result of economic structures based on fairness rather than untrammeled exploitation. And the flourishing of the natural world would be given a high priority in global decision making. There might even be an enforceable UN Declaration of the Rights of Nature, putting the natural world on the same legal standing as humanity.


원문출처

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-05-09/excerpt-from-the-patterning-instinct-can-we-transform-our-society-for-a-flourishing-future/


저자 책 소개
https://youtu.be/3FaqJ9jqBY0

Our Actions Create the Future: A Response to Jem Bendell

https://patternsofmeaning.com/author/jeremylent/