Understanding the Past, Navigating the Future

Erich Kolig

Description

There is more to globalisation than just world-wide economic interconnectedness. Equally important is that cultures grow together, engage in rapprochements, harmonise global pluralism, find common values in human existence, agree on international laws and share fundamental ethics. It is not important whether women wear a hijab, or indigenous art is copyrighted; but it is important whether the death penalty is invoked for blasphemy, apostasy and homosexuality, or whether an inconvenient journalist exercising free speech can be murdered with impunity by the justice system of a potentate. Many problems span the whole world and cannot be solved by nationalist isolation. Human rights conventions and internationalised laws, agreements and compacts are a step in the right direction. Much more remains to be done. But from where to take the answers? Looking at many cultural expressions and major cultural impulses over the centuries and millennia of homo sapiens' existence - even going back to the Neanderthal - no coherent picture emerges of a trend, a teleological movement towards a set goal, a bright future, a utopia. Interrogating evolution, religion, secularisation, reason, ethics does not suggest an answer. Cultural features relating to sexuality, the ideas of equality, liberty and democracy, just show how varied and often unsatisfactory the pursuit of these ideals has been. The history of approaches to environmental issues, of the food quest, migration and violence neither reveals nor prescribes a future course. Navigating its cultural future humankind is alone. No natural law, religious determinism, or DNA predisposition steers our course. At the moment the values of the modern Western liberal democracy seem to point the way. But this may not last in the shifting maze of global cultural multilateralism.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 30 septembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528984263
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Understanding the Past, Navigating the Future
Erich Kolig
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-09-30
Understanding the Past, Navigating the Future About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © About This Book and Some Explanations Chapter 1 Quo Vadis, Humankind? The State the World Is In Is Globalisation the Future? What Do We Hope For? Globalisation: What Does It Actually Mean? Homogenisation or What? Tolerance and Globalisation in Conflict Human Rights and Shaky Compromises Difficulties Galore Culture War or Global Culture? A United World. Really? What Would Extra-Terrestrials Make of Humankind? Chapter 2 Where Do We Really Stand: Hubris and Nemesis? Power and Hegemony Cultural Arrogance and Dreams of Grandeur The Technological Side of Globalisation Population Growth and Globalisation Utopianism, the Unlikely Goal Nativism, Nationalism and Identity Universalised Ethics Chapter 3 Evolution and Its Failures Survival of the Fittest? Really? Random Firings of Evolutionism Brain and Its Teleology The Donkey’s Carrot More About Cognition Artificial Intelligence and the Future Brain Hominin Competition Sapiens and Neanderthal Fraternising Did Neanderthal and Sapiens Kiss? Miscegenation in History Effects of Mixing with Neanderthals Superiority Not Through Muscular Strength Signs of Better Intelligence The Troglodyte Brain and Knowledge Growth But It May Not Be All One Way! Culture War over Old Bones Another Kind of Culture War Expunging History Chapter 4 Reason, Myth and Cognitive Revolution What Is Knowledge? Karl Popper and Epistemology Myth as Proto-Science Troglodytes and Scientists Conservatism and Progress at Odds Why Popper Is a Little Bit Wrong Our Present State of Mind Cognitive Evolution and Revolution Is There a Religious Evolution? Myth-Making and Reasoning Theorising by Cobbling Bits Together Myths as Glue Speculations About the Origins of Religion The Beginnings of Aesthetic Expressions and Material Evidence Culture, Religion and the Real World: A Powerful Triumvirate The Viking Example The Horror Example of Easter Island Religion, Existential Reasoning and Ethics Secularisation and the Future of Religion Chapter 5 Is Agriculture the Future? Not Everything That Can Be Eaten Is Food Oh Lord, Give Us Our Daily Carbohydrate The Fate of Hunter-Gatherers What Can Hunter-Gatherer Societies Teach Us About Human Development? The Archaeological Evidence The Kubu’s Shame An Evolutionary View of Hunter-Gatherer Societies Roots of Genocide The Affluence of Foraging A Short Working Day from 7.00 am to Noon The Testimony of Venus The Temple Complex of Göbekli Tepe and Its Mysteries What Is the Lesson? Physical Changes, Collateral Damage The Strong Farming Women Is Change in Food Production Unidirectional or Reversible? Cognitive Ability and Urbanisation Agriculture as the New Enemy Nutritional Standards and Society Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb What We Can Learn from the History of Economy Chapter 6 Sexuality, Procreation and Their “Anomalies” Some Basics of Sexuality Sex as Instrument of Procreation and Joy Sexual Revolution The Shady Side of Sexuality Weaponising Sexuality Control of Women’s Fertility Sex, Homosexuality and Other Delicate Things The Ethnographic Data The Value of Male Semen and the Papuan Sperm Drinkers Is Sexual Mutilation a Form of Aggression? Dr Freud’s Saga of Libido The Samoan Dispute Hedonism and Sexuality Chapter 7 Liberty and Equality Some General Observations About Ideal and Reality Rights, Laws and Divinities A Word About Islam Foundations of Thinking About Liberty and Equality Freedom of Speech Rise of Social Stratification and Deep Inequality Status and Power The Ventriloquist’s Dummy Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus Women as Victims of Inequality Women and Islam Slavery Governance and Democracy Wealth, Power and Inequality Chapter 8 The Question of Violence Homo Horribilis Of War and Other Forms of Violence The Smoke-Screen of Statistics Is There a Reason in This Mayhem? A Smorgasbord of Violence Witnesses of Past Violence Human Sacrifice Nature Versus Nurture The Origin of the Faulty Policies of Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism A Failed Experiment in Peacefulness: The Moriori Some Nuances in Aggression Reconfiguring War in the 21 st Century The Religious Legitimation Low-Level Traditional Violence Violence in the Name of Jihad The American Example Future Prospects Chapter 9 Sacralising Land and Environment The Search for Anthropocene’s Beginning An Even Bigger Worry Arises Human Culture, the Culprit What Is the Evidence? Comfort Zone Rubbish, Glorious Rubbish The Birth of Environmentalism Extinction of Species Guardians of Nature Some Conservation Techniques Legal Persons That Are No Persons The Spiritual Quality of Geography Uluru-Ayers Rock, the Navel of Australia The Nature of Sacred Sites Landscape and Etiquette Chapter 10 Mass Migration, Multiculturalism and Pluralism Europeans and Their DNA Hold Some Surprises The Nasty Companion of Migration The First Black Man in Britain A Short World (Pre) History of Migration Migration and Identity Climate Migration Is There a Welcome Mat? Violence as Motive for Migration Other Motives for Migration The Melting Pot Is No More Cultural Adaptation and Cultural Rights A Brief Afterword
About the Author
Erich Kolig is an Austrian-New Zealand cultural and social anthropologist who has taught in New Zealand, Austrian and Australian universities. His research spans nearly 50 years and focused on Muslim and Islamic social and religious issues, on Australian Aboriginal culture and many other issues. He is the author and editor of 12 books and numerous scientific papers and book chapters. Now retired, he lives on a small farm outside Dunedin on the South Island of New Zealand.
Dedication
Dedicated to my parents and Nicole
Copyright Information ©
Erich Kolig (2020)
The right of Erich Kolig to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Austin Macauley is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528984256 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528984263 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2020)
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About This Book and Some Explanations
This book seeks to discuss some of humanity’s most important and fundamental cultural values and natural proclivities. In all probability, their expression, realisation, suppression or neglect, will shape the kind of cultural future humankind can achieve. What kind of culture, global or otherwise, can emerge on this basis if globalisation continues on the path we can observe today? Admittedly, this is a long shot. Some experts assume we are going towards a brilliant future with a rich and globally harmonised culture. Others believe the current climate of isolationism and rising nationalism will stifle globalisation, and the promise of cultural harmonisation will be replaced by chronic friction and crisis. Does globalisation, instead of cultural homogenisation, lead into the abyss of culture wars? An even more glum perspective assumes a dystopian future beckons, a cultureless wasteland of rusting heaps of technology, a miserable bunch of a human underclass scraping a living from the detritus of past glory. Brutal chaos, anomie and the rule of intelligent machines await us.
It would be wrong to see globalisation as inevitable. The worldwide rise of nationalism, of cultural borders going up, fighting tooth and nail against globalism, may turn out not to be just a blip in the flow of history. There is no absolutely cogent reason to perceive globalisation in terms of a teleological process, an evolutionary unfolding with pre-determined consequences and an unchangeable goal-directedness. There is no clear empirical evidence for the assumption that what we were experiencing in the second half of the last century up to now is a law-like evolutionary process that extends into the future and brings the world more and more together – unless one reads the tea leaves of human history and interprets them imaginatively. Cultural homogenisation, universal integration and globalism are far from being assured outcomes.
The Roman Empire, as an embryonic globalisation project, was creating not only a cohesive political entity but also a super-culture that put its stamp on every region within its political reach. But eventually, it fell apart and history for a long time moved in the opposite direction. In a scientific sense, extrapolating from current or past conditions has to be done with great caution lest one crash-lands in the territory of pure phantasy. Projections into the future have to be declared as what they are: daring conjecture. All we can say with some certainty is that a highly interconnected world, on all levels, is both a safer world and a more dangerous one. What seems to be required is harmonising sharp cultural differences, universalising laws and ethics and creating and maintaining international channels of communication and negotiation.
Literary landmarks of past decades in summa tend to be rather ambiguous and none had any great lasting influence on the behaviour of humanity. Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb (1968) was digested and soon excreted without much impact. The world population contin