Social regression and after-postmodern shadows…

Each person has its shadow side where difficulties, weakness, faults, troubles, etc. are kept hidden or aside of day-to-day life. But that shadow has its own energies and sometimes it arises in thoughts, emotions and behavior. When two or more people live together comes a time when arise a kind of “collective shadow”, that is a result of intertwined minds, behaviors, fears and common believing. 

Through history mankind learned to deal with those energies in several different ways under law, religion, rules of behavior and respect to other people. 

In the first half of the 20th century, the world had two great wars and mankind had to deal with the confrontation with collective shadows. The horror of war awaked consciousness against the danger of global annihilation. 

But mankind always has some kind of ambivalence and paradox feelings…

In the second half of 20th century, at the same time that it was a fear of that annihilation, the science helped to develop more and more destructive weapons…and the post-modern speech was “efficiency” in every field…

In the transition between 20th and 21st century started to happen in several parts of the world situations of carnages and growing violence…

Now, in after-postmodern times, mankind should learn to deal with that kind of shadow… 

Are we having a regression in society to pre-historical conditions, or “pre-Hammurabi conditions”?

After-postmodern is open to complexity and complexity studies could help to deal with that shadows…    

Macroshift and after-postmodern

Since the end of 20th and the beginning of the 21st century the philosopher Ervin Laszlo talks and writes about “Macroshift”. He uses this word meaning an association of several big changes in the society in general, and even in individual lives, in a relatively short space of time. He felt that the macroshift was already starting and had an optimistic vision, even explaining the possibilities of different scenarios for the future.

After the historical occurrences of the first decade of 21st century, Laszlo adapted his ideas and wrote about the possibilities for the years from 2012 to 2020.

Those reflections of Laszlo indicate a perception about something that we call “after-postmodern”. “After-postmodern” is not only a time of transition or shift because we cannot surely say when that change will end, or when a new era start… Maybe “after-postmodern” includes even a time after the shift… After-postmodern time opens space for complexity; complexity can bring different notions of limits: there is not a fixed barrier between eras, they are intertwined.

CO2 and after-postmodern

At this corner of history, the midia has announced that we achieved already the atmospheric level of CO2 expected for 2020...

The greed, the anxiety for consuming, the struggle for/with no cause/end/finality... everything that increased to much in postmodern era now has its environmental consequences... At same time when someone keeps saying "why/if" about natural or human causes for greenhouse effect, now it is not efficient anymore all that "glory" of production and globalization...

Maybe it could be interesting go beyond just talking and get to alternative sources of energy, or maybe cool down a little all that struggle for life and give and take themselves some time to recover forgotten values of life...

The after-postmodern era has the burden left by postmodenity: environmental problems, economic crisis, etc.

But, at the same time there are opportunities for new beginnings and new paradigms.

Crisis: a sign of the end of postmodern period...

In August/September-2008, in a first moment, it seemed that some kind of crisis was at the door, but it could last for months, maybe a year…

Step by step it became greater and greater and it is still there…

The postmodern era was a time of assurance and confidence in the capacity of mankind to be driven by free market and progress of science, despite the warnings about environment and social issues.

Now the postmodern methods are exhausted and we are in a transition to the after postmodern era that probably already began…

As there is not a perfect wall between eras, we have traces of modern and postmodern things going on together with after postmodern tendencies that arise among us…  

Complexity and shadow archetype in after-postmodern - part 3

Complexity is about to not reduce the several human factors and conditions to just one or few.

Reductionism is a tendency to think that, for exemple, everything about human life could be reduced to biological factors or even to genes... The most commonly cited reductionisms are those one that concern to biology, or physics, or biochemistry, or other scientific field.

But reductionism can be related to any human activity.

When someone try to explain everything based on just one field of human knowledge, or human activity, it is also a reductionism.

Reductionism can bring difficulties to accept "the shadow archetype". Reductionists suppose to have solution for all problems just under their reductionist doctrine.

But mankind is complex...

When we talk about complexity, someone says that we need to simplify and not to "complexify"...

To open space to complexity is not to be against simplify, but it is embrace also the simplicity.

We can undestand complexity when we remember that each human being is more than the sum of each part of him or her. 

We can understand complexity when we understand that we never will know everything.

WE can understand complexity when we see that there is light and shadow in the world and inside each human being.

To apply complexity is also accept the shadow, embrace the shadow, and, by that way, do not give to the shadow the driving of our lives.

In modern and post-modern times mankind suffered under the strengh of the shadow. Maybe in after-postmodern times it is possible to better understand complexity and shadow...

  

Complexity and shadow archetype in after-postmodern – Part 2

The humankind always needed to deal with the shadow archetype.

The old traditions had and have several rituals to attenuate the strength of shadow over each person or over a community.

In the historical period of the Enlightment the thinkers supposed that with reason and knowledge someone could domain instincts and emotions. The Reason seemed to be superior to those two aspects of human life. But few time after the French Revolution the Terror took advantage over reason. Even the Revolution itself had some violent destruction of monuments expressing some rage from the shadow.

So, in XIX, XX and XXI centuries sometimes mankind lost control over the shadow…

Maybe some old rituals were good…

But mankind lost its linking to old and nurturing myths…

If we start to understand the shadow, to learn and study it, to exercise about it, maybe it is possible to achieve a new level of interaction among different cultures and different people.

Complexity and shadow archetype in after-postmodern

Carl Gustav Jung proposed the psychological concept of archetype as a kind of original form, pattern, as a “psychological gene” in the collective unconscious of each human being in common with all the humankind. In each culture the archetypes have some particularities concerning to that culture. 

Among those archetypes Jung named one as “the shadow”. To understand the shadow is interesting to know first the archetype of “the image”. The archetype of the image can be a individual, personal image or a collective image. It is so because when two or more people have certain level of coexistence they start to share psychological aspects and they have a collective conscience and a collective unconscious even still keeping the individual conscience and unconscious.

So, the different human groups have their images. The individual and the collective image are built with the “good things” that they have under the concepts of society. Aspects that are not good for the rules of society, not acceptable (not only under the law, but also under the traditions) remain concealed “in the shadow” of mind. We can extend this idea for repressions not only by culture, but also under repressive political conditions.

Any human community has image and shadow and it is difficult to find balance between them.

The constitution of the “modern nations” through nineteen and twenty centuries caused several transformations in culture, some under repression.

After the beginning of the fall of the “postmodern period”, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in the nineties of the 20th century, collective shadows of repressed communities started to arise in several ways. 

In the After-postmodern, there are many “energies” emerging from several collective shadows and the mankind need to find the way to achieve a new balance between the images and the shadows, respecting the notions of complexity, in order to achieve world peace.   

The After Post-modern Paradigm of Thomas Kuhn

In 1962 Thomas Kuhn wrote about his ideas of scientific paradigms and scientific revolutions, explaining that the History of Science is not linear and continuous but it has ups and downs under changing models.

Kuhn thought that his paradigm could be useful to understand the history of Hard Sciences. He was not sure about the adaptation of the structure of scientific revolutions to other fields of knowledge.

Anyway it is interesting the exchange of methods to analyze and understand the process of knowledge.

But, the “Post-modern way” made the Kuhnian Paradigm becomes a kind of “tool”; a tool to apply to achieve any capitalist aim. It became only a concept “to force” things to be the way we want to be, but not the way the things really are…

How can we “force” History to change under new paradigms? Changing comes with the movements of History. Paradigms are detected when we analyze changes.

So, the use of “paradigm” for everything, in the Post-modern times, was just a name of a game of “new beginnings” in economy or even in life…

It was so because the Post-modern Times were times of “efficiency”, and this use of paradigm was efficient.

But, in After Post-modern times the efficiency of that paradigm is gone, although the Kuhnian Paradigm is still alive!

A paradigm is something that happens anyway; it is not a thing that we can manipulate under our desires. Maybe in After Post-modern we can learn to read the flow of paradigms instead of try to control it.

flying money, flying paper, flying bits

In Post-Modern Era stability should be achieved by stable money in a stable economy, and so it was...

But the pendulum of history doesn't stop and mankind is not the owner of history, although we think we have power over it.

And so, in After Post-Modern it seems that notes and coins are flying, supposed valuable papers are flying, economic valuable bits are flying...

We are not coming back to middle ages to trade merchandising by objects or livestock, or metals instead of money, but maybe people is going a hardway to find that life is more valuable than money, that money can be just a mirror of work, and a mean, not an end...

It seems utopian, but mankind is suffering anyway under a stubborn economic expectation.  

Complexity and crisis

There is a persistent crisis around the world too much seen as “an economic crisis”… And the only ways people try to solve that crisis are “economic ways”… So, humankind walks in circles…
That reductionism is far from to find stable solutions.
It is difficult to accept that we are living under paradigms different from those of postmodern times.
As history go round in circles and vortex, so some parts of philosophy.
Aristotle wrote that the whole is more than the sum of the parts. If we think only in one aspect and work only in that field we will not achieve the whole.
Complexity can afford ways to deal with problems and questions beyond the limits of each field of knowledge. We must see the link among things and not only each thing itself.

which singularity?

When wrote about "ecosophy" the philosopher Felix Guattari used the therm "singularity" to mean something very connected to the inner part of each person to achieve a balanced level among someone's subjectivity, the community and the nature. It is a concept that implies human respect and recovery of mankind in the subjective aspects of each human being.

In the end of 20th and beginning of 21th century "singularity" became a kind of an "almost sci fi concept" about the human being achieving some kind of "transhuman condition", made by technology, under circumstances where doens't matter how much humanity could be lost: the aim is to achieve some kind of "imortality". But could it be a kind of a imortality of a "not anymore human being"...

This "transhumanity" is different of that used by Basarab Nicolaescu when he meant a kind of "transcultural condition".

So, maybe the "singularity" of the "almost sci fi human being" could mean some "dehumanized human being"?

At the same time that more than 1 billion people are starving and more than that has obesity, what of the two singularities could be more useful to humankind?

Metaphorically, the "Bicentennial Man" (the movie) chose to be human instead of to be immortal...

Now, when the efficiency of postmodern is weak, and the humankind is searching for meaning of life, maybe we could remember the singularity of Guattari...

We know that the technology of that "postmodern singularity" could bring some benefits to human life, but it is important that we do not forget the "singularity" of each human being in the world...   

after-postmodern social bindings

The economic crisis is the same since 2008.

It is not only "economic" or even political, but it has other "transversalities".

Under a complex approaching we can see that history is in a bigger change that we could first suppose.

Each human community is looking and discovering its own roots at the same time that communication and deal among human beings is easier than ever.

People are looking for their own identity. This identity has universal bindings but it has also local, ancient and sometimes almost lost bindings.

After the end of the Cold War, step by step human communities are discovering aspects of their identities that was repressed under political power and other factors.

This segmental process is a movement in the pendulum of history.

In the end of the Roman Empire the occidental nations were divided in smaller groups linked more by cultural   aspects than the former political and economic binding with the empire.

We cannot say that we are going to a "new feudal era", but the pendulum of history shows that there is a moment for humankind to look back to inner collective values and not just to external economic bindings.

Maybe this is a side of the crisis that could be better understood under the after-postmodern complexity. 

unsustainable sustainability - part 3

How to work for sustainability with insatiable human beings...

If sustainability implies some limit, what are the limits of insatiability...

... or satiability...

Maybe Complexity is the field where those limits could work, or could be worked...

Even with a insatiable human being, there is not possible to build sustainability without the human being.

There is not environment without human being.

So, the balance must be found inside complexity, among all actors of worlds scenario. 

unsustainable sustainability - part 2

Does sustainability need money?
Maybe it is more a matter of action and direction... or a matter of changes...
Many times changes are not comfortable "movements".
But each one must find its own change.
In the deep this is not "my change", or "our change" but "your change".
Arne Naess thought about superficial ecology and deep ecology.
Sustainable sustainability implies deep ecology.
Many steps of superficial ecology are perhaps necessary, but they are not sufficient.
Between 1992 and 2012 the world was, in the first half of this period, in the Postmodern climax; and in the second half it was in the descensus of the Postmodern, in the waning of the efficiency.
In after-postmodern we must find other ways to find the change inside complexity.

unsustainable sustainability

Susteinability is the word of the moment...

Nonetheless we do hear so much but we do not see how to sustein...

As we said before, in after-postmodernity we see the end of the efficiencies, those efficiencies of post-modernity: strong as a truck but not too much "human"...

Everything that is done for environment is necessary but it is not sufficient for achieve a new level of sustainability.

Human beings need to talk and deal all the time to achieve a balance between "modern life" and "after-postmodern conditions" that include a stronger respect for nature and life on earth more than ever were before.

For while we see more "vicious circles" than "virtuous circles" in therms of sustainability. 

In other words, what seems to bee sustainable, in the end of the day brings unsustainable collateral effects.

A sustainable virtuous circle could mean a chain of sustainable causes and effects.

Maybe History itself will, step by step, push humankind to inevitable sustainable paradigms...

But it could be less expensive if human beings try to start practical measures to stimulate small communities to find their own ways to development respecting environment, at the same time the greater measures are applied among countries. 

after-postmodern problems, after-postmodern solutions

Henri Bergson wrote that we will be free when we formulate a problem instead of simply receive it already formulated. 

Thomas Kuhn wrote that a paradigm conditionate the formulation of the problem and the formulation of the solution. Most times that we read this we do not pay attention to the word "problem", we only pay attention to the word "solution". We can also replace the word "problem" with the word "question" and we can replace the word "solution" with the word "answer". It is a similar thinking.

So, we are conditioned to see a problem or a question only under the current paradigms.

But we are in times of changes...

Kuhn also wrote that when a paradigm cannot have anymore answers or solutions it is time to rise a new paradigm.

In after-postmodern era it is more and more difficult to use the postmodern paradigms to solve the problems.

We must read or write questions and problems with new formulations.

Maybe there are not only "global" problems. When we think only in global problems we do not see the "local" problems. 

So, transdisciplinary, we can see at same time global and local problems. But, in after-postmodern, maybe it is a liitle more important to look to the "local" problems, because we have the bias to forget a apparently "small" problem when we have a bigger...

Maybe we should ask to each community: "how the current crisis affect you ?" "What do you think that could be the solution for your local problem?"

  

Crisis and transdisciplinarity

The international economic crisis is bigger than just “economic”. It is also a crisis of the way to see life and to see the world.

Under Thomas Kuhn we could say that it is a crisis of paradigms; not only economic paradigms, but also an indication of changes in paradigms of science, knowledge, living and all aspects of human life and as we see life in general on earth.

The postmodern formula to solve all questions and problems doesn’t work anymore as it worked before...

So, economy, knowledge, science, living, arts, sports, etc., must open itselves to each other, and this time maybe Arts could show the way...

It is necessary “creativity” to solve the problems. Creativity is between austerity and liberality. To improve creativity in all professions it is possible to use Arts.

The experts could stop for a moment and hear a symphony, read classics, admire paintings, or even listen the opinion of the artists. They have a special feeling of what is going on in the world.

Arts can be also a calling for Ethics.

When we are immersed in our own speciality, sometimes we are blind for all the variables in each situation.

In Postmodern period, to be a workaholic could be something desireble, commendable, a way to success.

Now, in after-Postmodern it is not enough, it is not efficient, it is not necessary.

Maybe it is better for all not work too much and let some room for unemployed people to divide time and space with us.

Maybe if the profits become a little less, more people can start to have some profit too...

We could take a look to the writings of  some wise man like Arne Naess and his recomendations for better life and living, suggesting to cultivate peace, to have time not only for work, but also for enjoy the nature, the Arts, and sports.

What Arne Naess named for himself Ecosophy T, he says that each one could find his or her own Ecosophy A, or B, or C, etc., respecting nature and culture of each human community.

In Postmodern, everything had to be in a hurry. In after-Postmodern, this way doesn’t work. We must take time and recover some capabilities that our ancestors had.

We lost some kind of wisdom of the Gothic Cultur in Middle Ages. We can see in their sculptures that they are smiling, we can see in that huge buildings some kind of strengh... At same time we know that they had several feast days...

We must recover the value of pause...

Crisis: still the same... Let's open the door to afterpostmodern

Some people say that there is a new crisis in 2012... Well, that crisis actually started in 2008. 

Since then it is the same crisis with variations through the years.

There is a discussion around "austerity".

Maybe no one could say that would start from now a life without any austerity envolving struggle for existence...

But in another hand, as it's used to say in a methaphoric way, the medication cannot be too strong because it can kill the patient together with the germs.

The solution can be between strong austerity and its opposite.

The key to the the solution can be in a variety of mesures and not in just one mesure.

Those mesures can come from a transdisciplinary vision of the crisis, and not just from the discipline of Economy or even from just one line of economic thinking.

Maybe the opposite sides, or the different sides, need to talk much much more...

Among human habilities, only Arts can save our humanity...

 Most human beings have some believing and some ideas about spiritual salvation.

This is very important but it is not what we are talking about.

We are talking about human habilities acquired through centuries.

In Postmodern times, Science could explain everything about nature and humanity.

Science had a discourse about any trace of the human being: genes and molecular biology could answer any question.

Science is still more and more usefull and necessary, but it is not sufficient anymore to account for our humanity.

In the after-postmodern times, efficiency is not sufficient to fill our humanity.

We need something more.

Science can save my kidney, my brain, my body, but not my humanity...

In that context, only Arts can save my humanity.

Some discourses about the human being can only be made by poetry and cannot be replaced by Science.

Maybe poets could have some suggestion for current economic crisis...   

Consumer: the new old citizenship...

In modern times, from 1800 to 1950, products were made to last and people dreamed and searched  first to be a citizen than to buy things. 

In the second half of the 20th century the "concret dreams" replaced the subjective aims. So, the postmodern brought more and more dispensable products and "to consume" became a verb to exercise like a kind of sport.

In the "after-postmodern" with the end of bipolarization of the world and the multilaterality of economy, almost everyone want to become a "world citizen" or, in other words, to become "a consumer". 

Freedom became "a capacity ro buy things" as anyone of the so called rich countries. 

Maybe in a certain way it is true... But also maybe it is true that it could be more important to be "first a citizen" and to be on control of what to buy, than to blindly follow advertising.

Of course there is ethic advertising... or there ethic "anything"... 

And that is the reason because we say that in the after-postmodern times there is a space for Ethics to come before other values, because in after-postmodern that other values maybe are still necessary but not anymore sufficient to achieve what people need to live well...

   

Do international "megameetings" work in after-postmodern?

Postmodern Era was time of efficiency, time of results.

Big political international meetings had the attention of the world every time bringing news, even someone could doubt about the directions of the results of such meetings.

In after-postmodern times it seems that more and more the official international meetings have some week results and directions.

We are not talking about sports and art, even they are intertwined with economy, politics, etc.

In a certain way it seems that the in the "internet world" things work better for social and political movements.

The megameetings spend too much energy, material and money for few results.

Maybe they are necessary but they are not sufficient anymore to solve big problems.

Maybe international environmental megameetings could be less expensive and more sustainable if it uses more the communication technology and diminish the need of big trips of many people and the waste of resources, energy and material just to talk about environmental issues...

There are some paradoxes around these questions...

In after-postmodern they become more visible... 

The main scientific tool of after-postmodern: computation, cybernetics, the digital world...

Probably the most important scientific product of the Postmodern Period was computation and its derivatives. 

Nonetheless, although computation was the climax of Postmodern, it was also one of the main tools of its end.

We can take any exemple of hard sciences, biological sciences or human sciences and we will see the deep influence of computation. We can even think of a library or any archive, and that influence is very important to find a new level of technic, scientific method and understanding of the world and the human being.

Paradoxically, when we get to such a level it becomes to be more dangerous to the limits of mankind and to ethics.

In the 20^th century, maybe the nineties would be completely different if there was not something like computation...and the postmodern era would not go down...

The digital world provided the conditions to the traps of the free market and at same time the conditions to surveillance over it.

George Orwell wrote in the modern times a prophetic book about the postmodern era: “1984”.

But now “The Big Brother” is more than ever over everyone...

And that is a paradox of After-postmodern: the digital world can free  - as the universality of the cell phone, or other comunications and information - and can be a new kind of jail...

Well, anyway, computation was one of the main propellers of the After-postmodern world.

  

complexity, the third included and after-postmodern

The "third included" is another pillar of the Transdisciplinarity.
The complexity can open the door to the third included.

In the Aristotelian Logic we know the "third excluded". It is a logic conclusion about something that doesn't fit to an afirmation like "This man is John or is not John". There is not any other possibility. There is not a "third possibility". He is John, or he is not John.

But, with the third "included" it is possible to go beyond this paradox.

Basarab Nicolaescu use to explain it with the concept of Quantum in Physics, that is something that goes beyond the paradox that some elementary particles that seem to be matter and energy at the same time.

In the Postmodern Era the thinkers of Transdisciplinarity seemed to be just "dreamers" to many people.

In the After-Postmodern we can bring the idea of "third included" to the day by day...

There is a paradox that we live with every moment and we don't give attention.

We use to say that everybody is equal.

We also use to say that each person is unique and that there is not a person completely equal to another, even in the case of twins...

In the Postmodern Era of bipolarity and reductionism it was not accepted a "third way" in a deep sense.

But now bipolarity and reductionism doesn't bring solutions or answers. Maybe it is possible to embrace some paradoxes understanding a multilevel of Reality where de apparent impossible conciliation of a paradox can reach a solution.

Maybe this is a way to world peace in the after-postmodern.

Maybe this is a way to understand that even very important Science is not the only way to find answers to the deep questions of life...

Back to the Pendulum of History

 The Postmodern years can be divided in decades of the 20^th century, from fiftys to ninetys.

At the same time that the “main postmodern program” was walking looking for efficiency and results, parallel movements, opposed or not to that program, capted different feelings about what was happening to the society.

From fiftys to sixtys, at the same time that the Counterculture Movement was growing, in the Arts it was a kind of “romantic feeling” in the 19^th century style.

It was a kind of “counterbalance” to the “main postmodern program”.

So, at the same time that people were dreaming with peace and liberty, they had a nostalgic feeling about life walking together with existentialist crisis of that days.

Then, in the sixties The Beatles sang that “yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away”, and that they “long for yesterday”.

The decade of seventys was a transitory decade toward the next apparent “victory” of the “main postmodern program”.

The decade of eightys was called “the lost decade” because of economic problems, but (and maybe because of it) it was also a time to the stablishment of a very pragmatic economic way that would be stronger in ninetys.

Well, in the eightys Duran Duran did not sing anymore like Beatles. The nostalgic feeling was replaced by a more realistic and conformist way of life and they sung a song named “Ordinary World” and talked that “I won’t cry for yesterday, there’s an ordinary world, somehow I have to find, and as i try to make my way, to the ordinary world, I will learn to survive”.

The nostalgic world of Beatles was a dreaming world and the ordinary world of Duran Duran was a “post-dreaming world” in front of a new reality, but it were two poetic ways to feel the current moment in that days.

The pendulum of history swang from a “romantic para-postmodern” to a “realistic para-postmodern” between fiftys-syxtys to eightys-ninetys.

The seventys was something different, a forgotten decade, a kind of “middle ages” in the Postmodern Era.     

complexity, transdisciplinarity and after-postmodern - part 2

Complexity is different of Holism.
Complexity can embrace Holism but it is not restricted to Holism.
Holism is interesting as a theory against the Reductionism, but sometimes Holism has its "traps".

Holism can be a kind of Reductionism if it only accept the "vision of the whole" has the unique approach to Reality... So it can become another "reductionist tendency", if it reduces everything to "the whole".

Holism appeared in Modern times but it became a strong and maybe "fashioned" way of thinking in Postmodern Era, because it was a strong way to oppose to Reductionism. 

The Postmodern Era was a time of "strong polarity" with Reductionism at one side and Holism at the other.

In the After-Postmodern times, Complexity can embrace traces of reductionistic and holistic tendencies but going beyond polarities.   

Systems Theory is also interesting and can also be embraced by Complexity. But, as Edgar Morin wrote in his great work "La Méthode", Systems Theory can have also a kind of "trap" that we could say can be similar to Holism.

So, Holism and Systems Theory are good tools to better understand Reality, but Complexity can help us to do not reduce Reality to any of both ways of thought.

The third pillar of Transdisciplinarity, "the third included" can harmonize paradoxes. It can help to harmonize reductionistic and holistic tendencies.

complexity, transdisciplinarity and after-postmodern

As we wrote, Complexity is the second pillar of the Transdisciplinarity. 

Transdisciplinarity has a "not reductionist" philosophy.

Complexity is a strong "not reductionist" tool.

We could say "anti-reductionist" instead of "not reductionist", but if we start to assume an attitude of "anti-this", "anti-that", we will end staying out of the transdisciplinary comprehension, and having a kind of reductionist position.

It is better to point a "positive opinion", or "what we are for" instead of acumulate a collection of "antis".

The Complexity is something that has a space to "the exceptions".

In the Post-modern philosophy, the exception is seen as a menace to "the rules". That is a fear of the exception, because "maybe the exception could become the rule".

But, in true the exception gives reason to the rule. There is exception because there is a rule and vice-versa.

Transdisciplinarity is not against the rule, but is not in the side of a kind of "a rulism" that doesn't give place to exceptions.

Without exception we "dehumanize"... If we give space to exception we humanize...

interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and after-postmodern - Part 3

The current crisis needs multidisciplinary level with the opinion of specialists, but it needs also some approach in the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary level. As we said before, in the "after-postmodern" the specialist is necessary but is not sufficient to achieve new ways to guide the crisis.

Transdisciplinarity has three pillars: different levels of reality; complexity; the "third included".

People are trying to deal with the crisis almost only and strictly in the level of the discipline of Economy.

Maybe other levels of knowledge can bring help to that discussion, as Philosophy, Sociology, Anthropology. Even "not official knowledge" could bring new models of thinking and deal with the problems.

So, as suggested by transdisciplinarity, if we see reality by and through several levels, maybe we can see new solutions for old problems.

Perhaps there is a third way between the polarity of "all or none" alternatives to solve the crisis.

At same time that mesures suggested by specialists are started, maybe activities that could reach people in local way and not just global, could help to find new ideas and actions.

Maybe people could have thousands of peaceful areopagus spread around the world where they could discuss the problems under the local conditions of their own cultural and social variables. 

interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and after-postmodern - Part 2

One characteristic of the Postmodern times (mainly the second half of the 20th century) was "the specialist" and "the specialization". More and more the paradigm of specialization was necessary and sufficient to solve problems and answer questions. The "multi-specialization" was typical of "multidisciplinarity". So, there was a great competition among specialists of the same field, or yet a competition among specialties around of which could be "the best answerer to all questions". 

Under the strengh of this paradigm, interdisciplinarity and much more transdisciplinarity seemed to be matter for "poets and philosophers" but not for pragmatists that conducted policy and economy. 

But in the 21th century came the depletion of that model and was the end of that kind of efficiency.

So, in the After-Postmodern, specialization and multidisciplinarity are still necessary but they are not sufficient to solve many problems and answer many questions. 

In the After-Posmodern, it is necessary a new paradigm to be sufficient to bring solutions to the current crisis. 

The interdisciplinarity and the transdisciplinarity can be the tools to achieve a new way to deal with several difficulties.

It means that we still need the specialist, but we now need people that work "transverselly" with the connections between specialties, or within "the net" that goes beyond the limit of the disciplines. 

interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and after-postmodern - Part 1.

In the 1950's decade, some scholars started to look to the relationship among the different disciplines of Knowledge. In the 1920's it was already used the word "interdisciplinarity", but in another context.

In 1950's, at the same time that a "pragmatic postmodern vision" started in therms of "production of results", people that worked with Education were concerned about which kind of Education could be better for the new generation. 

At that decade Jean Piaget proposed the word "Transdisciplinarity" to mean a new way to go beyond the limits of the disciplines. With these kind of studies, in a general way, appeared 3 therms: multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity.

Someone says that "Multidisciplinarity" started with Aristotle. It is partially correct, because, in true, Aristotle did not think about multidisciplinarity although created a kind of disciplinary division.

This kind of reflexion was a concern of scholars that saw that the growing division among specialties could lead to a fragmentary knowledge that could dehumanize and make the noction of whole to be lost.

Multidisciplinarity is the most common way that we use to learn: each Discipline with its own language and own method, with few "permeability" to other disciplines.

Interdisciplinarity imply in some interrelation or exchange of language and method, with more "permeability".

Transdisciplinarity works with: different levels of reality; complexity; the third included.

New paradigms: Complexity.

In the Postmodern Period the strong spirit of competition a kind of "all or none" principle made only one line of thinking to be acceptable as a paradigm in scientific or other circumstances. 

In the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21th century, this model did not answer anymore all the questions or problems. It was necessary to see the possibility of different answers to one same question, and the possibility to try to understand and conciliate paradoxes.

So, it was space for a more "complex" comprehension of the world and the human being.

The notion of Complexity started in Biology, in the first half of 20th century, when some thinkers wrote about the idea that "a living being is more than the sum of its parts". So, life is more than the chemical and molecular components. Life is also a kind of net among parts of a living being and even among several living beings. 

This concept of Complexity reached Philosophy and Anthropology and could be used to understand society and nature. 

Thinkers like Edgar Morin and Basarab Nicolaescu wrote about Complexity. Maybe now, in the After-Postmodern Period could be possible to better understand and apply Complexity. 

    

malthusian cathastrophe ahead?

Malthusian hypothesis is based in an idea that the population would increase much more than food, and so, the world would enter in a disaster, or mess, or war for food... 

This menace maybe was usefull for postmodern efficiency keeps the steering wheel of the history, but, in true, we know that the population is not growing so fast and that there is enough food in the world for each person. 

The problem is that many have too much and many have too few food and other things.

This is not healthy for anyone.

We need an "individual ecology"...  Each one must be "more natural", more healthy... Our body has not the capacity to carry so many things inside... We don't need to eat so much...

We need a "sustainable individuality"...

Anyway, the malthusian cathastrophe will not happens...

Less competition, more cooperation: utopia?

When someone writes about a world with "less competition and more cooperation", we can quickly hear negative commentaries of "dreams" of famous artists and politicians that had or have that kind if "illusion" and that  it is not possible a good international economy without a strong competiton.

We don't want deny that the quality of products can improve if someone needs to make something better than other "competitors".

But there is a key tool that can give a differenciated mesure and conduction on the competitoon: Ethics.

If Ethics is ever ahead of any circunstance, it is a good beginning of more cooperation.

Ethics in a large meaning of the word, including aspects directly correlated to the competitors, but also aspects of respect to human beings, to animals, to nature. 

A new crisis?

Some news talk about a possible "new international crisis" in 2012 similar to 2008`s crisis?
In true it is the same crisis in a new step...

It is possible to see it if we understand that the postmodern efficiency cannot be the main paradigm anymore.

The capitalistic competition, as the only way to find welfare, doesn`t work for each person on earth.

At same time the Malthusian idea cannot be the core of development.

At same time that more tham 1 billion people is in misery, there are more than 2 billions in overweight or obesity...

The main problem is not the number of more than 7 billions of population on the earth. One of the problems is the possibility to access resources, vital resources for human beings...

"Modern" in 20th century

 In the end of 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century the "Modernist Movement" started in the Arts as a reaction against Realism and what was considered conservative values of that. It was not an exactly return to Romanticism but was, anyway, a look to "abstract" and to what was supposed to be "new". 

Eric Hobsbawm has a concept that the 20th century , in true, started in 1914, with the First World War.

After the Second World War some movements that intended to "surpass" the "Modern" appeared. 

So, between 1914 and 1945 there were not too much time for "modern"...

And the Futurism of that days was maybe a kind of "modernism" that latter walked together with dictatorial ideas... If it was so, Dadaism, that claimed to be against the principles that leaded to War, was, in some level, influenced by Futurism?

In the middle of all that, how was Surrealism and Expressionism situated?

Was Dadaism already a kind of Postmodern Movement? 

Maybe Modern and Postmodern was intertwined in 20th century...

New paradigms

Since the book of Thomas Kuhn "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (1962-1970) was publicized the word of Greek origin "paradigm" became a kind of keyword for anyone that would like to promote any supposed "change", even in conditions that not would really change, but only because people are all the time looking for some "change for better". Sometimes, main in science, "paradigm" is pointing to a change, other times "paradigm" is just a good advertising word.

In an after-postmodern "paradigm", we can remember the use of this word by Boaventura Souza Santos when he writes about a new paradigm that stablish a relationship between "Subject" and "Subject" instead of a relationship between "Subject" and "Object". That idea brings a more complex and new vision about relationships of human beings and also between humankind and nature, in a way to see that all things are connected in a huge net, and so there are influences from each other. That is different of the supposed influence only from "Subject" to "Object" in the typical "controlling way" of postmodern efficiency.