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.