What word could replace “globalization”?

“Globalization” was one of the paradigmatic words in the apex of postmodern era.

It was a word carried with strong attractive almost magic meaning, suggesting a kind of “economic peace”, “end of poverty”, etc., although some movements opposed to it.

Now, in a crisis since 2008, what could be the meaning of “globalization”? Could it be “unemployment”?

Postmodern was an “efficient” time…

Is after-postmodern an “inefficient” time?

As Thomas Kuhn said about scientific paradigms, the time of a scientific paradigm is ending when it cannot answer questions or find solutions to problems.

Under this thought we could say that the postmodern paradigms are over…

People are running in circles trying to find solutions using overcome paradigms, overcome concepts that seems to be still efficient, because society is still working in several issues despite the crisis…

Maybe it is necessary to find the new paradigms… Maybe it could come from several different fields beyond economy, although together with economy…  

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.