Collective cultural fatigue
Collective cultural fatigue
Key references: Behavior psychology – Evolution psychology – Gestalt
I read Rama about mirror neurons, first big bang and second big bang; then I decided to write this blog, with a mainly reference of behavior psychology. Study of old world and middle age, give me a clear view that people communications are the tools of widespread ideas, only remember one age journey to return to his home after say half a century to tell who still alive of his friends his story. Past communication was sometimes very difficult even cost life as the case with Pheidippides and the Marathon.
The main routs of old world were land; rarely people use sea except only for short distance and beside shores because of dangers of open sea ride, but river ride was safe; so all people migrations were by riding seas of sands or lands, later large ships appeared in Persia and Rome to compete each other in monopolization trading of spices and silk instead of Arabs, to end in complete siege; so that Arabs become sand prisoners, facing life catastrophe.
This type of catastrophe was not natural as usually was the case in old world, when for example earth becomes dry without rains and herbage for animals to eat. Natural catastrophe leads to free people movements anywhere, a phenomenon responsible for wide spread of Human kind to cover whole earth plant; but with appearance of selfishness or social – Machiavellian intelligence [Increasing population density as a factor will appear later]; empress and armies faced each other, and change the game to be cultural struggle.
Who name collapsed Turkey as a sick man had a sharp mind, because people can undergo collective sickness leads to people confusion; this phenomenon, we can meet it repeated in Human history, when the collective mind suffer cultural Pressure due to insisting strict conservation supporting out of date ideas.
Arabs face cultural siege struggle of Rome and Persia through raising their monotheism religion against Rome and Persia Paganism which was suffering of cultural sickness or as I want to put a term of "collective cultural fatigue".
Phenomenon of "collective cultural fatigue" facing us in clear examples of: 1] collapsed Rome and Persia [indicating old world collapse] 2] collapsed Turkey.
But between 1 and 2, we find European collapse which occurred after its siege by Arabs and Turks. Europe in middle age undergo outer siege and inner conservation leads to collapse or sickness or collective cultural fatigue; they tried land route and failed, even Crusades failed, then the squeezed European people gush out of their Home, mainly by riding open seas.
European getting out of siege and fatigue was timing of start collapse of Arabs as happened by their withdrawal from Andalusia, at 1492 when Columbus starts his journey to discover the new world. Europe encourage come from scientific discovering started in middle age, which transport mind to construct a modern culture and compete culture of middle age.
Middle age is the finishing tool of old world, during it undeveloped people, in Europe: German, Celt and Viking and in Middle East: Arabs and Berber deal progressed culture, at that time, with their stomach, not mind; leading to blocking of progressed cultural heritage of old world [India, Chin, Egypt, Persia , Greek and Rome].
During intermingling of societies; undeveloped one is pushed to use developed tool not for progress but to serve its strict conservative ideas.
Cross human times; culture accumulation leads to acceleration of organization of mind.
After some time, may be thousands of years in old world or may hundreds of years in modern world; accumulated culture become so tightly compel mind; that leads to cultural fatigue in form of fragmentation of organized ideas inside minds of common people; which resemble alarm for society intelligentsia to reconstruct the culture.
Cultural fatigue appears in form of psudohypertrophy of civilization, even to a degree of self destruction; this we can meet in Egyptian civilization near its collapse time with attempt of Ramses II to recover his country glory in minds of his natives by construct huge edifices and statues, while self destruction appears in doing nothing regarding landscape of flood plain to secure people life and instead of that he get involved in useless war outside his country.
In Europe at middle age; cultural fatigue beside Arabian and Turkish siege leads to explosion of constrained people in a form of unrest and going everywhere. These compulsory managements uproot actually generations of fatigued people, and refresh the rotten environment and society.
So; we in our Middle East need that management; to sacrifice some generations and get rid of fatigued people to give fresh oxygen to our rotten minds.
This is my understanding to second big bang, genetic change can not explain it but behavior study can.
DR. Salah Hussein
4/4/2010
Cairo
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Hello!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts here.
Which Rama are you talking about? Do you mean V. S. Ramachandran ? (#41: V. S. Ramachandran and God center in the brain.)
I am not familiar about the 2 big bangs you are referring to. Is the first one the cosmic event? What is the second one. Could you provide some more background information?
For the rest, I find your historical and cultural perspective very interesting. I agree with you that our culture is showing signs of fatigue (decay?) and that a new culture will, must emerge, either socio-economically (politically) or spiritually. Probably both.
Blessings!
Hello!
First, I am very sorry to delay my reply due to about a year of sickness (heart & diabetes) besides aging (70year).
I mean V. S. Ramachandran, and you can take some idea about 2 big bang from the following paragraph:
"The hominid brain grew at an accelerating pace until it reached its present size of 1500cc about 200,000 years ago. Yet uniquely human abilities such the invention of highly sophisticated "standardized" multi- part tools, tailored clothes, art, religious belief and perhaps even language are thought to have emerged quite rapidly around 40,000 years ago — a sudden explosion of human mental abilities and culture that is sometimes called the "big bang." If the brain reached its full human potential — or at least size — 200,000 years ago why did it remain idle for 150,000 years? Most scholars are convinced that the big bang occurred because of some unknown genetic change in brain structure. For instance, the archeologist Steve Mithen has just written a book in which he claims that before the big bang there were three different brain modules in the human brain that were specialized for "social or machiavellian intelligence", for "mechanical intelligence" or tool use, and for "natural history" (a propensity to classify). These three modules remained isolated from each other but around 50,000 years ago some genetic change in the brain suddenly allowed them to communicate with each other, resulting in the enormous flexibility and versatility of human consciousness."
It is a big bang of human brain evolution.
My attempt was to declare my idea that myth, belief and even science are human cultural activity; arise as reactions with natural manifestations in human environments, and are void of supernatural revelation.
Sometimes, culture misleads its creator, like the statue which misleads its sculptor!
Eternal nature, but relative culture.
Modern era comes when European people reach a catastrophe natural life not cultural one, so they revolt changing decay culture; while we in our zone (Middle East), for my very sorry; accept under authority suppression and self repression to sustain our fatigue culture after fatigue culture for thousands of years. We, in our zone are prisoners in our out of date culture, so; we don't have natural life!
Best regards.
Salah
Cairo
20-10-2011
I don't know enough about what is happening in the rest of the world (I live in the U.S.), so I am glad that you have given us your perspective, Dr. Hussein. I agree with Augustin that the culture here in the U.S. is showing definite signs of fatigue/decay, and that a new culture will/must emerge, although at this point it is anybody's guess what form it will take. It may even be fairly pluralistic, because alot of people are simply sick and tired of the brutal pace of life these days, and are opting for a simpler, more human-paced, human-sized kind of life. But I am speaking of the U.S. when I say that.
btw, to me, a second big-bang would be when the majority realize that inner space is just as big as outer space, and much more densely populated ;)