One fine morning It dawned on me that what could be true about our collective relationship to human history could also be true about our personal relationship to our own lives.
For about the last 20 years I’ve carried this pain about the forgotten and even ridiculed knowledge from the past. It’s something that I felt more intuitively, before any knowledge of the cycles of history and the knowledge about prevailing ideologies and the reasons for the changes in world view, the scientific enlightenment and everything else I’ve learned in more recent years. I feel like I’ve been waging some kind of war, fighting for the rights of the wisdom of the past in the face of a modern view which actively scorns and undermines it.
In our modern reductionist materialist times, what we actually undermine about the past is not just the things it says about the human experience but the way this knowledge and wisdom was acquired, and the mode of cognition itself.
John Vervaeke, Propositional knowing and Participatory knowing.
For many good and sensible reasons, what John Vervaeke calls Propositional knowing has risen to the fore. He himself says this is the world that came into being following the ideas of Descarte, Newton and Kant. How we are supposed to know things has been reduced to just one mode of cognition which is only one part of the picture. It’s the emphasis on this kind of knowing – facts, data etc, that has stolen a march on other kinds of knowing and announced itself as the only way.
Without a doubt it has served a very real purpose. It has straightened out a lot of the errors in the facts that were incorrect or skewed with subjective interpretation and superstition. And of course it has accumulated more facts. We know more.
But we have equated this with a better way of knowing, that we are better or more advanced, that we are more intelligent. It all comes at a loss. We have lost, in general, an ability to gain knowledge in other areas using other modes of cognition, namely what Vervaeke would call Participatory knowing. This is linked more to a holistic appreciation of worldly phenomena and is relational, not either or. And we value all that much less. It follows that human knowledge of the past is lacking in some way.
Whats good for one is good for all? A therapeutic perspective
It has to be said, we have become arrogant and conceited, scathing of what came before, somehow seeing that linear time correlates with better or worse humans.
In this blog I won’t get too into the reasons why this may be an incorrect way to view our past but I will pose the question; are we able to see if there are any harms being committed by using the same line of reasoning with individuals? As in, what happens when a person treats their former selves in that way? What happens when there is judgment, criticism and a lack of curiosity for our former selves?
In layman’s terms it’s called pride and arrogance. In therapeutic circles it could be classed as self loathing, unacceptance and generally being unforgiving of self. What’s usually in the mix with that is guilt, shame, denial and an inability to grow. It looks like the suffering of repression and the in-authenticity that stems from it. All of this kills curiosity, and therefore prevents self knowledge.
Is it possible we are doing this with the human story?
Being ashamed of the past
Granted, as we become older we are able to accumulate more facts for intelligence, and it’s possible we can become more wise with experience. But it’s also possible to see that some individuals and some societies are degenerating. How can this be possible if with age we becoming more intelligent?
Also it’s undeniable that the spiritual impulse evolved, strengthened and even grew horns in the form of ecclesiastical dominance and dogma which has been responsible for many harms on the back of many falsities.
However the lack of curiosity into the nature of this problem closes the case and gives our current world view superior status. It’s akin to emotional immaturity and the cold unwillingness to investigate, not to mention the violent harmful rhetoric, actually sounds like shame.
The wisdom of the ages
When it comes the collective issue of the human story, and the individual issue of the human condition, there are answers in the past. Pre Descartes (and a long way back before then) people approached life differently and for different reasons. That isn’t to say there was no scientific advance or Propositional knowing. However there was an emphasis on its counterpart Participatory knowing, the more ritualistic, intuitive mode of cognition which had more of a look in. Its value was higher.
What Vervaeke and many others express very clearly is that where there is an emphasis on participatory knowing there is no less emphasis on rationality.
Being factual and scientific is not the same as being rational. This is a major point of consternation and discussion, the space for which does not exist in this blog. For the curious however, the disparity in these two kinds of knowing are also addressed by Iain McGilchrist in his groundbreaking work on the left and right hemispheres of the brain and the different modes of cognition employed by both.
The Master and his Emissary
The Matter with Things
If we are to agree that there is value in this form of knowing other than the reductionist and materialist, then what we are actually doing is subjugating one whole half of what it means to be human AND more importantly, throwing out all off the great knowledge and wisdom that has been acquired while this was a more prevalent and more valued way of figuring out life.
World-view bias
To me, the scorn towards some ancient civilisations, and some religious or spiritual texts and figures is not that at all. When you see it in this context it’s actually a scorn for a mode of cognition we no longer value in our current world view. It really is nothing to do with religious dogma which we may be able to have equal criticism of. It’s an arrogance that comes with an allegiance to thinking the accumulation of facts is the way humans will live better lives.
And what is at stake? Well as mentioned, our very existence and the richness of it.
Truths from the past are longstanding because they resonate with humans. Something in them is still recognised as meaningful. We faced similar struggles which all revolve around security, happiness and ability to come through adversity. Subjugation of our history is subjugation of humanity itself.
0 Comments