Without giving it a thought, we adopted from the traditional culture a myth incomparably more subversive than the myth of creation. This myth now serves as the foundation on which our worldview, culture and social institutions have evolved.

Scope

We have come to the very crux of our proposal. We are about to zoom in on the relationship we have with information. And on the way in which truth and meaning are conceived of, and socially constructed in our society.

That changed during the Enlightenment; and triggered a comprehensive change. Could a similar advent be in store for us today?

Our proposal

Truth and meaning today

Although our proposal does not depend on it, we begin with a brief sketch of the status quo, to give our proposal a context.

"Truth", it seems to be taken for granted, means "correspondence with reality". When I write "worldviews", my word processor complains. Since there is only one world, and hence only one "reality", there can be only one ("true") worldview—the one that corresponds to "reality".

Meaning, it is assumed, is the test of truth. Something is "true" if it "makes sense", i.e. if it fits into the "reality puzzle". "This makes no sense" means "this is nonsense"; it means it cannot be true.

The purpose of information, it is assumed, is to tell us "the truth"; to show us the reality as it truly is. If this is done right, the ("true") pieces of information will fit snuggly together, like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle; and compose for us a coherent and clear "reality picture".

Truth in the holoscope

All truth in our proposal is truth by convention: "When I say X, I mean Y." Truth, understood in this way, is both incomparably more solid (a convention is incontrovertibly true), and incomparably more flexible (a written convention can easily be changed)—compared to the conception of truth we've just described.

Truth by convention is completely independent of what's been called "reality". We offered it as a new 'Archimedean point', which can once again empower knowledge to 'move the world'. A clear understanding of this might require, however, a bit of reflection; and a dialog.

Meaning in the holoscope

Meaning is, by convention, strictly "in the eyes of the beholder". Information, by convention, reflects not reality but human experience. And experience (we avoid the word "reality"), by convention, has no a priori structure. Rather, it is considered and treated as we may treat an ink blot in a Rorschach test—as something to which we assign meaning; by perceiving it in a certain way.

We too make claims of the kind "here is how the things are"; not in "reality", however, but in experience. The meaning of such a claim, howeer, is that the offered scope fits the offered view to a sufficient degree to illicit the "aha feeling". The sensation of meaning is thereby transmitted from one mind to another—and that's all we want from it. The message is a certain kind of human experience—and that's what's been communicated.

Hence a vast creative frontier opens up before our eyes—where we find ways (by taking due advantage of the vast powers of the new media, and by federating whatever we've learned from the psychology of cognition, from arts, the advertising...) to improve such communication.

Information in the holoscope

Information is, by convention, "a system within a system", which has a purpose—to fulfill a number of functions within the larger system (or systems). Or as we like to phrase this—its purpose is to make the larger system whole.

"A piece of information" is not a piece in the "reality puzzle". Rather, it is, as Gregory Bateson phrased it, "a difference that makes a difference". Hence we can create what "a piece of information" might be like—to best fulfill new or neglected purposes.

An example might be a piece of information that conveys the "aha experience" – namely that something can be seen and understood in a certain specific way. The piece of information may then have the scope–view–federation structure, where a way of looking at a phenomenon or issue called scope is offered—alongside with a view that may result from it, and a federation by which this view is first clearly communicated, then backed by data so that it may be verified, and finally given ways to make a difference, by eliciting suitable action. An example is, of course, what's been going on right here.

The views thus created do not exclude one another, even when they appear to contradict one other. "Models are to be used, not to be believed." There is, by convention, more than one way to perceive a theme of interest or situation. Any of them can be legitimate, if it follows from a justifiable way of looking; and it can be useful, if it tells us something we need to know. Since the purpose of information is to contribute to the wholeness of the system or systems in which it has a role, the chances are that a seemingly discordant view of things will be more useful than something that immediately fits in.

The holoscope ideogram serves to explain how the holoscope, and information, are to be used: The cup is whole only if it is whole from all sides. It has a crack if any of the views show a crack. Hence the holoscope endeavors to illuminate all relevant angles of looking (but organizes and encloses those details in the square). And shares the final outcome (as the circle). This makes it effective and easy to both understand and verify its message (by using the provided scopes to look at a theme from all sides, as one would do while inspecting a hand-held cup, to see if it's cracked or whole).

An example of a resulting "piece of information" is a gestalt—an interpretation of the nature of a situation as a whole. "The cup is cracked" is an example of a gestalt; another examples include "our house is on fire"; and the Modernity ideogram. A gestalt points to a way in which a situation may need to be handled.

View

We must emphasize once again, before we continue, that the crux of our proposal is a relationship or an attitude. What we are offering is not a solution, but a process, by which the solutions are to be continuously improved. We are not proposing a better 'candle', or even 'the lightbulb'—but a praxis by which information, and the way we handle it, are continuously recreated.

Hence what we are about to say is offered as an initial prototype—whose purpose is to serve as an initial proof of concept; and to prime the process through which its continued improvement is secured.

"Reality" cannot help us distinguish truth from falsehood

The "correspondence with reality" is a truth criterion that cannot be tested in practice.

Instead of guarding us from illusion, it itself tends to be a product of illusion.

"Reality" is a result of socialization

The fixed grasp of the human mind ... a gestalt... is most naturally used to fix a certain social order of things...

XXX

By rendering the socialized reality insight, we have attempted to combine together in an accessible way a number of specific insights that were reached in 20th century science and philosophy—which now demand the kind of change we are proposing:

• "Correspondence with reality" cannot be applied in practice, because it cannot be verified
• Instead of guarding us from illusion, "correspondence with reality" tends to be a product of illusion
• What we call "reality" is one of a number of possibilities, created and selected through complex interplay between our social and embodied cognitive processes
• "Reality" has always been, and must be seen as, an instrument of our socialization—by which the existing power structure is legitimized, and the people are kept in obedience to it. This socialization to accept a shared "reality picture" is not only an instrument of the power structure—but it should rightly be considered as its integral part

Socialized reality and cultural revival

Having failed to liberate our worldview from socialized reality, our socialization has during the Enlightenment only changed hands. While earlier we were socialized to be pious and obedient subjects to the king, we are now socialized to be compulsive consumers; and to vote for policies that are against our best interests.

Galilei is once again in 'house arrest'—but he's kept there by new power structures.

Especially relevant for cultural renewal are the cultural consequences of the change of foundations for truth and meaning, which the Enlightenment brought. The reality myth was of course in place also while Galilei was still in house arrest. But it had a different purpose—the "reality" of the Scripture served to keep in place a myriad values, customs, rituals, mores... which constituted the culture. By "discovering" that the Bible was not telling us "the truth"—we found a way to throw away all the functions of culture, without having to place anything back. Hence the very mechanisms by which the culture is reproduced were disrupted.

The recreationof those mechanisms is, of course, a core element of the Holotopia project.

The Mirror ideogram

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