Holotopia: Socialized Reality

H O L O T O P I A    I N S I G H T S

Socialized Reality

From the traditional culture, without noticing that, we have adopted a myth incomparably more subversive than the myth of creation. This myth is the foundation stone on which our ideas about the world and our society's institutions have been built.

Scope

We look at the attitude we have towards information. And at the ideas we have about the meaning and purpose of information, and also about truth and reality, and about meaning itself.

We look, more concretely, on the assumption that

• "truth" means "correspondence with reality"
• "truth", understood in this way, is what distinguishes "good" information
• "a normal human being" sees "the truth" that is, sees "the reality as it is"—and is therefore perfectly capable of understanding and representing his "interests"

This assumption permeates not only our ideas about knowledge, and about ourselves—but also our understanding and handling of our society's most fundamental issues, such as freedom, justice, power and democracy.

View

"Reality" is a product of socialization

From the 20th century science and philosophy we have learned that

• Correspondence of our "true" ideas are true because they depict the reality "objectively"or "as it truly is", is (or more precisely can and demonstrably needs to be consider as) a myth (a shared belief that cannot be verified, which serves certain social purposes)
• The way we see the world, or "reality", is constructed through a complex and profoundly interesting interplay between of our cognitive organs and our culture
• What we consider "reality" is (or more precisely can and demonstrably needs to be considered as) a product of our socialization.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with socialization; that is how the culture has always functioned, and always will. Already in the crib, and long before our rational faculties have developed to the point where we are capable of understanding what goes on, and being critical about it, our socialization is well under way. What makes all the difference is whether our rational faculties—of us as a culture—are developed to the point where socialization is considered and treated as human-made—and hence subjected to careful scrutiny, and made an instrument of conscious evolution.

The alternative is alarming: Socialization may become an instrument of renegade power; so that the enormous power that information and knowledge have is used not to liberate us, but to enslave us. That socialization is used to hinder us from evolving further—as culture; and as humans.

Academia must take the lead

As part of holotopia's scope, we have defined academia as "institutionalized academic tradition". The point here is to see that the academic tradition has been an alternative to unconscious, power-driven socialization since its inception; the stories of Socrates and Galilei illustrate that unequivocally!

During the Enlightenment, this process—of liberating us from renegade socialization—took a gigantic leap forward. But it was not at all completed!

While we liberated ourselves from the kings and the clergy; but having failed to take our socialization into our own hands, our socialization has only changed hands—as new power structures replaced the old ones.

The situation we are in

We (the academia) must see ourselves in the mirror!

The evolution of knowledge, or more specifically the evolution of knowledge of knowledge, which the academia is now in charge of, has brought us to a whole new situation.

Having been socialized to compete and produce, we are too busy to even see this new situation clearly.

Metaphorically, we say that the evolution of knowledge of knowledge has brought us in front of the mirror.

The mirror symbolizes

• Self-reflection
• End of (the assumption, or the pretense of) "objectivity"
• Beginning of accountability—by seeing ourselves in the world, we see that we are part of the world, and responsible for it.

The academic tradition, and the social role we've acquired, as academia, demands that we build a larger version of this mirror and offer it to contemporary people and society—along the lines we've been drafting here. Having only our socialized reality as a frame of reference, what we do, and what we've become, appears to us as just "normal". We must now see ourselves, and what we do, in a more solid frame.

And when we do that, the collective walk through the mirror will most naturally follow

And so the academia must now guide our society through the mirror—just as Moses (according to that other tradition) guided the oppressed over the Red Sea. No miracle is, however, needed now; only a consistent application of the information we own.

The Mirror idogram

Action

We must go through the mirror

We must take the consequences of the knowledge we own—and resume our evolution. Just as the contemporary academia's founding fathers did, in Galilei's time.

Or to in the language of our metaphor, academia must guide us, the people, through the mirror. And into a new academic and social reality on its other side; which are now ready to be explored and developed.

Holotopia is a prototype of a social and cultural reality on the other side of the mirror.

Holoscope is offered as a prototype of the corresponding academic reality. And also as the next step—the one that enables us to walk through the mirror.

Stories

"Reality" is a myth

A myth is a popular belief that cannot be verified—but serves certain social and cultural roles.

Two quotations of Einstein, repeated in several places already, including Federation through Images on this website, are sufficient to make this point:

• The closed watch metaphor explains why "correspondence with reality" cannot be verified
• The quotations about the two illusions confirms that "correspondence with reality" is (according to 'modern science') a product of illusion

"Reality" is constructed

The point here is to see that what we consider the reality is constructed—by our perception organs, our psyche and our society.

A brief summary begins here.

"Reality" construction in cognitive biology

To 'see ourselves'—how (we saw that) "reality" is constructed—it is sufficient to federate Maturana (as cognitive biologist),

"Reality" construction in psychology

Piaget (as cognitive psychologist) and

"Reality" construction in sociology

Berger and Luckmann (as sociologists), to see how those insights were made, and some of their consequences.

"Reality" is a product of socialization

Odin – Bourdieu – Damasio

The nature of socialization illustrated by this thread

TBA

Pierre Bourdieu<h3>

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<h3>Antonio Damasio<h3>

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<h3>Odin the horse

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Political consequences of socialized reality

Ivan Pavlov

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Sergei Chakhotin

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Murray Edelman

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Symbolic action

We propose this pair of (roughly) antonyms: symbolic and systemic action.

Having been socialized to think and act within the confines of the existing systems ("inside the box"), we act out our concerns and responsibilities in a symbolic way: We organize a conference; publish an article; occupy Wall Street...

Cultural consequences of socialized reality

Sigmund Freud

Fought a heavy battle to convince his contemporaries that we are not the rational animal we believe we are.

Edward Louis Bernays

Freud's nephew, turned Freud's ideas into a "scientific" approach to culture creation—for the benefits of the counterculture...

Edward Louis Bernays (November 22, 1891 − March 9, 1995) was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations". (Wikipedia)

Implicit information

IVLA story. Ideogram. While we are focusing on explicit information, our culture is dominated by and created through implicit information.

Socialization in popular culture

The Matrix

When we think of the machines as being the power structure, the metaphor works rather accurately. We live in a constructed reality—while serving as power sources, living batteries, for machines. The metaphor is complete—reality is constructed, we have no freedom at all—and the world in an abysmal condition, without us being aware of that.

Even the fact that periodically there is a revolution, "the One" comes and restarts the matrix...

This puts us into an interesting situation—can we ever liberate ourselves from the matrix completely?

Of course, that's exactly what this part of the Holotopia project (liberation from socialized reality) is about.

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Animal Farm

The animals throw out the humans, but the pigs take over and begin behaving as the humans did. A pattern repeated by our revolutions. The point is to see the pattern in our evolution—we tend to turn our social organization, and our shared "reality" (they are really two sides of the same coin), into a turf...

Socializing elephants

The elephant can't move his leg. This is a metaphor for socializing humans, of course.

Prototypes

Holoscope and Holotopia

They are, of course, the prototypes of an approach to knowledge that liberates us; and a social order that results. We shall here, however, show how we may evolve beyond the socialized reality (or metaphorically, 'step through the mirror'), with the help of Holoscope's specific technical solutions.

Truth by convention</p></h2></div>

When we say, for instance, "Culture is...", one expects, instantly, that what is being told is what culture "really is". How can we ever overcome this problem?

By using truth by convention

This has the additional advantage of giving us explicit definitions of things (instead of taking things for granted, because we all "know" what they are..

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<h2>Design epistemology</h2>

It's defined by convention

Triply secure: (1 - 3)

<h2>Prototype</h2>

Resolves the symbolic action problem. Also the Wiener's paradox. Enables us to bootstrap. </div> </div>

<h2>Dialog</h2>

<p>A cognitive and ethical stance—roughly equivalent to the "objective observer" etiquette in science. </p> <p>Has been part of academia since its inception—but David Bohm gave it a new meaning. A profound topic, truly worth studying.</p>