hex_m_hell

We need to talk about “Western Civilization.”

But let's start by talking about a boat. Technically it's a ship, and it belonged to Theseus. (It's related, I swear.) For any not familiar, a few thousand years ago (give or take), Plutarch recorded the following:

The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and strong timber in their places, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.

• Plutarch, Life of Theseus 23.1

A millennium an a half or so later, Thomas Hobbes extended this paradox, giving us The Ship of Theseus that people contemplate today. This paradox would be covered in most “Introduction to Western Civilization” type classes and any basic introductions to philosophy. Folks familiar with the concept of digital immortality may have also run across it. (If you transfer consciousness into a machine, would it still be you?)

The paradox manifests from the disconnect between the ideas of subjective and objective reality. We believe that our subjective labels and groupings are somehow connected to an objective physical world. They are not. They are, in fact, arbitrary labels applied to arbitrary collections based on a combination of biological and social systems that evolved to help us order the world.

Those labels “ontologies.” The ontologies we use to order the world are the basis of our reality. There is an interplay between our ideological paradigm and our ontology: ideology shapes what can and can't exist, and we only things that we believe exist can shape our reality. While these restrict our thought, they also free us from the overwhelm of having to understand everything all at once.

A cyberneticist would say that these models exist to attenuate complexity. That is to say, they decrease the number of things for which a system (a person, a social system) must account. The greater the degree of differentiation, the more simple the model; the more simple the model, the less accurately it reflects real complexity of the set of things it's describing. It is necessarily true that embedded in any model is a trade off between accuracy and simplicity.

If we are honest, we cannot say that anything exists as such (outside of particles and the undifferentiated universe) but that it's existence fulfills a functional purpose for a system. Ontologies are created by systems to fulfill a system's objectives. Ontologies are (necessarily inconsistent and incomplete) models through which one can construct their own reality.

But these base assumptions are more malleable than ideology will often allow us to believe. To understand this one must only compare an address in Japan to an address in the US. Within the context of navigation, Americans identify streets as things that order space with buildings being largely unlabeled things where residences are identified by a combination of street name and number or set of numbers. A Japanese map generally doesn't label roads and uses a completely different addressing system in most cases.

The “self,” as a differentiated identity, is the product of evolution. A gene that produces things that have “selves” will continue to exist. Therefore, the “self” is a phenotype of a gene or set of genes, and the function of that phenotype is to replicate those genes. The self only really exists within the context of that genetic system.

But this most important object, the discrete identity of humans, isn't even allotted to all other humans. Rather discrete identity is reserved for those around us (our friends, our family, our pets, etc) and we create a other undifferentiated objects for everyone else (the crowd, the country, humanity as a whole). Of course, we must because the human brain lacks the internal complexity to model even a few thousand objects, much less so multiple billions.

Because the brain has a limited complexity, all objects we carve from the undifferentiated universe must serve a purpose. Then when we assert that something to exists, we must ask ourselves “Why does this exist? What purpose does it's existence fulfill?”

The existence of “two genders,” for example, is an ontological assertion, an intentional restriction of the continuous to the discrete. It simplifies a socially complex phenomenon into a simple binary based on a vast simplification of biological properties. What ideological purpose does that serve? How does that intentional restriction of reality shape what can and can't be? How does it constrain what we are and are not able to think about?

“Race,” by any scientific assessment, does not exist. Genetic variation within a “racial group” is greater than the variation between groups, showing that any classification as such is necessarily arbitrary. Race doesn't exist, the cleaving of undifferentiated humanity into discrete groups (with no definable boundaries between them) is an ontological construction that fulfills an ideological purpose. What is that purpose? All one needs to do to answer that question is open a history book.

Governments don't really exist. It's just a bunch of people making an ontological assertion, and some people with guns threatening everyone who doesn't act like they accept that assertion. Even these words don't really exist, except in our minds, after we learn to cleave them from the undifferentiated noise of the universe. What does and does not exist is always arbitrary, involves a conscious or unconscious choice, and fulfills some function.

So we arrive back at “Western Civilization.”

There are those who say that “Western Civilization” is collapsing, that it needs to be save. OK, let's start by defining it. What are the geographical boundaries of “Western Civilization?” Clearly “Western Europe” and “North America” are in the group. North America is easier to define than “Western Europe” because of the clear geographical boundaries of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Panama Canal. Except that North America isn't “Western” at all, but historically comes from a completely different tradition than the one claimed by “Western Civilization.” Sure, aside from the several million people and several hundred tribes that trace their identity to a lineage outside of “Western Europe,” sure, I guess North America is “Western.” Well, except that Mexico and “Central America” seem to have a much more complex relationship with that lineage, not to mention Caribbean nations who were kidnaped by those who are identified as part of “Western Civilization.” They are more likely to trace their identity back to the African Diaspora.

One of the defining things that “Western Civilization” identifies with itself is the concept of “Democracy.” While “Western” nations trace this lineage back to the slave states of Greece and the genocidal slaver empire of Rome, “Western Civilization” traces the roots of “modern democracy” back to American democracy. American democracy is largely copied directly from the Iroquois Confederacy, while the modern bureaucratic state that this democracy controls came to “Western Civilization” by way of trade with China and observations of how the Chinese state operated. The founding document, of course, was written in an alphabet that developed largely in the Middle East before being adopted by Romans (a people who were split between Europe and Africa). The predecessors to that “Latin” alphabet had originally modified Egyptian hieroglyphs to represent their Semitic language.

Those most staunch defenders of “Western Civilization” will also root their identity in “Christianity.” One of the most defining aspects of Christianity is the concept of “hell.” This concept is notably absent from Jewish tradition, but was a critical element of the most popular religion in the Middle East around the time Jesus is reported to have been teaching: Zoroastrianism. The archetype of a savior born of a virgin, who dies and returns to life, was a key element of the Osirus cult that spread via the same Roman roads as Christianity, and competed with it for converts in the pre-Christian Rome. John 1:1 is usually translated into English as “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” However, the original “word” is “logos.” The concept of “logos” is a direct reference to the Helenistic Jewish philosophy of Philo. That would be Philo of Alexandria. That “Alexandria” would be the one in Egypt… which is, as a reminder, located in Africa.

The interplay between cultures and groups is rich and bidirectional. Cultural borders blur as these exchanges make their way more slowly into the interior of an area we have arbitrarily labeled. Subcultures abound within borders. Dutch people will say that The Netherlands has a regional accent every 30 miles or so. Amsterdam is different from The Hague, and Friesland has it's own language. For the American reference, the country is somewhere between the size of Maryland and West Virginia. European borders, which North Americans tend to think of as more “real” and less “arbitrary” than, say, the Middle Eastern or African borders drawn by European colonizers, are just as arbitrary. Belgium is split between two languages. North Americans might expect signs in Spain to be in Spanish, but in Barcelona they may well be in Catalan. The Eurozone has almost as much cultural homogeneity across it as there is variation within the member states.

But what about Australia and New Zealand? Clearly these are “Western” nations, right? What about Israel? There have been debates about including it in the EU. North Americans may be surprised to know that Europeans generally don't consider England part of Europe since it's an island off the continent. “Western Europe” may be even harder to define geographically.

The choice of what we cleave from the undifferentiated universe is a political one. It becomes clear how especially political “The West” in context. Modern “Western” European countries are simply those that were not satellite states of the USSR. It is an explicit Cold War differentiation. The first reference to a differentiation of a “Western” identity was during the schism of the Roman Empire. These are mirrors reflecting an identity of conflict, of war, and, perhaps, of domination.

All this is to say, “Western Civilization” does not exist as such. It never existed. It never will exist. It can't exist. It is an arbitrary grouping of cultures and histories, an illusion, forged for conflict. And here is where we should loop back to another arbitrary definition: the self.

The self, this bedrock of our identity, is itself an illusion. We believe there to be an object, an entity, a persistence of experience, but there is none. There is only the experience of this moment, a side effect of a sufficiently complex system, that draws the illusion of persistence from memories that may or may not reflect a historical reality. It functions to pit the carrier of genes against the outside world. But we may, like so many other arbitrary definitions, return it to undifferentiated universe. In fact, this is precisely the goal of many meditation practices. Some mystics of Christianity, who share more in common with Buddhists or Taoists than with Evangelical Christians, might suggest this is exactly what is meant when one holds “Logos” within themselves.

Through psychedelics or meditation, one can truly “become one with the universe” simply by releasing this illusion of the ego. But what does that do for them? To release the division between oneself and the universe brings compassion, patience, and deep joy. It eases suffering and expands pleasure. Perhaps there are things which need not be differentiated, but are better experienced directly without the mediation of a model. Can we find the joy of simply being?

Perhaps, as one can improve mental health through the death of the ego, we should not try to avoid “the fall of Western Civilization” but rather experience the joy of transcendence through the death of Western Civilization.