Back to Ptolemaism: To Protect the Human Individual from Abuses of Social Constructs

ISBN-13: 9783000403521 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 346 str.

Vittorio Ferretti

Opis

Based on a discerning analysis of the concept of "complexity," this book champions the provoking conclusions that the Universe has run since the Big Bang from more to less complexity (from less to more interdependence) and that the Social Constructs (the bequest of ideas and organizations, which have evolved during the ages by social intercourse, including religions, ideologies, theories, technologies, corporations, nations) represent the most advanced stage of Evolution, as they discipline the conduct of Human Individuals, securing his material subsistence and social coexistence. However, Evolution has put the Human Individual in an existential dilemma, sandwiched between his (more complex) animal underlay and his (de-complexing) social overlay. The second key idea is to consider Social Constructs not only as blessings but also as potential banes, being autonomous organisms, which have inherited from the Human Individual the mania to reduce complexity by maximizing utility and minimizing efforts, but not the faculty of empathy. This can evolve, if unbridled, to the scenarios depicted by the dystopian genre and really happened in the first half of the past century, where Social Constructs dispose of Human Individuals as these do with animals. The fact that many of the excesses of self-optimizations of Social Constructs in detriment to the Human Individual, like human sacrifices, infanticide, slavery, and witch-hunting, have been abolished over time is interpreted as a success story of Human Individual's strive to have the Social Constructs orbiting around him, as in the former astronomic model of Ptolemaios, and not vice versa, as in the Copernican model. The United Nations Human Rights Declaration is interpreted as Magna Charta of "Ptolemaism"; the NGO's as its paladins; consumer protection, Green Movement, protest movements like Occupy Wall Street as Ptolemaic concerns. As Ptolemaic key issues for the future are seen in the submission of the Social Constructs to the ethical code their sub-level, the Human Individual, by opposing some reductions of complexity enforced by Social Constructs for their self-optimization, but detrimental for the Human Individual, who needs to preserve the hybrid complexity of his sandwich dilemma. This includes the banning of some residual "Copernicanistic" excesses like death penalty, torture, wars, democides, the submission to Human Rights of religions and all sorts of isms. On the other side, the Human Individual will expand on a consensual basis and with essential support of the Internet, his empathy spheres, to establish the confraternity of all Human Individuals, with mutual appreciation of diversity and otherness. The argumentation of the book is supported by short references to contextual appraisals of past and present philosophers and scientists, which can be skipped in a fist fast reading without losing the proposed line of thought.