Dear Fellow TOKers:
I have been encouraged to share the following with you - in the hope that comments might be garnered.
While musing about the ToK the other night I managed to generate a pre-Hallowe'en scare - as if American politics today isn’t scary enough!
Well, if not a scare, then at least a stab of intense desperation.
I was pondering Gregg’s depiction of “the digital identity crisis,” which is composed of:
The meaning crisis.
The mental health crisis.
The techno-environmental crisis.
The digital globalization crisis.
In one perspective, these might seem as four distinct problems of the present.
I compared those 4 crises within the perspective of the 4 existential domains of the ToK:
Matter.
Life.
Mind.
Culture.
Then the horror arrived as it became apparent that the Anthropocene is characterized by existential crises in all four of those TOK foundations.
For instance:
Matter.
Our actions are leading to an (probably) unavoidable planet-changing and existential-threatening climatic alterations.
Life.
Our actions are producing to an uncontrolled biological extinction event.
Our careless impingement upon and constricting many other life habitats has led to life-, societal-, and civilization-threatening pandemics
Mind.
Our actions are producing a myriad of mental health problems, of which suicide is one aspect.
We are drifting further and further away from our historically effective community practices.
Culture.
Our failure to propagate effective education (at least, here in USA) has left us with an inadequate world view which is ineffective in coping with current problems and crises.
There are, of course, multiple other crises which may be added to each component of the list.
To make things worse yet, it is intuitively obvious that the identifiable problems in each TOK domain are interconnected and interactive!
In short, we are effectively destroying the foundations of our civilization (way of llife), if not our very existence.
Frightened yet?
If not, let me add another area: energy.
Matter appears to have “precipitated” out of the big bang energy.
The ToK doesn’t comment to much on energy except as a precursor to matter - ie, the foundation of the other 4 levels of existence.
That’s probably because, as Feynman noted, we really don’t adequately define or understand the concept of energy. ("Energy <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikiquote.org_wiki_Energy&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=I5Hxt6bmq_8puZce_odpQrSNXtnbaFtsCfxILks20oU&s=XucRn2bdZuj-dM74cs0hUZV1Ciw-Rfk7O0vfKqnyttE&e= > is a very subtle concept. It is very, very difficult to get right.” - https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikiquote.org_wiki_Richard-5FFeynman&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=I5Hxt6bmq_8puZce_odpQrSNXtnbaFtsCfxILks20oU&s=DyVNwuexhDMkveIvGkrjNWSY5_JSEOlsVG9o2I9KPxY&e= <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikiquote.org_wiki_Richard-5FFeynman&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=I5Hxt6bmq_8puZce_odpQrSNXtnbaFtsCfxILks20oU&s=DyVNwuexhDMkveIvGkrjNWSY5_JSEOlsVG9o2I9KPxY&e= >; https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Richard-5FFeynman&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=I5Hxt6bmq_8puZce_odpQrSNXtnbaFtsCfxILks20oU&s=WsptVFar0Kwy5SjNg8zHXrLwPCXsGu_bFjz7RNPNHxQ&e= <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Richard-5FFeynman&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=I5Hxt6bmq_8puZce_odpQrSNXtnbaFtsCfxILks20oU&s=WsptVFar0Kwy5SjNg8zHXrLwPCXsGu_bFjz7RNPNHxQ&e= >)
We are profligate users of energy and choose to pollute our world providing it.
We are quite effective at producing localized, sudden, massive amounts of destructive nuclear-based energy.
We have not yet - and likely will not - master the production of energy in controlled fashion which does not result in pollution - ie, we surely need to turn to non-carbon- and non-nuclear forms of energy. Such a change will severely impact how we live - and we don’t have the resilience and wisdom (at this point) to endure that change.
At this point, I am frightened, or at least desperate.
It is interesting to find another way in which the ToK System provides a coherent and consilient understanding of our existence, practices, and results thereof.
In addition, the ToK system provides the foundation to anticipate and apprehend what is needed in order to overcome the course on which we are so obdurately entrenched.
Which leads me to wonder, is there enough time to do so?
I’m not at all assured of that.
Best regards,
Waldemar
Waldemar A Schmidt, PhD, MD
(Perseveret et Percipiunt)
503.631.8044
Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. (A Einstein)
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