What is the Second Renaissance - first sketch from book draft

[rufuspollock]

Here is a first draft i started preparing last year for a book on the second renaissance.

This book is about the second renaissance¹.

The second renaissance is a time between worlds. A moment when a profound transformation is taking in our societies and our civilization. It is a transformation not just in our institutions and economies but in our culture and being -- in the very nature of how we see ourselves and the world.

The word renaissance means rebirth. The first renaissance took place 600 years ago in western Europe starting in Italy. It was a moment when western societies rediscovered ancient greek and roman philosophy and thinking. In this sense it was a "re"birth because these ideas had always been there but had largely been lost during the dark ages after the fall of the Roman empire. This rediscovery was transformational for western thought and being.

Second, and even more significantly, it was the moment when the modern world was born. Key ideas such as individuality, equality and the role of reason started to have a major place in discourse and thought. Technological breakthroughs proliferated including the printing press and accounting - exemplars of technologies of modernity. Even our very ways of seeing the world changed with the introduction of perspective in art.

This has significant analogies with today. First, in the west, there is a discovery of wisdom traditions that have been lost, forgotten or never known -- be that eastern traditions like buddhism or taoism or more indigenous traditions from all over the world. Meanwhile in the east and elsewhere there is an new or renewed encounter science and reason and other aspects of modernity from individualism to democracy.

Out of all this, there is a potential for a new integration -- as well as new kinds of conflict -- and ultimately an opportunity to birth a new kind of civilization. ...

Questions to Explore

What is the second renaissance

• What similar terms are there?
• Why use a term for the period rather than the outcome?
• What does Varela mean by it
• What does the new society -- the one being born -- look like?
  • 🙋‍♀️ an awakening society
  • Economically
  • Institutionally
  • Culturally
  • Ontologically
  • What is the role of religion and spirituality in this future?
• What evidence do we have that "this civilization is finished" aka cracks in the wall
• Can you give examples of previous paradigm shifts? Especially ones of an equal magnitude?
  • What was the first renaissance?
  • The Reformation
  • Analogy with children's development
• Can you summarize Jean Gebser's work
• What evidence is there for cultural (r)evolution in general?
• What is modernity?
  • How as modernity born? 🙋‍♀️💡 first wave in renaissance, then second wave in enlightenment, then third wave in victory ! (see drawing below)
  • What stage is it at now?
    • Why do you think that?

Footnotes

1. the idea of a renaissance or transformation in human civilization is not a new one and it has shown up in many places and under many names over the last century and especially the last half century. For example, in Aurobindo, in Gebser, in Joanna Macy and the "Great Turning", in Wilber etc. This book derives from builds on all of these previous efforts. ↩

[rufuspollock]

From Cultivating an Emerging Paradigm

https://lifeitself.org/blog/2022/02/01/cultivating-an-emerging-paradigm

Our key theses are:

1. Transition is Needed: there is an urgent need for a transition from where things stand today.

2. Transition is Paradigmatic: The transition involves a paradigmatic shift that includes a profound shift in worldview (views and values).

3. Transition is Inner & Outer: the transition involves the integration of the inner and the outer – personal/collective growth as well as systemic transformation.

4. Transition prioritizes Being: whilst inner and outer are both needed, inner development has primacy, that is it should be prioritized and takes ultimate priority (also known as the “primacy of being” thesis).

5. Transition requires Engagement (of the right kind): transition can be cultivated but not engineered. There is a middle way between passive disengagement (just letting it unfold) and arrogant engineering. The challenge is therefore to facilitate transition and cultivate emergence, rather than seeking to engineer it.

these could be a basic "credo" for "second renaissance(r)s"