The frightening journey of cultural evolution.
The fundamental crux of my position that Western Culture stands at the vanguard of cultural evolution is predicated on the idea of a broad scale, global evolution towards a Culture of the Mind. What is the Culture of the Mind, and how does it differ to all other cultures?
I define a Culture of the Mind as being a culture that places primary importance on the perspective/s, interpretation/s and the associated beliefs and values, of the smallest (atomised?) unit of it’s particular culture. Plainly, it is not hard to see how this might devolve into what we know today, or recognise at least, in the West as individual and/or minority rights. But it is the appreciation, in the Humanist tradition, of the “cultural atom”s right to perspective and interpretation that lays the groundwork for which a culture of individualism is built.
This stands in contrast to Cultures of the Senses, that is to say, Cultures of every other society other than Western Culture, which are far more predicated on behaviours, actions, practices and rituals. It is a Culture of the Senses insofar as these cultures place primacy on cultural aspects and dimensions that are propagated by the real/physical world, not the world between our ears.
As a result of the constellation of events we know as the Enlightenment, and some events prior to it, a series of cornerstone philosophical and cultural developments took place that set the Occident on its ascent/descent into the cultural forefront that it is on today.
This bifurcation between an internal world of the Mind, against that of an external world of the Senses is an idea with a long philosophical tradition. For example, in the 17th century, John Locke spoke of the world being divided into “primary qualities” existing objectively, and “secondary qualities” existing only in the mind’s perception. One could easily draw relevant strings on this train of thought to bring about conclusions that would support a Culture of Mind versus a Culture of Senses. Similarly, René Descartes drew a distinction between res extensa (the external, physical realm) and res cogitans (the internal realm of thought and consciousness). Once again, it’s not a long bow to draw to see how we might begin thinking in terms of a Culture of the conceptual against a culture of the experiential if we were to think in Descartes terms.
The Magna Carta can be argued to have set off a chain of events (quite unintentionally I might add) that resulted in the decline of chivalry. Why rely on one’s honour and word when black letter law will suffice? Black letter law which, inadvertently, can be interpreted, and critiqued. This practice of interpreting and critiquing set the stage for a more widespread application of this train of thought – the Humanist movement. This movement, once again quite unintentionally, saw a rejection of theocratic preoccupations for the study and examination of the lived experience. This, in turn, assisted in the popularisation of art works that placed the artist, and, importantly, the viewer, at the centre of worldly command with the powers of perspective. A term so simple and innocuous, it belies the earth shattering impact it had with its ability to make individual interpretation and analysis accessible to the masses. This last evolution, however, being conducted by artists, unlike the former two, probably was rather quite intentional.
Suffice to say, these evolutions all led to a similar destination – the Culture of the Mind. The culture of the individually responsible, thinking, analysing and interpreting atom. A culture so orientated towards views and beliefs, it set it aside from anything that had been seen previously in the world to date. And continues to do so.
The Culture of the Mind gave the West an advantage in the evolution of the knowledge/information economy. Some might say, it is is precisely because of the Culture of the Mind that the knowledge/information economy even flourished in the first instance. But in order to remain competitive, various cultures around the world which have historically been orientated towards the Senses, have begun having to adopt and embrace various aspects of the Culture of the Mind. The reasons for this are many. Ranging from the benign, such as simple social intrigue, to the more nefarious, such as cultural imperialism, or somewhat in between for pragmatic economic or political reasons.
The point to take away is that the ‘rest of the world’, who dabble in the Culture of the Senses, are fast following the West into the deep rabbit hole of the Culture of the Mind. Where that hole ends is anyone’s guess. It took six hundred years for a formalised concept of post-modernism to be developed, which, can logically see it’s roots in the development of the Perspective artworks of the 1400s.
The West is currently embarking upon a frightening journey of cultural evolution. A journey that may end in cultural utopia. Or societal collapse. One thing is for sure, it is the first evolution of it’s kind in the entirety of human history. And that makes this era we live in, an exceptionally exciting one.
Photographer and cULTURE VULTure 
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