Patterns of Knowledge/Power: a Holistic Approach to History

            Cruel inquiries lead to  tyranny of knowledge. The purpose of the Inquisition was power, and the means was the creation and maintenance of system of knowledge and cultural norms and values that allowed and sustained this power. The domain of culture is not different than the domain of political-economic realities; they interpenetrate in complex ways that are only dimly understood. Current cultural prejudices dictate that , material, economic and political realties, not ideas or 'mentalistic' concerns are the only valid realities, and this concern is projected backwards in time, as a means of judging other cultures as different, and usually inferior, to our own. But one need not see this way: one can tell a different story. It seems unlikely that the causes of the major atrocities in the last 500 years can be addressed without a more holistic, interdisciplinary approach, which takes into account metaphysical, philosophical, scientific, economic, and cultural developments. The patterns of atrocity are more easily discerned through a comparative approach. Ultimately my concern is to justify the rights of beings, both natural and human, and this cannot be done by a narrowly specialized approach. The specialized approach serves hierarchies and I mean to question hierarchy.

            The story that leads to the Nazi Holocaust and from thence to Nagasaki and Vietnam begins before Columbus.  One can trace it back to the Bhagavad Gita or the blood baths  in Jerusalem wrought by the Crusaders, or to Innocent III, the Inquisition or Francis Bacon, if one prefers. It is born from the "Higher Truths" and ultimate ambitions, the will to total knowledge and power that go back at least to Socrates and involves most of the "great ideas" and 'great books" that are supposed to be the guiding lights of Western Civilization. Science developed out of Catholicism, from Aquinas to Descartes, and slowly became a secular religion offering service and justification to the political and cultural ideology of the superiority of Western civilization. With the ending of the Cold War in the early 1990's the destructive effect of centuries of Western conquest, ideology and historical purpose are readily discernible. The myths continue to live on and the danger and possibility of terror is still present, but the "canon" of Western cultural superiority can now be brought into question. Other voices and stories, even those which criticize the West, can perhaps be heard. But ultimately what matters is that beings and rights be protected.

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