Limits of Cognition and Insight

Original article

Wolfgang Sassin,                            

Dr-Ing, Independent researcher, formerly Senior Scientist of International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and Lecturer of Technical University Vienna, Austria

Address: Jochberg 5, 6335 Thiersee, Austria

E-mail: w.sassin@aon.at

Article ID: 010310202

Published online: 21 April 2018

HANDLE: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12656/thebeacon.1.010310202

DOI: https://doi.org/10.55269/thebeacon.1.010310202

 

Quoting (Chicago style): Sassin, Wolfgang. 2018. “Zu den Grenzen menschlicher Erkenntnis.” Beacon J Stud Ideol Ment Dimens 1, 010310202. https://doi.org/10.55269/thebeacon.1.010310202

Language: German



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Abstract

In the paper, on the basis of discussing the analogy between geometry of geodesics and human cognition, the limits of cognition are discussed. An attempt to adapt human action to limited human perception can be found in the article. The problems shown therein, make it clear that the humanity needs a change in the mental coordinate system that refers to the very values that have led us to where we are right now, namely to a world in disarray.

Key words: geometric argumentation, ideological control, WE concept, stints of cognition, limits of insight, borders of consciousness

Extended summary in English

 

With several geometric examples with spheres and geodesics, the complexity of multidimensional thinking is demonstrated in the article.

 

The geometric examples described and analysed, shed some light on the limits of human cognition and insight. Combined with the consequences of “flat thinking,” without which a complex external reality cannot be reduced and “made conscious,” it is not surprising that the humanities are much more severely restricted than the natural sciences by the mental limitations. Rationality, emotionality and communication between individual brains that re-construct external reality individually, require a far greater reduction in collective behaviour and collective phenomena than Newton’s derivation of the laws of gravity from the “logical interpretation” of an apple falling to the ground in an otherwise empty universe, a situation that is in conflict with reality. The mental limitations of cognition and insight lead to the emergence of ideological control over the borders of human cognition.

 

As a result, concepts of global democracy, monohumanism, the Spaceship Earth, arose. The extension of the rule of the people in the direction of a global rule, a rule of mankind, represents such a dimensional change. Global democracy, humanity as an all-encompassing community thought to its logical end, finally assumes a single undivided will which would have a singular meta-consciousness as its prerequisite, a will which finds its expression in Mono-humanism, namely in the assertion that all human beings are equal. The story of the Biblical hero, patriarch Noah and his Ark, who had to decide whom to take on board and whom not, is not the only illustration of the intellectual labyrinth into which the narrative of the One Humanity can lead, i.e. the idea that we are all sitting in a common Spaceship Earth. The fact that the narrative of an impending climate catastrophe distracts from other, much more urgent “catastrophes,” which among other things are triggered by the belief in economic growth as the very prerequisite for social peace, is one of those dimensional reductions described above using the example of a “curved geometry.”  The same applies to the notion that urbanization makes people free, or even that the serious consequences of demographic imbalances can be avoided by migration.

 

The dramatic consequences of a global mental climate catastrophe can certainly not be prevented by “taxes” on the “emission” of new people, nor by the “censorship” of heretical thoughts by any variations of New Speak or Truth Ministries, as George Orwell did already demonstrate 70 years ago. There is a need for a convincing vision of the future, i.e. an unambiguous description of the duties to be fulfilled before any rights can emerge, which must ensure order on those civilisational platforms that always need to be erected and maintained by hard work. We all have to realise that the values of a world that is disappearing because it is overloaded, deprive us, homo sapiens, of the very sapiens part that distinguishes us from our animal predecessors, the homos. The homo billionis, the new conviction that focuses on the survival of humanity and its well-being and spreads everywhere, it reduces the individual to a being that is a part of a gigantic herd. Herds always panic, being too narrowly confined, and do not elude an ideological and rational control. But that is not the only consequence of their panic state. They rather lose their emotional, i.e. their “human” qualities, which have developed solely from the experience of free individuals working together and against each other.

 

The paper outlines the ways how to avoid a mental climate catastrophe within the next one or two generations, in view of the additional billions of homos expected by then, but certainly does not give any recipes and prescriptions. It is a real challenge for all of us.

© 2018 Wolfgang Sassin.
Licensee The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) that permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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