the Western Cognitive System

[Kebo]

Greetings.

A few times I've heard the phrase Western Cognitive System being tossed around. It sounds like a comprehensive of ways of thinking that are limiting to the natural mind. So many ways of thinking in the mind are ingrained to the point of being first nature. These ways are difficult to identify if the mind has grown up in these ways of the western cognitive system. Do people have perspectives on the patterns of the western cognitive system?

A pattern of the cognitive system may be 'linear' thinking. That history and chronology is linear. Others have suggested that time is not linear but rather past, present and future are one.

One pervasive pattern of the western cognitive system I've noticed deals with numbers and figures. Businesses and education for example hold a high regard for numbers over people and students education. Numbers pop up in speech and thought and have a deadening effect. And often a confusing effect, math confuses the mind and is not imaginitive. And in conversation questions like 'how long', 'how many people were there', 'what time' can be like systematic impulses instead of the original mind at work.

Another example deals in thinking in terms of making money. Doing things for the sake of making money instead of enjoying them, the mindset of having to pimp out one's talents by law.

These are examples that are coming up around me. I did a search on the internet for information on this subject but nothing came up. Do others have insight into this thing some call the western congnitive system which may be keeping people enslaved to the patterns of the worldwide system.

The patterns seem to look routine, deadening, unimagintive, limiting, business-like.  

Kebo

[Rootsie]

Even though Einstein pretty much destroyed the idea of linear time 100 years ago, the assumptions of linear time still pervade Western Consciousness.

The whole 'argument' of Christianity is based on the idea of linear time. So everybody is waiting for the end of it for Jesus to come swooping out of the sky and save everybody's sorry self.

And with linear time comes the recent (16th-17th century) idea of 'progress' through time which, among other things, allowed the West to dismiss the achievements of Egypt. Before then, everyone in Europe accepted the fact that everything Greek came out of Egypt.

When you really start unravelling this idea of 'progress' it is like a many tentacled-monster. It accounts for Western arrogance, since Europe and America were definitely newcomers to the whole 'civilzation' thing. And mindless technological expansion, and military aggression, and racism, and...and...

[iyah360]

Ever heard the phrase "time is money"? It is true. All measurement comes from man's relationship to light(the movements of the sun, the moon, the stars). The SYSTEM of measurement is Babylon's ultimate tool. World time is based on the standard known as the Greenwich Meantime. This is the standard by which the WHOLE world is telling it's time. If time is money, and the standard is based in Greenwich, England, who is the controller?

[iyah360]

Peace.

I posted this a while back which I feel has some relevance to this topic :

"I have been reading a text called "the tibeten book of the Great Liberation" it is introduced with commentary on the actual work and therein it touches on the foundation concept i think many are trying to get to in regards to this "white/black" conception. in this introduction there is a comparison between "western" and "eastern" psychological mind sets.  

in regards to the european mindset it reads:

"We(Europeans) naturally try to get as far away from our weaknesses as possible, a fact which may explain the sort of extraversion that is always seeking security by dominating its surroundings. Extraversion goes hand in hand with mistrust of the inner man, if indeed there is any consciousness of him at all. Moreover, we tend to undervalue the things we are afraid of."  This is a quote by none other than Carl Jung, the famed German psychologist who wrote the introduction to this English translation of this Tibeten text.

Is the European history of conquering and dominating and enslaving a function of the European man's psychology?  This should not be misinterpreted to mean that European man is uncapable of transcending his cultural conditioning however.  When raised from the innocence of infancy into a system DOMINATED by this mass-conscious psychological mindset, the result is another propogater of this un-balanced way of being.  

YET if European man(and perhaps others who are raised in a society whose dominant paradigm is one of this aversion to the inner man) is to overstand this FACT of his environment, then this is one of the steps in the quest to KNOWING THYSELF and breaking free from this leash of cultural conditioning which can not be sustained.

This is one way RASTA has revealed to me as a white person."

[Tracey]

Iyah...some very relevent points brought to the table for sure.

I find this quote... "We (Europeans) naturally try to get as far away from our weaknesses as possible, a fact which may explain the sort of extraversion that is always seeking security by dominating its surroundings. Extraversion goes hand in hand with mistrust of the inner man." ...to be a very powerful statement that does indeed attest to alot of the western cognitive ways of thinking. It most definately seems to attribute to many of the western attitudes ...and truly is a reality seen.

One of the things I have been thinking on lately is how complexes originate... I think this one nails it...

Arrogance and superiority complexes seems to try to elevate the false self by pushing the authentic self away..or.. "mistrusting," as Jung says..therebye over-compensating by trying to dominate it's surroundings to give it a false sense of security ..

yes Iyah...Rasta do reveal much )))

[Kebo]

Rootsie, how does the concept of progress come from linear time?

Another aspect of the western cognitive system I think is the 9 to 5 schedule. Which over the last decade or so has become 8 to 6. There might be some progress in that development. The 9 to 5 schedule is rigid, time-based, routine, and spirit-deadening. And its all about the numbers: profits, revenues, quarterly reports, the bottom line, incentives, and beating out the competition.

Kebo

[Rootsie]

Well that is an interesting question. Because in the Christian view the world has not been making progress since creation, but is getting worse. But the two views are really two sides of the same coin, and do not capture the essence of life.

During the Enlightenment, philosophers came up with the idea of 'progress' in order to establish their superiority over nonwhite people, to justify their conqest and murder of nonwhite people, and to dismiss the greatness of their seed culture in Egypt. They literally got intoxicated by their new scientific discoveries and felt that through scientific progress the problems of humanity would all be solved. To believe this went against the teachings of the Church, and caused many a war and death, but in time, the idea of progress somehow integrated itself into the Western mind, and now ones see no contradiction between the idea of political and technological progress and the Christian teaching of the fallen nature of earth. They have now convinced themselves that Western progress is a sign of God's favor towards them. In their delusion they think to have mastered time.

Maybe a better way to look at this issue of progress is by looking at people who see time not as linear, but as cyclical, who put the idea of relationship with the cycles of life over the idea of domination of nature and time. Wallace Black Elk said his Lakota people never felt the need to invent much, but found greater value in the respectful use of what is already given us here. It is a completely different value system. I wonder if the idea of linear time is also related to the reckless consumption of resources--this anxious sense that if you don't use things up they go away. One thing the West surely is is anxious. All this 'progress' has literally made people sick.

We in the West are so used to the idea of progress, to the triumphant march of man down the road of history, that it is hard for us to think about life differently. 'Evolution' simply means change, and not necessarily improvement.

I think there is a way in which our desire to see the world perfected, to see an end to suffering (when all we seem to be doing is creating more and more of it) cannot possibly be answered unless we are willing to return, to re-member, to reconcile with our past. That is what I always like about Rasta, the roots...from there we get the strength to go on.

To one who thinks in terms of linear time, the past is a poor and inferior version of the present.  And so the West is rootless. People are so lonely because they feel no connection to a shared heritage. 'There's no going back,' people say, and in a way that is true but in another way it's not. The sun goes up and shines and then goes back down and comes up again. But each day is also new. Our ancient ancestors saw God in that movement, that endless cycle of birth, decay, and return. Somehow the Western mind has the illusion that it has transcended that order, that nature has nothing to teach, and exists to be mastered.

I don't know if this really answers the question you asked, Kebo. But like I said, it's a really interesting question. I will be thinking more about it.

Rootsie

[nyamabla]

http://216.173.253.107/CHpapers/Reason_Intent.pdf

Intent and Reason:
A Comparison of Selected Aspects of Western and
Shamanistic Thoughthttp://