The Patterning Instinct: Table of Contents
The Patterning Instinct traces the path from the earliest human search for meaning to our current precarious situation.
It’s a fascinating journey, offering up new possibilities to understand our human condition along the way, while occasionally challenging some of our deepest assumptions. The path can be segmented into different periods, each characterized by the core pattern of meaning by which people made sense of their world.
These periods, with their patterns of meaning, give the book its structure. Here’s what they look like.
It’s a fascinating journey, offering up new possibilities to understand our human condition along the way, while occasionally challenging some of our deepest assumptions. The path can be segmented into different periods, each characterized by the core pattern of meaning by which people made sense of their world.
These periods, with their patterns of meaning, give the book its structure. Here’s what they look like.
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I: Everything Is Connected
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II: Hierarchy Of the Gods
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III: The Patterns Diverge
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IV: Conquest Of Nature
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V: The Web Of Meaning?
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For 99 percent of human history, our ancestors were nomadic hunter-gatherers, living according to the rhythms of nature, and gradually learning how to exploit them. Section I tells their story.
Chapter 1. How We Became Human. Beginning with the question of what makes humans unique, this chapter investigates whether it’s our true nature to be selfish or cooperative. It traces how early hominids developed a sophisticated nonverbal culture, which gradually coevolved with the prefrontal cortex, leading to the emergence of language.
Chapter 2. The Magical Weave of Language. This chapter takes the reader on a trail of discovery about the origins of language, leading to a theory of language that underscores the book’s central theme: the importance of the human patterning instinct in structuring meaning throughout history.
Chapter 3. The Rise of Mythic Consciousness. Here we see how, empowered by language, the patterning instinct drove early modern humans to try to make sense out of their universe, developing a collective mythic consciousness that wove a network of meaning into every aspect of human experience.
Chapter 4. The Giving Environment: The World of the Hunter-Gatherers. This chapter discusses the quality of life our ancestors experienced as hunter-gatherers and describes how they saw the natural world as alive and continually transforming, shaping their underlying pattern of cognition: everything is connected.
Chapter 1. How We Became Human. Beginning with the question of what makes humans unique, this chapter investigates whether it’s our true nature to be selfish or cooperative. It traces how early hominids developed a sophisticated nonverbal culture, which gradually coevolved with the prefrontal cortex, leading to the emergence of language.
Chapter 2. The Magical Weave of Language. This chapter takes the reader on a trail of discovery about the origins of language, leading to a theory of language that underscores the book’s central theme: the importance of the human patterning instinct in structuring meaning throughout history.
Chapter 3. The Rise of Mythic Consciousness. Here we see how, empowered by language, the patterning instinct drove early modern humans to try to make sense out of their universe, developing a collective mythic consciousness that wove a network of meaning into every aspect of human experience.
Chapter 4. The Giving Environment: The World of the Hunter-Gatherers. This chapter discusses the quality of life our ancestors experienced as hunter-gatherers and describes how they saw the natural world as alive and continually transforming, shaping their underlying pattern of cognition: everything is connected.
Section II explores the double-edged effect of agriculture on the human experience, investigating why it occurred, and how it led humans to become as domesticated as their crops and animals.
Chapter 5. Agriculture and Anxiety. This chapter discusses the symbolic revolution of agriculture: the separation of domestic and wild, the value assigned to material goods, and the emergence of hierarchies leading to a new conception of the cosmos – hierarchy of the gods – that obliged active human participation through sacrifice, priesthood and ritual.
Chapter 6. Going Their Own Way: Early Civilizations. We trace how different early civilizations developed their own unique ways of assigning meaning to the universe: the orderly, bureaucratic cosmos of China; the pantheistic Egyptian vision of the “one and the many;” the Mesopotamian obsession with tidying up the cosmic mess; the Harappan exploration of the mind; and finally, the strange enigma of the Proto-Indo-European horsemen who bequeathed their structures of thought to Indian, Greek and European cultures.
Chapter 5. Agriculture and Anxiety. This chapter discusses the symbolic revolution of agriculture: the separation of domestic and wild, the value assigned to material goods, and the emergence of hierarchies leading to a new conception of the cosmos – hierarchy of the gods – that obliged active human participation through sacrifice, priesthood and ritual.
Chapter 6. Going Their Own Way: Early Civilizations. We trace how different early civilizations developed their own unique ways of assigning meaning to the universe: the orderly, bureaucratic cosmos of China; the pantheistic Egyptian vision of the “one and the many;” the Mesopotamian obsession with tidying up the cosmic mess; the Harappan exploration of the mind; and finally, the strange enigma of the Proto-Indo-European horsemen who bequeathed their structures of thought to Indian, Greek and European cultures.
Western Pattern: Split Cosmos, Split Human
Eastern Pattern: Harmonic Web of Life
During the first millennium BCE, in what is known as the Axial Age, Eurasian societies developed new patterns of meaning transcending the borders of their particular regions. A gulf opened up between the cosmologies of western and eastern Eurasia that would shape the future direction of world history.
Section III chronicles this fateful divergence, beginning by investigating three different conceptions of the cosmos that emerged in ancient Greece, India and China, then following the contrasting trails of Western and Chinese thought over the next two millennia.
Chapter 7. The Birth of Dualism in Ancient Greece. In Greece, a radically new way of thinking erupted with an emphasis on rule-making, categorization and systematic thought, conceptualizing a universal god composed of pure Mind. Plato’s dualism, with its deification of reason, laid out the split cosmos, split human cognitive pattern that has pervaded Western thought ever since.
Chapter 8. Dualism and Divinity in Ancient India. Turning to India, the cliché of the mysterious Orient is dissected, showing some remarkable similarities between ancient Greek and Indian thought, both of which rejected the material aspect of the world as illusory.
Chapter 9. The Search for Harmony in Ancient China. In contrast to Greek and Indian cosmologies, the Chinese tradition looked to the material world for the source of meaning, seeing the cosmos as an indivisible resonance comprising heaven, earth and humanity, forming a harmonic web of life.
Chapter 10. The Cultural Shaping of Our Minds. Are our minds in fact shaped by culture? After delving into the long-running acrimonious debate among linguists over whether language affects how we think, the book investigates how the deep differences between ancient Greek and Chinese cognition reveal themselves in the modern contrast between holistic thought patterns of East Asians and more individualistic Western patterns. Can we consciously develop a cognitive style that incorporates the best of both?
Chapter 11. Pathways to Monotheism in Israel and Alexandria. Turning back to history, this chapter chronicles two parallel pathways towards monotheism. It reveals the true story of the Israelites, as unearthed by the surprising findings of modern archaeology, and narrates the intellectual quest in Alexandria for the discovery of universal, abstract truth.
Chapter 12. Sinful Nature: The Dualistic Cosmos of Christianity. This chapter describes how those parallel paths converged in Christianity, the world’s first truly systematic dualistic cosmology. It explores the devastating effect this new form of split cognition had on the human experience, outlining a millennium of Christian thought with body and soul in perpetual battle, culminating in Descartes who established human identity as thought alone.
Chapter 13. The Scourge of Monotheistic Intolerance. The grim chronicle of monotheistic intolerance is reviewed here, showing how, with its claim for universal truth, it is inextricably entwined with ideological absolutism.
Chapter 14. Discovering the Principles of Nature in Song China. China, meanwhile, was developing a systematic cosmology that recognized humanity’s intrinsic connection with other aspects of the universe. We see how the Neo-Confucian conception of universal organizing principles relates to modern systems theory, offering an alternative framework to meaning in the cosmos that avoids the dualistic trade-offs of the mainstream Western model
Eastern Pattern: Harmonic Web of Life
During the first millennium BCE, in what is known as the Axial Age, Eurasian societies developed new patterns of meaning transcending the borders of their particular regions. A gulf opened up between the cosmologies of western and eastern Eurasia that would shape the future direction of world history.
Section III chronicles this fateful divergence, beginning by investigating three different conceptions of the cosmos that emerged in ancient Greece, India and China, then following the contrasting trails of Western and Chinese thought over the next two millennia.
Chapter 7. The Birth of Dualism in Ancient Greece. In Greece, a radically new way of thinking erupted with an emphasis on rule-making, categorization and systematic thought, conceptualizing a universal god composed of pure Mind. Plato’s dualism, with its deification of reason, laid out the split cosmos, split human cognitive pattern that has pervaded Western thought ever since.
Chapter 8. Dualism and Divinity in Ancient India. Turning to India, the cliché of the mysterious Orient is dissected, showing some remarkable similarities between ancient Greek and Indian thought, both of which rejected the material aspect of the world as illusory.
Chapter 9. The Search for Harmony in Ancient China. In contrast to Greek and Indian cosmologies, the Chinese tradition looked to the material world for the source of meaning, seeing the cosmos as an indivisible resonance comprising heaven, earth and humanity, forming a harmonic web of life.
Chapter 10. The Cultural Shaping of Our Minds. Are our minds in fact shaped by culture? After delving into the long-running acrimonious debate among linguists over whether language affects how we think, the book investigates how the deep differences between ancient Greek and Chinese cognition reveal themselves in the modern contrast between holistic thought patterns of East Asians and more individualistic Western patterns. Can we consciously develop a cognitive style that incorporates the best of both?
Chapter 11. Pathways to Monotheism in Israel and Alexandria. Turning back to history, this chapter chronicles two parallel pathways towards monotheism. It reveals the true story of the Israelites, as unearthed by the surprising findings of modern archaeology, and narrates the intellectual quest in Alexandria for the discovery of universal, abstract truth.
Chapter 12. Sinful Nature: The Dualistic Cosmos of Christianity. This chapter describes how those parallel paths converged in Christianity, the world’s first truly systematic dualistic cosmology. It explores the devastating effect this new form of split cognition had on the human experience, outlining a millennium of Christian thought with body and soul in perpetual battle, culminating in Descartes who established human identity as thought alone.
Chapter 13. The Scourge of Monotheistic Intolerance. The grim chronicle of monotheistic intolerance is reviewed here, showing how, with its claim for universal truth, it is inextricably entwined with ideological absolutism.
Chapter 14. Discovering the Principles of Nature in Song China. China, meanwhile, was developing a systematic cosmology that recognized humanity’s intrinsic connection with other aspects of the universe. We see how the Neo-Confucian conception of universal organizing principles relates to modern systems theory, offering an alternative framework to meaning in the cosmos that avoids the dualistic trade-offs of the mainstream Western model
Section IV lays out the cultural construction of our modern world, showing the underlying patterns of cognition that form the basis of our present day experience.
Chapter 15. To Command the World: Metaphors of Nature. Powerful core metaphors of nature arose from the European dualistic view of the universe: mankind’s dominion over nature; conquering nature ; and nature as a machine – each of which justified and celebrated the ever-increasing power humans could wield over the natural world. These metaphors are compared to the fundamentally different view of nature shared by non-European cultures throughout history.
Chapter 16. Great Rats: The Story of Energy, Power and Exploitation. The dramatic story of humanity’s exploitation of both natural and human resources is told, highlighting Europe’s unique construction of values that let loose in the 16th century a torrent of conquest and domination of unprecedented magnitude.
Chapter 17. The Enigma of the Scientific Revolution. Why did the scientific revolution occur in Europe, and not in the more advanced Islamic or Chinese civilizations? This investigation of the question argues that the underlying cause of Europe’s scientific revolution was cognitive: the core values of Chinese and Islamic cultures propelled them in different directions, while European thought led towards a radically different way of understanding the universe and humanity’s place within it.
Chapter 18. The Language of God: The Emergence of Scientific Cognition. One of the central themes of modern civilization is the clash between science and religion. Here, a fresh perspective is offered, showing how the European intellectual tradition led to “Christian rationalism”: a seamless fusion of the classical deification of reason with the belief in God’s omniscience, which nurtured scientific cognition and inspired the intellectual breakthroughs of the Scientific Revolution.
Chapter 19. “Something Far More Deeply Interfused”: The Systems Worldview. While the dualistic worldview dominated European thought, an alternative “moonlight tradition” emphasized the intrinsic connectivity of the universe. This tradition was the intellectual precursor of the modern systems worldview that sees nature as a complex, dynamic web of interconnected systems, which works according to principles that can be investigated but never completely controlled. This new way of thinking is contrasted to today’s predominant worldview and shown to offer a cognitive path towards a sustainable future for humanity.
Chapter 20. Consuming the Earth in the Modern Era. A consumer culture has engulfed our modern world. This chapter investigates its sources and assesses its devastating impact on the earth. It traces the self-accelerating treadmill of a capitalist world dominated by corporations and based on the abstraction of money, describing the extreme wealth disparities and unsustainable ecological overshoot that have resulted. With the arrival of a new epoch on earth characterized by humanity’s overwhelming impact – known as the Anthropocene – the chapter explores what UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has called the “global suicide pact” of our world system. It concludes by showing how the Western dualistic mode of cognition lies at the root of our current crisis.
Chapter 15. To Command the World: Metaphors of Nature. Powerful core metaphors of nature arose from the European dualistic view of the universe: mankind’s dominion over nature; conquering nature ; and nature as a machine – each of which justified and celebrated the ever-increasing power humans could wield over the natural world. These metaphors are compared to the fundamentally different view of nature shared by non-European cultures throughout history.
Chapter 16. Great Rats: The Story of Energy, Power and Exploitation. The dramatic story of humanity’s exploitation of both natural and human resources is told, highlighting Europe’s unique construction of values that let loose in the 16th century a torrent of conquest and domination of unprecedented magnitude.
Chapter 17. The Enigma of the Scientific Revolution. Why did the scientific revolution occur in Europe, and not in the more advanced Islamic or Chinese civilizations? This investigation of the question argues that the underlying cause of Europe’s scientific revolution was cognitive: the core values of Chinese and Islamic cultures propelled them in different directions, while European thought led towards a radically different way of understanding the universe and humanity’s place within it.
Chapter 18. The Language of God: The Emergence of Scientific Cognition. One of the central themes of modern civilization is the clash between science and religion. Here, a fresh perspective is offered, showing how the European intellectual tradition led to “Christian rationalism”: a seamless fusion of the classical deification of reason with the belief in God’s omniscience, which nurtured scientific cognition and inspired the intellectual breakthroughs of the Scientific Revolution.
Chapter 19. “Something Far More Deeply Interfused”: The Systems Worldview. While the dualistic worldview dominated European thought, an alternative “moonlight tradition” emphasized the intrinsic connectivity of the universe. This tradition was the intellectual precursor of the modern systems worldview that sees nature as a complex, dynamic web of interconnected systems, which works according to principles that can be investigated but never completely controlled. This new way of thinking is contrasted to today’s predominant worldview and shown to offer a cognitive path towards a sustainable future for humanity.
Chapter 20. Consuming the Earth in the Modern Era. A consumer culture has engulfed our modern world. This chapter investigates its sources and assesses its devastating impact on the earth. It traces the self-accelerating treadmill of a capitalist world dominated by corporations and based on the abstraction of money, describing the extreme wealth disparities and unsustainable ecological overshoot that have resulted. With the arrival of a new epoch on earth characterized by humanity’s overwhelming impact – known as the Anthropocene – the chapter explores what UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has called the “global suicide pact” of our world system. It concludes by showing how the Western dualistic mode of cognition lies at the root of our current crisis.
Chapter 21. Trajectories to Our Future.
The final chapter evaluates some of humanity’s possible future trajectories, from the grimmest to the most dazzling.
The threat of civilizational collapse is investigated and found to be a serious possibility, while the belief that technology will save us is also shown to hold some validity. But at what cost? From global engineering proposals to mitigate climate change, to the promises of genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, the possible effects of technology on our future are discussed.
The book explores the prospect of humanity ultimately splitting into two species: an affluent, genetically enhanced minority, with an impoverished majority reeling from the ravages of climate change and collapsing infrastructure. This Techno Split scenario, it is argued, would be a fundamental betrayal of human values.
A more desirable possibility is discussed: a transformation of global norms based on a realization of our intrinsic connectedness within a web of meaning. Whatever transpires in this century, the book concludes, is ultimately up to each of us, and the meaning we choose to forge from the lives we lead.
The final chapter evaluates some of humanity’s possible future trajectories, from the grimmest to the most dazzling.
The threat of civilizational collapse is investigated and found to be a serious possibility, while the belief that technology will save us is also shown to hold some validity. But at what cost? From global engineering proposals to mitigate climate change, to the promises of genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, the possible effects of technology on our future are discussed.
The book explores the prospect of humanity ultimately splitting into two species: an affluent, genetically enhanced minority, with an impoverished majority reeling from the ravages of climate change and collapsing infrastructure. This Techno Split scenario, it is argued, would be a fundamental betrayal of human values.
A more desirable possibility is discussed: a transformation of global norms based on a realization of our intrinsic connectedness within a web of meaning. Whatever transpires in this century, the book concludes, is ultimately up to each of us, and the meaning we choose to forge from the lives we lead.