The most important thing that awaits us in the foreseeable future is the emergence of a new cognitive paradigm. Basically — a change in the way of thinking and the emergence of a new mind as it is — says the famous scientist-sinologist, translator of the “Book of Changes” and “Tao Te Ching” into Russian, Bronislav Vinogrodsky:
Waiting for the end of the world
The actual paradigm of thinking in Western civilization (to which we are largely related), has been formed historically and is based on Abrahamic religions and cybernetics. The word “cybernetics”, which was introduced by Norbert Wiener, comes from the ancient Greek term “to steer a ship, to navigate”. The difference is that modern cybernetics controls the flow of information.
A human being is inside the semantic structures that are determined by the first scripture. The root text of modern civilization is the Torah (Pentateuch). It sets a certain approach, and it implies the beginning of the world (“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”) and its end (Judgment Day).
The current pandemic fits perfectly into this perception of the world. A huge number of experts provide a variety of forecasts. With human fear, added to it, and the eternal expectation of the apocalypse, all this gives rise to conspiracy theories about chipization and similar things.
This happens not the first time. Many times, people expected the end of the world in the middle ages. In the era of cybernetics, new expectations have arisen — that in 2000 computers will switch off massively, and that there will be the rise of the machines. The movies and other areas of art are imbued with the ideology of awaiting the doomsday.
Cycle by cycle
The pandemic has shown what opportunities can be provided by the manipulation of the information. Paraphrasing a well-known saying, we can say that if the pandemic had not happened, it would have to be made up. As soon as the COVID-19 epidemic broke out, the Chinese made an ostentatious blockade of an 11 mln city. They were the first ones in the world, who used the power of the state in order to introduce certain viral information worldwide. As a result, all the countries began to follow the example of China in everything. Moreover, much of what was done was not only useless but even harmful. However, the mechanism has already been launched.
In general, the Chinese model is attracting more and more attention, also due to the confrontation with the US. The Chinese paradigm is the most ancient, holistic, and intelligent on the planet, it has saved its roots in their entirety. After all the turmoil of past centuries, the Chinese finally recovered and began to return to their roots, taking into account the external cybernetic model.
The Chinese paradigm has a concept of 60-year cycles. They connect time and consciousness, development, dying, evolution, and revolution of ideas. The current cycle began in 1984, and the next will start in 2044. There are many divisions in the cycle, and each of them is corresponded by certain phenomena and events. For example, 1984 and 2014 were the years of the most powerful canonical, political, technological, and administrative renovations. It's curious that the first Apple Macintosh was launched in 1984, and it later led to the emergence of the first iPhone and the development of the smartphone which became an essential part of our daily life. 2014 was marked by certain events that changed the structure of political interactions. To the day with the Chinese calendar, Maidan protesters (named after Independence Square in Kyiv) won in Ukraine, changing the relations between Russia and the West substantially. There aroused great hopes for artificial intelligence, blockchain, big data, and medicine related to computerization and life extension. But so far they have not been able to save the existing paradigm in the West. Evidence of it is the emerging collapse of the European Union, and no artificial intelligence can help to resolve this problem.
Apocalypse is called off
The search for a new model of consciousness will now begin — it has already begun. At the previous stage, hopes were placed on cybernetic models. This was well expressed by science fiction, which, in fact, fit in the concept of a smartphone. At the next phase, new world description systems will appear. They will include ancient knowledge, which was neglected for a long time. At the same time, they will not deny the Abrahamic paradigm but will include other models represented by three blocks of semantic fields, on which, basically, the whole world stands: the Hebrew Pentateuch, the Vedic Pentateuch, and the Chinese Pentateuch. These three semantic blocks were preserved intact, but no one had ever compared them systematically.
There will be a big shift towards ecology and sustainability: interest in alternative energy sources and organic products will grow, and there will also appear attempts to completely reorganize the process of life on earth. Moreover, there will be created communities without an economy at all. Blockchain will be further developed, as well as computer technologies, but they will be supplemented, for example, with traditional Chinese medicine. Not coincidentally, the Chinese successfully used it alongside the modern methods of treating coronavirus. Ayurveda and Tibetan medicine will also take a worthy place in the world, and serious breakthroughs will await us in this area.
Definitely, there will be fundamental research into ancient types of knowledge using the most modern technologies. Cybernetics at its highest level will connect with the most ancient knowledge about human beings. There will be projects that re-describe ancient knowledge in terms of semantics, semiotics, genetics, cybernetics, and quantum mechanics. After all this story related to coronavirus, a request for this will appear. I am sure that serious research will be carried out in the field of the nature of time, and from this point of view will be studied the nature of the body and the nature of stewardship, because people will learn to manage processes in time.
One can say that we will move from the finite perception of the Abrahamic religions to the infinite perception of time. This transition process can take place until 2044. And then a new cycle will begin.