Thatta Kedona

Once again we engage ourselves with the topic of disparities in urban and rural cultures, their problems, misunderstandings and faulty developments caused by the myths. The erroneous developments in urban areas are massive and on the other hand, seemingly ignorant and largely uneducated residents in the rural areas are carriers of the traditional culture. They are also the owners of left-over knowledge of the concerned culture. Unfortunately, they are misused by the members of the city culture in many different forms for the purpose of income generation.

Philosophical Considerations

The urbanisation is proceeding forward with the main argument of progress and development, without its necessity being put in question in any way. The prospects of a solution to the enormous problems of the systems complex “City” appear to be further away, more than ever before. One is still looking to solutions used in the XX century, for example the expansion of the infra-structure. The answer to more traffic jams on roads is to widen them, and widen them again when the traffic jams increase even more, and this goes on and on. Mobility is the main catchword, technically attractive, but seen in a long-term or even lesser context, just a sham answer.


Not so that the thinkers have not put in question the oddities of the times:

Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) The Structure of Scientific Revolution (1962)The typical Researchers-Discoverers-Scientists are not objective and independent, rather discover in order to try to prove, what they already suppose.

Juergen Habermas (1929 - ) Theory of Communicative Action (1982), Between Facts and

Norms (1992) The existing system of economy and politics colonises and dries out the traditional culture.

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) Truth and Methods (1960) The idea, that we can step out of our cultural links in order to produce timeless truths, is a usual fiction in modern thinking.

Robin George Collingwood (1889-1943) The Idea of History (1946) Events and Happenings of the past are not to be considered independent of the current times and the happenings of current times always stand in contrast with the past.

Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) Social Systems (1954) The one eye (known from the christian symbolism) does not see everything, the truth is not real any more, there exist only observations of observations.

Max Weber (1864-1920) Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus/The Evangelical Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism (1907) The employed religious rationalism uncovers the „other life“ and directs attention towards materialism, professional status and income generation, which lead to a new religion in itself.

Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) Pseudoproblems of Philosophy (1928) Conclusions, that are not supported by experience, have no value.

Topics like training the population are carried with the slogan „The Right to Education“, well meant, but not thought till the end or adjusted to the appropriate times. Really simple processes, like for example when the members of each generation try to understand their life circumstances anew in each time period are falsely understood as evolved new knowledge. The so-called knowledge is then understood as reality, so that out of a large number of misunderstandings and follies, new models are developed, which are based upon fundamental errors which are not recognized. New models are then based on these „principles“ and they lead to new material for education and awake expectations in the sense of income generating measures. The reality is ignored and it is replaced by a “false-reality” around which everything is built. The ridge between Reality and False-reality is increasing immensely and the repetition of the basic error is extreme.

Religion-Economy-Society

In the religion almost a sort of cannibalism, in the economy usage and effects of a slavery system, in the society the practice of legalized land robbery, -such are the three pillars of the system, if critically observed, which has spread successfully in the world inspite of these shortcomings, consciously or sub-consciously, knowingly or unknowingly. What is the secret of this power, its roots and foundations ?

There is no chapter in the human history, in which one could not find something good and positive, at least in short span of time. This is not an excuse for errors, but an explanation. If the outlined thoughts lead to a change of thought, even that will not necessarily lead to an improvement in the current situation but only to implementation of an already overdue change. And also this will lead at some point of time to a reversal of some sort. To decide means to start such a process. The errors originate from the theories, which have been thoughtlessly taken over by the populations and their hollow implementation into reality, -which again proves, that humans by nature think one dimensionally, which however can hardly be described as thinking. Does’nt matter.

Also belonging to the three above mentioned pillars of this false Success-system is the capability to separate problems and therefore to quickly handle them successfully. One can consider the clash between the „Believers“ and the „Knowers“ a sort of milestone in this context. As usual with the monopolists (Monotheists !!), also the papal catholics propogated a purpose and aim-oriented history, which was doubted by the believers and they started to question it. The results are evident and so seen also understandable. The uppermost power is being increasingly put in question and put in a mercantile system, in which it is gladly found by the advancing science and politics. Work and not extravagant life, saving and god fearing, the religious scripts convert the message into the laymans language; the happenings of the church wars can be reduced to this simple form: Hugenots, Calvinists, Zwinglists, Quecker and other anglo-saxon sectarians, who found unlimited freedom in their lands, etc. these are the results. As long as they immigrated into europe, in the beginning they could still not fully unfold their capacity as they had immigrated into existing communities. Compared to this, there were no boundries when they immigrated to overseas lands.

The capacity to solve problems short term by dividing them leads to a loss of overview and the solution finding becomes sort of an automated process, -the cause for tremendous erroneous development in the economy, politics, science, art , -infact, in the culture in its totality.

Economy

The industry is forced to simplify for production technical reasons, only in this way, through new machines etc., the production, the quality, the design can be improved, -and only in this way the product can stand up to competition in the market: so one reads, hears and unnderstands in general.

It is however ignored that the reality is more complex. Is the simplification the measure for all things and when this simplification is understood to be reality, the difference between the original reality and the supposed reality are bound to increase, whereas it is not intended at this place to discuss the differences between the realities but only to encourage a deeper critical appraisal. The arguments “progress” and “development” are exposed on even slightly critical examination to be a word capsules and a careless description of a highly complex destruction system of cultures.

Education: Knowledge and Training

The socalled growth in knowledge must be financed, as also its progress believing advocates and their students. The students are financed, also with the help of the parents, who –nothing new-, just want the best for their children and this if possible in shortest time.

Seen on a global scale, in the framework of this mechanism, millions of scientists, teachers, economists, engineers, sociologists, manager etc. are produced, who think only in terms of increasing demand; a fascinating growth-oriented industry, which indirectly also produces superiority over the population in the rural areas, who remain backward. They (still) do not understand these word capsules and let themselves be easily bewitched. Who would like to be considered backward in a (falsly) progressive world ? It is not without reason that the cities keep on growing due to this grand error.

Conclusion

It has been attempted to describe the problems of the current culture with short insight into individual areas, whereby it has been attempted to shed light upon the conflict situation city culture versus countryside culture.

Seen in historical context, there is hardly ever a main reason; at least one cannot be named as such: The fast developing technology, and this out of profit reasons. The technology is no more driven by the consumers, rather the technology dictates the consumers. The generalization makes simplification possible. But the simplification is not the reality, -and apparently this fact is most often forgotten.

Prof Dr Pintsch, Bamenda 022005/Lahore 032005
pdp33@hotmail.com