Contexts are no longer contexts when examined ( as a thing {existent} to be studied, and all this in another context). Contexts, by definition, are never a part of explicit consciousness. When we focus on contexts, attempt to attend to them, they cease to be contexts. This is a version of the observer/observed paradox.
EXAMPLES: Why was the wheel for transport never invented in the Americas? They lived in a world without wheels, or the concept of wheels. But they knew “circles”. Might we call the “absence of wheels” part of the context of indigenous Americans? If we study any population from our past there is much contemporary knowledge they were unaware of. Consider the “Heavens” – which for many cultures the sun and clouds both occupied the same domain – and early meteorology and astronomy were related. Contrast the vast depths in space and time of our cosmological universe (now with mind boggling photos) and the earlier view of bright points of light that moved in regular patterns. Camp fires across the great divide?
- We need a genre of speculative (What if?) fiction as how populations from the past may have responded to an attempt to share some contemporary (future) knowledge domain with them. The historical struggle of new ideas trying to break through the constraining contexts and frames informs us how difficult such change really is. We will discover how our current comprehension of simple “fact” depends on many contexts not present historically. In the past, a presentation of the “fact” would be far, far from being experienced as a “fact”.
- How does what one doesn’t know influence what they do know? How does my comprehension of the vastness of space and time make my life and thinking different from those who think in Biblical time scales? How does a belief of an after-life make a difference in a person’s living? Or, not believing in an after-life?
- It usually takes a belief that another population is truly less than human (and dangerous) for mass killings of one population on another.
- I read that Western, so-called “educated & civilized” MEN suddenly opened up to enabling the education of women when they learned the science of inheritance: women were more than fertile soil for the male seed; women contributed as much (even more) to the nature of children as men.
What is not part of a context can be as important as what is in the context.
- Even when a context is of sufficient scope to include all the “bad” things that must not happen in the future and all the “good” things we want to happen in the future, that context is far from comprehensive. What is missing is what is missing.
- Often what the “good people” propose is framed in the context of the contemporary bad & good [the bad being part of the status quo, much of the good being absent]. This context blocks consideration of “things” not related to the bad, but not thought of because of the good/bad conflict. This is one factor in the heavy bias towards transformation over emergence in futures scenarios.
- What if what “good people” need to be doing to succeed isn’t even in their imagination because their scenario always involves unpleasant encounters with established orders (maintained by people conditioned to perform in systems that do “bad”).
- In this context, the “good people” never seriously inquire whether the reason they seem never to succeed is because they have an inaccurate comprehension of themselves and the whole scene. Their difficulty may have nothing to do with the “bad” and the status quo, but do to habits-of-mind, and limiting paradigms that keep them from learning what it takes to learn what they need to learn, and then learn it.