The Patterning Instinct

Summary

A long ‘cognitive history’ from Jeremy Lent, tracing how cultures have patterned meaning since hunter-gatherer times. The West, “prizing reason over emotion, splitting human existence into mind and body”, laid the ground for science and industry, and for today’s crisis. What could follow is a worldview “seeing humanity as embedded integrally within the natural world”, chosen consciously this time.

Rationale

Lent follows separation back to Plato and Descartes, further than we attempt. He hopes enough people will consciously change their values; we’d put more weight on the conditions forming them.