Civilizational forgetting

Reverse Alfred North Whitehead: civilization dissolves by slowly forgetting the important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

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Community of practice, scenius, communal knowledge, metis exists between the members of a community and is embodied in the structure of the community network, generating repeated patterns.

How do you keep communal knowledge alive? Through ritual, institutions, storytelling, shared myth and legend.

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This whole year is an exploration of what it means to know something or not know something collectively. Like at this point OBVIOUSLY some individuals knew how to deal with the situation. But collectively? Apparently not. In a lot of supposedly high functioning places! #

I imagine this is how civilizational forgetting feels too. Like everyone doesn't forget at once. There are still people who know things. And sometimes they drink. #

See also: Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations.