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These are created by mind, mind that does not belong to individual brains in individual bodies, but flows across them creating real actions by real people stretching across some centuries and more or less culminating now. This mind has indeed created the problems, through the nature of the thoughts it perpetuates and the actions it has induced. And it is still doing it, right now.
Now it is a mistake to think we are separate from this--for we are participating in it. Our individual minds may recognize the disaster we are involved in (some do, some don't), but the mind we are part of all together does not. There are several reasons for this, but one of them is the metaphysics of this mind--a metaphysics we all share. This lies a bit below the level of visibility--the metaphysics we are happily arguing about do not reach quite that deep. My tactic is that by arguing about--or sharing--our little metaphysics, the deeper levels might start to show.
It is needful that they show, that they are revealed to us, the participants who never think about them.
When I said there are things we want to save, but we don't know what CAN be saved, there are two meanings to this. There are things that simply cannot (are unable) to make the transition into the new age. But secondly, there are things which we think we want to save, but are actually part of the destructive process itself. We don't know what these things are, but we should make a point to know before we set about trying to save them. We need to know what things belong to the destructive process.
This then has its mirror: What does life require of us? Life needs to outwit the mind causing the destruction. How do we help it do that?
Is it "social?" Oh, yes. The Fates are kind.
I do not see the benefit in "explaining" social systems by loose metaphors to one of the aspects of our own biology that we most struggle with understanding, unless deliberate obscurity is the goal.
However, that is an aside ... if it is a loose metaphorical social "Mind" being discussed, then, while it is true:
"Mind" => thoughts/actions
it is equally true that
thoughts/actions => "Mind" ...
... so "Mind" recreates itself ...
"Mind" => thoughts/actions => "Mind"
... and patterns of thoughts/actions recreate themselves ...
thoughts/actions => "Mind" => thoughts/actions
... and the simple externally-driven system turns into the classical living system, open to material cause, but recursively closed to efficient cause.
That is, a concrete, self-reproducing, matter/energy processing system ...
... for which the simple linear mechanical Newtonian causation, in which material, formal, and efficient cause all collapse into a single type of cause-effect relationship, is inadequate. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
These are created by mind, mind that does not belong to individual brains in individual bodies, but flows across them creating real actions by real people stretching across some centuries and more or less culminating now.
If you insist on mis-using terminology confusion will be your reward.
What you are describing is intellectual continuity within a particular culture. She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre
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