Chapter 5  
Mental representations of the world

In chapters 2 and 3, we examined what is inherent to human nature, namely generalized nepotism and cognitive dissonance. Then, in chapter 4, we illustrated how this naturally translates at the level of the current decision-making mechanism. In this chapter, we will address the cultural aspect, that is, the way in which we represent the world. These representations influence our decision-making process just as much, but they are the result of our shared history. They would have likely been completely different, and above all, they evolve over time.

A very brief history of humanity

In chapter 1, we indicated that we are entering the second industrial revolution, that of computing as an amplification of our cognitive abilities for certain elementary tasks, the first having been that of the engine as an amplification of our muscular capacity. This is a perspective on a historical scale.

Now, if we take a step back and move to the scale of human history, we can also observe that we are entering a second revolution.
The first one was related to the emergence of agriculture, that is, the shift from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a sedentary agricultural one, leading to the birth of villages and then cities. This first revolution resulted, on the one hand, in the organization into larger social groups, which brought us from family clans to empires, and on the other hand, social organization in the form of the tripartition described by Georges Dumézil, which we will present in this chapter.

The second revolution is that related to the emergence of modern science, which began in the 17th century and will probably end in the 21st or 22nd century. What characterizes this second revolution is that man has acquired a technological level that allows him to be exempt from the obligation to work to meet his basic needs. On a human scale, the two industrial revolutions are part of one and the same revolution, caused by the emergence of modern science. This revolution will lead to a second mutation of production methods to meet our basic needs, and therefore a second mutation of our social organizations. However, this social mutation has not yet taken place. Indeed, the philosophy of the Enlightenment, which we will also present in this chapter, has certainly produced democracies in some parts of the world, but today clearly shows its limits. This second revolution will therefore end when, on the one hand, we have massified robotic production, and on the other hand, we have adopted a new social organization system whose balance is not based on mass work but on the optimal and reasoned use of our technological know-how, serving everyone.

The tripartition

The tripartition, or Indo-European tripartite functions, constitutes our long-term cultural heritage. It is a concept of comparative mythology proposed by Georges Dumézil, who claims that the myths of Indo-European societies are structured on the basis of three functions, which translate into a social organization in three classes.
The first function, called the sacerdotal function, corresponds, in the French Ancien Régime, to the clergy class.
The second function, called the martial function, corresponds to the nobility.
Finally, the production function corresponds to the Third Estate.

To be clearer, the sacerdotal function should be understood as containing beliefs, as well as knowledge and reason.
The martial function includes action.
Finally, the production function includes abundance and love.

We do not seek here to take a position on the level of universality or relevance of Dumézil's proposal. What interests us is that it allows us to include the cultural aspect, that is, to make explicit the widely shared mental representations. Indeed, even though they are not inherent to our nature, that is, they do not constitute invariants, as we saw in chapters 2 and 3, it seems to us important to take into account the mental representations arising from our cultural heritage. Indeed, this allows us to propose a social organization that produces as little cognitive dissonance as possible, and thus facilitates its acceptance. In other words, chapters 2 and 3, which presented social ambition and its consequence, generalized nepotism, then cognitive dissonance, dealt with characteristics of human nature identifiable by modern scientific methods. Conversely, the tripartition deals with a simple cultural heritage, made up of symbolic representations, which can therefore only be observed, and not demonstrated by the application of the scientific method, even though in chapter 1, when we addressed the philosophical question arising from progress, we saw that the emergence of three social classes was likely in any agricultural society benefiting from favorable natural conditions.

To illustrate the importance of the three functions in our common perception of social organization, we will take the example of Christian mythology, which replaced Roman mythology in the 4th century. The starting point is Jewish monotheism. A prophet, Jesus-Christ, appears and announces the imminent coming of the kingdom of heaven (1), and creates a sect that quickly progresses in the empire, in part because the proposition of a paradise where one will meet all the deceased loved ones is very attractive. However, as Alfred Loisy shows in The Gospel and the Church, for it to impose itself, the new religion must become intelligible to the Romans (2), hence including the three functions. For this purpose, the Holy Spirit is added. From this point on, the new religion becomes as attractive and intelligible to the Roman elites. Indeed, God represents the sacerdotal function. The prophet Jesus-Christ represents the martial function in an inverted form, hence easily assimilable but weakened, which could be desirable in an empire that has ended its expansion and seeks to shift power from the military function to the sacerdotal function. Finally, the Holy Spirit represents the production function.

Let us conclude the story of the evolution of the three functions up to the present day.
Throughout the Middle Ages in the West, following the legacy of the shift that occurred in the Roman Empire, the sacerdotal function was the most powerful, symbolically at least. Proof of this is that the king is anointed by clergymen. Likewise, it is often the monasteries that organize the initial economic development of territories.
The situation began to change in the 15th century with the great discoveries, which were financed by the emerging capitalism, thus reinforcing the martial function. The industrial revolution marks the shift of dominant power from the sacerdotal function to the martial function embodied by its economic component, capitalism, and the new dominant class, the bourgeoisie. Capitalism thus moved from the conquest of resources, initially gold, to the conquest of markets: the term 'conquest' well characterizes its warlike nature. Moreover, it gradually emancipates from the sacerdotal and then political tutelage, to become self-justified in the form of the economic system presented as the most efficient. Testimony to this is the famous statement 'The state cannot do everything,' made by Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in 1999, which ratifies in France the shift of economic preeminence over politics.
At the same time, the French Revolution marks a rise in power of the Third Estate, whose mythology will become Marxist class struggle.
In the end, the 20th century witnessed the collapse in the West of the sacerdotal function in its ecclesiastical form, so that we shifted from the tripartition to a binary system. On one side, 'the right' represents a coalition of the sacerdotal and martial functions, with the hegemony of the martial function in its capitalist form. On the other side, 'the left' represents the production function, with Marxist class struggle as its mythological support. The sacerdotal function has thus in a way been absorbed by the other two.

However, during the same period, one can see nationalist ideologies called 'far-right' as an attempt to restore the sacerdotal function in the form of the myth of races and nations, which clearly shows that even when the political system seems to have shifted to bipartisanship, the tripartition remains very deeply rooted in our mental representations.
Similarly, in the first chapter, we saw that the main practical heritage of Marx's thinking expressed in Capital is social democracy. However, at the level of popular representation, Marxism is class struggle. This comes from the fact that the concept of class struggle is a mythological concept, and that it has been adopted as a sacerdotal substitute by the production function.

The philosophy of the Enlightenment

In a few words, we can see the philosophy of the Enlightenment as the upheaval of mental representations induced by the emergence of modern science.
At the level of the tripartite organization of the society of the Ancien Régime, the rise of science and the rationality that characterizes it undermines the foundations of the sacerdotal function based on dogma, by its nature irrational, and increasingly seen as an unacceptable arbitrariness. This is translated by a rise in the power of the other two functions. First, the martial function, through the rise of nationalism that will be at the basis of the XXth century wars. Then the production function, through the primacy that will progressively be given to the economic.

To fully understand the philosophy of the Enlightenment, and its evolution up to the present day, we invite you to listen to the remarkable courses entitled Legal Figures of Economic Democracy, given by Alain Supiot at the Collège de France in 2016, available on the Internet (3). He presents the birth of democracy in ancient Greek times, then its slow maturation in the Church and the free cities during the Middle Ages, its conceptualization in the Enlightenment, and finally its evolution up to the present day.
The central point of the Enlightenment's democracy is the emancipatory education that, on the one hand, allows access to independence in terms of work and decent incomes, and on the other hand, gives the ability to fully exercise one's role as a citizen in deliberative assemblies. It is therefore not surprising that this representation emerged at the time when the birth of modern science suddenly raised the social prestige of knowledge at the expense of belief.
Then, Alain Supiot shows us how the industrial revolution of the 19th century suddenly brought back to the center of the stage the question of the risk that excessive concentration of economic power poses to democracy. The problem had arisen in ancient Greece and had been resolved by forced redistribution. It had also arisen in certain Italian republics of the Middle Ages and had led to the election of a strong man, and ultimately to the end of democracy. This risk is recalled by Roosevelt in his speech on the State of the Union in 1938: 'The freedom of a democracy is not assured if the people tolerate that private power grows to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself.'
However, after being at the center of the debate for more than a century, this question was decided at the end of the 20th century, with the advent of ultra-liberal globalization: not only did all the legal barriers limiting the concentration of economic power disappear, but also the ideal carried by the philosophy of the Enlightenment changed. The goal is no longer the emancipation of citizens: only the freedom to do business remains, which obviously only addresses those best endowed by nature in terms of personal abilities or heritage. The others '[Workers] renounce their freedom in exchange for economic compensation.' The role of the state and intermediate bodies is no longer the organization of this emancipation and the animation of public debate, but merely the collective defense of the price and duration of work, since employment has become the norm.
Finally, Alain Supiot notes that this perversion of the Enlightenment ideal is accompanied by a profound transformation of mental representations, consisting of seeing everything as a market, even what was originally non-commercial, whether it be non-profit missions such as unemployment insurance, or even public debate, which becomes the market of ideas. By the same movement, the citizen is largely reduced to the status of a consumer.

(1)
All mythologies predict some form of afterlife. What is specific to the message of Jesus-Christ is predicting the imminent coming of the kingdom of heaven, that is to say, the imminent end of historical times. In this sense, his message can be characterized as millenarian, and it is closer to that of the current Jehovah's Witnesses than to that of the Roman Catholic Church.

(2)
Alfred Loisy speaks of the 'Hellenization of the Christian doctrine' p134

(3)
Several elements contribute to making these courses remarkable. First, having chosen as the central point of the social organization how people work together. Then, the use of legal texts to factually illustrate social changes seems to us much more interesting than that of wars or the lives of great men. Finally, the clear formulation of mental representations, and especially of their evolutions, which lead to these laws.
In the end, from our point of view, if the goal is to allow young citizens to fully exercise their responsibility as voters, a simple explanation of the first course would advantageously replace the entire program of economic introduction given in the second year of secondary school, and the whole set of these courses would advantageously replace all or part of the history courses given in high school. In particular, course 8 very well describes the ideological shifts that reshaped the conception of democracy at the end of the 20th century.