About fifty years ago I did a small survey and found that there were four categories of primary universal action as viewed by Americans. About 50% of adults viewed some (1) sort of god as the prime mover, 20% saw (2) power as the prime mover, 25% saw (3) money as the prime mover and 5% had other categories.
Under God I found many people who viewed science as the prime mover, what historically was called the clockmaker version of prime mover or math as the scientific universal structure.
Now 50 years later the ratio has gone to 45% some sort of god, while 25% now see power as the prime mover. Many of these people are ‘wokies’ and have some ‘colonialism’ as the model of primary universal action. The philosophic model for this group, even if they don’t know it, is Michel Foucault. Marxism is the meta model of money as prime mover.
These categories seem to remain fairly stable over long periods of time. The (4) ‘other’ category is not growing.
In the other category are many Asian and traditional versions of multiple prime movers. The Greek and Roman pantheon are multiple movers. So is the Indian universe. The Chinese Dao and Confucious are multiple prime movers as are the Japanese Buddhism and Shinto.
In the modern world anthropology sees different cultures as having many different societal multiple prime movers.
I personally see humans as driven by a wide variety of ideas, metaphors, stories and images as prime movers of our species.
I don’t see much change in the future. These categories appear stable over long periods of time. The ‘wokies’ will be with us indefinitely. The wokies who see colonization as a prime force may add the Chinese in Tibet and Xinjiang (Uyghurs); and Moslems in much of Africa to their current hate list (Columbus, America and Israel.)
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