ABSTRACT

Europeans and peoples of European origin have been locked into an ontological world that came into being about five centuries ago at the dawn of the European colonial era. It goes by different names such as modernity, naturalism or the machine age. In many ways it has been highly successful. Materially humans have never had it better. Our understanding of how the universe works is extraordinary. Transformative technologies abound. And yet our ontological world is also quite myopic. Much insight that could enhance our well-being is closed from view. And our abuse of our planet is now an existential threat. With colonialism and its legacy, including the persisting high prestige of our version of reality, according to which it is heralded still as the pinnacle of human progress, our initially local common sense has been globalised. Thus, our common sense has become the world’s common sense. Other common senses have been pushed to the margins. These may collapse the dualities we unthinkingly adhere to, and have no conception of discoverable laws of nature or indeed for assumptions about human progress all of which are so embedded in our mindsets.

Our very language is steeped in ontological frameworks hence the binaries we assume like nature versus culture, wild versus domesticated, natural versus supernatural, and life versus non-life. But these binaries are not shared at all by many autochthonous peoples whose ontological frameworks – which we might, following Edmund Husserl call “lifeworlds” – could hardly be more different. Indeed, one may well posit that their lifeworlds are the norm and ours is the aberration. Adding the word totalitarianism to ontology, I refer to one ontology being deemed as the only correct one, all the others being dismissed as inferior, or worse as nonsense that is unworthy of respect or even toleration. I consider totalitarianism to be appropriate here. The material and psychological impacts on many Indigenous groups around the world of the imposition of the ontology of modernity has been devastating. It is also making parts of the world uninhabitable.

We can have a strong allegiance to our own lifeworld and still see the dominance of a single powerful one over all others as a bad thing for humankind. In fact, our ontological world has, in deep historical terms been short lived and may not be as stable or enduring as we might suppose. Ontological pluralism is not just more humane; it might just save us all.