Cultural Achievements
Throughout history mankind has a gained cultural achievements which characterize modern life. These achievements have precise origins in history.
We name some of them here.
The ladder of potentialities for progress and emancipation is shown in the following list:
| CENTURY | LIBERTIES | PROTECTING PRINCIPLE | CORRESPONDING INSTITUTION |
| 20th | Freedom for growth, health | Public character of labour | (?Perhaps: adult education, decentralization of industry?) |
| 19th | Freedom for talent, thought, genius, speech, creativeness to compete | Public character of private ideas | Copyright, patents, a written constitution |
| 17th | Freedom of endowment | Public character of wills | An independent Judiciary |
| 16th | Free choice of profession, no vows for children | Public character of education | Public schools |
| 13th | Freedom of competition between teachers | Public character of the sciences | Universities |
| 11th | Freedom of movement for the men in the professions | Public character of civil life (truce of God) | Judges of the peace, public prosecution of crime |
taken from: Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy: Out of Reveolution, p. 32
Kroesen, Ravesteijn: Radical sustainable change: a case for communicative sustainability and civil society as enabling environment for engineering
Oualities engineers have:
- Future-orientedness: technology aims at a better future.
Other human qualities, likewise essential to engineering, include
- universality,
- civility,
- conscientiousness,
- teamspirit,
- rational inventiveness,
- large-scale planning and
- social responsibility.
Otto Kroesen: SUCCESSFUL CONTEXTUAL TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER AND DETERMINANTS OF CULTURE and Een rode draad door de tijd
Tribal Culture Qualities:
- chief in the lead: external institution (chiefdom)
- internalized values (tradition and authority)
- family and incest taboe
- openness to other tribes for exchange of women (avoiding inbreeding)
Imperial Culture Qualities:
- hierarchy
- labor division
Jewish (OT) Qualities:
- humans are made in the image of God (first step toward individuals?)
- dethrone the gods or the cosmic order, representing traditional authority and hierarchy
- claim divine power beyond the visible powers, a divine power which is sensitive to the sufferings of ordinary human beings or which is not a divine power at all
- future oriented human achievements and qualities: prophetic calling
- religious relation is not determined by ancestors but for each generation anew (Abraham - Isaac)
- secure provisioning of food is not of ultimate value (Moses)
- established (political) structure can be criticized (David)
- humans are not captured by the tragedy of this cosmos, but can have personal relationship to God, who is beyond the cosmos (Job)
Ancient Greek Culture Qualities
- empathy: seeing the other as oneself beyond the social group
- reflective activities: science, theater, philosophy, sports
Christian / Western Culture Qualities:
- man is allowed to switch between the once exclusive cultural qualities of the tribe, the empire, Israel and ancient Greece. These qualities become aspects of a fuller set of qualities.
- social death is not the end of life, but man can be resurrected to a new life
- “engineers qualities above”