Monday, March 19, 2018

The Modern Era

A few days ago I wrote here about the 1st Axial Age, the name given to the time in history when humanity made a major leap ahead, a change in consciousness that brought scattered humanity—each in unique ways—to lay the foundations for civilization that still serve us today.

The modern era necessitates another axial change wherein humanity comes to embrace a new consciousness of what and who we are.  We’ve seen ourselves from outer space—earth as one small interconnected interacting unit.   We must come to realize that what happens to one part effects the whole.  We can no longer choose war; we are One world threatened with self-destruction. 

We were given a planet in which to create a world according to our choice.  Little by little, with glory and strife, we came together to become a global world; we have yet to realize our oneness.  May we in our lifetime experience humanity's rise in consciousness.
                                                                          - - -
        
 I repeat an earlier poem from my blog of 10/15/13


POTENTIAL


I believe in human potential--
     Man can be more than he is
     if armed with the will to become.

I see the inherent dangers--
     Power can either create or destroy
     so knowledge of it awakens fear.

I know of quantitative quality--
     That which can be expressed positively
     can likewise be expressed negatively.


     I look to civilization’s development
          - the taming of fire
          - the mastery of communication
          - the understanding of order
          - the creation of beauty
          - the invention of systems
          - the development of industry
          - the perfection of technology
     Laced with wars, tyranny, slavery, holocaust, bigotry, treason, genocide...

     This is my heritage, my lineage, my ancestry;
     It all came before me and is mine because I am!

     This awareness engenders painful ambivalence;
     Majesty and pride joust with horror and shame.

     All this is because of human potential;
     Our being has changed the face of the earth.

     Man has traveled to the moon
     And he has created Auschwitz and Dachau.

               Are we gods or demons?

     The more we refine our being
     the more aware we become of its flaws.

     Ignorance once hid from us our vast potential;
     Yet once glimpsed, that image holds the mind in bondage.

     Reality forces us to live with the less that is
     while desperately longing for the more beyond reach.


Now, together, we are called to create a better world--      
     The negatives are painfully real
     but somewhere, somehow, progress happens.

Truth demands we acknowledge our potential's full range
     without abnegating the responsibility;
     --each person's choices help shape the future.


Thursday, March 15, 2018

A New Axial Age?

Has the modern era brought us to a new Axial Age?  Some say so, but what does it mean?  The German-Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers coined the term ‘Axial Age’ in 1949 when he noted that during the period between 800-200 BC there was a shift in how humanity viewed itself.  A turn as if on an axis—a change in consciousness that allowed civilization to develop.  Prior to the shift, tribalism was the dominant form of social organization.  The general characteristics were: small populations closely related, closed to outer influences, lacking individualized thinking, total submission to the group (ultra-conformity), with non-members of the tribe usually seen as ‘enemy’.

During the first Axial Age there was a revolution in human thought.  Independently in most clusters of humanity (China, India, Persia, Judaea, Greece and Rome) there was a change in consciousness that produced great advances in intellectual, philosophical and religious thinking.  Great men arose to define a ‘way of life’ (Confucius and La-Tzu, Gautama Buddha, Zoroaster, Moses and the Prophets, Socrates and Plato).  In each cluster there was some version of The Golden Rule: ‘Do unto others what you would have them do unto you’.  Humanity had moved from the isolation of tribalism to recognizing the necessity of cooperation for mutual benefit.  It was a huge leap, laying the groundwork for civilization to emerge.

How is this relevant to today?  The modern era has brought tremendous technological change.  From 1900 to 2018 we’ve leapt from horse and buggy transportation to rockets to the moon and back; in communications, then the telephone was new and cumbersome and today we carry it around in our pocket not only for conversations but also to navigate highways and instantly obtain limitless information . . . it isn’t the same world!   In the early 1900s we were just awakening to the terrifying destructive power we held, erupting in a World War with heretofore-unimagined armament—which escalated to nuclear arsenals capable of destroying all life on planet earth.

This new world requires a shift or change in how we see the world; another revolution in human thought is needed.  War has been the way to settle disputes since man first walked the earth.  It is no longer a viable option—viable means: capable of working successfully.  There is no ‘success’ with nuclear weapons.  Until we ventured into outer space and looked back on this tiny planet in the vast universe, we still believed (although science told us otherwise) we lived in a limitless static world where earth was the center of it all with sun and moon and stars revolving around us, as God sat on a cloud watching our every move. 

That isn’t the reality.  We are a dynamic evolving interacting singular unit, dependent upon each other for survival.  Early in the Bible (Deut. 30:19) God says:  “I have set before you life and death . . . choose life.”  God left it up to us. Whether or not you believe in the Bible or God, that clearly is a statement to us today.

The choosing of death is to continue to war, enlarge the nuclear arsenal, and deny reality.  The way to ‘choose life‘ is to embrace our interconnectedness, change our consciousness to find the way for humanity to work together in peace and build the world. . . thus bringing on a second Axial Age.

I once again quote Teilhard de Chardin:
 
                       “The Age of Nations is past,
     The task before us now, if we would not perish
                              Is to build the earth”