Our Axial Age

This work is an original rendering of world history directly relevant to today. It's about an appreciation of its whole in three hundred pages.



After eons of development, humanity's progress from knowledge unto intelligence happened almost overnight in historical terms with the formation of civilizations in the three or four centuries on either side of 3000 BC. Twenty-five hundred years later, in the two or three centuries on each side of 500 BC, love/wisdom manifested with the morality and spirituality taught by the great prophets of the age, principally Zoroaster, the Buddha, Confucius, and Socrates. Each separately in their flung corners of Eurasia preached a version of the Golden Rule and a concept of the "Way." This was Karl Jasper's first Axial Age.



Out of this age emerged, in time, four major civilizations with their great defining religions--Confucian China, Hindu India, the Muslim Middle East, and the Christian West. Historians have long recognized that the only way to think about the people of the world as a whole is in terms of civilizations. It has been the interactions of these four major civilizations over the past nine hundred years that have carved out where we are today. Accounting for up to 85 percent of the world's population, to know their story, even in relief, is to know the world.



Another twenty-five hundred years later, we are in the midst of a second Axial Age that has to do with will/power which relates, in terms of our civilizations, to governance. Our Axial Age's essential expression has been the historically sudden emergence of republics worldwide over the last two hundred years or so. In 1800 there was only one genuine republic in the world. In just two brief centuries, 85 percent of the members of the United Nations are republics or at least feel compelled to call themselves republics. The progression is not precise, but regular as is human evolvement.



After setting the stage, our story pieces together how all this came to be over these many centuries by using colorful vignettes and memorable, innovative interpretations of periods of time. The penultimate chapter notes numerous very curious harmonies of history and interprets them consistent with Carl Jung's "meaningful coincidences" in his Theory of Synchronicity. The last chapter assesses where we are today, offers suggestions including a crucial one in accord with Immanuel Kant's essay, To Perpetual Peace, and looks to the future given our progression.