<aside> đź“– SUMMARY The contemporary world has been shaped by two important and potent myths. Karl Jaspers' construct of the "axial age" envisions the common past (800-200 BC), the time when Western society was born and world religions spontaneously and independently appeared out of a seemingly shared value set. Conversely, the myth of the "dark green golden age," as narrated by David Suzuki and others, asserts that the axial age and the otherworldliness that accompanied the emergence of organized religion ripped society from a previously deep communion with nature. Both myths contend that to maintain balance we must return to the idealized past. In Convenient Myths, Iain Provan illuminates the influence of these two deeply entrenched and questionable myths, warns of their potential dangers, and forebodingly maps the implications of a world founded on such myths.
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The Axial Age
<aside> <img src="/icons/subtitles_lightgray.svg" alt="/icons/subtitles_lightgray.svg" width="40px" /> 800-200 BCE
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“…the most crucial turning point in history; it was then that man as he is today was born … the “axial age.”
—Karl Jaspers, “The Axial Age of Human History”
I believe that we are in a Second Axial Period. We are caught up in a transformation of consciousness that is as momentous as that of the First Axial Period and that will have comparable far-reaching effects on religion and spirituality.
—Ewert Cousins, “Spirituality in Today’s World”
“THE STORYTELLERKARL JASPERS (1948–1953) In an essay published in 1948, Jaspers looks back upon the record of history telling in the West up until that point and suggests that it has hitherto been grounded to an unacceptable extent in a specifically Christian account of the world.2 The turning point or “axis” of human history has been wrongly identified as the entrance of Jesus Christ into the world. This faith-based approach to the past must now be rejected. “If there does exist such a thing as an axis, or turning point, in history,” Jaspers affirms, it must be based on observable or recorded fact; and it must be valid for all men, including Christians. Such an axis would be that point in history where man first discovered the notion of himself that he has realized since, the point in time where there occurred that shaping of man’s being which has produced the most important results. And the existence of this turning point would have to be, if not absolutely demonstrable, at least convincing on an empirical basis for Europeans, for Asiatics, and for all men, without the need to appeal to the criterion of a definite religious[…]”
“This was the age in China of both Confucius and Laozi (the founder of Daoism). In India it was the age of the Upanishads and Buddha; in Iran, Zoroaster; in Palestine, the Hebrew prophets; and in Greece, Homer, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Plato, Thucydides, and Archimedes. It was an era, therefore, during which what are still the fundamental categories that we use in our modern thinking were developed. It was the era of the beginnings of the world religions by whose teachings we have lived until the present time—an age in which “a step was made towards the universal.” The age of myth was over. Rationality and practical experience now battled against myth, and religion became informed by ethics.”
“The reality of the axial age, then, “summons [us] to boundless communication,” prompting us to overcome our narrowness and to oppose the claim that any one faith exclusively possesses the truth. It calls us to arms against fanaticism, pride, and self-deception—against the will to power that dominates Western thought in particular. We are summoned to acknowledge the empirical truth, that “God has revealed himself historically in many ways and opened up many paths to himself. It is as if God, speaking the language of universal history, were warning us against exclusive claims.” This discovery must then affect our understanding of our contemporary situation, in which we must ask ourselves how the unity of the human race can become a concrete reality for each of us, whatever our own tradition may be.6”
“Even the great spiritual powers handed down to us no longer support life … we must return to a deeper origin, to a fountainhead from which all faith once welled forth in its particular historical shapes, to this wellspring which can flow at any time man is ready for it. … [T]rust in the origin of all things must lay the foundations.” He goes on to envisage a new religious order—a new axial age: “In coming centuries men will perhaps arise who, sustained by the sight of the origin of the Axial Period, will proclaim truths replete with the knowledge and experience of our era that will really be believed and lived,” taking into account that “the truth of faith lies in the multiplicity of its historical manifestations, in the self-encountering of this multiplicity through ever deeper communication.” In the meantime, he tells us, “Every individual must know where he stands and for what he will work. It is as though everyone were charged by the Deity to work and live for boundless openness, authentic reason, truth and love and fidelity, without the recourse to force that is typical of the States and Churches in which we have[…]”