OUR CHALLENGE:  TO OVERCOME CULTURAL NAÏVETÉ

Cultural Naïveté.  Not too surprisingly we Americans find it very difficult to understand the way of thinking of other cultures, supposing (very wrongly) that most "reasonable" people in the world think like us ... or at least want to be able to think like us.  If they don't there is something terribly wrong about their social situation.  And it is our duty to change them in their thinking.  We think of this as a policy of Enlightenment – bringing people out of the darkness of foolish or dangerous thinking into the bright light of our own thought processes.

Thus it is that we head off into the world to bring "democracy" (such as we think we understand the term) to the rest of the world.  We expect others to be very thankful for our intrusion into their world in order to bring them cultural "salvation."  When they don't react that way it simply certifies to us the urgency of our mission – something like administering very strong medicine to a very resistant child.  Not surprisingly, what our efforts ultimately do produce is massive cultural confusion – and a great deal of resentment against us for acting on what we see as our good intentions.

American social policy in Iraq. A perfect example of this naiveté would be the American "Neo-Con" ("neo-conservative") effort of President George W. Bush and his Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld to bring "democracy" to Iraq by overthrowing the government of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.  The Neo-Con presumption was that Americas moral responsibility was simply to rid the world of the dictator, allowing the Iraqis then to move ahead in securing for themselves the blessings of democracy.

This is why no American plans were made for how Iraq was to function as a society after Saddam Hussein was removed from power, the supposition being that the Iraqis would simply come together in a new spirit of democracy to design freely their own new government.  No provisions were made for the policing of the streets as Saddam-enforced law and order dissolved away, resulting in an outbreak of petty theft, then serious theft (such as the prized antiquities of the Iraqi Museum), then vengeance killing as ancient sectarian and ethnic hostilities were allowed to explode over the country.

America, not surprisingly, was caught off guard by all the chaos that descended on Iraq.

Then to make matters worse, in order to "purify" Iraq of its former corruptions, all who had been part of the former Baathist regime (virtually all professionals, including doctors and school teachers) were barred from further public service.  And the Iraqi army (which at the time was helping American troops keep some semblance of order in the country) was disbanded, leaving hundreds of thousands of young Iraqis with guns and no jobs to contend with the Iraqi future.

It was a disaster: one mistake following another because of the incredible cultural naiveté of the Bush cabinet that had planned a fairy-tale remake of Iraq, without even the slightest understanding of the fragile mix of Iraqi culture and the long-established expectations of the Iraqis as to how life was to be governed.  Such ignorance created a huge human disaster (as well as a huge economic burden for both Iraq and America) – which, needless to say earned America no gratitude from the Iraqis but instead deep resentment for American efforts to be "helpful." Indeed, American actions simply drove Iraq closer to the neighboring Shi'ite nation of Iran, which has clearly announced itself as the center of a great Islamic mission to rid the world of evil secular culture – and especially the most secular nation of all, America:  the Great Satan.

Cultural confusion at home as well. This problem of cultural naiveté affects not only Americas understanding and actions with respect to the surrounding world – but just as tragically, its own cultural self-understanding and domestic political actions.  America is at war with itself culturally (not for the first time however) over what its own cultural foundations happen to be.  Long-standing Christian ideals that for several centuries had made America morally and culturally something of a Christian nation have since the 1960s been gradually jettisoned – to be replaced by a new untried and untested secular culture.  Deep social divisions have subsequently afflicted America ... and the country – reaching a height of power and prominence in the 1950s and early 1960s – has been on the defensive politically and economically ever since.

A changing world around us.  The failure of the Soviet system in Russia gave the impression to Americans that our nation had won a place of eternal prominence in the global scheme of things.  But Soviet failure did not automatically translate itself into American success.  It meant only that the long-standing challenge of Soviet Communism was no longer a concern.  But there were other problems rising on the horizon to replace the Soviet-American Cold War as our greatest challenge.

The world around us had been changing while we were not paying close attention – so fixed on the dispute with the Soviets were we.  Now those challenges loom large over us:  over-population and consequent economic decline in the Third World, which breeds economic radicalism and hostility of the "have-nots" against the "haves"; Islamist opposition to the West, bred to a great extent by this economic frustration over the failure of Western ways to bring the Third World both prosperity and security; a fast-rising China which is gaining considerable financial muscle and an increasingly active foreign policy to match its new financial muscle; India which is quietly gaining economic and political momentum and as potentially the world's most populous society a presence in the scheme of things that will follow its greatly heightened social potential.  Indeed, as America struggles to not get itself caught in fiscal foolishness and something akin to state bankruptcy (which has destroyed more than one society in the past), even merely maintaining a place of distinction in the international status quo will become increasingly difficult.

The tragedy of failure.  And how much of all this do we Americans truly understand?  Like failed societies before us, we simply suppose that we are entitled perpetually to our place of privilege in the grand scheme of things.  We have become self-blinded to the reality of the changing world around us – and to the dire need of cultural-social reform within ourselves if we are to continue to play a successful role amidst a very changed world.  If we do not wake up to the cultural-social challenges facing us within and without we will soon find ourselves, as so many tragic societies of the past have, dreaming wistfully of the days of glory gone by, days that will never, never return.

The quest for strategic "Realism."  So what we are proposing to do here in this course of study is to gain some much needed strategic Realism about the world, both our American world and the world around us.  We are going to search for perspective ... perspective not just about a day that once existed, but perspective on the day we actually live in – and hopefully some kind of strategic perspective on the world that seems to be unfolding before us.  Then we can make some choices – social choices – as to how to respond to our world.  Then will our choices possess an important element of wisdom rather than fantasy and folly.

Then we can think about being a society that serves the world as "The City on a Hill," a beacon of light (rather than of brute dominance) to the rest of the world.  Then can we say that we are living as God intended us to live – in glory as a people of light.
A Crude Summarization of the World's Major Cultural Trends

First of all, about ourselves.  For various reasons which we will explore closely, in the 1960s America underwent something of a cultural revolution, violently rejecting the long-standing political, social, economic and spiritual foundations that had long served our country in its development from the status of English colonies to a world superpower.  We might sum this whole cultural tradition as our "Yankee" heritage.  It is not that there were no challenges prior to the sixties.  One of these had led to a fierce civil war a century earlier.  And there were strains of the same problems afflicting American culture in the 1960s back a couple of generations earlier in the 1920s.

But by the 1960s it appeared that the old Yankee spirit, founded on very deep Protestant Christian (even Puritan) spiritual roots came out the loser in the contest.  The victor was a culture of hedonistic secularism which derided the patriotic, law-abiding, socially committed and God-reverencing culture of Yankee or Middle Class America ... often referred to here as "MIddle America." The high popularity of the TV series All in the Family – the most-watched TV program of the 1970s – points to the fact that it was very chic to ridicule these older cultural instincts of Yankee Middle-America.

These long-standing Middle-American social standards were now classed as the source of intense White-based racial bigotry ... forgetting that it was outrage (and willingness to die in battle) of "White" Middle-Americans that finally put an end to the greedy and insensitive practice of Black slavery.  Middle America – with its working undertstanding that America was the land of opportunity for those willing to work hard to make a living – was accused of holding deep contempt for the poor and downcast, that is, those who somehow failed to find life-sustaining work.

In countering the Middle-American work-ethic, Secular "Progressives" proposed instead the idea that everyone was somehow entitled to basic social benefits (paid for or produced by whom?) regardless of their contributions to society ... basically the heart of the doctrine known as Socialism ... which unsurprisingly is itself slowly gaining popularity as a doctrine in America – despite the horrible social disasters that Socialism has very clearly brought to so many Third World countries that supposed that Socialism would somehow pull them out of their poverty ... rather than lock them into that condition.

Middle America was accused by Secularists of intolerance with respect to those who did not think intellectually and spiritually as Middle America did ... conveniently overlooking the fact that the idea of religious freedom came from Middle America's willingness to give room to other faiths, beliefs and worldviews, regardless of how much they contradicted their own ideas of right and proper ... a tolerance that Progressives themselves find difficult to extend to those who do not share their "more enlightened" Secular-Socialist views.

America's own precious story (a social legacy such as those from which all societies draw their collective sense of self) is being rewritten in a process proudly presented as "historical revisionism" ... in which the heroes of the past who led the country trough times of crisis have been recast as "Dead White Males" (DWM) and ignored in favor of the stories of the little people, highly romanticized praise of the lower social orders that quietly tolerated the supposed tyranny of the DWM.

Historical revisionism also carefully ignores the story of the generations of Christians who tried to set out in America a new society in which the simple "commoners" drew their sovereign rights from God... rather than from kings and their governments.

These "revisionists" have portrayed the founding and entire century-long Puritan experience of 1600s America on the basis of the brief but tragic event which occurred in 1692-1693 ... an event supposedly rerpresentative of the entire range of Yankee Christian culture, then and now.  They portray the Puritan founders of Yankee America as if they were simply a group of superstitious, bigoted individuals, possessing a horrible blood-lust for cruel death sentences handed down to those accused of witchcraft ... overlooking the fact that this was a tragic but common fear shaking all of Western civilization at about the same time (for a complex set of reasons) ... and was not just simply a Puritan phenomenon.

In fact, this was not the general disposition of the Puritans at all.  The events of the Salem witch scare were relatively brief in duration, located in only one small portion of Puritan America and not only not supported by the Puritan authorities in Boston, but put to an end by them.  Historical revisionism overlooks such details – in order to recast the story along strongly Secular or anti-Christian lines that it follows faithfully ... even religiously.

Sadly these half-truths that have been put forward about the Puritans and their grand social legacy have served the purpose well of those seeking to end this long, and quite noble Yankee Heritage.

What the new cultural elite has to offer as a replacement to the old Yankee-Christian tradition has been the moral remaking of American society in such a way that any ideas that undercut the old traditions have been held up as "liberating" ... and therefore not only are well justified but to be pursued as the noblest of paths.

Sexual impulses have been given license to go wherever they wanted – so that the traditional family is no longer the respected preserver of American sexual behavior.  Indeed, since the 1960s the breakdown of the American family, the most fundamentally important of all social institutions, has been of crisis proportions.

This "liberating" spirit ("do your own thing" ... as 1960s hippie-Boomer youth termed it) has made greed and self-indulgence a lauded social norm – something that Christian America once convincingly demonstrated was a sign of the kind of social decadence that precedes the fall of a great society – of which history has countless examples.  And indeed, a enormously widening income gap separating the ordinary worker and the highly privileged business executives and professionals afflicts today's "progressive" society ... undercutting the egalitarian instincts that made Yankee America so very different from the societies of the rest of the world.

The State is looked to increasingly to provide the social benefits that family and local business once offered Americans – with the new generations unwilling to pay the cost for such governmental indulgence, but to leave the burden (the public debt) to future generations to cope with.

In short ... socially and economically speaking, the Middle-American by-word of "what is it of value that I can bring to my world" had been replaced by the "Progressive" by-word of "what is it of value that I can get from my world."

Equally tragically, hero worship of extravagant, publicity-seeking celebrities has replaced the noble honoring of those who, through noble service to their world, once proved themselves to be worthy of the title of hero.  Today, we expect little of our leaders except that they be interesting and even entertaining.

Thus we no longer produce leaders able to do anything except follow this trend in the hope that it will advance their personal careers.  Few are those who really know how to think on behalf of the good of the whole society.  In fact it is very difficult any more to be sure of what that "good" even might be.  Personal freedom – actually just self-indulgence posing as "democracy" – has become the happy national slogan.  But it offers nothing of true substance to a society trying to cope with an increasingly uncooperative social environment.  And we continue on blissfully as we head deeper into economic, political, moral and spiritual bankruptcy.  Secularism – and its political version Socialism – has not served us (or anyone else) well.

Then, concerning the world around us.  Understandably, the world around us is either deeply concerned about what is happening to America – or worse, gladdened to see America mired down in the mess we have made for ourselves.  In any case, we no longer inspire the respect of the rest of the world.  The world is moving on, and we are becoming less relevant to the way the future is shaping up.  We haven't gone the way of the other superpower, Russia ... which not too long ago collapsed under such economic, political, moral and spiritual bankruptcy – but which has been trying desperately to make something of a political comeback under the disciplining hand of Russian President Vladimir Putin.  But many are beginning to suspect it will soon be our turn to take a political nosedive from greatness to secondary status ... like Spain in the 1600s – and more recently, Britain, France, and Russia.  They are thus planning accordingly.  

THE MAIN THEMES OF THIS STUDY

Man and God

At the heart of this study is the central idea that human history is a story of man's relationship with his world ... and, even more importantly, with the Maker of his world.  Sometimes man walks closely with the Creator and Sustainer of life.  Other times man attempts to organize his world on his own ... without the help of anything beyond his own human powers to manipulate and control life.

But man is not nearly as clever as he himself believes.  Ultimately man brings himself, through his own "cleverness," to self-inflicted catastrophe – usually involving the loss of his personal freedom – as he gets caught up in his own political-economic maneuverings.  And a compassionate (and disappointed!) God once again comes to man's rescue.
The cyclical nature of this relationship

This pattern has been repeated many times over the long run of human history (the Jewish scriptures describe this historical dynamic perfectly).

It is, unfortunately, a pattern likely to be repeated in the future – as long as man walks the earth.  His hybris (as the Greeks termed it) or sin (as the Jews termed it) will always bring man to self-inflicted disaster ... which will require another redemptive intervention of God to straighten out man's mess.

For a while, after just such a rescue, man will "get the point" and live life as God created him to live it.  But new generations will eventually arise, ones who will know of this Divine partnership not personally but only through the narration of older generations.  They will believe that they are cleverer than the older generations and therefore not susceptible to such folly ... and thus proceed to commit just such folly themselves.  And so it goes.
God’s instructions ought never to be ignored

It's not that man is working blindly through life.  God has, on many occasions, made it very clear to man what the "deal" is.  So man is actually without excuse.  God has sent prophets and teachers to remind man what succeeds – and what does not – here on earth.  Most importantly he sent Jesus to make the point absolutely clear as to how we are to live in relationship with God ... and with fellow man.  This was not mere religious or moral instruction.  Jesus was sent by God to clear the way to a perfect understanding of what life – now and eternally – is all about, how it works, how man is to attain the very best that life has to offer, in this life and the one to come.  Such is the good news (the "gospel") God has presented us in Jesus Christ, good news designed to help us live a glorious life ... eternally.

This gospel presentation of Jesus's was not intended to be the exclusive religious privilege of a small group of select people ... but was intended for all of humankind.  It is usually, however, only a small group of people who "get it."  Yet "getting it" is not just a special privilege for the few, but a huge responsibility of the few to carry Jesus's "good news" to the larger world ... not just verbally as a message but even more importantly through the very way we go about living life ... as a clear, living model to others of how the "deal" actually works.

From time to time we have taken up this divine calling, this key responsibility.  And thus is God justly glorified ... and thus also is human life on this planet glorified.  And other times (mostly when we again become self-absorbed and self-deluded about our personal powers) we have not. And thus we slip into cataswtrophe.  And so history cycles onward ... the pattern repeating itself endlessly.

And it is thus exactly just this pattern of life we want to look at more closely.  There are broad trends we will examine ... and also smaller details of this general pattern.  



                      
       Medieval - Catholic    
(1000 - mid 1500s)
Reformation - Calvinist
(mid 1500s - late 1600s)
Cosmological vision hierarchical (the Great Chain of Being) from God - down through ruling priests/kings to peasants below - everyone in their place God - present in the community of the faithful or "chosen" - all coequal before God together forming a witness to His greatness
Truth The laws and writings (Biblical/traditional)
given authoritative interpretation and enforcement by God-ordained bishops and kings		 God’s mighty and mysterious Word expressed in human form as Jesus Christ, revealed in prayer and Biblical study through the work of the Holy Spirit
Good The will of God expressed in the Holy Christian Order The outflow of God’s will found both in scripture and in the natural witness of creation
Evil Results from trying to work outside this Christian Order Results from the speculations of the human heart and mind (human depravity)
Salvation Offered through the offices of the Holy Mother Church Asssigned through the irresistible grace of God 
alone - neither gained nor lost by human action (Synod of Dort: 1618-1619)
God The foundation of all that truly is / ever will be The foundation of all that truly is / ever will be
Jesus Christ Head of the Divine Order ... and special friend of popes, emperors and kings chiefly responsible for this Order on earth God’s living Word among us; Savior of God’s elect or chosen people
Virgin Mary Consolation of the little people 'Adoration' of Mary is idolatrous
Holy Spirit Love-partner of the mystics God’s counsel and power among believers
Prayer The duty of the obedient The way of aligning ourselves to God’s will
Miracles The sign of God’s special favor with saints The sign or reminder of God’s powerful presence
Social Vision Hierarchical:
The placement (by God’s will indicated by birth) of the individual in the hierarchical social order determines completely the identity and value of the individual; 
To please God he/she must play out his/her prescribed role in life		 Pragmatic and Egalitarian:
Each member of the community stands equally 
before God and is equally valued by God;
Each has been given a particular call (vocation) – and sufficient talents to fulfill that call;
All vocations are necessary to the life of the community – and are therefore relatively equal in importance; 
Showy signs of status (housing, clothing, titles, etc.) are deeply insulting to the rest of the community – and thus considered sinful



Early Enlightenment 
(early 1600s - late 1600s)
Enlightenment
(late 1600s - late 1700s)
Cosmological vision Two worlds:
 The higher world of God 
   (Mysterious and moving under grace alone)
 The lower world of nature 
   (God-created but under self-operating laws)		 Two worlds:
 The world of nature (holding center-stage)
   operating like a precise machine
 The realm of God (relegated to heaven)
   a distant place of judgment and reward
Truth Of two natures:
 Revelation truth - “higher” truths of God 
   revealed through prayer and Biblical study
 Empirical truth - “factual” truths of the world
   found through man’s “natural philosophy”		 Essentially self-standing 'fact' revealed through the work of the human mind in scientific study, expressed in mathematical formulae and scientific law.
Good The outflow of God’s original will - discoverable in nature itself through an enlightened mind The outflow of God’s original will - discoverable in nature itself through an enlightened mind
Evil Results from a misinformed (heretical) human mind Results from an unenlightened human mind
       (ignorance and superstition)
... and corrupt societies built on failed ideas
       (producing tyranny) 
Salvation / Prfogress Salvation - Through the grace of God 
 met by free human choice to follow God 
 (Jacob Arminius: Arminianism)		 Progress - Through enlightened human action
God The foundation of all that truly is / ever will be (Deism)  The "original architect" of all that is;
 though not really necessary to today’s world
Jesus Christ God’s Word among us; savior of the world The teacher/model of proper moral behavior
Holy Spirit God’s counsel and power among us  ???
Prayer The way of aligning ourselves to God’s will A perhaps useless human enterprise; human reason or logic is all that is needed for success
Miracles The sign or reminder of God’s presence Merely events not yet explained by science
Social Vision Reformist:
Kings and officers of the state have the responsibility of nurturing and protecting the community and its members		 Elitist / Utopian:
A corrupt social order inherited from medieval times must be overthrown and replaced by a republic led by an enlightened elite group



"Modern" Secularist
(late-1700s - today)
"Post-Modern" Quantum
(emerging in late 20th century)
Cosmological vision A universe operating under fixed rules of operation/behavior ... which awards success to the "winners" in the competitive struggle for existence An unbounded universe that takes on existence and meaning only as we enter into conscious relationship with it
Truth Self-standing 'Fact'
Revealed through the work of the human mind in scientific study, expressed in mathematical formulae and scientific law.		 Relational
Something is "out there" ... but takes on meaning for us as "Truth" or "Fact" or "Value"
only according to our particular context
Good The outflow of the will of "natural" Man A moral outflow of our sense of "Truth"
Evil Results from an unenlightened human mind
     (ignorance and superstition)
 and corrupt societies built on failed ideas
 but also: the untamed natural environment
     (producing hunger, poverty, disease)		 Not clearly articulated as such ... But some dark sense of the capabilities of human consciousness to contemplate and plan the destruction of all earthly life
Progress Through enlightened human action.  May be
 'Revolutionary' or very violent if need be
 (Jacobins, Marx, Lenin, Mao, Khmer Rouge)		 A somewhat nonsensical concept for there seems to be a constant trade-off for every choice in life
God/religion A dangerous fantasy dreamed up to frighten weak minds into social obedience (Marx: ‘the opiate of the masses’)
 ... or merely a desperate refuge of weak minds
 unable to cope with reality (Freud: ‘neurosis’)		 Only beginning to explore this concept
 ... though already sensing that "God" sums up all consciousness not only in our 4-dimensional human world but in a realm vastly beyond it
Jesus Christ A teacher/model (among others)
of proper moral behavior
 – though dangerously connected to religion		 not yet well explored as a concept
 ... but a sense that he touches on much deeper insights into life than what Western religion has often made of him
Holy Spirit A nonsensical concept Holy Spirit / Prayer / Miracles - 
Not yet well explored
But here too - a sense that Western religion
has only "scratched the surface" of the meaning and power of these items
Prayer The last resort of a superstitious mind
Miracles The perceptions of a superstitious mind
Social Vision Individualistic/Hedonistic/Utopian/Elitist
Emphasis is placed on the sovereign individual
seeking self-acquired happiness ...
leaving community life to be directed by an all-powerful ‘state’ governed by enlightened leaders whose job is to protect and nurture the rest of society's members in their quest of enhanced personal fortune and status		 Relational
The individual and community take on meaning and purpose only as they interact and shape each other

 A TIMELINE OF EASTERN AND WESTERN CULTURES

THE COURSE OUTLINE

Course Description

The purpose of this course is to introduce the student to the different ways that major world cultures have addressed the ‘cosmological’ issue of why and how man and society exist in relation to the larger cosmos – and why Jesus stands at the center of that issue.

The course is a broad survey of

the rise of civilization from primitive origins, 
the emergence of a number of major ancient civilizations (Mesopotamian,
    Egyptian, Indus and Chinese river cultures) 
the appearance of a number of ‘Axial Age’ teachers with their message of 
    personal spirituality (Confucius, Gautama, Zoroaster, Greco-Roman
    philosophers and Jewish prophets) – culminating in the life of Jesus Christ
the rise of a number of ethical or religious states (Confucianist-Buddhist China,
     Vedantic India, Byzantine and Catholic Christendom, Islam, feudal and
     Renaissance Europe
the rise of European democracy – and modern secularism
the global spread of Western (partly Christian, partly secular) civilization,
the contemporary struggle of all traditional civilizations to accommodate the
     shifts in the material-moral order brought on by this Western challenge
the recent rise of mass society and totalitarianism
the role of the Christian in this complex global culture

Part One (1st Quarter) - Primitive and Ancient Cultures

Introduction

Biblical insights into man's ongoing relationship with God
     Man walking with God in times of challenge
     Man forgetting God in times of plenty
     Man attempting to manage his world on his own ideals
     Man calling for God's rescue when catastrophe strikes
The appeal - and dangers - of utopian idealism and secular humanism
Man's instinct for political hierarchy
The difficulty of maintaining true democracy
Primitive paleolithic and neolithic societies / cultures
The paleolithic world view or 'cosmology': ‘animism’
Paleolithic man's 'spiritual technology'
The paleolithic band and its spiritual headman (and shaman)
The neolithic revolution: discovery of the secret of the 'seed'
The neolithic cosmology: the crucial role of the fertility gods and goddesses
The genealogical union of family, clan and tribe in its elders - and their 'seed'
The rise of ancient civilization
The discovery of the imperial principle of class and social hierarchy
    The ruling class of priests and soldiers
     The 'middle class' of artisans and tradesmen
     The lower class of peasant farmers and herdsmen
     Slaves
The city-village complex
The hierarchical cosmos of greater and lesser gods
Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt
The city-states of ancient Sumer
The rise of Babylon / Assyria / neo-Babylon (Chaldea) / Persia
Egypt develops its own Nilotic civilization in protected isolation
The ancient Eastern Mediterranean
Ancient Phoenicia
Davidic Israel formed from a Hebrew tribal confederacy
Ancient Crete
Mycenaean Greece / later development of the independent Greek city-state
Ancient China and India
The first dynasties of China
Pre-Vedic and early Vedic India
Pre-Columbian America
The Mayas
The Aztecs
The Incas
Part Two (2nd Quarter) - The ‘Axial Age’ in the East

The Axial Age:  An overview

The simultaneous appearance (500s BC) of teachers across the world
     offering general access to life's higher values: Truth / God / heaven
The reaction of the ruling classes to the Axial Age philosophers
The Asian teachers
Zoroaster
The Jewish experience of the 'Babylonian Captivity'
Indian Vedanta:  the Upanishads / the Bhagavad Gita
Buddha / Mahavira
Confucius / Lao Tzu
Confucianist and Buddhist society
The Confucianist Mandarin bureaucracy of China
Ashoka and the Buddhist mission
Buddhist accommodations to preexisting cultures: from Tibet to Thailand
Ch'an and Zen Buddhism
Hindu Manusmriti and the Bhakti movement
Manusmriti:  The defining of the caste/jati system
The bhakti movement
The Persian Empire

Part Three (3rd Quarter) - The Axial Age in the West

The Greek materialist and transcendentalist philosophers

The rise of the Greeks
Thales and the Milesian philosophers of Ionia
The Orphics, Pythagoras, and the transcendentalists of Magna Graecia
The Sophists and Socrates
Democritus
Plato
Aristotle
Hellenism
Alexander and the development of Hellenistic culture
Cynics / Skeptics / Epicureans
Hellenistic scientists and mathematicians
Neo-Platonism
Stoicism
The Roman Republic and Empire
The political rise of Rome
The Republican political reformers
Roman order: Cicero
From Republic to Empire
Decline
Jesus, Paul and the Early Church Fathers
Jesus – the consummation of the Axial Age
Jesus and the Jewish, Greek, Roman context
Paul: from persecutor to apologist
The early church ‘Fathers’ as apologists
Christendom (an adaptation of the Christian faith to the Roman Imperium)
Constantine and the Nicene Fathers relate the faith to Rome
Defining Christian Orthodoxy
Augustine and the coming 'Dark Ages'
Byzantine or Eastern Christianity
Islam
Muhammad and his times
The Islamic Empire (Ummah)
The Sunni-Shi'ite split
The various interpretations (legal schools) of the Shari'a
Sufism
Jihadism: spiritual or legalistic?
Medieval Christendom, the Renaissance and Reformation
The brief Carolingian revival
The Vikings
The crusades
Medieval piety, scholasticism and mysticism
The secular-humanist Renaissance
The Protestant Reformation
The beginning of the Age of Western Exploration and settlement
The Thirty-Years' War and the changing political face of Europe

Part Four (4th Quarter) - Secularism and Spirituality in Conflict

The rise of Western secularism

The quest for ‘scientific’ Truth as an alternative to religious dogma
British pragmatism
French rationalism / the philosophes
The 'Great Awakening' gives new strength to the Christian world view
The 1800s:  The beginning of the 'Age of Progress'
The American and French Revolutions in contrast
Hegelian Idealism
The British Whigs and the empirical ideal
Darwin and Darwinism
Marxist Utopianism
European Socialism
American Progressivism
Nietzschean cynicism
Western dominance
The moral motif of Western global imperialism
Muhammad Ali's Egypt / the Meiji Revolution / the Young Turks
The tragic 'Great War' - and Wilson's Idealism to the 'moral rescue' of the West
The post-war struggles between democracy and Fascism
Atatürk reforms Turkey / The Japanese turn increasingly aggressive militarily
Kuomintang and Communists in China / Gandhi and Nehru in India
The Cold War and the rise of the Third World
Nasser in Egypt / Baathists in Syria and Iraq / Pahlavi Iran
Our changing world
The struggles to maintain a largely America-founded international order
The rise of new global powers
The democraphic, cultural and political challenges in a rapidly growing world
Traditionalism on the rebound
Mass society: its blessings and its curses
Is modern democracy merely a passing phase in human history?
Understanding the roots of the Christian democratic spirit
Rediscovering the Spirit of Jesus Christ
Science is not by necessity atheistic
Christianity is not mere religion – but basic Truth about life revealed in Jesus
     Christ – among Communists, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, secular Europeans
Christ in America

THE QUARTERLY ESSAYS

Essay 1: The Early Development of Civilization
1.  Paleolithic Society:
   
    1a.  How did paleolithic man’s vision of life (cosmology) see divine spirit in all things
            and events?

    1b.  What kind of religious ‘science’ or religious ‘technology’ did he develop to help him
             work with these larger forces?

    1c.  How was his community organized?

2.  Neolithic Society:

    2a.  How did the discovery of the "seed" seem to offer neolithic greater human control
             over life?

    2b.  How did the idea of the "seed" undergird the very idea of the tribal community?

    2c.  How did this discovery reshape his relationship with the divine?

3.  The Rise of Traditional (or "Imperial") Civilization:
   
    3a.  Explain the principle of organizing societies along hierarchical "class" rather than
            tribal lines, and how that offered the possibility of organizing man into ever
            larger "imperial" communities (vertical organization).

    3b.  Explain the structure of the dominant or imperial city, and how it ruled a huge
            city-village network (horizontal organization).

    3c.  How did traditional man’s view of the heavenly realm reflect this earthly
            organization?
Essay #2: The Rise of the Axial Age

1.  The Axial Age: How in general did the "Axial Age" challenge the culture of
         traditional-imperial society?   

2.  How was the Vedic Age of India typical of pre-Axial Age society? 
   
    2a. What were its main features? 

    2b. How did the Axial Age in India produce not one but several different religious
          movements? 

    2c. In what general ways were they similar? 

    2d. In what general ways were they different?

3.  How did the cosmology that Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) introduced among the Persians
         add a new moral dimension to Persian power?

4.  How did Prince Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) shake up the Hindu caste system with
         his new cosmology and spiritual discipline?

5.  How did the Axial Age in China at first take a more social-political form? 

    5a. How did KongZi (Confucius) and MengZi (Mencius) challenge the Chinese
          political system with their moral-ethical philosophy? 

    5b. How did LaoZi add a spiritual component to Chinese philosophy with his doctrine
          of the Dao (Daoism)? 

    5c. How did Confucianism come to play a central role in Chinese culture? 

    5d. How did Buddhism come to play a complementary spiritual or religious role in East
          Asia?
Essay #3: The Formation of Western Culture - Including Islam

1.  How did the captivity experience of the Jews in Babylon, combined with the
           prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah, produce a profound reshaping of the Israelite
           cosmology and social structure into the form we know as Judaism?

2.  How did ancient Greek philosophers challenge the idea of the Olympian gods as
          masters  of the universe?

      2a. How did Thales and the Milesian philosophers reshape Greek or Hellenic
           cosmology by challenging the idea of the Olympian gods as masters of the
           universe, putting forward instead their ‘materialistic/mechanistic’ view of life?

      2b. How did Pythagoras and the “Logos” philosophers explain the cosmos from
            a more transcendent or ‘mystical’ view of life?

      2c. How did Socrates try to bring a moral-ethical component to Greek
            philosophy?

      2d. What did Plato add to the philosophical debate?

      2e. How did Athenian political arrogance produce yet even another sense of
             things called ‘cynicism’?

      2f. What did Aristotle add to the debate?

3.  How did Alexander’s conquest produce a new 'Hellenistic' culture?

      3a. How did Hellenistic philosophy tend toward a more cynical view of life?

      3b. How did Hellenistic science tend to make secularism a more “natural” view
           of life?

4.  What were the early cultural contributions of the Romans? 

     4a. How did the Roman Empire come to replace the Republic? 

      4b. But what were the serious shortcomings of the Empire?

 5.  How did Jesus shift the Jewish cosmology? 

      5a. Why did both Judaism and the Empire reject the movement called
            Christianity? 

      5b.  Yet how did this new faith connect with Hellenistic culture?

6.  Why was Christianity finally adopted by the Roman Empire – and with what result, both
      for the Empire and for the faith?

7.  What are the key differences between Unitarian and Trinitarian Christianity?

8.  Who was Muhammad (meaning, what did he do and why)?

9.  How was Mohammed strongly influenced by Unitarian Christianity?

10. What (and why) are the key cultural differences between Sunni Arab and Shi’ite
          Persian Islam?

11. How did Sufism attempt to reform Islam around a more mystical or less legalistic-
          political approach to the things of God?
Essay #4 - The Emergence of the Modern World

1.  What were the causes of the West’s emergence out of the Dark Ages? 

    1a. How did this emergence at first take the form of a highly developed Christian
       material and intellectual culture (the High Middle Ages)? 

    1b. But what broke the spirit of the High Middle Ages? 

    1c. How did the West continue to along the lines of a greater interest in materialism
         and humanism (the Renaissance)?

    1d.  How did this impact the moral-spiritual quality of European society at that point?

2.  What sparked the Protestant Reformation? 

   2a. What in particular was Calvin’s influence on the Reformation in England and
       how did this in turn become a key foundation of the English colonies in America
       – at least in the American North?

3.  What were the causes of the Western Enlightenment?

    3a.  How did the political-religious wars between Catholics and Protestants of the
         1600s contribute to a rising secularist mood within Western culture? 

    3b How did this in turn challenge the remaining elements of Christendom?

    3c. How did the early “natural philosophers” (1600s) contribute to the emergence of a
         secularist cosmology:
            René Descartes - the powers of human reason
            Isaac Newton - the materialist basis of the physical world around us
            John Locke - the “mechanical” character of the human mind
                and the utilitarian nature of government  

    3d. How was Louis XIV’s monarchy both a model and a challenge to European
       monarchy? 

    3e. What were the causes of the French Revolution – and why did the Revolution
       have to be rescued by Napoleon? 

    3f. How did Revolutionary and Napoleonic France challenge the rest of European
       society?

4.  In what different ways were the 1800s the ‘Age of Progress’?  What different forms
       did this doctrine take?

5.  What brought the Gilded Age at the beginning of the 1900s to an abrupt end? 

    5a. What was Wilsonian Liberal Idealism – and how well did it fare in the early 20th
       century?  

    5b. Why  did the West fall into an existentialistic ‘funk’ in the 1920s and 1930s? 

    5c. How did Communism and Fascism challenge the ‘democratic’ humanism of Western
       Liberal culture  (how did they introduce the challenge of ‘mass culture’)? 

    5d. Why did Christianity make a comeback under the impact of the 1930s? 

    5e. How did World War Two resolve (in part) these cultural conflicts – yet also open
       the way for the Cold War? 

6.  How have the several challenges today of population explosion, mass depletion of
       the earth’s natural resources, the explosion in communications technology, and
       the tendency toward mass culture created huge challenges to human life on this
       planet? 

7. What could possibly be a proper "Western" response to these various challenges?



Go on to the next section:  Primitive (Paleolithic) Society

  Miles H. Hodges