WORLD CULTURES

AN INTRODUCTION

Cultural Naïveté.  Not too surprisingly we Americans find it so 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 America's 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 America's 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 international 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 understanding 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 representative 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 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 – most notably China ... but also members of the expanding BRICS grouping – 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.

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.

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

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?