5. The Pattern
Of Universal History
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Fourth Turning Points
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| 5.8.6 Fourth Turning Points? | ||||
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The reader might try as an exercise the idea of a ‘fourth turning point’ in relation to our basic set. This idea is informal and will lead to possible absurdities but is a way to emphasize the relation of system and free action, as items for our ‘scratchpad’ approach. The beauty of this structure is the way ‘fourth turning point’ issues arise in the attempt to ‘exit’ the system into ‘free history’. Note that the ‘turning points’ of the birth of Christianity or Islam, the postmodern or (ambiguously) the Marxist, are not inside this sequence. Actually, it would be severe prejudice to exclude the Marxist from the status of modernist emergent, but it seems to wish to adopt a fourth turning point status by preference. This ambiguity proved its undoing as it began to negate an entire transition. A ‘postmodern’ gesture wishes to create a new ‘turning point’. In general our two levels of universal history seem to be out of sync. That’s not surprising. Men are free at all times to decide on their course of action, yet over time we see a directionality emerge. But every point in history is potentially a ‘turning point’ that might move against what has come before. The two best examples of the ‘fourth turning point’ effect are Christianity and Islam. Another analogous one is the emergent Mahayana Buddhism in India. However, one might also argue that these new developments were generated by the Axial Age transitions. In any case, these are not inside the eonic sequence, and default to ‘free action’ since they are not inside transitions, their arising is contingent apart from the obvious tracks of sequential dependency. But their creators both understood their eonic dependency on the early Judaic period (and/or Zoroastrian stream). Then we see them confounded by the rise of the modern. It is good to consider this point, since the claims of the Christians to have been foretold by the Judaic transition are ambiguous, at best. However, our model leaves the middle part alone, and this requires a separate investigation. This flexibility seen in the idea of fourth turning points, or more generally, free action, is a powerful feature of our model, one that no others allow, and it reflects what happened in modern times as the left essentially created a ‘fourth turning point’ ideology. The problem with this is that while our directionality allows no teleological certainties, it is likely to be a hard experiment in wrong directions to buck the average trend of the basic transition. This issue of counter-cyclical thinking inside our ‘cyclical’ system is clear from the end time obsessions of these two religions, Islam and Christianity. But they can’t succeed against modernism, and remain system bound. Note that we claim only that we are sequentially dependent on the third turning point. Nothing in what we have said preempts a new ‘fourth turning point’ that would transcend modernism, and this with a ‘turning point’ that ‘starts now’ in its own, where our system sequence shows equally spaced transitions. That’s the very odd but completely appropriate property of such a system. That arises because we have defined two universal histories that intersect as eonic determination, otherwise the system remains as ‘free action’. A fourth turning point that would exit the system evolution into free history is potential at all times. But it is obvious man, so far, can’t manage it. Study Marx and Engels in this light. Wasn’t it odd that, just as a new world order is coming into being, they wish to generate a ‘fourth turning point’? In fact, their initial concerns were very humble efforts to create democracy, before the meaning of the term became fixed! Nevertheless the impulse to ‘chase the end times’ with a history-transcending teleological ideology arises spontaneously in this kind of system, and the great religions and Marxism are notable examples. Nothing in principle disallows this, but in practice we don’t see, let alone control, the dynamics behind the mysterious outer form, these turning points. The reason is the sheer scale, and the subtlety of the eonic emergents that appear in the mainline. We can’t even explain them, only describe them, looking backward. Note that you would have to control, for example, the regeneration of artistic movements at the highest level of quality, as a deliberate policy! Clearly it is all we can do to flow with the stream, and direct things on a small scale, e.g. economies. In fact, libertarians make a point of ‘let go’ philosophies. Note the deftness of the eonic sequence. It creates massive redirections where human imitations tend instantly toward totalitarian catastrophes. Review these turning points, especially the most visible, the modern, and look at the way it occurs. Deliberate revolution is almost an afterthought, and usually a failure. But change happens willy-nilly and by 1800 a new world historical direction is fairly well set. We have a better option, to assist this system in its one weak spot: globalization. It globalizes via the part, then stops. The unbalanced system becomes chaotic as ‘free action’ starts to exploit its local advantage in the short run. |
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