6. Symphony
Of Emergence
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The Eonic Evolution of Civilization
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| 6.1 The Eonic Evolution of Civilization | ||||
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Our tour is complete, but we need to reset our perception of the eonic effect by moving from the past toward the present. We have started with the modern period, moved backwards, and need to turn around and move forward again, armed with the basic framework of the eonic model, which instantly highlights the overall architecture of the emergence of higher civilization. Even as we follow the general sequence pattern, we need to start exploring the branches clearly show in the Axial spectrum as our system attempts to cover the maximum ground with the minimum interaction. We have achieved our prime objective, demonstrating a non-random pattern, and this without ‘telling the story’ in much detail, just on the verge of narrative description. Now we need to find a practical strategy to use it. Try to get a feel for the beautiful and elegant way in which our stream flows interact with the mainline sequence. If the model seems too abstract, simply follow the eonic periodization. Our model is designed to not get in the way of ‘current action’: no theory with an Oedipus effect needs to be computed in the present. We deal with the eonic emergents. We are in the middle of evolution—yet nothing we do is evolution as such. Evolution disappears into the background as an abstraction. Note that theory is always in the background, a virtual ‘theory’ that is itself evolving, so to speak. But the minute you make generalizations about the large-scale, however, the model should swing into action. Thus, the basic contour of our pattern is enough to make our point, even though the model created has a tremendous potential for expansion, and elaboration. We have a puzzle with about a hundred pieces. We could easily make it one with a thousand. As we pass through the eonic sequence we detect an overall coordination in world history. Things are acting together. The spontaneous metaphor of a symphony with a conductor has occurred to a number of people. Thus Koestler, referring to our Axial period, notes The sixth century scene evokes the image of an orchestra expectantly tuning up, each player absorbed in his own instrument only, deaf to the caterwaulings of the others. Then there is a dramatic silence, the conductor enters the stage, raps three times with his baton, and harmony emerges from chaos. The maestro is Pythagoras…[i] Our subject is the eonic observer, his object eonic data as a series of eonic observations, and here Koestler is such an observer. The rise of modern archaeology is itself an eonic emergent, and the great moment is the discovery of the Rosetta Stone by Napoleon’s scientists. Within the next century human historical knowledge will be transformed, especially by the discovery of the rise of Sumer and the onset of Dynastic Egypt. This chapter can be an exercise in visualizing the eonic effect at a high level to see how something deeper than the emergence of states, civilizations, and religions is at work in world history. The chapter is connected with the Appendix, where we construct an ‘idea for an historical database’, and where there is also a discussion of the probable first half of our sequence in the Neolithic. We have distinguished the eonic effect and a frequency hypothesis and have a way to deal with a new historical perception, yet without the distraction of a theory. A useful feature of the model is that we have not closed on specific interpretations of much that makes up our data. We can navigate toward the literature in each specialized field. Our distinction of ‘eonic determination’ and ‘free action’ makes the model fully compatible with historical narrative mode. Looking Backward: The embedded Eonic Observer Just as we are about to begin our tour of the eonic sequence, we can remind ourselves that we are in the modern period looking backward, inside the cone of diffusion of the last transition, seeing everything through the filter of the changes of this last transition, whose effects create a dialectic against what was occurring before, e.g. a secular perspective on religion. This perspective filters everything through the lens of this transition. Although this filter does not preempt the demonstration of a non-random pattern, it can distort our ‘opinionated’ view of prior eras. But that is recursively correctable with returns on various zoom targets. Our model is itself a temporal entity inside this period, now said to be in a postmodern era, in reality a post-transition, and this model is sequentially dependent on the eonic emergents of the period in question. This model, as a action script, is indeed ideological then, as it affirms the very turning point it is describing. We will leave our suggestion about the Neolithic to the Appendix ‘ET1,…’ : ????? ‘ET2,…’ : ??-8100 to -7800 ‘ET3,…’ : ?-5700 to -5400 and begin with ‘ET4,….’ : -3300 to -3000… Chapter 6 [i] Jamie James, The Music of the Spheres (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1993), p. 21.
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