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  3.5 Last And First Men: End Of Eonic Sequence?

As we close our analysis of the eonic effect we are left with a final mysterious question: have we reached the end of the eonic sequence? Note that our analysis has demonstrated that we have exited the modern transition in the period of the Great Divide, thence to enter a sort of New Age of modernity as a new stage of history given by the eonic sequence. But was this the last transition? We have no means to finally say. The character of the system has changed as the system action shuts down leaving ‘free action to realize freedom’ in its wake. Although it is appropriate to leave the issue open, the tentative answer to our question should be in the affirmative, that the spectacular driving motion of the eonic sequence has completed its action in what is probably a driving motion initiating in the Neolithic period. Now it is sink or swim. There is a very strong reason for thinking this: as we become aware of the eonic effect, its future action would be blocked by just that awareness. Let us note that ‘suspicions turning into outlandish myths’ arose very early in history concerning the cyclical character of history, and the blending of this with Zoroastrian eschatology has resulted in a ‘world historical mental confusion’ about the action of a system whose simple character could never have been deduced by those immersed in it. At least it can be said of this confusion that, while it did suspect the coming of a ‘new age’ in the future, based on glimmerings about the past, it was anticipating the wrong future, which accomplished itself by taking man by surprise. That must the last time it could happen, as full knowledge of the past, and the implosion of globalization, makes any transitional staging area highly problematical.

Even as we say this we should consider that the real ‘end of the eonic sequence’ might have been precisely the Axial Age. All the elements that make up civilization as we know it made their appearance. However, as we can see that in the wake of the Axial transition everything fell to pieces, with democracy, a bare hint, engulfed in empire, science simply fading away barely kept alive in the medieval period by the Islamic world. In general the drift into empire and the inability to deal with slavery condemned the whole advance. Thus the resurgent modern period resembles a kind of spooky feedback process setting the system back on its course. Who could predict this kind of disconbobulation won’t happen again. Nonetheless, our eonic sequence, despite the appearance of some recursive action, never really repeats itself, and once having established a viable outcome is not likely to produce an unlimited set of repetitions. And we suspect that we are in a situation not unlike that at the end of the Great Explosion when a stable plateau had been reached and the consequences of that transition allowed themselves to unfold in a long period of working out its implications. We sense a similar character to our own times, as we seem to be looking backwards at the relatively brief impetus of development producing civilization, a mere ten thousand years. The issue is to avail ourselves of the immense fruits of this progress without getting stuck in the mechanization of social consciousness that is so evident from much of the evidence of history. And this leaves us with the question, not of revolution, but of the real means to social change. There is no simple answer here, and we seem left with the ambiguities of economic evolution as a substitute for the deliberate creation of future stages of change. We can no longer say that this possibility is utopian since the means to produce real revolutions is evident from the eonic effect: create three century transitions seeding innovations in all phases of social life: art, philosophy, science, and religion, and politics! Clearly we have reacted to, but not initiated, change on that scale, the fiascos of revolution being prime evidence of our incapacity. Thus the future remains unclear.

This remarks are the bare minimum restatement of the ideological issues that appear in the convulsions of the Great Divide, followed by the action of the nineteenth century left. The character of this period was ambiguous in so far as the realization of democracy and the achievement of some future social state beyond liberal modernity became collated producing the remarkable confusion that we see, including incorrect attempts to mimic the French Revolution’s dynamics with a set of wrong assumptions. While this might be a premonition of the future, it has not been able to clearly establish a theoretical basis for action. But whatever the case, it could hardly be true that if we think we have reached the end of the eonic sequence we have also reached the end of development, or that the de facto outcome(s) of the modern transition have an eonic legitimation. The point is only that the eonic sequence rescues systems stuck in mud, and gets them moving again. The end of its action leaves the future open to man’s self-development. This is not the same as, but in some ways resembles, the Hegelian ‘end of history’, in the sense that a process of self-conscious action is completed. It is remarkable that a figure such as Hegel should appear in this regard with such an idea. But our thesis is something quite different, and we mention Hegel in order to warn against a confusion of ideas. The ‘end of the eonic sequence’ is not the end of history, but its beginning. Hegel’s philosophy has been given the interpretation of endorsing liberal capitalist societies as a final stage of development. But this is only true by comparison with what has occurred in the past with the gross inferiority of social forms from which we have awakened as if from a nightmare. Perhaps Hegel merely expresses the hope that a new plateau of development will not regress to primordial primitive statehood. But, in any case, his metaphysics is really a preposterous story about an evolving world spirit, an entity that has no definition in the framework of our thesis. The swift leftist attack on this misunderstood philosophy of history restored the potential of a free future of social innovation, a phraseology overly euphemistic if we consider the difficulties of actually trying to surpass the present. Our verdict should be left in neutral gear by reiterating our sense of the discrepancy between economic and eonic evolution, econosequence != eonic sequence. More we can’t say, and, having reaped the benefits of a model that began with a critique of predictive historicisms, we should conclude without similar prophecies our model doesn’t support. However, we are not at the end of our study, but at its beginning, armed with a highly practical form of historical analysis that reconciles the many pieces of the puzzle of human evolution for the first time.

 

 

 

 

  

 


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