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A New
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We reach the end of our survey of ideology and can see that as theories of evolution close on the present, some strange things happen, and the result is an ideological action script. Actually the resolution of the paradox lies in seeing that 'evolution' stretches into our present, or recent past, and that the 'eonic emergents' of the modern transition are the 'scripts' requiring our active involvement. Hare-brained efforts to apply primordial cases of natural selection to our present is not only wrong but harebrained. We have instead a generic ideology of freedom with all its depth taking its place as a foundation for ethical/rational action. What we do depends on how we evolved, but this evolution is not the hallucination of the survival of the fittest in the Paleolithic, but the content of civilization, as this evolves in the double mode of the two level eonic model.
We conclude our telescoped discussion, amounting to some study notes, with a reflection on the idea of a New Age. The rise of the modern has often been called the dawn of a New Age. The modern New Age movement has tended to be a postmodern reaction to modernism, and this ideology has a concealed danger, of inducing retrogression, and behind the scenes many reactionary initiatives of anti-modernism conspire against the freedoms achieved by modern man. Actually, any New Age movement worth its salt should be learning the lessons of the Axial Age, which demonstrated 'new aging' in the powerful way it generated a new era of religion, science, and culture. That suggests the possibility of new religious perspectives styled after the fashion of the modern! There is every chance this could be done right, and a strong likelihood it will become what we see, the chaotification of New Age cults and religions. That, in any case, is not our topic, but we should point to the powerful suggestions of a figure such as Kant who tried to reconcile the claims of Reason and the Enlightenment with a critique of traditional religion, producing a discourse in the process on 'religion within the limits of reason'. There is every possibility this can adapt itself to an intelligent discourse of secularism that can summon religious thought in a critical fashion, as a real guide to action.
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Resources/
Tutorials Notes Toward an Eonic
Model
Was There an Axial Age?
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