Symphony of Emergence

Study Guide 
For Online Text of
 
World History 
And The Eonic Effect
Civilization, Darwinism, and Theories of Evolution
2nd. Edition
The Book
By  John Landon

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 6. Symphony of Emergence  
       6.1 The Eonic Evolution of Civilization 
              6.1.1 World Line of The Eonic Observer
        6.2 Egypt, Sumer and the Rise of Civilization   
               6.2.1 From Akkad to the Assyrians,…and Israel ….     
        6.3 System Cycle, System Return: The ‘Axial’ Transition  
               6.3.1 Age of Revelation or Eonic Transition?  
               6.3.2 Quest for the Historical Gita     
               6.3.3 A Book of Changes  
               6.3.4 Tragedy and the Discrete Freedom Sequence     
       6.4 On the Threshold of World Civilization   
              6.4.1 A Rebirth of Freedom…Cycle, System Return….   
              6.4.2 Anti-Semitism, Mideonic Jackknife, Teleological Tragedy 
Endnotes 
        6.5 Axial Ages and Eonic Observers
        6.6 Religion and Empire 
               6.6.1 Slavery, Abolition, and Eonic Sequence   
               6.6.2 Islams….      

The Eonic Evolution of Civilization

After moving backwards to the source of the eonic sequence, we can turn around and move in the other direction. We have developed a formal concept of the 'eonic evolution of civilization', referring to the large-scale macro sequence we have found.

• Eonic Observers We can introduce the idea of an 'eonic observer' of the eonic sequence, looking backward at the process of evolution in his historical past, creating a boundary in his present between system action and free action.

Our model is designed around relative beginnings. We can take each transition as a self-contained unite, extend the system backwards armed with new data, or reduce the whole system to an hypothesis about our degree of freedom in the present. As we move towards the present from the Neolithic we can see the crucial issue of the individual and system reflecting in the onset of the State, especially visible in the first transition. This is recombined in a new way in the second stage where the great religions emerge as integrators in the process of transcultural globalization. The key to seeing the connection is the case of Israel, with its clear play on the forms of the state flowing outward to become something larger than the state.

The rise of the state
The Axial interval
Rise of the modern

In terms of our new fundamental unit of analysis we can see that the issue is not the civilization, but the 'transition' and 'oikoumene' that this creates.

The Eonic Evolution of Religion

We can see that the great religions are closely associated with the second stage of our sequence, and it is not surprising that the rise of the modern react against the second stage. This tends to create confusion over the meaning of secularism. What we see beyond the secular idea is simply the way in which our system spawns a New Age that will transform the legacy of Axial antiquity, and produce new cultural instruments.  But the basic issue is to see that the evolution of religion shows direct correlation to the eonic sequence. That correlation is not identity. Religions can and do emerge at arbitrary times, but the action of the eonic sequence sets the tone for a whole era, and we find the two distinct cases of India and the Judaic stream. The latter, of course, produces several religions in the mideonic period.

Discrete Freedom Sequence

We also see the extraordinary way in which the eonic sequence contains the subset of the 'discrete freedom sequence', and the double emergence of democracy is a tell-tale clue to the inner dynamic of the system, so beautifully reflected in the thinking of Kant.

• The discrete freedom sequence  The double emergence of democracy in two successive steps in our eonic sequence gives away the clue to a macro 'evolution of freedom'.

• Greek tragedy We see suddenly that the brief emergence of Greek tragedy reflects the master theme of freedom and necessity, and contains the core idea differently cast.

• Slavery, economy, abolition We see that the birth of the idea of freedom is one thing, its realization another, and the second stage is stuck in the legacy of slavery. It is not chance that abolition is so closely associated with the modern Great Divide.