Convenient Myths: The Axial Age, Dark Green Religion, and the World that Never Was

Introduction

1 Introduction Stan Fields: What is the one most important thing our society needs? Gracie Hart: That would be harsher punishment for parole violators, Stan. (The crowd is silent) Gracie Hart: And world peace! —From the film Miss Congeniality If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. —Derrick Jensen, Endgame We all believe at some level in world peace. That is why young women in beauty pageants worldwide have so often asserted their own firm commitment to it, as they have sought the judges’ approval. It is such a cliché that the 2000 film Miss Congeniality can exploit it for laughs— among the many other aspects of beauty pageants that the film mocks. Most of us also believe in saving the planet. I say “most of us,” because we must acknowledge the minority in different religious traditions who 2 Convenient Myths cannot wait to see it blown to oblivion. Most of us, however, recognize that this is the only home we have right now, that some “inconvenient truths” have to be faced with respect to its sustainability, and that we have a moral obligation to deal with the problem as best we can. 1 We should not “degrade the planet.” These are both noble agenda items. It is possible, however, to become so driven by our visions of the future that we cannot see clearly what is right in front of our eyes, in the present. It is also possible to become so driven by these visions of the future that we cannot see clearly, either, what lies behind us, in the past. The past gets caught up in the future as we ask it to lend support to our hopes for the future, and we get confused about what is really there and how it is different from what we would only like to be there. This is a book about the past—the world that was and the world that never was. It concerns two influential stories about the past told by well-meaning, intelligent, and idealistic people who believe in world peace and in saving the planet. I do want to stress intelligent. These are stories told by smart people, who are often writing at a very high level—professors and the like, writing peer-reviewed books and essays. Often “people in the street” will never have heard of these writers , even though they will certainly have been influenced by their ideas (whether they recognize it or not). These stories are persuasive. Unfortunately, they are untrue. They are myths—using myth in the modern, popular sense of “an unfounded or false notion.” The first of these stories I shall refer to as the myth of the axial age. 2 The idea of an axial age was first introduced to the world by the German existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers in the period just after the Second World War. Jaspers had just lived through a period marked by barbarism, nationalism, and fanaticism. He was concerned, in the aftermath of the war, to identify something that modern human beings hold in common—something that might unify humanity and help us all to move forward together peaceably. He believed that he had discovered what was needed, not in any single religious or philosophical system, but in a specific historical experience: the axial age. Modern human beings stand, he proposed, on the far side of this crucial turning point in history (the period 800–200 BC). This is the period which produced the basic categories within which we modern human beings still carry on our thinking—the period that saw the emergence of world religions. The cultures that experienced this new beginning constantly return Introduction 3 to it in order to renew themselves. They recognize as they do so what they hold in common, beyond all particular differences of faith. It is to this common past that we ourselves must now return, as we strive to make the unity of humankind concrete in the present. We must return to this axial age—the wellspring from which all faith once emerged, behind and beneath all specific religious and philosophical worldviews and their secularized, political forms. And, having gone back, we must move forward to build a new world order. We must birth a new axial age—an...