A new epoch of Humanity.

The past five centuries have transformed us, in a sense, inverted our conception of ourselves and our environment so radically, and in such a short time that to conceive of living in earlier time periods of our history becomes a difficult counterfactual. Whether we call it progress, if we have a notion of what progress should mean, then we have progressed, if not then definitely changed.

Some say that time is circular, or even non existent, but I would conceive of it as spiral, because it’s true that human nature would ensure certain facets of history repeating itself, but history corresponds also to changes in how we see the world, and takes a direction from there.

Most of human history has in some form seen the meaning of life as beyond our means, and attributed things beyond our control to an entity of god. All our virtues, existential discomfort, but even our social and political institutions conformed to a divine entity. From explicit attributions of divine justice by an anthropomorphic being to cosmological justice enshrined in philosophies of karma and dharma, even skeptics found a way to attribute a definition of god, whether it be the sun, our nature, our inner soul, so that this larger set of god encompassed everyone and no one alike.

However, five centuries back, the corruption of humanity in the form of institutional monopoly over god raised questions, and set forward a chain reaction in every sphere of human life, which we now call the renaissance epoch or the enlightenment.

Martin Luther bellowed, that God was democratic, and the clergy had no right over them. People could now interpret the holy cannons as they liked. People started to read and learn to understand the scriptures, and some found the scriptures to lack in proof, or certainty. Descartes, though religious, questioned certainty, and gave us the cogito ergo , the only certainty of our existence because we can be aware of existence.

I wouldn’t go into too much detail for the history is for everyone to read, but skepticism rose like wildfire, and atheism no longer meant roasting at the stake. The pinnacle of this movement of religious questioning reached when Nietzsche roared, ‘God is Dead’, the cosmic divine connection is cut, the lies have been thrown into the garbage of history. But as liberating as liberation from God can be to some, the question soon came, so is there is no divine justice, what do we live for? If there is no God, and I’m going to be a pile of dust, then why not make the most of it? And the seven deadly sins became the seven pure pleasures, until they sowed their own destruction, for values are needed, with and without a god for a sustainable progress of our species.

Nihilism gave way to existentialism, and humans set about starting to explore their own meaning and ethics. Science became a method of finding meaning by ourselves, and soon the Darwins and the Newtons and the Einsteins of the world drafted the sketch for meaning.

But what about ethics?

The evolution of sciences corresponded with the evolution of human thought, and in the wake of secularism, and our increased awareness of our consciousness in response to religious doubts, the rise of the Individual dawned.

I as a person want to be sustainably happy, and have rights, so that in absence of values, may these be my virtues. The Christian ethic was partly forgotten through conception of capitalism, and the need to work.

Political revolutions, Economic revolutions and ultimately social revolutions hinged on the idea of liberalism characterized the epoch, and the ‘I’ became the philosophy of mankind, and nations were conceived of the identity of ‘I’, with my rights, which the new states guaranteed slowly in response to evolution of these institutions.

Fast forward to now.

Despite all differentiated conceptions of sense of reality and morality, as well as competitions from other doctrines, individualism and its forms of egotism, liberalism, libertarianism have solidified and spread throughout the world, which is a fact, whether is good or bad cannot be judged.

However, while the wheels of motions of earlier epochs are still turning, there has been a metamorphosis from within, and a consciousness towards a new epoch is emerging.

Science has outpaced thought, and has created anarchistic modes of organization possible within the internet, connecting everyone in the world, and providing them instant access to all forms of information one needs.

With developments in fields of psychology, linguistics and neurosciences we have again started asking questions, unlike the earlier epoch on the existence of a divine meaning to now questioning our own understanding of meanings we gave to ourselves. We have uncovered grossly humbling biases in our thought and cognition, the limits of our subjectivity and our needs and desires, which transcend to almost being universal. Concepts of the collective consciousness, collective unconsciousness, the genealogy of our languages to a common ancestry, uncovering of the knowledge that our genes reflect varied identities, pierce straight to the heart of the barriers between the I and them we put through our new institutions of nationalism.

Globalization has reached a point of intermingling of people in such a way, that the current tension is nothing but friction of the inevitable, the breaking of the barriers of the I, and recognize the we, across cultures and people. The new epoch is starting from the evolution of human thought in the foundation of a new ethic- Global empathy.

We have always been bogged by selfishness from animal instincts to protect ourselves at any costs, until religious doctrine advised the masses to care for each other. But a commandment is a top down order of ethics. That has been the wrong method of ethics all along, for global empathy comes from within, and truly defines the meaning of a civilization and perhaps re-defines it. Global empathy in the truest meaning of the world global (or universal) will radically change the politics, philosophy, and will help us go beyond ourselves, from thinking animals to beings with the truest conception of our world, and awareness of our connectedness.

Some doctrines have pointed this out since ancient times, but it’s with experience only that such doctrines reveal their wisdom, and the first step to launch ourselves into this new epoch is to go beyond our evolutionary pre programming of selfishness as a virtue. Of course, this can only happen over time, when technology allows us to lax the seeds of competitiveness within us. This includes the dissolving of the nation state, the dissolution of economic scarcity, and resolution of indoctrination of prejudices, which allow ourselves to truly understand a person and perceive no threat from him. When this is achieved, which I speculate is slowly creeping through our awareness, would the problem of ethics resolve itself forever, and virtue will evolve on its own. The anarchistic tool of the Internet I speculate would be supreme in tearing down the hierarchy of ethics we still take from our institutions.

Perhaps this is what Nietzsche meant when he talked about the ubermensch(The ideal man) as the opposite end to the animal which man finds himself to be between in. Perhaps this would be Nirvana and enlightenment which the Buddha attained. All I know is, that the wheels have been set in motion for a new world, and a new humanity.