Meditation 45: It's Still the Ancient World

One of the great debates of 17th Century Europe was about whether the virtues of the modern world surpassed those of the ancient.  Modernity is supposed to have emerged in the course of the Italian Renaissance, the Copernican revolution, the rise of mathematical science and the coming of the Enlightenment. It promised to overthrow superstitions, make progress in the arts and sciences, and to lead to a general 'humanization' of man through reason, education, good sense and moderation.

There is so much in the ancient world to look down on from the height of the Enlightenment. The ancients believed in omens and supernatural signs. The gods were out of sight on high mountains or in the clouds. Living spirits blew through the world as winds, from mighty Boreas to the tiniest caressing zephyr. Everything was ensouled. Magic worked. The ancient humans tried to appease the whimsical gods and supernatural powers by sacrificing to them, worshiping them, engaging in ritual behavior around their images, and in countless other ways. In return, the gods would see to the harvest, the health of the flocks, the return of the ships, and cure diseases where no human knowledge or skill could heal the afflicted.  The ancients knew that we were at the mercy of the elements and forces that far outstrip our human powers and common sense understandings.

By contrast, our contemporary world has unlocked the secrets of the universe in a way previously unknown. We need no longer appeal to supernatural powers in order to explain natural events. If things go wrong, and the hurricanes come, well, we will know why, and it will not be because Poseidon is angry with us for not sacrificing to him since the time of the ancient Greeks. In a world of light and progress, only time stands in the way of perfection here on earth, according to the hopes of 17^th Century Europe.

Unfortunately, the debate about the relative merits of the ancients and the moderns was misconceived because we have never left the ancient world. What we have now is the ancient world with atom bombs and other weapons of mass destruction. Ancient religions survive, holding on to revealed truths that are anything but universal. Many people still believe in superstitions, prophecies, omens, jinxes, evil eyes and the rest. Superstitions never went away, but were swept under the carpet. They were railed against, but never eliminated. Even Chairman Mao, with his great authoritarian powers, could not eradicate the tendency of the Chinese peasants to put faith in superstitions and magic.

The status quo for the ancient world was war and conquests, victory, defeat, surrender and slavery. The so-called modern world, with all its technological sophistication, simply continues the ancient tradition of warfare, inventing ever more ingenious weapons of destruction and killing.  Our religions, though not polytheistic for the most part, continue to be sources of violence and war, despite preaching peace. Monotheism is just as much based on beliefs in a supernatural realm as polytheism, and just as far outside the scope of reason and empirical evidence.

The bleeding spectacle of the world, man's inhumanity to man and even more to women, the clash of ideologies, religious and secular, are just ancients days continued into our present. They began a few thousand years ago with the first civilizations and have continued ever since. We now stretch in a continuous and bloody line back to the beginning of human civilization on this earth. The general enlightenment of the peoples of the world has not yet arrived, and our vaunted 'modernity' itself is nothing but another phase of the ancient world.