1. 1490: Civilizations
of Olympia
In his book, An
Historian’s Approach to Religion (1956), English historian Arnold Toynbee
(1889-1975) notes the similarity in type between Western Civilization and
others at that time:
In the fifteenth century of the
Christian Era, when the Western Civilization…set out on its world-wide career
of expansion, it was still a civilization of the same type as its contemporaries
in other parts of the Old World: an Eastern Orthodox Christendom in South-East
Europe and Anatolia; a branch of this same Eastern Orthodox Christendom in
Russia; a Turco-Persian Islamic Civilization stretching from South-East Europe
to India; [and] an Arabic Islamic Civilization stretching from Morocco to
Indonesia…(149).
We have referred to Europe, Southwest Asia, and North
Africa as our fabled land of Olympia. The cultural distinctions we have
identified within this land correspond reasonably well with those of Toynbee. For
the year 1490, we also divide Christendom into Western and Orthodox regions
(see “Geography” above). We too divide the Orthodox region into two provinces:
one, in South-East Europe (Hellas); the other, in Muscovy. Likewise, within Islamic
Civilization, our separation of the cultural province of Anatolia from the provinces
of Africa, Egypt, and the East corresponds with Toynbee’s separation of
Turco-Persian Islamic Civilization from Arabic Islamic Civilization.
2. Their Most
Important Similarity
This common characteristic of
being set in the framework of a higher religion made fifteenth-century and
sixteenth-century Western Christendom familiar to its contemporaries in the Old
World and at the same time repulsive to them. It was familiar because of its
traditional religious setting. It was repulsive be-[149]cause Western
Christianity was a different religion …to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Islam,
[etc.], which were the religious frameworks of the other living civilizations
of the Old World (149-150).
We use religion as our primary criterion for
distinguishing one civilization from another. Maybe Toynbee agrees. Here,
though, he states that Western Christianity is a religion and “religious
framework” distinct from Eastern Orthodox Christianity. I would call Latin
Christianity and Greek Christianity two distinct cultural regions within one
Christian Civilization.
We may agree with Toynbee, however, when he states that
Christendom (Christian Civilization) was structured in terms of a traditional
religious framework and that Islamic Civilization was so as well.
3. 1648: Accurately
Diagnosing the Big Difference
In the seventeenth century of
the Christian Era, however, when the West’s mastery of the Ocean was now firmly
established, and when consequently the West had already become the potential
master of the World, the West went through a revolution that had been by far
the greatest of its history down to A.D. 1956. In the seventeenth century the
Western Civilization broke out of its traditional Western Christian chrysalis
and abstracted from it a new secular version of itself, in which Religion was
replaced by Technology as Western Man’s paramount interest and pursuit (150).
We have spoken of the year 1648 as marking the beginning
of a new age in Olympia (and the world): The Age of Exuberant Olympianity
(1648-2008). This is the year that the warring Protestant and Catholic regions
of Western Christendom collapsed exhausted into the Peace of Westphalia. We may
conveniently use this date to analyze what Toynbee says about the times.
One, Toynbee notes that, by 1648, Western Christian
states controlled shipping on the world’s oceans.
Two, because of this, Western Christian states, though
still structured in terms of a traditional religious framework, stood poised to
take control of all other states which were structured in terms of different
but still traditional religious frameworks. In terms of our fabled land of
Olympia, Western Christian states stood poised to control both Eastern
Christian and Muslim states within it.
Three, we may use 1648 as a convenient date for marking
the beginning of what Toynbee calls the greatest revolution in Western history.
He characterizes this revolution as the replacement of religion by technology as Western Man’s paramount interest and
pursuit (150).
Here Toynbee makes a mistake. In sociological terms, we
may define as god whatever serves a society as its paramount interest and pursuit. In 1648, Toynbee rightly sees
technology as the object of this enthusiasm. We more accurately understand this
enthusiasm, however, as renewed devotion to Vulcan, god of technology. What
Toynbee refers to as a revolution, we may more accurately call a dramatic and
exuberant return to worship of the six gods of Olympianity: (1) Jupiter, god of
politics; (2) Mars, god of war; (3) Vulcan, god of technology; (4) Venus,
goddess of sex; (5) Pluto, god of money; and (6) Bacchus, god of consumption.
Toynbee refers to Technology as secular but there was nothing neutral, or non-religious, about it.
After almost 150 years of civil war, Western Christians had completely
discredited Christianity. Christianity, while the dominant religion in the West
for over 1,000 years, had never been the only one. Romans, and the people they
referred to as barbarians, had been Olympians for millennia before Christianity
became the sole official religion of the Roman Empire in AD 380. Even then,
Olympianity didn’t disappear. It just took second place. The gods, however,
never rested and did their best to bully, bribe, and deceive the Church into
abandoning Jesus and his path of freedom in favor of their own path of power. By
1648, they had succeeded. Olympianity enjoyed a dramatic return to primacy—in Western
Christendom, no less. An ignoble defeat for Western Christians.
4. The Fatal Misdiagnosis Made by the Rest of the World
…the effect of the
seventeenth-century secularization of the Western Civilization on the attitude
of the non-Western civilizations was to remove the previous obstacle to a
reception of the Western Civilization by them. In consequence, the whole of the
non-Western World had become deeply committed to the Late Modern secularized
version of the Western Civilization by the middle of the twentieth
century…(150).
Here Toynbee reveals the fatal mistake made by
traditional religions in Olympia (and the world). Like Toynbee, they wrongly
understood the technological phenomenon occurring in the West as religiously
neutral. They should have seen it for what it was: devotion to Vulcan and the
other Olympian gods. Had they done so, then these religions, and the
civilizations structured in terms of them, would not have become so deeply committed to
alien and destructive gods. Had they understood and resisted, then societies,
cultures, and personalities across the globe would not now suffer from a
parasitic, collapsing, and meaningless Global Technological System with no
place to go.
Copyright © 2018
by Steven Farsaci.
All rights reserved. Fair use encouraged.
All rights reserved. Fair use encouraged.
