As for the Axial religions, it’s a real mess. Every single one of them contains vast quantities of “official” scripture that directly or indirectly promotes violence in one form or another. But at the same time, they have these amazing messages like never kill anyone, always speak the truth, always love everyone, that we are all God. I’ve never studied any religion in detail (other than Buddhism), but almost every historical person I’ve ever admired has derived their way of living from a profound relationship with their faith (and a number of people I’ve personally known). If Hinduism can produce a Gandhi and Christianity can produce a King, then I have to believe that there’s something going on there that’s much bigger than the obvious crap in the scripture.

The sense I’ve gotten is that the prophet’s messages have come to us through many layers of cultural filters and have been greatly distorted. And, of course, the prophets were humans. Though they may have seen much further than others, they may not have been any more immune to faults of character than we are. It’s entirely possible that their messages were bigger than they themselves understood.

For war, I would say that in our current cultures war will never be ended. It is a fundamental axiom of every culture I’ve ever heard of that anyone and anything that is “other” is less valuable and ultimately fair game for exploitation as a resource. I believe that it is possible to build a different culture some day, a culture whose fundamental axiom is that all reality is equally Sacred. A culture that has no concept of resources, only aspects of the All which are taken and given with the tenderness of gaining or losing a lover. I don’t know that I’ll live to see such a culture, but it’s my job to help us take a step in that direction.

And wow the HOMSI website takes itself far too seriously.

Men dominating women wasn’t universal, but you’re absolutely right about tribal warfare. I don’t know that there’s anything to be done about that, though — I used to believe that it was possible to end all war, but these days that idea seems pretty naive.

when one reads the heart of those messages it seems pretty clear that they were supposed to mean that we should love everyone equally (ie no sexism or war).

Didn’t Confucianism emerge during the Axial Age? Cuz I don’t recall him being too into equality. Actually, can you give me some examples from the Abrahamic religions? I’m asking not because I think you’re wrong, but because I’ve never studied them in any sort of, er, normal sense (like by reading the Tanach or the New Testament or the Koran or by going to temple/church/mosque) so I primarily know the stories in broad strokes, the specific rules that people argue about, and some of the occult symbolism as taught by HOMSI.

*nods* This reminds me of that part of the Bible that describes humans as the stewards of nature — I don’t know why that’s interpreted to mean that we can use natural resources wantonly instead of responsibly, like how a shepherd both cares for and uses his sheep, but I bet the Roman influence is to blame. Damn Constantine.

However it’s interpreted, the Bible still characterizes human beings as a dominating species, which is inherently problematic, especially when this ideology mixed with Germanic superstitions about evil wood spirits more recently — I’m thinking specifically of these horrible times when early European colonists living in New England would hunt by forming a circle around a certain area of woods and making their way to the center, slaughtering everything in their path. They didn’t do this to gather food, they did it because they believed that wolves and bears and whatever else inconvenienced them was Evil, and that it was their right as human beings to kill whatever they wanted. The Plains Indians tried that out 11,000 years beforehand, but, as they lived somewhere where relying agriculture for food wasn’t an option, they quickly realized that they were basically shooting themselves in the foot by wiping out other species. I’m assuming that this is what laid the seeds for their later belief that buffalo are sacred creatures (which, in turn, is unfortunately what led them to believe that it was impossible for anyone to wipe out buffalo when the Europeans started paying them for hides centuries later). As Christianity developed at a time and in a part of the world where agriculture provided people with enough food to live on, I’m not surprised that it’s followers have traditionally had a blatant disregard for the well-being of other species.

Maybe the prophets really did preach disdaining the world. I just don’t see how it fits.

Well, I can see how someone might come to that conclusion if they believed that stratified societies (and therefore oppression, slavery, genocide, etc.) were a normal part of being human on this earth. Pain, which I believe almost everyone has been in since ruling classes emerged, is usually a sign that something’s wrong. There is, of course, but these profits misdiagnosed the cause (although they found some interesting and beneficial stuff while doing it). It would kind of be like if everyone wore and thought it was normal to wear wale-bone corsets all the time. The religions that emerged from the Axial Age noticed we were all in pain and suggested that we’d be happier if we were thinner. They’d encourage a healthy diet and exercise, which is awesome, but they’d still be placing the blame on our bodies (and I bet most of the followers would interpret their words to be endorsements for having ribs and internal organs removed). I like Daniel Quinn because he suggests that we’d be happier if we took off the god damned wale-bone corset, although I don’t know if he doesn’t believe in the benefits of exercising and eating well or if he just doesn’t think it’s pragmatic to expect everyone to do so. In any case, I think they’re both important.

I have more to say in response to your comment, but I’m getting very, very sleepy, as is probably obvious from my silly analogy (if you haven’t noticed, I am incredibly fond of silly analogies).

As for the Axial faiths and their relationship to the world, you are quite correct that there is a common theme of disdaining the mundane (which has had devastating consequences). However, it’s unclear to me if that was in the prophets’ original messages or if that’s the way that people who didn’t get it interpreted them (sadly, almost all of the actual documents we have come from the followers and not the prophets). I could certainly see how a message of “there are more important things than survival” could be confused with “the realm of survival {ie the physical world} is not important”. The whole earthly-things-are-evil thing just seems way out of sync with the rest of the message. Of course, I can only speculate. Maybe the prophets really did preach disdaining the world. I just don’t see how it fits.

Assuming that animism as it has been recently observed is more or less the way things were prior to the Axial Age, I completely agree that they saw the Sacred in all things. However, their understanding of the nature of that Sacredness doesn’t seem in any way to lead them to believe that men shouldn’t dominate women or that one tribe shouldn’t make war on the next. Of course, there are plenty of these things in Axial Age religions as well, but when one reads the heart of those messages it seems pretty clear that they were supposed to mean that we should love everyone equally (ie no sexism or war).

Again, you are right about the Axial division of the mundane and the Sacred. It seems like the message should have extended to mean love all of “God’s creation” equally, which means don’t rape the planet. But that doesn’t seem to have been the case. I don’t understand it, either. I can only offer one of my favorite Gandhi quotes: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

Anyone who argues that hunter-gatherers are more enlightened than those of us who rely on totalitarian agriculture is guilty of transforming human beings into noble savages, which is just as dehumanizing as thinking of them as blood-thirsty savages. Privileged white liberals are especially guilty of this, and it’s an incredibly damaging perspective because such racist ideas a) discourage the people in power from learning facts about contemporary and former hunter-gatherer peoples, which both aides in the perpetuation of unresearched governmental policies that do more harm than good and replaces the colonial guilt of ignorant white folk with a sense of undeserved self-satisfaction, and b) provides the people in power with an excuse for living in a ridiculously unsustainable way. The idea is that we can’t stop polluting and cutting down trees because we’re human, and therefore inherently flawed, rather than “noble savages,” who are spiritually superior to the rest of us because they’re more “in touch with nature”. This association between spiritual purity and doing what we know is right (read: living sustainably) is possibly the most harmful lie that we have in our culture. It’s certainly the most environmentally damaging. This is why I have a mixed relationship with the Abrahamic religions — on one hand, they all agree on the idea that we cannot treat each other well or live sustainably without the help of a spiritual savior, which, although false to the point of absurdity, is incredibly popular, probably because the notion provides people with an excuse to avoid taking responsibility for their behavior, both toward individuals and on a global scale. I have a hard time forgiving those faiths because this damaging ideology has influenced even the most atheistic members of our culture. However, I’ve also primarily done ritual magic in the Jewish and Christian traditions, so I know from personal experience how they can provide real and beautiful spiritual connections. In all honesty, I haven’t reconciled these things yet.

It seems to me that one of the unique things about the Axial Age is that it was, as far as I can tell, the first time in the history of life on earth that there was, en mass, a message that we had a higher priority than resources. A value that all things were equally part of the Sacred (by whatever language) and thus all life must be considered as your own.

Why do you say that? Animism espoused the belief that everything was Sacred long before the savior-based religions existed, and I’d argue that the religions which emerged from the Axial Age were the first to declare that most things were not Sacred. I mean, every savior-based religion demands that you deprive yourself of worldly pleasures in order to achieve enlightenment or go to heaven or whatever, which implies (and often states) that worldly things are not Sacred. I mean, correct me if I’m misunderstanding what you mean here, but I’ve only seen evidence that the religions which came out of the Axial Age made clear distinctions between the world and the Sacred.