An attempt at a "new story" of our emergence from the violence of the ancient cities. Those cities spun the cocoon in which our civilization matured. The human self is like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. In this study author and religious scholar John William Kuckuk traces the path of human evolution and what it means for the world today. He examines the advantages our ancestors had that helped them survive, considering how the brain developed. From Greek and biblical beginnings the human self grew more self-conscious as Europe developed. Through the Renaissance, the late Middle Ages, the Reformation and the Enlightenment, our culture developed a new appreciation of the human self. He also relates how philosophy, media, and religion steered the course of Western history and how culture continues to evolve. The complex dynamics among species, peoples, and schools of thought have led to violence, misunderstandings, and the repression of the human spirit. As humanity continues to evolve, we can work toward a better future by understanding our past.

Out of the Cocoon

Rethinking Our Selves: An Introduction to a New FutureBy John William Kuckuk

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 John William Kuckuk
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4697-4514-5

Contents

PREFACE.............................................................................1INTRODUCTION: MAYBE A NEW BEGINNING.................................................5I. THE SOCIAL SELF..................................................................27II. SELF DEVELOPMENT-TRANSCENDENCE OF INSTINCT......................................37III. EVOLUTION OF OUR SELF - FROM EARLY MAN TO PYTHAGORAS...........................53IV. SURVIVAL OF THE SELF – FROM REPRESSION TO ERASMUS.........................73V. RECOVERING THE SELF: FROM CONFUSION TO ARROGANCE.................................91VI. ANEW AUTHORITY TO FIT A NEW SELF-FROM MONARCHY TO DEMOCRACY.....................109VII. SEARCHING FOR ANEW LANGUAGE FITTING THE NEW SELF...............................125VIII. THE SECOND CHRISTIAN REFORMATION..............................................145IX. THE THIRD CHRISTIAN REFORMATION.................................................155X. REBUILDING THE SOCIAL ORDER......................................................175XI. A PHILOSOPHY OF PRAGMATIC IDEALISM..............................................195XII. PIETY IN THE NEW WORLD.........................................................225XIII. EASING INTO OUR NEW CULTURE...................................................239XIV FAITH FOR OUR NEW CULTURE.......................................................267POSTSCRIPT ON INSIGHT...............................................................295END NOTES...........................................................................301AUTHOR'S CHRONOLOGY.................................................................325ALPHABETIC INDEX....................................................................329

Chapter One

THE SOCIAL SELF

A. OUR PERSPECTIVE ON TIME

Many schemes for reviewing the history of civilization have been proposed. We will not review them. In 1966 Arnold Toynbee began his modest effort to find precedents in history in Change and Habit with observations of our short memories and habitual patterns. But he adds that it is in times like our own that the human capacity for choice operates to change habits. He reminded us "The light derived from experience is ... the only guide [we have] for dealing with the future...." "Adults can choose what they will transmit and what discard, and a rising generation (can to a degree add its mind to the evolution of society)." "History," he says, "is the process of change and Time-Spirit is the 'humming loom of Time' (Goethe, Faust)."

Douglas John Hall brought to light one of the most provocative insights in modern times, the notion of "the end of Christendom." Hall extended the view of many Christians from a very short modern period to encompass the end of the history of Rome and its influence on the present shape of Christianity in the West. "Christendom" was dominated by medieval institutions, but its influence extended past the Enlightenment.

Hall's focus is still narrowly on Christianity in North America. His humility in recognizing the difficulty of speaking sweepingly about world Christianity reflects the new world. It is a world in which we are not so apt to speak in absolute and global generalizations as our predecessors. We are bit more circumspect and considerably more analytical in talking of culture and belief. Hall is a "Reformed" theologian; the Reformed branch of Protestant Christianity is directly related to Calvin just as Lutheranism is a child of Martin Luther. The Reformed branch has always been "rational" in the best sense of the word, emerging in a world in which specialization of knowledge had not yet torn apart the wholeness of human perception and experience. Life was still more whole than we know today. The erudite Calvin's iconographic representation is a flaming heart, denoting love and compassion. The rational element in the Reformed world is strong but always balanced by a fresh new sense of humanity, a key element in the new Protestant view of Christianity.

Hall also reflects the new mind increasingly evident in our culture in his careful, contextual, dialogical treatment of Christian theology. We will be more brazen and extend our time frame far beyond Hall's because many recent developments seem to point in the direction we will explore here. And an urgency has arrived, which Hall sensed, in the condition of human life which calls for our attention.

What the forerunners of our culture could not see clearly was the struggle of the human spirit at the end of the Middle Ages to free itself from a very long period of repression. They were aware of the role of slavery in ancient times, but had no sense of a humanity extending back tens of thousands of years. There was as yet no sense of geologic time. For them slavery was one of the many "sins" from which in their day Christianity was understood to free individual people. One's private "self" saved from sin was closely identified with the "soul." This soul was treasured in the dualistic Medieval Church as a part of the person which was the object of salvation. The Reformation highlighted the basic unity of the person in the Judeo-Christian faith. One of the results of this was the identification of "the priesthood of all believers" – a democratization of the medieval church. This ended one of the remaining vestiges in their lives of oligarchy (and the self-image of sheep-like slaves) and enabled people to recover their self-confidence.

Many Western Christians have limited their historic sensitivity to the Christian period. Its beginning is universally defined by the dating mechanism we all use, now "CE" for Common Era, and "BCE" for Before the Common Era. Both periods begin with the year one, CE is positive, BCE is negative. The trouble with this mechanism is two-fold. First, the known history of our Western civilization (and most of the world) goes back much further "BCE" than we have come in the period "CE." The earliest cities probably took form between 5000 and 3000 BCE in the Indus valley of the northwest Indian subcontinent we call Pakistan and in Mesopotamia (Iraq). Judging by our best archaeological evidence, civilization began in these cities.

And before that, we are aware of the beginnings of modern agriculture as early as 10,000 BCE. This is the time of the great Agricultural Revolution in which human beings began the transition from hunter-gatherer life to settled farming and herding. But that is not really "the beginning," either.

The second problem is that we humans left Africa at least 100,000 years ago, and were evolving in Africa for perhaps five million years before that. It is a very long "history." Most of the really old skeletal remains of humans have been found in Africa. They include predecessors to Homo-sapiens (our species) as early as 200,000 years ago when a woman scientists called Eve lived. She may have been the progenitor of all current people. But she was far from the first of our ancestors. Just a few years ago, fossil remains of a child who died 3.3 million years ago were the first complete remains of a child of our ancient ancestors we have found. The child was of the same species as "Lucy," a woman who died only 150,000 years later. Evolution is a very slow process.

After such a glance back to the earliest beginnings, the earliest known people...