Foreword

Foreword

Description

We—humankind—are at an inflection point, a critical threshold. We soon must choose between the fear that is the currency of populism and the hope that is harboured by those who, like Teilhard de Chardin, described the possibility of a Second Axial Age. In his volume, The Origin and Goal of History, Karl Jaspers described the period from 800 to 200 BCE as the Axial Age because ‘it gave birth to everything which, since then, humankind has been able to be’. It was the era when Lao-tzu and Confucius revolutionized Chinese thought; Buddha, Mahavira and the rishis who wrote the Upanishads transformed philosophy, religion and ethics in India; and the followers of Zoroaster in Persia explored profound questions about the nature of good and evil. In the Levant, Jewish prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah sounded calls for higher levels of moral awareness. In Greece, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle articulated the fundamental ideas of Western philosophy. Before the Axial Age, the dominant form of consciousness was cosmic, collective, tribal, mythic and ritualistic. By contrast, the consciousness born in the Axial Age, which was then extended by successor waves such as Christianity, Islam, the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution, carries a sense of individual identity that permeates the cultures of the world today. Since the middle of the last century, we have begun to see signs of a Second Axial period. Although first described by theologians, the Second Axial Age also has a progressive, secular dimension that Teilhard predicted—a process of ‘planetisation’, a shift in the forces of social evolution analogous to biological evolution, proceeding from ‘emergence’ and ‘divergence’ to ‘convergence’. The first groupings of humans were familial and tribal, engendering loyalty to a group and separation from other groups. Humanity then diverged, creating different cultures and nations. But the spatial finitude and spherical shape of our planet were intrinsic constraints: so, human beings now occupy all of earth’s readily habitable areas, and modern communication and transportation systems mean that groups can no longer detach completely from the world. Today, humankind is pressed into a full planetary community. Even as powerful forces of difference and division incline us against one another, we are being drawn into a global society. But this global world need not compromise the great gift of experiential diversity. Teilhard saw not a homogenisation but rather ‘creative unions’, in which diversity is enriched. ‘In any domain’, he wrote, ‘whether it be the cells of a body, the members of a society, or the elements of a spiritual synthesis, union differentiates’. Whether subatomically or globally, elements unite in ‘centre-to-centre unions’. Just as physics describes centres of mass in the universe that are drawn together, capitals of the world will be connected even more than they are. They will touch one another at their creative cores, releasing new energy and much deeper understanding. This powerful centre-to-centre contact offers the promise that we, the citizens of these cities and of this integrated world, may discover what is authentic and vital not only about others but also about ourselves. New York University has embraced this Teilhardian view of the world in reshaping itself over these last two decades in a Global Network University. Founded nearly two hundred years ago in the world’s premier ‘glocal’ city (global and local simultaneously) to be ‘in and of the city’, NYU found it natural to become ‘in and of the world’. Today the university is located in 16 idea capitols on six continents, anchored by full research campuses not only in New York but also in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai. This is not an independent set of ‘branches’; rather, it is a fully integrated circulatory system through which faculty, staff and students flow freely—and, along with them, their ideas. It is in this context that these extraordinary volumes both operate and cooperate, simultaneously touched by this planetisation and shaping it. My NYU colleague, Professor Colette Mazzucelli, both in her work at NYU and as the president of the Global Listening Centre, has practiced a kind of secular ecumenism. At NYU’s New York campus she teaches seminars across schools in conflict resolution, religious radicalisation and ethnic conflict—each a story of division. But from these potentially disheartening stories she draws a contrapuntal lesson of hope—through aggressive listening and genuine dialogue. So, it is in this volume that she, James Felton Keith and C. Ann Hollifield offer us a homage to and an example of collective, nuanced conversation that truly advances knowledge and understanding. This volume, collecting as its content does the thoughts of participants spread throughout our global society, presents genuine centre-to-centre dialogue. And it does in fact release new energy and deeper understanding. It remains for us to emulate this example still more pervasively in all of our conversations. Congratulations to the editors and the authors. Onward and upward together!

Source Publication

Personal Data Collection Risks in a Post-Vaccine World

Source Editors/Authors

Colette Mazzucelli, James Felton Keith, C. Ann Hollifield

Publication Date

2023

Foreword

Find @ NYU

Share

COinS