Changing Images of Man

DOMINANT IMAGES OF HUMANKIND THROUGH HISTORY


Source Period	Approximate Date	Dominant Image	Culture in which Image is at Present Active	Significance For Post-Industrial Era

Middle Paleolithic	250,000- 40,000 B.C.	The Hunter, focus of the male- dominated culture field of "Great Hunt"	Few cultures in its pure form most in its militaristic equivalent	Jeopardize cross-cultured peace; likely necessary for police operations, however

Upper Paleolithic	30,000-15,000 B.C.	Including sense of spiritual affinity between beasts and man, of which toteism is an expression	Various American Indian cultures with traditions intact	Has relevance for a renewed sense of partnership with other life forms on the planet

Neolithic	After 9,000 B.C.	The planter, the child of the Goddess; the giver of life	Hindu and certain other cultures	Has possible relevance for balancing male-emphasis of Western culture

	3500 B.C.	The human civilized through submission to seasonal variations and ruling elites	Most cultures	Has relevance as historical analogy: man systematically explores his inner world

Semite	2350 B.C.	The human as a mere creature fashioned of clay to serve the gods, as a slave; but superior to and having dominion over nature. Notion of "chosen people"	Orthodox Jewish, Christian, Islamic faiths	Stands in its present form as an obstacle to emergence of new ecological understandings

Zoroastrian	1200 B.C.	The human having free will, having to choose between good and evil, mythology of individual salvation	All Western cultures, in a secular form	Presents a basic polarity needing to be dialectically transcended / synthesized

Age of the Polis	500 B.C.	Representing the absolute fulfillment of the Indian image of man as yogi released from the wheel of karma, death and rebirth. Intrinsic divinity of man realizable through own efforts	Hindu/ Buddhist	Could contribute to a new "self realization ethic" for our culture if incorporated into a larger synthesis

		China: Confucius and the paradigm of the "superior man" as politically and socially concerned sage	Oriental cultures	Could contribute to a new "ecological ethic" for our culture if incorporated into a larger synthesis

		Levant: as a slave, submissive to God in the image of a despot	Some forms of Islam, Christianity	Possible to see ecological requirements in this light

		Greece: Aeschylus and image of human as tragic hero,	Most Western cultures to some degree	Could provide a guiding image for personal/ societal Transformation in time of crisis
		Greece: Mystery religions, the person becomes so attached to the material things of this world that he has lost touch with his own true nature, which is not of these things, but of spirit--himself the very being and model of that Spirit of which each is but a particle	All cultures, but never very visible	Could contribute to deemphazing material over consumption and ecological understanding

		Greece: science and objective knowledge as aesthetic rather than utilitarian activity; naturalistic emphasis in science art, and philosophy	None in which dominant	Has relevance to counterbalancing the "technological ethic."

Early Christian	100 A.D.	Two contrary images--(1) following the Semite and Zoroastrian tradition God's servant--obey or be damned;	(1) Traditional Judaeo / Christian/Muslim cultures;	(1) A dominant image that needs to be incorporated into a larger synthesis
		(2) that of the Gnostics, similar to the image of the Greek mystery religions man "saved" by self-knowledge	(2) Most cultures as an underground view	(2) Could contribute to new "self - realization

Industrial Revolution/ Enlightenment	1500 A.D.	"Economic man" --individualistic, materialistic, rationalistic; objective knowledge, utilitarian/economic values coming into dominance	Most modern industrial nations	Likely inappropriate for transition to post industrial era

Modern Social Science	1900 A.D.	Man as "beast" -- instinctual drives predominant, a "creature" of evolution" whose survival depends on competitive adaptation and/ or suppression of base instincts	Most modern industrial nations	An image needing to be incorporated into a larger synthesis

Modern Behavioral Science	1913 A.D.	Man as "mechanism"-- to be understood in ways found successful by nineteenth century physics	Primarily United States	Promoted as providing the most appropriate basis for man's next era, perhaps now itself needing to be incorporated into larger synthesis

Modern Trans-disciplinary Science	1954 A.D.	Man as a "goal-directed,adaptive learning system"	Image has not yet reached "takeoff point"	Provides a possible conceptual basis for integrating most other images of man in an evolutionary frame of reference

Various times and places from circa 1500B.C. to the present		Man as "Spirit"--the "philosophia perennis" view of man and the universe as essentially consciousness in manifest form	Most cultures, in various degrees of purity	Could contribute to needed synthesis of "opposing" images as it sees apparent opposites as differing aspects of the same underlying reality