‘"Change? What do you mean "change"?’

Changes in Our Lives and in the History of Christian Belief

Session 2:  Paradigms in History

Pre-History and Stone Age

• No complex language – but some grunt-like sounds used (larynx not evolved yet)

• Hunter/gatherer, scavenger culture

• Small bands kept together

• Change very slow

100,000 B.C.E. – Stone Age

• Goddesses dominate

• Collectives are more important than individuals

• People live in clans

• The earth is flat

• People can’t fly

• Human sacrifice is common

Bronze and Iron Ages

10,000 B.C.E. Bronze Age

• Cities belong to God; people are caretakers

• Theocracy (God/Gods rule)

• Collective initiation rites at puberty

• Most people live in villages and sacred cities

• Sacred mountain at center of community; pyramids in many cultures

1,500 B.C.E. Iron Age

• The earth is at the center of the universe

• Philosophy of Greece dominates

• God becomes male; related to only in human terms

• Rise of individualism; personal perspective more valued

• Few collective celebrations of life events like puberty

Middle Ages and Renaissance

1100 C.E. – Middle Ages

• Agricultural society

• Cities springing up along agricultural trade routes

• Feudal structure; no class mobility

• War is "good" – basic strategy for success is to win by defeating others

• Occupation is usually within the family

• Extended families

• Copernican theory predominates – the earth is round and not at the center of the universe

• Globe is being explored, colonized

• Newtonian physics –

– Mechanical: theory of gravity, theories about nature of light and laws of motion

– Time is an absolute

• Different occupations within families; new occupations exist • People move to where the work is; extended family falls apart and is replaced by nuclear family

• Rise of capitalism; entrepreneurs valued

• Dominance of individualism yet conformity, homogeneity and assimilation valued

Perspective

• Notice anything about the history we’ve reviewed so far? It's largely from the Western European perspective. This is what most of us were taught in schools.

How History is Created

• Pentimento* – From the Italian "repentance." An underlying image in a painting, as an earlier painting, part of a painting, or original draft, that shows through, usually when the top layer of paint has become transparent with age.

Palimpsest - A manuscript, typically of papyrus or parchment, that has been written on more than once, with the earlier writing incompletely erased and often legible. An object, place, or area that reflects its history. Something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface

• History: From Greek historia, "knowledge discovered by inquiry"

– From "a story represented dramatically" to "the aggregate of past events"

• Some history left out or treated as "separate"

– Because it’s thought of as "less important", not as relevant

– Can also be a form of denial – de-emphasize events because they make us uncomfortable, or literally deny that they occurred (e.g. the Holocaust)

•Heraclitus*

– Change is the only thing you can know for sure; can’t step in same river twice

• Herodotus vs. Thucydides*

– Use conjecture when facts were not available vs. rigid objectivity

• Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle*

– System changed by observer and vice-versa

• Incomplete view of the past makes it hard to anticipate the future and be prepared for it.

*For illumination, in the class we quoted from the novel "Our Lady of the Lost and Found" by Diane Schoemperlen.

What else is in our history?

20,000 – 10,000 B.C.E.*

• Planet is at capacity - what archaeologists describe as the "Pleistocene Overkill." The combined stress of climate changes and efficient hunting by growing human populations led to massive extinctions of large mammals and flightless birds.

• In the Americas around 10,000 years ago, in the span of only 800 years, early Amerindian hunters swept out most of the big game from both continents

*Source: The Human Story, by Robert Gilman

Middle Ages

• Mayan and Aztec civilizations flourish (Americas)

• Buddhism declines (India)

• Buddhism flourishes (Japan, China)

• Ming Dynasty – introspection and xenophobia (China)

• Hereditary Shogunate structure (Japan)

• Rockets developed (China)

16th C. Age of Discovery

• Sengoku ("Warring States") Period (Japan) – constant civil war, isolation from the West

• Manchus overthrow Ming dynasty (China)

• Prevailing Hindu and Muslim systems mingled (India)

• Emporer of China accepts divinity of the Dalai Lama (Tibet/China)

18th Century – Industrial Revolution