Symbols of the Axial Age

The Age of Psychological Transformation

What is new about this age … is that man becomes conscious of Being as a whole, of himself and his limitations. He experiences the terror of the world and his own powerlessness. He asks radical questions. Face to face with the void he strives for liberation and redemption by consciously recognizing his limits he sets himself the highest goals.
Karl Jaspers

The Origin and Goal of History

The sages of the Axial Age had reverence for knowledge that precluded final answers. In The Origin and Goal of History, Jaspers argued there was one single origin and goal of civilization that unites all humanity, but it is still unknown and remains a mystery to be discovered. The goal of the Axial Age was not to find a dogma that explained the world; rather, the goal was to find oneself in relation to the universal human experience because true knowledge was never “secondhand” and occurs by asking the right questions. In fact, the Axial Age ends when the dogmatic followers of the sages imposed rigid belief systems.

The Axial Age sages were more concerned about how you lived rather than what you believed. First and foremost, it was most important that sages live and model a life of humility, morality, ethics, and compassion. Axial Age sages believed their knowledge was, at best, flawed and, at worst, useless and dangerous. Modern history will show that when scientists do not exhibit the Axial Age qualities of the sages, the dark side of shadow emerges, resulting in unimaginable consequences. For example, many scientists in Germany supported the Nazi extermination of Jewish, gay, and the disabled as well as other people they viewed as “eugenic misfits.” Psychologists in recent history supported torture and the waterboarding of prison inmates in Guantanamo Bay in the post-9/11 era.