Leonard Swidler - The Age of Global Dialogue

Leonard Swidler - The Age of Global Dialogue

1. The Universe is a Cosmic Dance of Dialogue 
Dialogue – the mutually beneficial interaction of differing components – is at the very heart of the Universe, of which we humans are the highest expression: From the basic interaction of Matter and Energy (in Einsteins unforgettable formula: E=mc2 – Energy equals mass times the square of the speed of light), to the creative interaction of Protons and Electrons in every atom, to the vital symbiosis of Body and Spirit in every human, through the creative dialogue between Woman and Man, to the dynamic relationship between Individual and Society. Thus, the very essence of our humanity is dialogical, and a fulfilled human life is the highest expression of the Cosmic Dance of Dialogue.

In the early millennia of the history of humanity as we spread outward from our starting point in central Africa, the forces of Divergence were dominant. However, because we live on a globe, in our frenetic divergence we eventually began to encounter each other more and more frequently. Now the forces of stunning Convergence are becoming increasingly dominant. 

In the past, during the Age of Divergence, we could live in isolation from each other; we could ignore each other. Now, in the Age of Convergence, we are forced to live in One World. We increasingly live in a Global Village. We cannot ignore the Other, the Different. Too often in the past we have tried to make over the Other into a likeness of ourselves, often by violence. But this is the very opposite of dialogue. This egocentric arrogance is in fundamental opposition to the Cosmic Dance of Dialogue. It is not creative; it is destructive. 

Hence, we humans today have a stark choice: Dialogue, or Death! 

2. Dialogues of the Head, Hands, and the Heart 
For us humans there are three main dimensions to dialogue – the mutually beneficial interaction among those who are different – corresponding to the structure of our humanness: Dialogue of the Head, Dialogue of the Hands, Dialogue of Heart. 

a) The Cognitive or Intellectual: Seeking the Truth 
In the Dialogue of the Head we mentally reach out to the Other to learn from those who think differently from us. We try to understand how they see the world and why they act as they do. This Dialogue of the Head is vital, for how we see and understand the world and life determines how we act toward ourselves, toward other persons, and toward the world around us. 

b) The Illative or Ethical: Seeking the Good 
In the Dialogue of the Hands we join together with Others to work to make the world a better place in which we all must live together. Since we can no longer live separately in this One World, we must work jointly to make it not just a house, but a home for all of us to live in. 

c) The Affective or Aesthetic: Seeking the Beautiful 
In the Dialogue of the Heart we share in the expressions of the emotions of those different from us. Because we humans are body and spirit, or rather, body-spirit, we give bodily-spiritual expression in all the Arts to our multifarious responses to our encounters with life: Joy, sorrow, gratitude, anger... and most of all, love. All the world delights in beauty, wherein we find the familiar that avoids sameness, and wherein we find diversity that avoids distastefulness. 

d) (W)Holiness: Seeking the One 
We humans cannot long live a divided life. If we are to even survive, let alone flourish, we must “get it all together.” We must live a “whole” life. Indeed, this is what the religions of the Western tradition mean when they say that we humans should be “holy.” Literally, to be holy means to be whole. Hence, in our humanDance of Dialogue we must “get it all together,” we must be (W)Holy. We must dance together the Dialogue of the Head, the Dialogue of the Hands, and the Dialogue of the Heart. 

3. A Radically New Age 
Those thinkers who earlier in the twentieth century with a great show of scholarship and historical-sociological analysis predicted the impending demise of Western Civilization were clearly mistaken. After World War I, in 1922, Oswald Spengler wrote his widely acclaimed book, “The Decline of the West”. After the beginning of World War II Pitirim A. Sorokin published in 1941, his likewise popular book, “The Crisis of Our Age”. Given the massive, world-wide scale of the unprecedented destruction and horror of the world’s first global war, 1914-18, and the even vastly greater of the second global conflict, 1939-45, the pessimistic predictions of these scholars and the great following they found are not ununderstandable. 

In fact, however, those vast world conflagrations were manifestations of the dark side of the unique breakthrough in the history of humankind in the modern development of Christendom-become-Western Civilization, now becoming Global Civilization. Never before had there been world wars; likewise, never before had there been world political organizations (League of Nations, United Nations). Never before did humanity possess the real possibility of destroying all human life – whether through nuclear or ecological catastrophe. These unique negative realities/potentialities were possible, however, only because of the correspondingly unique accomplishments of Christendom-Western-Global Civilization – the like of which the world has never before seen. On the negative side, from now on, it will always be true that humankind could self-destruct. Still, there are solid empirical grounds for reasonable hope that the inherent, infinity-directed life force of humankind will nevertheless prevail over the parallel death force. 

The prophets of doom were correct, however, in their understanding that humanity is entering into a radically new age. Earlier in the twentieth century the nay-sayers usually spoke of the doom of only Western Civilization (e.g., Spengler, Sorokin), but after the advent of nuclear power and the Cold War, the new generation of pessimists – as said, not without warrant: corruptio optimae pessima (The corruption of the best becomes the worse) – warned of global disaster. This emerging awareness of global disaster is a clear, albeit negative, sign that something profoundly, radically new is entering onto the stage of human history. 

In the mid-nineties professor Samuel Huntington of Harvard University named a central contemporary reality when he argued that with the fading of the Cold War, in its place is rising of a Clash of Civilizations; fundamentalisms of all sorts, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, nationalist, ethnic, tribal, are tearing at the fabric of the New World Order even as it is being woven. At least we thought we understood the other side in the Cold War, whether we admired, respected, tolerated or despised it. But in the nineties we entered into a state of cacophonous confusion and consequently were floun-dering, or even foundering: e.g., Rwanda, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, the Middle East–and then the most shocking blow of all for us Americans: September 11, and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But these outbreaks of violence are only the most visible flashpoints of the contemporary malaise. The problems run much deeper. They are cultural, ethical, religious, spiritual. 

A world with clashing, or potentially clashing, cultures, religious, ethnic groups – civilizations – is the world of the beginning of the Third Millennium. However, that is not all it is. In the midst of our current War on Terrorism, the very antithesis of the Clash of Civilizations is likewise a reality, and an increasing one. Humanity is also in the midst of a deep evolutionary shift towards a higher, communal, and dialogical way of life. This evolution of religions and cultures points towards a process essential to healing the deep problems that inhere in all aspects of our human cultures and even threaten our very survival, namely: the awakening of human beings to the power of dialogue. 

Moreover, there have likewise recently been a number of scholarly analyses pointing to the emergence of a radically new age in human history. I will deal in some detail with two of them below. The first is the concept of the Paradigm-Shift, particularly as expounded by Hans Küng. The second is the notion of the Second Axial Period, as articulated by Ewert Cousins. Then, including these two, but setting them in a still larger context, I shall lay out my own analysis, which I see as the movement of humankind out of a multi-millennia long Age of Monologue into the newly inbreaking Age of Dialogue, indeed, an inbreaking Age of Global Dialogue. 

4. Dialogue: the Way Forward 
The future, I submit then, offers two alternatives: death or dialogue (e.g., the Samuel Huntington or the Leonard Swidler view). This statement is not over-dramatization. In the past it was possible, indeed, unavoidable, for most human beings to live out their lives in isolation from the vast majority of their fellows, without even having a faint awareness of, let alone interest in, their very existence. All of us for the most part talked to our own cultural selves. We talked only with those who thought as we did – or should! Put briefly, until the edge of the present era, we humans lived in the Age of Monologue. That age is now passing. 

Today nuclear, ecological, or terrorist devastation is just a little further down the path of Monologue. It is only by struggling out of the self-centered monologic mindset into dialogue with the Other as s/he really is, and not as we have projected her/him in our monologues, that we can avoid such cataclysmic disasters. In brief: We must move from the Age of Monologue to the Age of Dialogue. 

What we understand to be the explanation of the ultimate meaning of life, and how to live accordingly, is what we call our religion – or if that explanation is not based on a notion of the transcendent, we can call it an ideology. Since our religion or ideology is so comprehensive, so all-inclusive, it is the most fundamental area in which The Other is likely to be different from us – and hence possibly seen as the most threatening. Again, this is not over-dramatization. The recent and current catalogue of conflicts which have religion/ideology as a constituent element is staggering, including such obvious neuralgic flashpoints as Northern Ireland, Lebanon, Israel, Sri Lanka, Pakistan/India, Tibet, the Sudan, Armenia/Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Iraq. 

Hence, if humankind is to move from the Age of Monologue into the Age of Dialogue, the religions and ideologies must enter into this movement full force. They have in fact begun to make serious progress along this path, though the journey stretches far ahead, indeed. 

5. Dialogue: A Whole New Way of Thinking 
Dialogue, especially dialogue in the religious and ideological area, is not simply a series of conversations. It isa whole new way of thinking, a way of seeing and reflecting on the world and its meaning. I am convinced that it is necessary to try to think beyond the absolutes that I as a Christian – and others in their own ways – have increasingly found de-absolutized in our modern thought world. Hence, I would like to reflect with you on the ways all of us humans need to think about the world and its meaning now that more and more of us, both individually and even at times institutionally, are gaining enough maturity to notice that there are entire other ways of integrating an understanding of the world than the way we and our forebears grew up in. 

Beyond the absolute way of understanding the world and its meaning for us, beyond the absolute way of thinking, we have begun to find a much richer, truer, way of understanding the world – the dialogical way of thinking. It is this dialogical way of thinking particularly in the area of religion-ideology that I reflect on here.

6. Dialogue: Its Meaning 
As noted, dialogue is at the very heart of the universe. At the level of humans, dialogue is conversation between two or more persons with differing views, the primary purpose of which is for each participant to learn from the other so that s/he can change and grow – of course, in addition both partners will also want to share their understanding with their partners. We enter into dialogue primarily so that we can learn, change, and grow, not to force change on the other. 

In the past, when we encountered those who differed from us in the religious and ideological sphere, we did so usually either to defeat them as opponents, or to learn about them so as to deal with them more effectively. In other words, we usually faced those who differed with us in a confrontation – sometimes more openly polemically, sometimes more subtly so, but usually with the ultimate goal of overcoming the other because we were convinced that we alone had the truth. 

But that is not what dialogue is. Dialogue is not debate. In dialogue each partner must listen to the other as openly and sympathet¬ically as possible in an attempt to understand the other’s position as precisely and, as it were, as much from within, as possible. Such an attitude automatically assumes that at any point we might find the part¬ner’s position so persuasive that, if we were to act with integrity, we ourselves would have to change. 

Until quite recently in almost all religious traditions, and certainly very definitely within Christianity, the idea of seeking reli¬gious or ideological wisdom, insight or truth through dialogue, other than in a very initial and rudimentary fashion, occurred to very few people, and certainly had no influence in the major religious or ideolo¬gical communities. The further idea of pursuing religious or ideological truth through dialogue with other religions and ideologies was even less thinkable. Today the situation is dramatically reversed. 

Why this dramatic change? Why should we pursue the truth in the area of religion and ideology by way of dialogue? There are the many external factors that have appeared in the past century and a half which have contributed constitutively to the creation of what we today call the global village. All these externals have made it increasingly impossible for Westerners, and then gradually everyone, to live in isolation. But underlying and even preceding the external forces opening the way to dialogue is a shift in consciousness that has been taking place for the past two centuries. We call this shift in consciousness a Paradigm-Shift in how we perceive the world. 

7. A Major Paradigm-Shift 
Thomas Kuhn revolutionized our understanding of the development of scientific thinking with his notion of paradigm shifts. He painstakingly showed that fundamental paradigms or exemplary models are the large thought frames within which we place and interpret all observed data and that scientific advancement inevitably brings about eventual paradigm shifts – from geocentrism to heliocentrism, for example, or from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics–which are always vigorously resisted at first, as was the thought of Galileo, but finally prevail. This insight, however, is valid not only for the development of thought in the natural sciences, but also applicable to all major disciplines of human thought, including religious thought – religion being understood as an explanation of the ultimate meaning of life, and how to live accordingly. 

A major paradigm shift in systematic religious reflection, i.e., in theology, then, means a major change in the very idea of what it is to do theology. Let me give an example from the Christian tradition: The major Christian theological revolution that occurred at the first ecumenical council (Nicaea, A.D. 325) was not so much the resolution of the battle over whether the Son and Father were of the same substance, homoousion, important as that was, but rather that, by defining homoousion, it tacitly admitted that here were issues in theology which could not be solved simply on the basis of recourse to the language of the Scriptures. In the next several centuries a flood of new answers poured forth to questions being posed in categories of thought unused by Jesus and his first, Jewish, followers – namely, in Greek abstract philosophical categories of thought. 

As the paradigm within which the data of what Jesus thought, taught, and wrought, and how his Jewish followers responded, was perceived and understood shifted from the Semitic, concrete, biblical thought world to a Hellenistic, largely abstract philosophical one, the questions asked, and the terms in which they were asked, shifted accordingly, and of course so did the answers. As always, when a new major paradigm shift occurs, old answers are no longer helpful, for they respond to questions no longer posed, in thought categories no longer used, within a conceptual framework which no longer prevails. It is not that the old answers are now declared wrong; it is simply that they no longer apply. Aristotle’s answers in physics and chemistry in terms of the four elements of air, fire, water, and earth, for example, simply do not speak to the questions posed by modern chemists and physicists. Tenth century Christian theologians answering that Mary remained a virgin while giving birth to Jesus (i.e., her hymen was not broken) were answering a question that no modern critical thinking Christian theologian would pose, for it presupposed a thought world which placed a high value on physically unbroken hymens. That thought world is gone. Hence, the old answer is impertinent. 

8. The Modern Major Paradigm-shift 
Since the 18th-century Enlightenment, Christendom – then become Western Civilization, and now morphing into Global Civilization – has been undergoing a major paradigm shift, especially in how we humans understand our process of understanding and what meaning and status of truth we attribute to our statements about reality – in other words, our epistemology. This new epistemological paradigm is increasingly determining how we perceive, conceive, think about, and subsequently decide, and act on things. 

Let me turn now to the post-Enlightenment epistemological Paradigm-Shift. Whereas our Western notion of truth was largely absolute, static, and monologic or exclusive up to the past century, it has since become deabsolutized, dynamic, and dialogic – in a word, it has become relational. Since the middle of the nineteenth century Eastern thought has become increasingly better known in the West, and proportionately influential. This knowledge and influence appears to be increasing geometrically in recent decades. It is even seen in the hardest of our so called hard sciences, nuclear physics, as evidenced by the popular book of the theoretical physicist Fritjof Capra, “The Tao of Physics” (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2nd ed., 1983). This new view of truth came about in at least six different, but closely related, ways. In brief they are: 

1. Historicism: Truth is deabsolutized by the perception that reality is always described in terms of the circumstances of the time in which it is expressed. 

2. Intentionality: Seeking the truth with the intention of acting accordingly deabsolutizes the statement. 

3. Sociology of knowledge: Truth is deabsolutized in terms of geography, culture, and social standing. 

4. Limits of language: Truth as the meaning of something and especially as talk about the transcendent is deabsolutized by the nature of human language. 

5. Hermeneutics: All truth, all knowledge, is seen as interpreted truth, knowledge, and hence is deabsolutized by the observer who is always also interpreter. 

6. Dialogue: The knower engages reality in a dialogue in a language the knower provides, thereby deabsolutizing all statements about reality. 

Before the nineteenth century in Europe truth, that is, a statement about reality, was conceived in quite an absolute, static, exclusivistic either or manner. If something was true at one time, it was always true; not only empirical facts but also the meaning of things or the oughtness that was said to flow from them were thought of in this way. For example, if it was true for the Pauline writer to say in the first century that women should keep silence in the church, then it was always true that women should keep silence in the church; or if it was true for Pope Boniface VIII to state in 1302, we declare, state, and define that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of all human beings that they submit to the Roman Pontiff, then it was always true that they need do so. At bottom, the notion of truth was based exclusively on the Aristotelian principle of contradiction: a thing could not be true and not true in the same way at the same time. Truth was defined by way of exclusion; A was A because it could be shown not to be not A. Truth was thus understood to be absolute, static, exclusivistically either or. This is a classicist or absolutist view of truth. 

1. Historicism: In the 19th century many scholars came to perceive all state¬ments about the truth of the meaning of something as partially the products of their historical circumstances. Those concrete circumstances helped determine the fact that the statement under study was even called forth, that it was couched in particular intellectual categories (for example, in abstract Platonic or concrete legal language), in particular literary forms (for example, mythic or metaphysical language), and in par¬ticular psychological settings (such as a polemic response to a specific attack). These scholars argued that only if the truth statements were placed in their historical situation, in their historical Sitz im Leben, could they be properly understood. The understanding of the text could be found only in context. To express that same original meaning in a later Sitz im Leben one would require a proportionately different statement. Thus, all statements about the meaning of things were now seen to be deabsolutized in terms of time. 

This is a historical view of truth. Clearly at its heart is a notion of relationality: Any statement about the truth of the meaning of something has to be understood in relation¬ship to its historical context. 

2. Intentionality: Later thinkers like Max Scheler added a corollary to this historicizing of knowledge; it concerned not the past but the future. Such scholars also saw truth as having an element of intentionality at its base, as being oriented ultimately toward action, praxis. They argued that we perceive certain things as questions to be answered and set goals to pursue specific knowledge because we wish to do something about those matters; we intend to live according to the truth and meaning that we hope to discern in the answers to the questions we pose, in the knowledge we decide to seek. The truth of the meaning of things was thus seen as deabsolutized by the action oriented inten¬tionality of the thinker speaker. 

This is an intentional or praxis view of truth, and it too is basically relational: A statement has to be understood in relationship to the action-oriented intention of the speaker. 

3. The sociology of knowledge: Just as statements of truth about the meaning of things were seen by some thinkers to be historically deabsolutized in time, so too, starting in this century with scholars like Karl Mannheim, such statements began to be seen as deabsolutized by such things as the culture, class and gender of the thinker speaker, regardless of time. All reality was said to be perceived from the perspective of the perceiver’s own world view. Any statement of the truth of the meaning of something was seen to be perspectival, standpoint bound, standortgebunden, as Karl Mannheim put it, and thus deabsolutized. 

This is a perspectival view of truth and is likewise relational: All statements are fundamentally related to the standpoint of the speaker. 

4. The limitations of language: Following Ludwig Wittgenstein and others, many thinkers have come to see that any statement about the truth of things can be at most only a partial description of the reality it is trying to describe. Although reality can be seen from an almost limitless number of perspectives, human language can express things from only one, or perhaps a very few, perspectives at once. If this is now seen to be true of what we call scientific truths, it is much more true of statements about the truth of the meaning of things. The very fact of dealing with the truth of the meaning of something indicates that the knower is essentially involved and hence reflects the perspectival character of all such statements. A statement may be true, of course – it may accurately describe the extramental reality it refers to – but it will always be cast in particular categories, language, con¬cerns, etc., of a particular standpoint, and in that sense will be limited, deabsolutized. 

This also is a perspectival view of truth, and therefore also relational. This limited and limiting, as well as liberating, quality of language is especially clear in talk of the transcendent. The transcendent is by definition that which goes beyond our experience. Any statements about the transcendent must thus be deabsolutized and limited far beyond the perspectival character seen in ordinary statements. 

5. Hermeneutics: Hans Georg Gadamer and Paul Riceour recently led the way in developing the science of hermeneutics, which, by arguing that all knowledge of a text is at the same time an interpretation of the text, further deabsolutizes claims about the true meaning of the text. But this basic insight goes beyond knowledge of texts and applies to all knowledge. 

This is an interpretive view of truth. It is clear that relationality pervades this hermeneutical, interpretative, view of truth. (It is interesting to note that one dimension of this interpretive understanding of truth can already be found in Aquinas, who states that things known are in the knower according to the mode of the knower.) 

6. Dialogue: A further development of this basic insight is that I learn not by being merely passively open or receptive to, but by being in dialogue with, extramental reality. I not only hear or receive reality, but I also – and, I think, first of all – speak to reality. I ask it questions, I stimulate it to speak back to me, to answer my questions. In the pro¬cess I give reality the specific categories and language in which to respond to me. Theanswers that I receive back from reality will always be in the language, the thought categories, of the questions I put to it. It can speak to me, can really communicate with my mind, only in a language and categories that I understand. When the speaking, the responding, grows less and less understandable to me, if the answers I receive are sometimes confused and unsatisfying, then I probably need to learn to speak a more appropriate language when I put questions to reality. If, for example, I ask the question, How far is yellow? of course I will receive a non sense answer. Or if I ask questions about living things in mechanical categories, I will receive confusing and unsatisfying answers. 

This is a dialogic view of truth, whose very name reflects its relationality. 

In sum, our understanding of truth and reality has been under¬going a radical shift. This new paradigm which is being born understands all statements about reality, especially about the meaning of things, to be historical, intentional, perspectival, partial, interpretive and dialogic. What is common to all these qualities is the notion of relationality, that is, that all expressions or understandings of reality are in some fundamental way related to the speaker or knower. 

With the new and irreversible understanding of the meaning of truth resulting from all the above-outlined epistemological advances, culminating in the insight of a dialogic view of truth, the modern critical thinker has undergone a radical Copernican turn. Recall that just as the vigorously resisted shift in astronomy from geocentrism to heliocentrism revolutionized that science, the paradigm or model shift in the understanding of truth statements has revolutionized all the humanities, including theology ideology. The macro paradigm or macro model with which critical thinkers operate today (or the horizon within which they operate, to use Bernard Lonergan’s term) is, as noted, characterized by historical, social, linguistic, hermeneutical, praxis and dialogic – relational – consciousness. This paradigm or model shift is far advanced among thinkers and doers; but as in the case of Copernicus, and even more dramatically of Galileo, there of course are still many resisters in positions of great institutional power. 

At the same time, with the deabsolutized view of the truth of the meaning of things we come face to face with the specter of relativism, the opposite pole of absolutism. Unlike relationality, a neutral term which merely denotes the quality of being in relationship, relativism, like so many isms, is a basically negative term. If it can no longer be claimed that any statement of the truth of the meaning of things is absolute, totally objective, because the claim does not square with our experience of reality, it is equally impossible to claim that every statement of the truth of the meaning of things is completely relative, totally subjective, for that also does not square with our experience of reality, and of course it would logically lead to an atomizing isolation which would stop all discourse, all statements to others. 

Our perception, and hence description, of reality is like our view of an object in the center of a circle of viewers. My view and description of the object, or reality, may well be true, but it will not include what someone on the other side of the circle perceives and describes, which also may well be true. So, neither of our perceptions and descriptions of reality can be total, complete – absolute in that sense – or objective in the sense of not in any way being dependent on a subject or viewer. At the same time, however, it is also obvious that there is an objective, doubtless true aspect to each perception and description, even though each is relational to the perceiver-subject. 

But if we can no longer hold to an absolutist view of the truth of the meaning of things, we must take certain steps so as not to be logically forced into the silence of total relativism. First, besides striving to be as accurate and fair as possible in gathering and assessing information and submitting it to the critiques of our peers and other thinkers and scholars, we need also to dredge out, state clearly, and analyze our own presuppositions – a constant, ongoing task. Even in this of course we will be operating from a particular standpoint. 

Therefore, we need, secondly, to complement our constantly critiqued statements with statements from different standpoints. That is, we need to engage in dialogue with those who have differing cultural, philosophical, social, religious viewpoints so as to strive toward an ever fuller perception of the truth of the meaning of things. If we do not engage in such dialogue we will not only be trapped within the perspective of our own standpoint, but we will now also be aware of our lack. We will no longer with integrity be able to remain deliberately turned in on ourselves. Our search for the truth of the meaning of things makes it a necessity for us as human beings to engage in dialogue. Knowingly to refuse dialogue today would be an act of fundamental human irresponsibility – in Judeo Christian-Muslim terms, a sin. 

9. The Second Axial Period 
It was the German philosopher Karl Jaspers who over a half century ago pointed out the transformative significance for humankind in his book “The Origin and Goal of History” of the millennium before the Common Era. He called this period from 800-200 B.C.E. the Axial Period because it gave birth to everything which, since then, man has been able to be. It is here in this period that we meet with the most deepcut dividing line in history. Man, as we know him today, came into being. For short, we may style this the Axial Period. Although the leaders who effected this change were philosophers and religious teachers, the change was so radical that it affected all aspects of culture, for it transformed consciousness itself. It was within the horizons of this form of consciousness that the great civilizations of Asia, the Middle East, and Europe developed. Although within these horizons many developments occurred through the subsequent centuries, the horizons themselves did not change. It was this form of consciousness which spread to other regions through migration and explorations, thus becoming the dominant, though not exclusive, form of consciousness in the world. To this day, whether we have been born and raised in the culture of China, India, Europe, or the Americas, we bear the structure of consciousness that was shaped in this Axial Period. 

What is this structure of consciousness and how does it differ from pre-Axial consciousness? Prior to the Axial Period the dominant form of consciousness was cosmic, collective, tribal, mythic, and ritualistic. This is the characteristic form of consciousness of primal peoples. It is true that between these traditional cultures and the Axial Period there emerged great empires in Egypt, China, and Mesopotamia, but they did not yet produce the full consciousness of the Axial Period. 

The consciousness of the tribal cultures was intimately related to the cosmos and the fertility cycles of nature. Thus there was established a rich and creative harmony between primal peoples and the world of nature, a harmony which was explored, expressed, and celebrated in myth and ritual. As they felt themselves part of nature, so they experienced themselves as part of the tribe. It was precisely the web of interrelationships within the tribe that sustained them psychologically, energizing all aspects of their lives. To be separated from the tribe threatened them with death, both physical and psychological. However, their relation to the collectivity often did not extend beyond their own tribe, for they often looked upon other tribes as hostile. Yet within their tribe they felt organically related to their group as a whole, to the life cycles of birth and death and to nature and the cosmos. 

The Axial Period ushered in a radically new form of consciousness. Whereas Primal consciousness was tribal, Axial was individual. Know thyself became the watchword of Greece; the Upanishads identified the atman, the transcendent center of the self. Buddha charted the way of individual enlightenment; the Jewish prophets awakened individual moral responsibility. This sense of individual identity, as distinct from the tribe and nature, is the most characteristic mark of Axial consciousness. From this flow other characteristics: consciousness which is self-reflective, analytic, can be applied to nature in the form of scientific theories, to society in the form of social critique, to knowledge in the form of philosophy, to religion in the form of mapping an individual spiritual journey. This self-reflective, analytic, critical consciousness stood in sharp contrast to primal mythic and ritualistic consciousness. When self-reflective logos emerged in the Axial Period, it tended to oppose the traditional mythos. Of course, mythic and ritualistic forms of consciousness survive in the post-Axial Period even to this day, but they are often submerged, surfacing chiefly in dreams, literature, and art. 

Following the lead of Ewert Cousins, if we shift our gaze from the first millennium B.C.E. to the eve of the twenty-first century, we can discern another transformation of consciousness, which is so profound and far-reaching that he called it the Second Axial Period. Like the first it is happening simultaneously around the earth, and like the first it will shape the horizon of consciousness for future centuries. Not surprisingly, too, it will have great significance for world religions, which were constituted in the First Axial Period. However, the new form of consciousness is different from that of the First Axial Period. Then it was individual consciousness, now it is global consciousness. 

10. The Age of Global Dialogue 
Ewert Cousins has basically affirmed everything Hans Küng described as the newly emerging contemporary paradigm-shift, but he saw the present shift as much more profound than simply another in a series of major paradigm-shifts of human history. He saw the emerging transformation as a shift of the magnitude of the First Axial Period which will similarly reshape human consciousness. I too want to basically affirm what Küng saw as the emerging contemporary Major Paradigm-Shift, as well as with Cousins that this shift is so profound as to match in magnitude the transformation of human consciousness of the Axial Period, so that it should be referred to as a Second Axial Period. 

More than that, however, I am persuaded that what humankind is entering into now is not just the latest in a long series of major paradigm-shifts, as Hans Küng analyzed. I am also persuaded that it is even more than the massive move into the consciousness transforming Second Axial Period, as Ewert Cousins demonstrated. Beyond these two radical shifts, though including both of them, human-kind is emerging out of the from-the beginning-till-now millennia-long Age of Monologue into the newly dawning Age of Dialogue. 

The turn toward dialogue is, in my judgment, the most fundamental, most radical, and utterly trans-formative of the key elements of the newly emerging Major Paradigm-shift and Second Axial Period. Something remarkable happens when we experience the depth of personal and communal dialogical awakening. There is a profound shift in how we perceive our selves, lives, priorities, relationships, world. The dialogical awakening removes obstructions that tend to cloud our global vision as it releases passionate moral energy, intensified social responsibility, and a deepened spirituality. 

However, this shift from monologue to dialogue constitutes such a radical reversal in human consciousness, is so utterly new in the history of humankind from the beginning, that it must be designated as literallyrevolutionary, that is, it turns everything around. Up until almost the present just about all were convinced that we alone had the absolute truth. Because all were certain that we had the truth – otherwise we wouldn’t have held that position – therefore others who thought differently necessarily held falsehood. But with the growing understanding that all perceptions of and statements about reality were – even if true – necessarily limited, the permission, and even the necessity, for dialogue with those who thought differently from us became increasingly apparent. 

Thus dialogue – which is a conversation with those who think differently, the primary purpose of which is for me to learn from the other – is a whole new way of thinking in human history. 

11. Conclusion 
To sum up: Since the latter part of the twentieth century humankind has been undergoing a Macro-Paradigm-Shift (Hans Küng). More than that, humankind has been moving into a transformative shift in consciousness of the magnitude of the Axial Period (800-200 B.C.E.) so that we must speak of the emerging of the Second Axial Period (Ewert Cousins). Even more profound, however, now at the beginning of the Third Millennium humankind is slipping out of the shadowy Age of Monologue, where it has been since its beginning, into the dawn of the Age of Global Dialogue (Leonard Swidler). Into this new Age of Global Dialogue Küng’s Macro-Paradigm-Shift and Cousins’ Second Axial Period are sublated, that is, taken up and transformed. 

Moreover, as Küng and Cousins have detailed, humankind’s consciousness is becoming increasingly global. Hence, our dialogue partners necessarily must also be increasingly global. In this new Age of Global Dialogue, dialogue on a global basis is now not only a possibility, it is a necessity. As I stated in the title of a recent book of mine, humankind is faced with ultimately with two choices: Dialogue or Death! By choosing the former, we are in step with the Cosmic Dance of Dialogue.