Chapter 2
History and evolution
During the course of history human beings have always felt the need to have a point of reference from which to derive inspiration for their lives, a model that could, above all, give an answer to the "Hows" and "whys" of their existence. Usually individuals are not aware of these models and of the way they help us to interpret reality. The majority of people today, in spite of the continuous progress of human knowledge, sees the future of the world as being obscure. It is commonly thought that the individual is an independent reality, nature has its own independent order, scientific discoveries are objective, valid and unique, competition among men and nations is a natural and inevitable fact. Obviously this is not so. Past civilizations would not be able to comprehend ideas which our new mental structure is able to express today. (12:1)

The roots of our "modernity" draw their nourishment from past centuries. The Age of Enlightenment and the philosophy of Positivism were important movements for the evolution of thought. Another particularly important impulse was given by the science of Newton and quantum physics. (12:2)

Not everybody, though, understands the influences of such impulses on the mechanistic conception of everyday life. Historians and anthropologists have tried for a long time to explain the reasons why, in the course of history, a specific idea of the world gains acceptance at a specific time and in a specific place. According to the ancient Greeks, history was a process of continuous degradation that included five ages: Gold, Silver, Bronze, Copper and Iron. Each of them became more degraded and unrefined than the previous one. The Golden Age represented the apex: a period of abundance and of divine origin; the Iron Age, on the contrary, lay at the bottom. (12:3)

Therefore history was a process through which the original order of things was perfectly maintained only in the Golden Age. In the course of succeeding ages, decadence set in and when, in the end, the universe neared final chaos, the divinity intervened to restore the initial conditions of perfection and then the whole process began again. (12:4)

History, therefore, according to the ancient Greeks, was a continuous removal from the original state of perfection. The road to pursue was to reduce to the maximum this process of degradation, thereby passing on to succeeding generations a world as secured as possible against the risk of change. (12:5)

For Christians the concept of history is still one according to which life in this world is just a passage, a preparation for the next life. In Christian theology history is defined by a beginning, a development and an end. Respectively: creation, redemption, Final Judgement. Life as a whole is seen as a struggle between the forces of good and evil. (12:6)

Our nineteenth century has been the scene of movements that have driven history along different paths and destinies. Many of them were apparently successful, but today they are almost dying. Others were born in silence, but, like embers under ashes, they have maintained their energies unaltered. They are beginning to manifest these energies today. (12:7)

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