Today I completed a subsection of my longer paper, which subsection might be read as its own independent 5-page essay. It’s subsection D., starts on p. 16, titled “Current Civilization - One or Many?”.
My intended readership for this piece is the activist community, not at all in favor of the past or current trajectory of Western Civilization, and mostly interested in doing something effective to change course. The essay is very much not theory for its own sake. It’s theory to get a bird’s eye of the territory, so we can all climb back down to ground level and get busy doing whatever it is we resolve to do.
With respect to Second Renaissance, this subsection was written specifically to offer a rigorous framework for considering what, exactly, might be “reborn” through a Second Renaissance? The original European Renaissance was based, among other things, on classical and Biblical philology. It’s doubtful such grounding in strictly Western traditional sources is what Second Renaissance intends. But what does Second Renaissance aim to get back to? My framework seeds a few ideas, but really it’s a much larger question than just one author or one short paper could ever hope to resolve.
Thank you @RobertBunge for your incisive contribution “Current Civilization – One or Many?” provides exactly the kind of high-level orientation needed amid today’s volatility. It’s refreshing to see such a seamless fusion of conceptual depth and activist utility. What resonates most is your framing of civilization not just as system, but as psyche the imaginal architectures that define what societies believe is possible. Your use of Kultur vs. Zivilization moves this from abstract theory to strategic discernment: are we repairing infrastructure, or reanimating meaning? And your provocation around the Second Renaissance is pitch-perfect. Rather than recycling the Greco-Roman archive, you point us toward deeper, more plural and perennial sources… an inquiry not of return, but of re-rooting.
I’d like to suggest that the genealogy of “civilizational imagination” extends much further back and outward than the classical Western canon often admits. If we’re genuinely trying to reconnect with cultural seeds worth replanting, we might need to look at:
Mesopotamian cosmology and law (Sumer, Akkad, Babylon) where cosmic order and justice were deeply tied to governance and agriculture; arguably the first meta-narrative linking ethics to systems.
Ancient Egyptian models of balance, harmony, and resurrection which shaped Hellenistic mystery traditions and influenced early Platonic thought through Mediterranean syncretism.
Persian Zoroastrianism with its dualism of truth vs. lie and emphasis on ethical choice, which not only prefigured elements of Jewish apocalyptic literature but filtered into Greek philosophical discourse during the Achaemenid period.
Arabic and Islamic Golden Age thinkers (Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes, and others) who preserved, critiqued, and amplified Greek philosophy while deeply embedding it in cosmology, metaphysics, and ethics. Their translations and commentaries shaped not just medieval Europe but seeded the very foundations of Renaissance rationalism.
In other words, the so-called “first” Renaissance was not purely a rebirth of classical Greek knowledge. It was a re-synthesis of Greek, Roman, Persian, Arabic, Jewish, and Christian currents emerging from centuries of intercultural contact. Why wouldn’t the Second Renaissance follow a similar pattern?
If we accept that premise, then perhaps this moment invites a radical pluralism not the “melting-pot” kind, but something closer to weaving distinct but resonant traditions together through dialogue, practice, and shared existential urgency. A Renaissance, not of the West, but of the human spirit in planetary context. So in that sense, your question What exactly is being reborn? might not be answerable through return, but only through re-integration. A new kind of synthesis, perhaps led not by a single civilization, but by boundary-crossers, translators, and cultural pollinators working at the interstices.
Thanks again for the provocation. Eager to see what patterns might emerge as this shared inquiry unfolds
Thank you so much @Naeema! It’s no exaggeration to say that 5 page essay has been decades in the making. If you alone were to be its only reader, somehow, that would be more than enough!
I would delighted to see a greater conversation spring up around your insights about Egypt, Mesopotamia, Zoroaster, and more. But for that to happen, best that I step aside for awhile …
Thank you @RobertBunge
That means a great deal coming from you, not only because of the clarity and care in your writing, but because it’s so evident how much lived time, reading, and reflection the work you shared carries. It’s rare to encounter theory that feels this grounded in the long arc of lived inquiry, and I want to acknowledge that fully.
That said, I’d genuinely welcome your continued voice in the conversation. These deeper historical threads don’t feel adjacent to your framework; they feel entangled with it, like older root systems still feeding the visible canopy. I sense that the interplay between your systemic vantage point and these more ancient, imaginal lineages could surface something deeply generative… something neither of us could land on alone. So while I appreciate the motivation of stepping aside, I wonder if stepping alongside might be even more fruitful here. There’s something powerful about holding these different inheritances in creative tension, especially as we try to imagine what a Second Renaissance might truly mean.
Would love to hear how you see these strands relating to your wider arc.
Oh, I’m very much right here! It’s just that I have two book projects in the works (this one, evidently - and a far more boring textbook under contract), and posting on 2R is my favorite form of procrastination! So back to the salt mines …
Well I’m honored to be part of your “productive procrastination” then
And now you’ve thoroughly piqued my interest about this book project of yours, if what we’ve seen so far is just a subsection, I can only imagine how the larger arc unfolds. I’d loooooove to know more, what’s the broader structure you’re working within? Are you tracing a continuous civilizational narrative, or mapping patterns across ruptures and reinventions? Also curious how the Second Renaissance framing threads through the full manuscript Is it an organizing concept, or more like a horizon you’re orienting toward?
No pressure to respond right away I know the salt mines demand their due but please consider this an open door whenever you feel like saying more…
I think many of us here would be eager to read along, even in fragments
It’s just this Google doc I keep reposting. (See the ToC at the top for the longer arc).
I keep bringing up 2R from time to time in various sections, because the question “what is 2R, really?” is a leitmotif I just can’t resist! So much narrative power!
Now that I’m past the mad passionate “right-brained gush” phase of the project and on to the more dispassionate “turning it into something readable” phase, standing back it looks like an extended meditation on “balance”. Whether my particular approach to “balance” is more Lao Tzu, Aristotle, or George Lucas, I leave it to others to decide!
A lot. Which would also be true if all of us and our entire discussion were hosted in Chengdu, Delhi, Lagos, Lima, or Bora Bora. This is an artifact of the great age of Western imperialism, which imposed Western practices on the rest of the world - at least at the level of political and economic elites. Where things get interesting is to hear how non-Western voices respond to this imposition of Western categories and how alternative perspectives get fed back to the West, albeit through media and channels the West imagined it invented (but also borrowed quite a bit).
I think we also should remember that even in eastern countries, the western worldview prevails. Maybe to a lesser extent than Europe and America. But when you look at the mainstream culture, the economic models and the education systems and the ambitions - competition, consumerism, one directional consumption - then it’s the same base. I guess one could tentatively point to exceptions like Bhutan but even those are not isolated pockets of alternative civilisation.
So should we be asking what is NOT western?
Or perhaps agree to define what it is (though I think we may already do).
Individual v community
Competition v cooperation
Separation v interconnection
Static absolutes v changing relatives
Inert mechanic world v living organic nature
Linearity v cyclical / networked
Separate, single deity v integrated, diverse deities
Ego strengthening v ego dissolution
Endless growth v cyclical rebirth
To me this is West v East.
Granted, some western thought incorporates eastern, and vice versa, but these are more like streams that deviate from the main current of each.
Until someone devises a more comprehensive framework (scholars of the future, please do!), I’m stuck quoting my own framework. The reason I built this - over the course of 40 years or more - was to get a grip on precisely the sort of question you pose above.
Given that framework, my short answer to your question above is to seek the non-Western in Kultur. That is, in the spiritual and artistic depths. Politics turns on a dime. Economic models run on generational cycles or less. But great cultures only evolve on the scale of millennia. Japan seems no less Japanese for all of its fairly recent technological trappings. We could say the same for any number of other places around the world. Will the Western influence on China for example be more profound and long-lasting than the prior influences of Buddhism, the Mongols, and the Manchus? Somehow I think a “Second Renaissance” in China might take on a generally Confucian character. (BTW - a Chinese scholar informed has me that a second Confucian renaissance has happened a time or two in China already. So we may need to adjust our numbering system …)
---------quoted framework--------------------
" I do believe we all participate now in a single world system, with the “core” being not just one nation but as a distributed network of financial, technical, and military power centers arranged unevenly around the globe. With respect to civilizational discourse, I tend to agree with David Wilkerson that our unified world system is a function of the long term unification of “Central” civilization. (Ballistic missile technology, for example, tends not to be affected much by cultural boundary lines). On a deeper level, however, our world does continue to evidence multiple divergent Kulturen. The surface evidence for this is the persistence of multiple world religions, not to mention thousands of smaller sects, cults, offshoots, and tribal indigenous practices. When people set out to express their ideals, the images, symbols, and practices that come to mind may find sources from multiple civilizations, or more and more often, from non-civilizational indigenous cultures. In practice, we all live in a globalized system. In our imaginations, however, we often seem to long for something more small-scale, traditional, and intimate. "
First draft finished! It currently weighs in at 56 pages. This thing started on a legal pad as an outline for a series of Medium articles, or maybe as a course outline for some university course I would love to teach, but probably never will. Very soon after that initial outline, the pre-writing burst out in a sort of fever dream, mostly in the form of bullet points. Then I felt more or less compelled to polish it up to at least its current level. (The whole section in this document called "The Spiritual ‘Pull’ " can be referenced for what the writing process felt like.)
Now it all needs to age in the cask for awhile. I’ll be very curious to see what, if any of this, lands and for whom.
“Current Civilization – One or Many?” provides exactly the kind of high-level orientation needed amid today’s volatility. It’s refreshing to see such a seamless fusion of conceptual depth and activist utility. What resonates most is your framing of civilization not just as system, but as psyche the imaginal architectures that define what societies believe is possible. Your use of Kultur vs. Zivilization moves this from abstract theory to strategic discernment: are we repairing infrastructure, or reanimating meaning? And your provocation around the Second Renaissance is pitch-perfect. Rather than recycling the Greco-Roman archive, you point us toward deeper, more plural and perennial sources… an inquiry not of return, but of re-rooting.
Is it an organizing concept, or more like a horizon you’re orienting toward?
I know the salt mines demand their due but please consider this an open door whenever you feel like saying more…