The Bottleneck Ahead

Crossroads Crises in Perspective (Part 1) – The Bottleneck Ahead

Axial Age Transitions :

Jaspers described the axial age as an in-between period between two structured world-views and between two rounds of empire building; it was an age of creativity where ‘man asks radical questions’, and where the ‘unquestioned grasp on life is loosened’; it was an age of uncertainty and contingency: an age in which old certainties had lost their validity and where new ones were still not ready [4] – Bjørn Thomassen (Liminality and the Modern: Living Through the In-Between [2014]).

Mass centralisation could also be understood with regards to the transitional phases between ages within the context of a certain category of anthropology, which describes how structure gives way to non-structure and anti-structure [5] in the middle-phase of Great Transitions [6]. The effect is that structure (from a metaphysical standpoint, which affects human thinking) becomes more fluid due to the aforementioned cycle’s structural energy petering out as it declines towards its end, while new structure has not arrived yet, so boundaries and separation would appear much less obvious or desired.

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By Jean-Jacques

06 August 2023

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