Causes and Logic of the Differences between Paradigms

Abstract

In the preceding chapter the quest for the meaning of human life and death led us along five different paths. First we met the theocentric (god-centred) view of the Mesopotamians, whose resigned acceptance of the absolute rule of their divine masters fostered a spectacular creative drive in matters of technology. Secondly we considered the death-centered, yet basically optimistic, Egyptians who, following their belief in the possibility of mastering their own fate, developed an elaborate technique which was supposed to overcome death. Thirdly we met the ebullient Greeks who found an outlet for their excess energy in a highly participatory civic culture. We found, however, that their pronounced anthropocentrism (man-centredness) could not always find adequate satisfaction and that they had to look for an alternative in a deeper religiosity stemming from the mysteries, alien to the mainstream of Greek thought. Fourthly we considered the Indians with their multi-ethnic population stratified by elaborate regulations into hereditary castes, more or less completely segregated in this life, yet mutually accessible by way of reincarnation in the quest for psychocentric (soul-centred) mastery of self. Finally we studied the rule-centred Chinese who, believing in the interconnectedness of the world of human beings with the ways of nature, saw in their supreme rule — as mandatee of heaven — the agent capable of establishing and maintaining harmony between the two, a harmony which was deemed fundamental to the well-being of the people.