Recently, Mark Safranski of ZenPundit linked a brief on Iran’s President [pdf] in an entry called “Rationality, Eschatology, Conflict and Iran’s President.”

Eschatology is an interesting philosophy-slash-study-slash-theology.  Eschatology typically concerns views of either the afterlife or the “aftertime” — i.e., what comes after a person has died or how the Universe will end/die, reflecting End-time thought. The study on Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, alone, is quite interesting and suggested reading, although certain strains in the article struck me as being potentially propagandistic.  The study was built to influence, in other words, even if many of the points are important points.  I have previously touched upon a consideration of End-time thought with an eye toward the psychological aspects of such thought, in two entries: “Ragnarok” and “Oh the Epiphany and the Confusion!”, rather than the political and military implications of such thought — although, to be sure, the personal psychological dimensions no doubt influence the other two. [Mark’s following post, on “The Epistemological Battlespace,” could actually bridge the two areas, btw.] One area I have not addressed will need to be addressed at a later time, concerning what the Oxford Companion to Philosophy calls “realized eschatology,” which supposes that present conditions on earth can be described as God’s judgment of the past.  (So it has a direct relationship to some ideas about Karma and theories such as those defining “hell on earth” or “heaven on earth” during the present — although even scientifically the cause-effect theory could borrow such a perspective.)  For now, I want to briefly consider a potential connection of modern economics with the rising tide of End-time thought in both politics and general theology, by borrowing an idea I read in Auden’s essay called “Brothers and Others,” in which he considers various plays by Shakespeare.

I have previously wanted to highlight another aspect of the essay which seems pertinent to current affairs, and must do so because it relates directly to eschatology.  Auden’s consideration of the societies utilized by Shakespeare in various plays bears on concepts of Folk, Kin, and Trade — and particularly on the ways the influences of each of these on the others, including changing relevances of each within societies, shape our concepts of allies and foes.  For instance, in a property-based society, in which ownership of property is the most significant measurement of wealth and prosperity, close ties will form between family members and even between families, because each community can be quite self-sufficient in isolation:

Economically, the country is self-sufficient, and production is for use, not profit.  The community-forming bond in this England is either the family tie of common blood which is given by nature or the feudal tie of lord and vassal created by personal oath.  Both are commitments to individuals and both are lifelong commitments.

[Auden describing Shakespeare’s Richard II and Henry IV]

In such a society, determining who is a brother is rather easy, as easy as determining who is an other, or an alien and potential foe.  Warring on those within our own community, although it could happen, would be considered civil war, potentially as detrimental to our own well-being as slicing off our own arm or blinding our own eyes.  But the alien, the person living in another society, could be attacked without such harm to ourselves, because our economic system is insular and self-sustaining.  Auden contrasts this type of society with a different type of society found in Shakespeare:

In The Merchant in Venice and Othello Shakespeare depicts a very different kind of society.  Venice does not produce anything itself, either raw materials or manufactured goods.  Its existence depends upon the financial profits which can be made by international trade,

. . . the trade and profit of the city
Consisteth of all nations

that is to say, on buying cheaply here and selling dearly there, and its wealth lies in its accumulated money capital.  Money has ceased to be simply a convenient medium of exchange and has become a form of social power which can be gained or lost.  Such a mercantile society is international and cosmopolitan; it does not distinguish between the brother and the alien other than on a basis of blood or religion — from the point of view of society, customers are brothers, trade rivals others.  But Venice is not simply a mercantile society; it is also a city inhabited by various communities with different loves — Gentiles and Jews, for example — who do not regard each other personally as brothers, but must tolerate each other’s existence because both are indispensable to the proper functioning of their society, and this toleration is enforced by the laws of the Venetian state.

I am sure that we can find many parallels within our own modern world.  After a long consideration of The Merchant of Venice, Auden concludes with a warning for our time.  The advance of capitalism and technology has led to more efficiency, more security, and generally better international manners, as it did for Shakespeare’s Venice — because all foreigners are potential trade partners, or brothers — but each advance in types of society carries its own “dangers and evils for,

the more advanced the social organization, the greater the moral demands it makes upon its members and the greater the degree of guilt which they incur if they fail to meet these demands.  The members of a society with a primitive self-sufficient economy can think of those outside it as others, not brothers, with a good conscience, because they can get along by themselves.  But …  we are all mutually dependent.  This demands that we accept all other human beings on earth as brothers, not only in law, but also in our hearts.

Such a consideration lies behind Thomas Barnett’s theories of globalization.  Auden continues with his warning by introducing another concept at the last of his essay:  our tendency, perhaps to avoid feeling guilt over warring with our brothers (and thus, committing a kind of civil war with ourselves) is “to regard everybody else on earth not even as an enemy, but as a faceless algebraical cipher.”

This last warning bears on eschatology in potentially devastating ways.  A millenialist (of any religion) may find that inaugurating The End is much easier when ciphers, rather than humans and brothers, are killed en masse to hasten that End.  But how does the development of a largely mercantile global society hasten and intensify End-time thought, or fundamentalist and extremist eschatology?  Auden addressed the different conceptualizations of time early in his consideration of the different types of society:

A change in the nature of wealth from landownership to money capital radically alters the social conception of time.  The wealth produced by land may vary from year to year — there are good harvests and bad — but, in the long run its average yield may be counted upon.  Land, barring dispossession by an invader or confiscation by the State, is held by a family in perpetuity.  In consequence, the social conception of time in a landowning society is cyclical — the future is expected to be a repetition of the past.  But in a mercantile society time is conceived of as a unilinear forward movement in which the future is always novel and unpredictable.  (The unpredictable event in a landowning society is an Act of God, that is to say, it is not “natural” for an event to be unpredictable.)  The merchant is constantly taking risks — if he is lucky, he may make a fortune, if he is unlucky he may lose everything.  Since, in a mercantile society, social power is derived from money, the distribution of power within it is constantly changing, which has the effect of weakening reverence for the past; who one’s distant ancestors were soon ceases to be of much social importance.  The oath of lifelong loyalty is replaced by the contract which binds its signatories to fulfill certain specific promises by a certain specific future date, after which their commitment to each other is over.

First: a cyclical conceptualization of time allows no End.  Second, the uncertainty produced by the quick-changing power nodes of capital produces a wish for certainty; meaning, we not only want time to end because such an end will be the end to the uncertainty produced by a forward movement of uncertain events, but also a consideration of time as moving forward linearly introduces the possibility that it will run out.  Third, a devaluation of ancestral loyalty and reverence, combined with a shifting set of brothers as money changes hands, itself subconsciously suggests an End to humanity, since no concept of humanity can exist if all the members are cyphers.

And last, because we may be missing our brothers in our tendency to view only cyphers — we are so confused about the matter — any attempt to bring on the End creates extraordinary guilt; so we may want to get it over with and let God mete out punishment, as expiation for our sins.

[I am not a historian, nor a very good scholar of early Judaism; but I can’t help wondering if the Roman Empire, relying as it did not only on mercantilism between its conquered provinces — thus, mixing up concepts of brotherhood — but also introducing so prominently coinage, led to the conceptualizations of Armageddon for the three main monotheistic religions.  I.e., early prophecies of The End may have merely been the “fingertip feeling” of prophets who sensed an ultimate result of changes occurring at that time to their societies.]

Update, correction, and extension: Actually, early Judaism would not have formed with the direct influence of the Roman Empire, but with various other tribes from the area and empires forming from those, such as the Egyptian Empire, etc. So really, the question of the subconscious, fingertip-feeling, inspired awareness of these as an influence on eschatological prophecy — even, on prophecy of any kind which predicts major changes within a society — may be merely the result of greater awareness of the influence of others. I imagine that any society, from the very earliest tribal systems, has had to contend with the question of others, and questions such as, Do we destroy them or do we trade with them? So deciding whether we connect or do not connect may be an on-going phenomenon, not new at all for our “globalizing” world.

However, one must wonder if a Final Outcome, or The End, may be the utter end of such questioning. I.e., once all humanity — the Globe — adopts the view of worldwide brotherhood, or utter social connectivity (even if the connections are not immediate, direct connections) and interdependence, then only the introduction of some extraterrestrial intelligent lifeform would reintroduce the question. [But if transhumanists are in any way correct, then the new lifeform could possibly be an evolved human. In such a case, as with other types of present plural monoculturalism, the question would be a matter of grave concern for individuals and groups if self-sufficiency — i.e., not really needing connections with others — obtains.]