Sex, Age, and Caste: The Ultimate Macrohistories?

Lawrence Taub

Macrohistories can be pigeon-holed in many ways. They fall into two clearly distinguishable types: those that describe recurring patterns that repeat throughout all or part of history, and those that describe a single program of history that happens only once, in one big, broad, one-way-flowing series of stages, that covers all of history, with no stage ever repeating itself. The first type gets you thinking like the author of Ecclesiastes, who stressed that "there is nothing [really] new under the sun." The second type leads you to believe the opposite -- that every moment is a first-time, unique event.

Macrohistories that fall into Type One include those of Toynbee, P. R. Sarkar, traditional Hinduism, and various economists' descriptions of economic boom and bust. Type Two macrohistories include those of Comte, Marx and Engels, Alvin Toffler, Ken Wilber, feminist macrohistorians Shulamith Firestone and Riane Eisler, and Western religious traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). The three macrohistories I present here are Type-Two types.

The macrohistorical approach to futures activity is important as it firmly deals with the often-heard criticism that most ideas about futures studies reflect a Western-biased, U.S.-Eurocentric view of the world. Effective macrohistories are just as often the anonymous products of the deep wisdom of non-Western, non-modern cultures as they are the brainchildren of noted Western (or non-Western) scholars or thinkers.

The three macrohistories -- or models, as I call them -- presented in this essay, though filtered through the mind of a semi-Western non-scholar (myself), have their origins in the anonymous wisdom of three cultures, two of which are Eastern. They reflect, I would say, the striven-for cultural impartiality. I will feel that this goal is achieved if Eastern futures people accuse this presentation of being Ameri-Eurocentric while Western ones accuse it of flaky "new-age" Easternism.

What about prediction, or anticipating concrete future directions with a degree of meaningful and useful accuracy? Can macrohistories do that too? Well, yes, I feel -- if the macrohistory in question deals with a deep-enough structural level of history. If it doesn't, you are safer going to your local fortune-teller than to a macrohistorian. But I'll get to that in the next few paragraphs.

Predetermined

The deeper levels of history are predetermined and set the parameters within which we can exercise our free will as freely as those parameters allow.

"The future is unpredictable." You hear that often in popular circles and media. But this "truism" is far from true. For though history has surface structures, the events and trends we see on the 6 o'clock news or read about in the morning paper, it also has deep structures, basic underlying trends which are "programmed" into history. These are easy to predict once we understand what they are, and they help us to predict a lot about surface trends as well.

Maybe two examples of deep structures not directly connected with history will make this clear: the human body and the life cycle.

What people do with their bodies -- and minds -- is basically unpredictable. But almost everyone has the same "predictable" body: Before a person is born, we know in advance that he or she will have either a female or male body, two eyes, two ears, one head, no tail, etc.

The life cycle is another deep structure. We can predict that everyone will go from birth, to infancy, to childhood, to adulthood, etc., in that order. Never once in human history has a person been an old man or woman before they were a child. (I may be the only exception to this rule.) What a person does during these stages, however, the surface structure is of course pretty unpredictable.

History has the same kind of deep structures. Here I'll discuss three of them, which I call models: the Age Model, the Sex Model, and the Caste Model.

I stumbled on these models, actually, macrohistories, and started matching them up to history as we are familiar with it. They naturally led to making forecasts based on them. But the forecasts seemed so crazy at the time, 1975, that I said, "such things could never happen," and discarded the whole idea.

But then surprising events happened exactly according to the models: religious revolution in Iran, Anwar Sadat's trip to Israel, intense US-Japan trade friction, and others. So I let my intuitions go all the way with the models -- "crazy" predictions and all -- which led to the writing of The Spiritual Imperative: Sex, Age, and the Last Caste (which covers the models in detail).

Not only do the models seem to explain history more clearly, simply, orderly, and convincingly than other macrohistories, but they also, judging by events and trends of the last 26 years, seem to correctly predict.

This essay contains only the broad outlines of the models, concentrating on the most interesting of the three, the Caste Model. Because of this, some of the forecasts may seem far-fetched and not deducible from the general principles of the models.



The Age Model

Growing Up

The Age Model is the idea that the life of humanity as a whole evolves parallel to the life of a single person. That is, we can divide history into at least six stages in the development of human consciousness, each of which corresponds to a stage in the life cycle of any individual.

Stage 1 I call the No-Center-Yet stage. It was early humanity up to about 250,000 years ago. Humans were still part of Nature. This stage corresponds to the Newborn Infant, when the baby is unconscious of itself as a separate individual.

Stage 2 was the magical-prehistoric stage of animism or "Nature-worship," the Self-is-the-Center stage, from 250,000 years ago to c.10,000 BC. Each tribe saw itself as the center of the world. This corresponds to Infancy, when the baby sees itself as the center of the world, the narcissistic stage.

Stage 3, the Mother-is-the-Center stage, was when the first civilizations arose, based on agriculture and worship of the Great Earth Mother Goddess. It lasted from c.10,000 to 2000 BC. It corresponds to Early Childhood, when the baby sees its mother as the center of the world.

Stage 4 was the Father-is-the-Center stage. Worship switched to God, the Father in Heaven, male gods, saviors, and divine kings like the Japanese Emperor. It lasted from c.2000 BC until the European Renaissance and the Enlightenment of the 16th-17th centuries. It corresponds to Late Childhood and Early Teenage, when the child sees its father as the center of its life.

Stage 5 is the rejection of God-the-Father, the age of revolution and democracy, communism, and other ideologies. It started in c.1650 and still continues. It corresponds to Middle and Late Teenage, when the teenager rebels against the father and parental authority in general. It's the Uncentered stage.


The Future of Religion and the Question of Survival

That's where we are now in history, with the human race about 19 years old. Which brings us to the future.

The next stage (6) is the worship of God-Within, God as one's deeper Self. This corresponds to Adulthood. One is one's own authority, self-reliant, autonomous. I call this the Centered Self stage.

When I say that humanity is 19, I mean that this is the age of the powerful or leading countries -- the US, Russia, Western Europe. Most countries are "younger," a few older: the socially advanced countries such as the Netherlands and Scandinavia. They are 23 to 25 years old.

What does this help us "predict"?

First, the future religion. We are moving away from the worship of Nature, Mother Earth, or Father in Heaven, and beyond Rebellion against these through secularism, communism, capitalism, and materialism -- the "religions" of our childhood and adolescence -- to adult religion. That is, to finding God within, inside the Self, listening to the Inner Voice.

Second, we can predict the chances of human survival in the face of nuclear and environmental destruction or overpopulation. They are the same chances that the normal adolescent has, to come through the storms and conflicts of adolescence and to make it to adulthood. I think only 1-2% do not make it. But since most countries are still "adolescent," a great deal of destruction and conflict still lie ahead. It gets worse before it gets better.



The Sex Model

The War Between the Sexes

"The division yin and yang pervades all culture, history, economics, nature itself; modern Western versions of sex discrimination are only the most recent layer."

-- Shulamith Firestone (founding feminist), The Dialectic of Sex.

This model, stated simply, is: Humanity evolves according to a sexual dialectic from Female to Male to Androgynous.

Based on the Chinese idea that all things are a balance between yin, the female principle, and yang, the male principle, the model tells us that the human race evolves through three sexual ages of history. To make this really clear I should define these terms in detail, as I do in my book, but here brevity must prevail!

The first age was the Yin, or Female Age. It corresponds to the prehistoric period, when humanity lived with a world view that we traditionally associate with the female principle: in harmony with, close to, attached to nature, the environment, the group; subjective; weak in ego, individuality, and self-assertion; self-sacrificing; having a sense of the world as being completely alive; holistic; relating to the world through feeling and emotional involvement; the heart.

This age was followed by the Yang, Male Age. It corresponds to the entire historical period, from the Patriarchal Revolution at the Dawn of History (c.2000 BC) until today. So it's the whole period of male supremacy and class society. Humans developed the features of the male principle: detachment from the environment and nature; objective; a strong ego, individuality and self-assertion; a sense of the world as being non-living matter governed by impersonal laws and divided into parts; classifying, analyzing; measuring; thinking rationally and scientifically; mental and intellectual; wanting to conquer, exploit and change nature, the environment, other people; the mind.

Sexual Division of the World into East and West

At the Dawn of History, the start of the Yang Age, the world split sexually into East and West. The yang worldview developed further in the West than in the East, reaching its peak with Western science and high technology.

Jerusalem, the focus of Western religion and culture -- especially of the very male-toned Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- became the world's yang-male pole; Varanasi (Benares), the focus of Eastern world religions and culture (Hinduism and Buddhism, which are more female in character), became its yin-female pole. That is, Eastern culture stayed closer to humanity's prehistoric yin origins, and did not become yang enough, while Western culture suppressed most of its female "roots" and became too yang.

Yangness also developed further among men than women, in the cities than in the countryside, and in the upper classes than in the lower.


Our Androgynous Future

What does the Sex Model say about the future? The future is the third, Androgynous Age: an integrated, even balance of yin and yang. It brings back the yin without dropping the yang. So anything that in the past was either too yang or too yin will become sexually balanced.

The recent movements and trends that reflect this will continue. The West will continue to see a revival of subjectivity, feelings, reliance on hunches and intuition; holism, harmony with nature, ecology, animal rights; the elimination of excessive or all meat-eating; the end of sport hunting and cruel sports; integration of Eastern and Western religions and culture; the disappearance of sex roles, sexual inequality, and class structure; looking at the big picture and synthesizing instead of just analyzing; emphasis on cooperation, less on competition and confrontation; acceptance of homosexuality; etc. In the East, of course, the trends will continue in the opposite, yang direction in the relevant areas.

The new androgyny will especially affect the role of women in politics and society, and sexual-love relationships between the sexes.

In the near-future, early Androgynous Age, women will outnumber men as heads of state and in upper political echelons -- especially in the most yang, Islamic countries. This is in equal reaction to men having dominated politics for so long during the Yang Age. But in the long run, both sexes will share high political positions roughly equally.


No Longer Too Yang To Really Be In Love -- Peace Between the Sexes At Last?

Regarding sex, affection, and love, we notice that men and women, in the Yang Age, developed opposite sexual styles: Men tended to be sexually detached: Even when strongly "in love," they became attracted to many women sexually, and would act on this if given the chance. Women, conversely, after sex with a man, tended to get emotionally attached to him even when not really "in love" with him, and felt a need to avoid sex with other men even when attracted to them.

These opposite tendencies reflect the basic yin and yang difference. Women, being more yin than yang, get attached to their environment, in this case, a male partner. Men, in their leaning toward the yang, stay detached from it, in this case, a series of female partners. In gay society, the more yang and more yin partners reflect the same tendencies, respectively, as in the straight world.

But as both men and women become more androgynous, they will combine the two styles: both sexes will combine sexual partnership with sexual variety, that is, deep sexual-love relationships together with sex with more than one person. Brought up as we are at the tail end of the Yang Age, this is hard for us to imagine. But our androgynous grandchildren will easily carry this off.

The Caste Model

The Spiral of History

The Caste Model originates in India. It is derived from -- but in important ways differs from -- the traditional Hindu philosophy of caste, which was also the theory behind the notorious caste system. That caste philosophy, together with the Hindu cosmology, forms the Hindu (macrohistorical, to be sure) philosophy of history. But, as sI aid, Indian culture is yinnish, and so thinks of history as cyclical. To correct this yin bias, I interpret the original Hindu philosophy with a Western-yang, linear twist to make it androgynous and more correct in relation to how it actually unfolded in history.

The Caste Model, like its Hindu prototype, says that there are 4 main castes in the world. Everyone has features of all four, but usually the features of one predominate. That is the caste a person "belongs" to. These 4 castes are:

1. The religious or spiritual caste -- the brahmans

2. The warrior caste -- the kshattriyas

3. The merchant caste -- the vaishvas

4. The worker caste -- the shudras

Each caste rules the world in turn, in the above order, taking power from the caste before it through "caste struggle."

What does "a caste rules the world" mean? It means that during the Age (yuga, in Sanskrit) a particular caste rules:

Its leaders or top class are the world's ruling elite;

Its worldview and spirit are the dominant ones worldwide;

And the tools, skills, and institutions that develop most in that Age are connected with that caste.

Then, at the end of the last, Worker Age, the kaliyuga in Sanskrit, after all 4 castes have ruled, the spiritual-religious brahman caste takes power again: the world experiences spiritual rebirth, and a second Spiritual-Religious Age starts.

So history actually consists of only 5 ages:

Spiritual-Religious Age (No.1) -- Satyayuga 1

Warrior Age -- Tretayuga

Merchant Age -- Dvaparayuga

Worker Age -- Kaliyuga

Spiritual-Religious Age (No.2) -- Satyayuga 2

In my East-West androgynous interpretation, this "cycle" occurs only once, covering all of human history. That is, Spiritual-Religious Age No.1 was the transition from animal to human life, while Spiritual-Religious Age No.2 will be the transition from human to superhuman life -- a step up in evolution and the beginning of a new, you might say, "post-human" cycle. In other words, unlike the original Hindu view of history as endlessly repeating cycles, human history, consisting of only one single cycle, thus forms a spiral.

Smaller Patterns in the Bigger Picture

If we look back over the history of this caste struggle, that is, over history itself, we see that it has many different patterns. One is that these caste ages get shorter and shorter except for the two spiritual-religious ages, which are very long.

But the most important pattern is that a caste struggles to top power through three distinctly different stages:

The first is the pioneering stage. This stage unfolds in the world's main power centers, where the ruling caste rules from. During this stage, the rising caste organizes itself and sets up pockets of power and opposition to the ruling caste. But it does not actually rule anywhere yet.

The second stage is the revolutionary-evolutionary stage. Here the rising caste takes power in some countries, usually outside the main centers of world power, in "backward" countries, through revolution.

These revolutionary countries become new great powers that now challenge the established great powers, the countries from which the old caste still rules the world.

But at the same time, the rising caste takes power in these established main power centers, the world's leading countries, as well, but by evolution, not revolution.

The third and last stage in a caste's rise is the peak stage. In this stage the rising caste is at the height of its power and rules the world -- but is also ripe for falling. This stage unfolds in those countries that have evolved to be most in tune with the spirit and worldview of that caste. These countries most "belong" to the caste, and become the great powers of that caste age.

Since the castes are in struggle, these three stages overlap: While one caste is at its peak, the one behind it is in its revolutionary-evolutionary stage, while the caste behind that one is pioneering.

This process tells us -- this is important! -- that countries belonging to the falling caste, though the great powers of the moment, lose world power to the countries belonging to the new, rising caste. That is, the Caste Model explains why great powers rose and fell in the past, and helps predict which countries will rise and fall in the future.

This will become clear as we now look at each caste age, yuga, in turn.


Spiritual-Religious Age No.1

The Spiritual-Religious Age No.1 was all of prehistory and the following period in which the great world religions developed: Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam.


Warrior Age

The following Warrior Age was the period of military monarchy, that is, ancient and medieval history, from about 4000 BC to the 16th, early 17th centuries.

The ruling elite was the top of the warrior caste: the kings, emperors, nobility, leading samurai, etc. The dominant worldview was the love of warfare, heroism, armed combat, machismo. Today's pre-industrial Third World countries still live in this age, which is why military cliques and monarchs still have the main power in these countries, and why they easily go to war with each other or internally to solve problems.

The last great powers of that Warrior Age, marking the warrior caste's peak stage in the 16th century, were Spain, Portugal, the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires, Ming China, and Mogul India.


Merchant Age

The Merchant Age was the period of entrepreneurial capitalism, from about 1650 until the mid-20th century. The world ruling elite was the top of the merchant caste: the leading financiers and pre-industrial mercantile traders and (later) industrial entrepreneurs: the Mellons, Rockefellers, Carnegies, Morgans, Moritas, Hondas, etc.

The dominant worldview was the pursuit of money and wealth through trade, business, industry, and mercantile imperialism.

Skipping over the pioneering stage, the revolutionary-evolutionary stage of the merchant caste rise to power unfolded roughly from 1600 to the 1860s. During this stage, all the revolutions were merchant-caste, so-called "bourgeois" revolutions. The most important, in order of occurrence, were the Dutch revolution against Spain, the British Civil War of the 1640s, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and, from the early 1860s to early 1870s, the unification of Germany and Italy, Japan's Meiji Restoration, and the US Civil War. These revolutions eventually made all these countries great powers.

Meanwhile, in those countries without such revolutions -- Austria-Hungary, Spain, Portugal, etc. -- the merchant-caste bourgeoisie also took power, but by evolution rather than revolution.

The peak stage of the Merchant Age was the period before, during, and after World War II. If you remember, the peak stage of a caste's rise to power takes place in those countries that evolve to be most in tune with the worldview of that caste. The worldview of the merchant caste is the pursuit of money and wealth. So, since the US developed to be most in tune with that worldview, it became the top world power during this stage.


Worker Age

The Worker Age is the present period of communism (state capitalism) and welfare-state, socialist, social-democratic, and big-corporate capitalism. It stretches from the beginning of the 20th century to about 2030 AD. So from here the Caste Model takes us into the future.

The main worldview of this age and ruling caste, the worker caste, is devotion to and identification with one's work, job, expertise, profession, or company: the idolatry of Work.

The ruling elite, the top of the worker caste, is Milovan Djilas' "new class" and what John Galbraith and Theodore Roszak call the technostructure or something similar. In the still-socialist countries, it consists of the top levels of the Communist Party, the government, the military, and industry. In the capitalist countries it's the top managers of the big corporations, governments, and labor organizations.

The worker caste's revolutionary-evolutionary stage lasted from 1917 to about 1979. During this period, the nature of revolution changed from "bourgeois" merchant-caste to "socialist" revolution. Countries which had such revolutions, especially the Soviet Union and China, became new great powers.


The Near Future -- The Peak Stage of the Worker Age

Now we are entering the peak stage of the worker caste's rise, which will last until about 2030. This stage will have two important features. The first is that the world will continue to divide itself up into blocs -- both in the industrialized North and in the mainly Third World South. The second feature is that the North will continue to be more powerful than the South, and will divide itself into 3 gigantic blocs, competing with but also collaborating with each other.

The bloc, or multinational union, replaces imperialism in this Worker Age. Space is too limited here to explain why and how this happens, and which countries will join which blocs, but these are treated at length in my book.

1. Confucio: The most powerful bloc in the North, thus in the world, will be one that I call Confucio. It will consist of the neighboring countries that share the Confucian tradition and other features -- Japan, China, Taiwan, and North and South Korea reunified into a single Korea.

 Confucio will be the world's top power because, following the pattern for peak stages I mentioned earlier, these countries, strongly influenced by their common Confucian tradition, will be those most in tune with the worker-caste world view of devotion to work, job, expertise, and company.

2. Europa: The second most powerful bloc in the North and world will be Europa. Europa will be an expansion of the European Union to include all of Eastern Europe, including the three Baltics, but not Russia, the other ex-Soviet republics, and perhaps not Switzerland nor Scandinavia.

3. Polario: The third most powerful bloc in the world will be Polario. Polario will consist of the United States, Canada, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, possibly Mexico, and probably all 5 Scandinavian countries.

I call this bloc Polario because it mainly comprises the four giant countries and regions that neighbor each other around the North Pole.

I put this bloc as third and last in the Northern power hierarchy because, of the three Northern blocs, except for Canada and Scandinavia, it will be the least in tune with the worker-caste worldview of devotion to Work. For it will be the most held back by outdated merchant-caste traditions related to devotion to the pursuit of individual money and wealth.


Spiritual-Religious Age No. 2

This age, already started, will last beyond the 21st century. Its dominant world view, as its name implies, will be religious and spiritual. This means both a return to religion in its old established forms as well as the development of spirituality and mysticism outside established religions.

Eventually, established and fundamentalist religions and sects will become less fundamentalist and more generally spiritual. The Age and Sex Models explain the reasons for this:

(1) Today's established religions come down from humanity's childhood and adolescence, and from its Yin and Yang Ages. But the religion of the future, the two models tell us, will be adult and androgynous. That is, all religions will become individualistic God-Within oriented, and will not visualize God as either man or woman. So, as Sri Aurobindo said, "The Age of Religion is over; Spirituality is the future of religion."

(2) As the Sex Model implies, feminist revolution, particularly the increasingly leading role women and feministic men will play within established religions, will set even their most fundamentalist sects in the direction of this adult, androgynous spirituality. Fundamentalism and extreme orthodoxy are based on male supremacy, the repression of the female principle, and religious leadership either by bearded male patriarchs or by clean-shaven men with strong patriarchal tendencies. Fundamentalism and female top leadership are contradictions that cannot coexist. So, as women take over leadership of even the most fundamentalist religious denominations, as they will continue to be determined to do, they subtly de-fundamentalize and spiritualize them.

The world ruling elite, the top of the spiritual-religious caste, will include traditional religious leaders, gurus, mullahs, rabbis, etc., but also people outside established religion who are considered spiritual. Fakes and charlatans will be among both types.

Despite this elite, this age coincides with the Sex Model's Androgynous Age. So it marks the end of power hierarchies, class structures, and male supremacy: Gradually, the distinction between ruling elite and rank and file, leaders and followers, will flatten out and disappear.


The Three Stages of the Rise of the Spiritual-Religious Caste

Now let's look at the actual past and future "history" of this age -- its 3 stages:

Pioneering Stage of the Spiritual-Religious Age

The pioneering stage of the new spiritual-religious caste's rise, which lasted from the 1950s through the 1970s, featured, on one side, the appearance of the counterculture: beatniks, hippies, the human potentials movement, transpersonal theory, etc. On the other side it featured masses of people being "born again" into established religions and fundamentalist sects, or joining new religions, Eastern religions or paths, and guru-led new-age groups.

Revolutionary-Evolutionary Stage

The revolutionary-evolutionary stage of the new spiritual-religious caste's rise to power started in 1979 with the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Lasting for the next 30-40 years, it overlaps with the peak stage of the Worker Age.

During this time, the nature of revolution changes again, this time from socialist/communist to religious revolution. Afghanistan was/is the latest example.

Religious revolutions will happen in countries within what I call the Religious Belt. This belt stretches from Bangladesh, Tibet, and Bhutan in the East, west across India and the Islamic heartland, Israel, across North Africa to Morocco.

But at the same time as some of these countries experience religious revolution, the spiritual-religious caste and its worldview will take power in the Religious Belt as a whole and in the industrialized North as well, but by evolution instead of revolution.

As religious revolution sweeps the Religious Belt, the Belt will divide up, I feel, into roughly four blocs. Remember, revolution makes countries powerful. As a result of the political and economic power generated by these revolutions, reinforced by the world dominance of religious and spiritual worldviews, world power will again shift, this time from Confucio, Europa, and Polario to these four religious-spiritual blocs, which I call:

1. The South Asian, or Bharati, Federation, consisting of India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Tibet.

2. The Central Asian Islamic Federation, consisting of Afghanistan, Iran, perhaps Turkey, the ex-Soviet Islamic republics, and Kurdistan.

3. The Pan-Semitic Federation, consisting of Israel, the Palestine Republic, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and all the countries of the Arabian Peninsula.

4. The Maghreb Federation, consisting of the North African countries minus Egypt.

Two of these blocs, the Bharati and Pan-Semitic Federations, will be the main great powers of the mid-21st century. There is time to mention only two reasons for their rise to power:

One is because religion and spirituality, the areas these two blocs will excel in, will become the main source of economic as well as spiritual power during this period. In the Warrior Age, military power was the source of all power. In the Merchant and Worker Ages, that is, over the last 350 years, economic power, as we know, has become the foundation for military power. But in the next age, spiritual power will be the source of economic, therefore military, therefore all power.

The second reason for the rise to power, particularly, of the Pan-Semitic Federation will be the migration, for at least four different reasons detailed in my book, of at least 2 million American and Canadian Jews to Israel -- and the return of large numbers of Palestinian refugees to the Palestine Republic.

Bear in mind, however, that power is not just the coercive-manipulative-type military, economic, and knowledge power we are most accustomed to, and that characterizes the Warrior, Merchant, and Worker Ages, respectively (and that Alvin Toffler explains so well in his book Powershift). There is also spiritual power.

These two blocs will not just be economically, militarily, and mentally powerful, they will also be spiritually powerful, with a strong spiritual influence over the rest of the world.

As I contemplate the rise of these two blocs, I am amazed how the prophecies of the world religions -- Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity -- seem to uncannily correspond to this natural historical evolution.

Peak Stage

Finally, in the peak stage of the Spiritual-Religious Age No. 2, from about 2050 on, the world and its spirituality will have evolved to where the rest of the world will have caught up to the Religious Belt powers, so that there will be no great powers to speak of. All the blocs will have become roughly equal in economic and spiritual development.

But human spirituality will have deepened to where it starts integrating those elements of our "roots," our yin prehistoric childhood past, that have been repressed by the traditional yang world religions of the Religious Belt. These elements are mainly the body, nature, and sexuality, all of which were essential to the religious feeling of prehistoric cultures on every continent. These feelings are somewhat alive today only among the indigenous cultures: native North and South American, Siberian, tribal in various Asian countries, and native Australian, New Zealand, and Oceanian -- and, of course, in Africa.

The only world region where these feelings have not been suppressed beyond recognition is sub-Saharan Africa (and remote parts of Latin America). Even today, within African Christianity and Islam, these old religious feelings still live and thrive.

So in the early peak stage, until the world completely integrates these repressed elements into its spirituality, the last great power of history, sub-Saharan Africa (and to some extent Latin America), because of its spiritual power, will have the strongest influence.



Conclusion

In this paper I've tried to explain the three macrohistories based on Age, Sex, and Caste, and what they seem to tell us about the future. If you find them to be true broad descriptions of history, you could, I'm sure, find in them other suggestions about where we're headed, based on your own interpretation of them from your own personal experience.

THE END

Those of you interested in the logic behind the forecasts in more detail may contact me via e-mail at elitov (at) hotmail.com to obtain a signed copy of the book, The Spiritual Imperative: Sex, Age, and the Last Caste (Listprice: US$20).

Image: "Yin-Yang, Computer Generated Image" by mamjodh, courtesy of Creative Commons license.