The problem with our present Age is that it has lost all bearings. Our Machine Age, aka the fag end of the Kali Yuga, is so infatuated with the idea of Progress that it has obliterated all reference to what we can call primordial integrity.
The four Ages in both Greek and Indian cosmological thought reference a progressive degradation of spiritual possibility. The Golden Age degrades into the Silver, then the Bronze and finally the Iron Age. We are now in the late Iron Age, and have no cogent memory of the previous Ages. It’s as if they never existed. In fact, according to the perverted logic of the Iron Age, things have never been better. The late Iron Age or the Machine Age has defined itself as the Age of Progress, which is the absolute inversion of spiritual fact.
People commonly think that the present age represents the climax of development over many thousands of years. This has everything to do with the exaltation of technology, which represents power. People commonly think that power represents development. People commonly think that the telephone, for example, represents an advancement over previous means of communication. Early man, it is stated, could only grunt his thoughts- let alone articulate them. But modern man can not only articulate his thoughts, but he can transmit them over vast distances via the power of technology. Modern man is thus an obviously superior being.
This framing of the evolution of man as a progressive development over time has been completely seductive. Practically everyone believes it. Only crazy people believe that the past represents anything other than an anticipation of our present development: man has never been so smart and never so capable as he is today.
Science has become the religion of the Machine Age. Science is defined as the continuously advanced investigation of the universe; we know more and more over time about who and what we are. But in fact, we know less and less. Human understanding develops a more and more abstracted knowledge of the universe which is illustrated by the advancing power of technology. The power of technology comes to define an increasingly impoverished knowledge of man as spirit.
We live in a time in which the advancement of analytical thought as illustrated in science and technology defines the supreme development of man. This very development of science and technology which defines Progress is of course destroying the planet. Our exalted God, the idol of Progress, is strangulating us. But none can believe that this is really happening. Most people believe we will invent a solution to outwit impending catastrophe. Most people believe we are way too smart to commit global ecocide and suicide. Most people believe that Progress will not fail us.
