Apocalyptic Grace

Book excerpt: Here is a unique exploration of the five eras or Worlds of cultural (socioeconomic, psychological, spiritual) evolution. Stephen Powell, a seasoned anthropologist and psychotherapist, illuminates the hunter/gatherer, horticultural, agrarian, and industrial/technological epochs in unexpectedly fresh and timely ways. Foremost, the diversity of these Worlds is still within us all. World One, reaching back to 50,000 BCE, was a time of widely accepted shamanic assumptions. World Two (10,000 to 3500 BCE) developed small-scale horticulture and tribal cohesion, but also unprecedented social conformity. World Three (from about 3500 BCE) experienced the global rise of caste-structured hierarchies with the World Religions as cultural compensation. Beginning in the 1600s, World Four developed a mechanistic, secularized worldview, accentuated by individualism, popular culture and a capitalist agenda. Finally, Powell describes the beginnings of a new, fifth set of world assumptions a world without borders. Here we may start to integrate humanitarian aspects of the preceding Worlds, embracing multiculturalism without losing cultural integrity. Moreover, the wisdom traditions from each time appear to hold seed truths of the profound changes that mark the end-time and the beginning of each World. Apocalyptic Grace leads the reader on a stunning survey of this remarkable journey.