We can see that our eonic sequence is about globalization, but this is not the same thing as economic globalization. One of the most remarkable properties of our eonic model is the way that it allows us to clarify the question of economic in relation to cultural evolution. In fact, the concept of ‘cultural evolution’ is ambiguous, and we have replaced it with something more specific by creating the rubric of the ‘eonic evolution of civilization’, a very large-scale process indeed, without this obviating the consideration of other forms of ‘evolution’, speaking no doubt informally, in the proliferations of the term ‘evolution’.  This can be seen in our distinction of stream and sequence, which is conveniently flexible and demonstrates an overall ‘master sequence’ of macroevolution, inside of which we see many streams undergoing their own historical narratives or possibly even ‘evolutions’.  This idea of these streams can be taken in any number of ways. We spoke of the stream of Greek history, but we could isolate any set of factors as a stream: the science stream, the philosophy stream, the religion stream. The inherent power of our model can be seen in the way this distinguishes clearly the ‘stream of religious history’ from the ‘eonic evolution of religion’. It is very hard to distinguish the character of early proto-Judaism, i.e. Israelite history in the Axial Age or transition, from the mideonic appearances of other religions. But we see at once that our model does just this and makes the point clear.

Thus we can take the ‘stream of economic history’ or what we can call with a specialized term, the ‘econosequence’ (this is the term from the first edition, but ‘econostream’ might have been better), and study this in relation to the eonic sequence. We could do the same thing with the history of technology, the ‘technosequence’. We can then proceed to study the history of economic systems or technology, or anything else, independently or in relation to the eonic sequence. As we consider the eonic effect and the eonic sequence of transitions we notice that its prime character is cultural in the broadest sense, and only secondarily involved with the evolution of economies. The great and confusing exception is the place of capitalism in the modern transition. So to speak, the econosequence and the eonic sequence come into conjunction and with a thunderclap effect modern capitalism springs into existence, and what’s more just at the Great Divide. This tends to make us associate capitalism with modernity, which is misleading. It also makes us think that the tremendous momentum of this new economic formation can be generalized across history as a master dynamic. In fact, that confusion was in part our starting point as we examined the influence of economic ideology on the gestation of Darwinism.

In our approach we are clearly able to see the limits of the so-called economic interpretation of history. Here the historical systematics of Marx tends to foist an incorrect generalization on the diversity of world history in the midst of trying to get the matter straight. In light of the eonic effect it is hard to maintain the suggestion that it is the economic means of production that drives the whole process of social evolution. The Axial Age shows the many exceptions.  Religions are more than economic cover stories, quite obviously, and we see that the many innovations of our second transition take place in their great diversity against the backdrop of still, by modern standards, sluggishly indolent economies, unable to extricate themselves from slavery. We should be careful here, since, as a descriptive methodology, the economic interpretation is almost a tautology. In every case, a society will clearly reflect the context of the means of production. But that does not work as a master dynamic driving the whole.

Nevertheless, Marx makes a tremendous significant point, almost the same point we making, which is that social evolution is something greater than the question of its capitalist realization in modern times. Let us consider the point in terms of our model. The first issue is that modern capitalism doesn’t really (depending, of course, on how you define it) come into existence prior to the abolition of slavery. But how does this occur? Once again, amazingly, we see that abolitionism appears in our modern transition, indeed, starts its great initiative just at the divide! In fact, we can see that this is just another aspect of our discrete freedom sequence. It is obviously no coincidence that it works out this way. But consider then the question in terms of the ‘eonic sequence’ with its interior discrete freedom sequence.

This is a process of evolution at a higher level than that of the emergence of economic systems. And just at the point of the achievement of this new freedom capitalism of the modern type begins its existence. This, we should note, is how the early generation of emerging liberalism took the matter. Capitalism, to Kant, Thomas Paine, and Adam Smith, was a question of economic freedom. We see how the whole disposition to a new form of economic organization is a definite ‘eonic emergent’ in our sense of some cultural factor showing transformation in relation to the eonic sequence. The distance between Adam Smith and Karl Marx is not so great, and the dialectical reversal arises instantly in the fluidity of the potential of freedom. We see how the crystallization of freedom bifurcates into libertarian and collectivist versions. We need to stand back a bit to see the remarkable way in which the potentiality of freedom at the Great Divide begins to issue into its realizations in dialectically diverging ways. It is a fairly straightforward question of the differing combinations possible in what we define as ‘democracy’ and this in the context of the new capitalist means of production.

The point, in this vast discussion (and our model can adapt itself easily to the many discourses here), is that capitalism is a sub-process in the larger system of the eonic evolution of civilization, and produces a highly efficient form of economic organization, without having the potential to be the master dynamic of historical evolution. It took millennia for social systems to mature to the point where modern capitalism was possible. But the immediate question arises if this is the case: if economic evolution is not the driving force behind Big History, then what is the status of the capitalist system in relation to some future state. Thus neatly we have restated  Marx’s essential point, careful to keep it quite abstract, and short of the claims made about revolutionary socialism, the status of private property. There is a lot to say here, but for the moment this is enough. In a nutshell, we see that econosequence != eonic sequence. As to the future, the answer to our question is that we don’t yet have the answer, but we are left with a final question to conclude the creation of our model: have we reached the end of the eonic sequence?  

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