集団苦の解決
人間個人の四苦八苦に加えて人間集団の独裁・戦争・核・破局の四苦があり人類を超えて全生類の破滅に至りかねない金字塔文明は気候変動・種大量絶滅・環境破壊・核戦争などの地球問題群を生み世界終末時計85秒前で時を刻みつつある。
今迄発見された二十種余の人類は進化の過程で淘汰され現存人類ホモ・サピエンスが優勝劣敗・弱肉強食により残ったと考えられて来たが先行人類の遺伝子が現人類に保存されておることが判明しむしろ共存・交雑・吸収と考えられる様になった。
約一万年前温暖化による農業・生産革命によって蓄積された富は約五千年前都市・社会革命を起こし都市間の競争・戦争は統率・支配の必要から権力集中・一極支配の金字塔都市国家を生み差別・搾取・植民・奴隷・階級・環境破壊などを生んだ。
物・力・金の集中により生産・交流に便のチグリス・ユーフラテス川にメソポタミア文明（都市化、社会革命、約5千年前）ナイル川にエジプト文明、インダス川にインダス文明、黄河流域の中国文明が生まれ暦法・文字・王侯・神話等が誕生した。
エジプト古王国第四王朝カフラー王（統治2550-2530B.C.）が真東向き自らの顔と百獣の王の体のスフインクスを作らせ背後の両神殿でミイラ化・霊化されギザの三大金字塔の真中の中位（大は彼の父小は子）金字塔から昇天するという話である。
スフインクスと金字塔は王が昇天し神と一体となり太陽・季節の運行・宇宙法則と一体となることの表示であり王の権威付けでしたが約千年後に首まで埋もれたスフインクスは掘り出され太陽神として崇拝され大衆からも崇められるに至った。
王・法王・王国・国家の権威は神話により大衆もその信仰をして成立していますがスフインクスの鼻は偶像崇拝を禁ずるムスリムにより切り落とされたとのことである。神話・宗教等の象徴主義を説いたカッシラーは「国家の神話」を書いている。
トインビーは「歴史の研究」で21の文明は自然人間環境と創造的な指導者の二条件で発生し気候変動・人口増等の挑戦に応戦し成長するが失敗すると指導者は対応能力を失い内部分裂が進み権力強化に大衆は反抗し文明は解体されると説いている。
人間集団は指導者が本当に普遍法により公共性があり良ければ社会は共存・共栄するが法・倫理によらず利己的で悪ければ分裂・崩壊する。一極集中の金字塔文明・国家は肥大化すると小集団共同社会の親密を失い集団業三毒・３M・五禍に陥る。
それを180度転換したのが約2千５百年前からの普遍的Dharma, Dao, Dei等による宗教・精神・文化革命であり、普遍法三学・３H（holy life, heart, harmony)・五福の分かち合い循環的命帝網文化であり真・善・美・聖（全体健全）修養である。
Solutions to Collective Suffering
In addition to the Four Sufferings and Eight Sufferings experienced by individual human beings, humanity faces four forms of collective suffering: dictatorship, war, nuclear catastrophe, and civilizational collapse. Our pyramidal civilization, which may bring destruction not only to humanity but to all forms of life, has generated a cluster of planetary crises―including climate change, mass extinction of species, environmental destruction, and the danger of nuclear war―while the Doomsday Clock ticks at 85 seconds to midnight.
Until recently, it was commonly thought that more than twenty known kinds of ancient humans had been eliminated in the course of evolution, leaving Homo sapiens as the survivor through the “survival of the fittest” and the law of the strong preying upon the weak. The discovery that genes inherited from earlier human populations remain within living humans, however, has increasingly revealed a more complex history of coexistence, interbreeding, and genetic absorption.
About 10,000 years ago, climatic warming accompanied the agriculture/ production revolution. The resulting accumulation of wealth contributed, about 5,000 years ago, to an urban/social revolution. Competition and warfare among cities created demands for coordination and control, encouraging concentrations of power and the emergence of centrally dominated, pyramidal city-states. These systems in turn fostered discrimination, exploitation, colonization, slavery, social classes, and environmental degradation.
Through the concentration of matter, might, and money, civilizations (:urbanization, from civitas) arose along major river systems favorable to production and exchange: Mesopotamian civilization along the Tigris and Euphrates, Egyptian civilization along the Nile, the Indus civilization along the Indus, and Chinese civilization along the Yellow River. Calendars, writing systems, kings, myths, and other institutions developed within these civilizations.
During Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty, King Khafre (reigned approximately 2550–2530 BCE) is traditionally associated with the construction of the Great Sphinx, facing almost due east, with a royal human head and the body of a lion, the king of beasts. Behind it stood temples connected with the royal funerary complex. Khafre’s pyramid occupies the middle position among the three great pyramids at Giza―the largest belonging to his father Khufu and the smaller one to his successor Menkaure. The complex expressed the transformation and celestial ascent of the deceased divine king.
The Sphinx and pyramid thus symbolized the king’s passage into the celestial realm and his association with the gods, the sun, the cycles of nature, and cosmic order. They also reinforced royal authority. About a thousand years later, after the Sphinx had become buried in sand up to its neck, it was excavated and restored under Thutmose IV and increasingly venerated as the solar deity Horemakhet, “Horus in the Horizon,” becoming an object of devotion extending beyond the royal court.
The authority of kings, divine kings, kingdoms, and states has often been legitimized through myths accepted by the wider population. The Sphinx’s missing nose was once popularly attributed to iconoclastic Muslims, although the historical circumstances of its destruction remain uncertain. Ernst Cassirer, who analyzed the symbolic forms of myth and religion, later examined the political power of myth in The Myth of the State.
In A Study of History, Arnold J. Toynbee examined some twenty-one civilizations. In his interpretation, civilizations arise through creative responses to challenges presented by their natural and human environments. They grow as creative minorities successfully respond to challenges such as climatic change and social pressures. When these responses fail, however, leadership loses its creative capacity, internal divisions deepen, dominant minorities increasingly rely upon coercive power, and alienated populations withdraw their allegiance. Civilization then moves toward disintegration.
Human societies can coexist and flourish when their leaders genuinely serve the common good in accordance with principles extending beyond private interest. But when leadership becomes selfish and ceases to be guided by law and ethics, societies tend toward division and disintegration. As pyramidal civilizations and states based upon centralized power expand, they can lose the intimacy and mutual responsibility characteristic of smaller communities and fall prey to the collective karma of the Triple Poisons, the 3Ms, and the Five Calamities.
Beginning about 2,500 years ago, however, a profound religious, spiritual, and cultural revolution sought to reverse this direction through recognition of universal principles expressed as Dharma, Dao, Dei, and related concepts. In place of pyramidal concentration, it points toward a culture of sharing and circulation grounded in universal Dharma, the Triple Learning, the 3Hs―Holy Life, Heart, and Harmony―and the Five Blessings: a circular and interconnected culture of the Indra-net of life, cultivating Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and Holiness―wholeness and health of the whole.
From pyramidal civilization to the Indra-net culture of life.
From concentration to circulation.
From exploitation to sharing.
From the Triple Poisons to the Triple Learning.
From collective karma to universal Dharma.
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