I’m not disputing your general thesis, but the period following the collapse of Bronze Age civilization after 1200 BC was a time of social simplification but also an era of sages and prophets that led directly into a brilliant cultural explosion after 800 BC. Both things can go together.
Collapse doesn't manufacture insight. It strips away the institutional weight that keeps the filter locked in place. Once the palace bureaucracies and trade networks fall apart, so does the pressure holding perception in a narrow channel. The sages after 1200 BC weren't produced by catastrophe. Their filter loosened because the structures suppressing direct perception were gone.
That's not the same as catastrophe creating modern thinking. The instrument already had that range before the Bronze Age fell apart. Collapse removed interference, it didn't install capacity. The cultural explosion after 800 BC looks like emergence because it was finally visible, not newly created.
Both things you're describing are real. Social simplification happened, the sages followed. But causation runs from reduced interference to increased access, not from catastrophe to cognition.
I’m not disputing your general thesis, but the period following the collapse of Bronze Age civilization after 1200 BC was a time of social simplification but also an era of sages and prophets that led directly into a brilliant cultural explosion after 800 BC. Both things can go together.
Collapse doesn't manufacture insight. It strips away the institutional weight that keeps the filter locked in place. Once the palace bureaucracies and trade networks fall apart, so does the pressure holding perception in a narrow channel. The sages after 1200 BC weren't produced by catastrophe. Their filter loosened because the structures suppressing direct perception were gone.
That's not the same as catastrophe creating modern thinking. The instrument already had that range before the Bronze Age fell apart. Collapse removed interference, it didn't install capacity. The cultural explosion after 800 BC looks like emergence because it was finally visible, not newly created.
Both things you're describing are real. Social simplification happened, the sages followed. But causation runs from reduced interference to increased access, not from catastrophe to cognition.
Nancy