The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis

Beginning in the tenth century, a new energy regime slowly began to take hold across Europe. The harnessing of horses, water, and wind power spawned a dramatic growth in population, the rebirth of urban life, the reintroduction of commerce and trade, and the resurgence of literacy and learning.

Christianity, which was initially a literate, urban, religious movement, changed its orientation to accommodate a largely illiterate rural peasantry. The introspective musings of the first urban Christians gave way to a rote catechism and blind faith, laced with magical rites and superstitions carried over from the pre-Christian era.
The empathic surg

universal language of the Empire, gave way to local languages and idioms as whole populations slipped back into a purely oral culture and consciousness. Life was cloistered, lived behind closed walls in thousands of little valleys and mountain fortresses