We're living through a meaning crisis.
The hollow pursuit of more stuff that never satisfies. The emptiness behind social media metrics. The sense that we're constantly entertained but rarely engaged. We've traded our dense needs — growth, love, self-realization — for cheap substitutes: money, status, endless distraction. Calorically full, but nutritionally starved.
The meaning crisis is a dwindling of the things that have historically nourished us. Things like purpose, belonging, and the sense that life is about more than just getting through another day.
The problem runs deeper than any of our individual choices. It's baked into the foundation of how our culture operates – what we reward, celebrate, and are taught to chase. To call it like it is, the values underlying our systems are producing emptiness at scale.
When we think about solutions to such a hairy problem, it's easy to get overwhelmed. To feel like we need a total rewiring of society. I tend to think that's the case. But where would we even begin?
Enter: my new obsession – the Axial Age. Walk with me.
2,500 years ago, civilizations were breaking down across the globe. People felt lost, institutions were crumbling, the old ways of making sense of life weren't working anymore.
And then things changed. Historians call it the Axial Age — named because human consciousness seemed to pivot on an axis, turning inward for the first time. This era was the last time humanity evolved its entire value system.
And the same raw materials that created that transformation? They're present today.
Before the Axial Age, meaning wasn't something you searched for within yourself. It was inherited and automatic. You were born into a tribe with its gods, and your job was simple: keep the group alive and stay on good terms with whoever was running the cosmic show.
Religion was about maintenance, not transformation. Perform the rituals, make the sacrifices, fulfill your assigned role to keep the cosmic order intact. Identity came from the outside-in — you were your function, end of story.
I tend to think today's world looks strikingly similar. We've just swapped the gods. Instead of feeding ancient deities, we feed quarterly earnings, social algorithms, and the endless grind of keeping the machine running. Identity remains defined from the outside in — by what we do for work, what we own, which tribe we belong to — rather than by any inner sense of purpose or direction.
Then something shifted. Between 800 and 200 BCE, almost simultaneously across Greece, India, China, Israel, and Persia, whole societies began asking questions their ancestors never had.
The intellectual firepower that emerged in this window is insane. In Greece: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle probing what it meant to live an examined life. In India, the Buddha and the authors of the Upanishads exploring suffering, liberation, and inner awakening. In China: Confucius and Lao Tzu wrestling with the Dao — "the way" — as guidance for individuals and entire civilizations. In Israel: prophets reframing God not as a protector, but as a moral authority for all people.
These thinkers birthed the big questions we still ponder today — the nature of justice, truth, compassion, virtue. They created the scaffolding that carried humanity forward for the next 2,000 years.
But here's the headline: people turned inward, and society fundamentally changed as a result. This wasn't a political revolution. It was a revolution of wisdom.
The Axial Age began because archaic ways of creating meaning collapsed. The old systems for making sense of life stopped working. Sound familiar?
Today, our institutions are cracking, rituals and beliefs are less central, and our politics are brittle. These aren't problems that political change alone can fix. A new president or new regulations won't cut it. This is the stuff that demands a new foundation.
When we think about transformation, we usually think about the French or American Revolution — massive shifts in power structures. But I don't think that model fits what we need today. Political reform without deeper cultural renewal is just a Band-Aid. If we don't do that foundational work of developing new wisdom and values, we'll just reshape the dysfunction.
We need something deeper. An Axial Age for today.
The original Axial Age didn't happen because a few philosophers got together in a conference room and decided to revolutionize how we think about our lives. It emerged from millions of individuals who started asking different questions. Who stopped accepting that life was just about maintaining the status quo and began exploring what it meant to live differently in the same context.
That's exactly where we are now.
The breakdown we all feel? The sense that the old scripts don't work anymore? It's raw material for big change.
You don't need to wait for institutions to change or for some new cultural leader to appear. The next Axial Age starts with people like you choosing depth over distraction, relationships over status games, creating over consuming.
Your contribution matters more than you think. When you choose to meditate instead of scroll, when you prioritize community over career, when you ask “how can I help?” instead of "how do I get ahead?" — you're not just improving your own life. You're modeling a different way of being that gives others permission to do the same.
This is how cultural shifts actually happen. Bottom-up, person by person, until the new way of being becomes so compelling that systems start reorganizing around it.
We don't need another round of protests (though these never hurt). We need another revolution of wisdom. And it starts with individuals willing to turn inward, do the work, and carry a new culture forward.
The question isn't whether we're capable of this kind of transformation. History shows we are.
The question is: will we be part of it?
If not us, who?
j