What are the ideological characteristics of western society?

Individualism, liberalism and legal thought are the most important characteristics of western society today. Tracing back to the source, these all come from Judaism and Greek philosophy in the Axial Age.

The pre-axial era is characterized by the fact that the material world and the spiritual world have not been completely separated. Correspondingly, the Jewish point of view is that suffering is because you have committed a crime, so it is your punishment. For the Israeli nation, the sin is the same, and the whole nation is punished for violating the contract with God. Therefore, the moral stain will be washed away by "washing sin", which is only the initial clue of moral conscience. At this point, personal responsibility has not yet arrived.

In the Axial Age, the causal relationship between suffering and crime is questioned. The Book of Job concentrated on expressing this doubt. The Book of Job sharply asks: Why does an upright man suffer so much? But this questioning brings another fear: if suffering does not come from sin, where does it come from? How to explain it? At this time, the explanation of suffering has shifted to ungodliness, and this ungodliness is a personal crime, and the threat of God's punishment for this crime can be balanced by forgiveness and redemption. The way to seek forgiveness is no longer to wash sin, but to repent. In the process of learning repentance, human beings entered the kingdom of conscience. Personal guilt marks that human beings realize that they are a single wrongdoer, which is the beginning of self in western civilization. Only an independent self has the ability to know and repent of his sins. Therefore, everyone must and can only be responsible for their own actions. The Jewish prophet Jeremiah said, "I will use the law to limit them." This is one of the most important moments in western history, and the concept of legal system has sprouted. In ancient Greece, Socrates was the first person who really realized the importance of personal conscience-he proved with his own life that human conscience can achieve something more precious than life, that is, freedom. Because people are miracles, people are conscious and can know the truth. Truth is the product of human thinking, which is open and accessible to anyone who wants to think. In Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus and antigone by Sophocles, they praised this behavior of sacrificing their lives in pursuit of conscience and morality regardless of suffering. Especially in the civil life of the ancient Greek city-states, individual conscience has a real meaning, that is, the detailed division of various crimes in the ethical code and criminal law. Because everyone's self-consciousness clearly knows whether he is guilty or not, it is no longer the gods or kings who decide everything, but what will play a key role in western civilization in the future-human reason.