Chapter 5: Man
Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much... the wheel, New York, wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely the dolphins believed themselves to be more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons. - Douglas Adams
The fifth concept is Mars, whose color is red. He is the human race. Civilized people see people do evil in civilization. They might think that these evils are part of people and that we are evil inside. They fail to see that these evils are caused by civilization and do not understand humans at all. One of the evils that they see is war.
Mars is not always a war God. Peopel are often peaceful. Some hunter-gatherers’ societies have no war. Wars happen in most societies, but they become more common when people leaves Nature. In all human societies men will kill each other because of the need to possess a woman. This is natural human behavior. Civilized societies invented more reasons for people to kill each other. Civilized people fight over unnatural things, like politics, power, property, and money. These things become more common the more civilized a society becomes.
Some thinkers, such as Carl Sagan, blame primitive parts of the brain for warfare. Sagan talks about civilized wars and assumes that they are caused by primitive instincts which civilized progress could some day control. He sees instincts such as aggression or territoriality or the ability to follow leaders as parts of war. Perhaps these instincts do exist as part of us, but we have other instincts. An instinct is not made of just one instinct. Instincts are combinations of feelings. Our overall instincts might actually be peaceful. These feelings can go wrong when things are unnatural, even though they work fine in our natural environment. Many people fail to realize the difference between civilized war and primitive war. Civilization will kill more people in more inhuman ways than primitive war ever would. Progressives who think they can stop war with progress might be mistaken. They will only create an advanced world where people kill with more advanced methods. Civilization can take our instincts and pervert them into something more violent than Nature could produce.
Most civilized wars are started by someone who has something to gain, but does not actually fight. Civilization will manipulate people to accomplish civilized goals. The people who fight are going to gain nothing but suffering. At least an uncivilized warrior will do his own fighting for things that he wants to fight about. A civilized soldier might not want to fight, but he is disciplined to deny his feelings, so he can kill. The civilized army turns people into killing machines that Nature never intended. Families might not want to send their children to war, but the system forces them to do so. Civilized leaders might not want to have a war, but civilized politics makes them support the war. Civilized reasons for war do not come from the primitive brain, but from the insanity of civilization.
Carl Sagan is typical of people who fear our Nature and assume that humans are naturally evil. He also thinks that we have a potential to be good, but sees this potential happening as a result of technological progress. What Sagan fails to realize is that the process he uses to correct the evil is causing the evil. He is evil, even though he tries to do good. He is full of Utopian dreams; his fear and hatred drive him to all kinds of sick, insane, perverted ideas. People like him could destroy the world. They think progress is order and that order will bring peace. They fail to realize that we also has peaceful instincts, which can bring about peace that does not come from order. These instincts must come about naturally. Any forced discipline would pervert our instincts.
We should leave people to do as they want. Small tribal wars may be a working part of life in some environments. What is important is that people keeps the balance with Nature and is part of Nature’s balance. The sacred name of humanity is YESUO, which is where the name Jesus comes from. "Y" is conception, "E" is birth, "S" is learning, "U" is maturity, and "O" is old age. The name is the five stages of Life. Y is the head, E is the left arm, S is the left leg, V is the right Leg, and O is the right hand. We should be standing on Earth. Adam, the first man is Yama, the person you meet when you die, because this person is you. While you are alive you are Tyr, the tree of life and the middle pillar at the center of the temple, balanced between everything.
Progressives might say that countries will one day stop fighting, as humanity advances to become a global nation. A Global nation will not stop war. There is more than one kind of war. Advanced, civilized societies fight members of their own society to keep people in control. People who are dependent on the civilized system, but cannot fit into it, turn to breaking the rules of civilization. In order to control these people, civilization has police, who are soldiers, fighting against their own people. The city streets are a battle zone, worse than any tribal war. Civilization is a war of Man against himself.
Life could happen in many places in the universe. The Earth produced life almost as soon as it was formed. Intelligent life is perhaps rare. The Earth existed for billions of years before it produced intelligent life. These facts seem to indicate that intelligence does not easily occur. It is possible that most planets with life would not produce an intelligent form. The universe is large, so even a rare thing like intelligence could happen many times. Other intelligent life could be very different from us. Some would never develop unnatural technology; others may have progressed as we did, until they almost destroyed themselves. Perhaps a few who survived did so by remembering what they really are. They did not reject themselves; instead, they accepted themselves. They found their Sacred Grove. Before people reaches this stage he must rediscover a few things about ourselves.
Civilized people think that primitive people never have any beautiful images in their stories. They assume that beautiful images are a sign of a civilized society expressing itself, and that beautiful ideas developed only after people became civilized. Most of the scholars who say that primitive people have no beautiful images have probably never read primitive mythology. People, not progress, create culture. Often, the information that civilized thinkers have when they compare primitive societies to their own comes from rumors and direct lies, created by missionaries or businesspeople who want to make the people they need to conquer look bad. Many extremely educated people believe these lies.
Many agricultural societies have stories about boys or girls being killed and planted. These stories are about the crops and not actual people. They are sometimes related to IAO initiation ceremonies. An Englishman named Frazer interpreted these stories as evidence of human sacrifice. He thought primitive people believed that they could make the crops grow by killing people. When better-qualified scholars examined these societies, they found no evidence of actual human sacrifice. They found that the children are the loving care that a farmer gives to his field. This give-and-take relationship is the creative mother.
Frazer’s "The Golden Bough" is a popular book on primitive beliefs. Unfortunately, Frazer gives a wrong image of primitive people. He is typical of people who believe that old ignorance and superstition will be replaced by rational progress. Frazer’s book is violent and bloody. Primitive people never did most of the things of which Frazer accuses him. Civilized people are sick enough to think of these things. Another common myth is about a king who is replaced each year. Frazer automatically assumes that the new king killed and ate the old king. The idea of peaceful retirement never occurs to Frazer. He interprets every myth to be a human sacrifice.
Most cultures claim to be founded by someone who gave them their laws. They believe that following these laws makes them better than other people. All people have a similar belief, including Frazer. His law is progress. A common idea in the myths about law is the elimination of human sacrifice. All people seem to dislike human sacrifice and usually accuse other people of practicing human sacrifice, even if it is not true. This accusation helps them to think that their ways are better than the ways of other people. The Jews consider themselves the Chosen People, married to God, and believe that they must obey God’s laws, given to them by Moses. Their Holy books are full of accusations against the Canaanites, who are accused of burning children in sacrifice to Moloch. Canaanite writings have been found by archaeologist at Ugarit. These show the Canaanites to be normal, every-day people. Perhaps they did not burn children to Moloch, and the Jews are probably not the Chosen People, either.
Many cultures believe that the Founder will return. These Messiah ideas are common, especially with people who have been conquered and would like to return to the older ways. They may want a Moses who will lead them to Paradise. Only those who are faithful to the old laws will join the Messiah. Jews wait for the Messiah. Christians believe he came, founded his church, and sacrificed himself to save mankind. They think that God proved he loved us by giving us his only son, Jesus, who will one day return. To be the Chosen, you must sacrifice yourself to the Messiah. Some people actually kill themselves. This kind of human sacrifice does exist, especially in civilized societies that have insane religions that wish to escape from the world and have forgotten normal human behavior.
Civilized religious people think that civilized religions are somehow better than primitive religions. They might call primitive religions "pre-logical." It is easy to think that the religion you were raised to understand is more logical than someone else’s. Progressives think that they will create a more logical religion. I see no reason why religions cannot be fun without being completely logical. Primitive religions do give a meaningful picture of reality. One person might see a great fire; another might see wind, and both might be watching the same tree grow. Trying to make religion logical is just another way Progressives want to sterilize their world.
A primitive holy person like the Native American "Black Elk," who talks about a circle of people, will make more sense than civilized people such as Jesus Christ, Mohammed, or Shakyamuni, who talk about spiritual salvation as if they really knew.
Civilized people think primitive people believe that magic can make rain happen. They do not realize that myths have more than one meaning. Perhaps the rain dances are celebrations. Few people think they can actually make rain. It is civilized people who has left Nature, ignores the rain, and forgets to celebrate it. Perhaps the rain is social bonding that the tribe may experience during a ceremony. The rain priest brings rain. Do not make the mistake of literally interpreting the myth. Perhaps you would have to live in the culture to understand its myths. There are meaningful stories in primitive religion, as well as many different kinds of ideas, because each society has different kinds of people. Frazer did not understand.
Apollonians and Zeus-worshipers also live in primitive societies. You can find all kinds of people in any society. Perhaps mankind naturally produces different people who each contribute a different part to their societies. Civilization has made the mistake of letting the Apollonians and the Zeus-worshipers dominate. Everyone else is forced to conform to ways into which they were not made to fit, or else are cast out as garbage. Black Elk was a Thunder Dreamer who worshipped the Morning Star, a disciplined, puritanical idealist who easily fit in civilization when it conquered his people, but he still had a strong vision of Nature which no civilized person could have. Another Native American named Lame Deer was a much more "fun guy," who had trouble fitting into civilization. I recommend Lame Deer’s book, "Lame Deer Seeker of Visions."
Civilized people think all primitive people are superstitious and limited in point of view. Such civilized people never stop to think that perhaps primitive culture is full of ideas that would compare with, and even sometimes do better than, the greatest of civilized thinkers. All societies, primitive or civilized, have a few individuals who know a lot about religion. Our oldest books of philosophy, from India, Greece, and China date from around 500 BC. All major doctrines and dogmas were developed before these books were written. People may have developed them long before 500 BC. These ideas did not develop as technology developed. An ancient philosophy book is just as good as any written today. There has been no progress in philosophy. All philosophers reinvent arguments, which have been said before, over and over again. The ancient Greek, Plato, is perhaps the best example, because he describes some of the most common philosophical arguments.
The arguments over religion that occur in college religion courses today also happened back in ancient Greece and in the jungles of the Amazon before Columbus. Archeologists have found religious symbols from people who lived during the last Ice Age. Perhaps a religious expert from 30,000 BC would know just as much as the greatest religious scholar today. Also, a religious fanatic from 30,000 BC would have just as many profound beliefs as the religious fanatic of today. An atheist from 30,000 BC would have just as many doubts as an atheist of today.
Sometimes a civilized person will point out something like a primitive belief in magic and assume that the belief is not part of his or her own culture. If you show this person the same belief in his or her culture, the person will say, "That’s just a leftover, outdated idea that will probably vanish some day." I don’t think it will. A belief in magic will exist in all cultures. This particular civilized person perhaps did not believe in magic and assumed that progress will eliminate the belief. That person may assume that skepticism is the product of a more advanced form of thinking that only civilized progress could develop. What he fails to see is that all societies, even primitive ones, have skeptics. Skepticism is not a new development. There is probably the same average number of skeptics in your society as in any society, primitive or civilized. There are progressive people who believe in magic and assume that civilization is actually advancing magic. They might even accuse primitive people of not being magical enough.
Civilized people think that civilized people are smarter. They think that progress is a continuation of evolution that makes life smarter. What they fail to see is that evolution has no aim. We do not know what will evolve as the Earth’s Gaia shifts about. Evolution does not necessarily make animals smarter. The mind is just another organ. In evolution, organs in a genetic line might change from time to time, but this change depends on what the environment lets happen. Sometimes a big brain fits, sometimes it does not. We just happen to be a thinking animal.
Civilization does not make a smarter mind necessary. The human mind developed as a hunter-gatherer. The hunter-gatherer’s life style requires much more use of the mind than a civilized lifestyle. As part of Nature, you must use your brain the way you are biologically made to use it. Primitive people develop a complex knowledge of their land and lifestyle. They also develop a sharp understanding of what it all means. They live as natural people and understand as natural people. Civilized people, who do not understand, cannot see the primitive wisdom and call primitive people ignorant and superstitious, when actually it is the civilized person who is ignorant. You do not need a high intelligence to survive in civilization. In a civilized society our brain can become permanently damaged, and yet technology could keep you alive and even allow you to reproduce.
Civilized Progressives say that the brain got bigger and then invented civilization. This claim can not be true, because the brain has been the same size for some time, long before civilization. Humans evolved to the present form thousands of years before progress. We are still genetically the same as we were, and we still have the same mental abilities as our ancestors. We will not always be this way. Progress might change us, like it changed those little nervous dogs that shake all the time. Domestication might one day eliminate our ability to think, but it is not making anyone smarter.
Even if Progressives know that primitive people has the same abilities, they think a civilized education system makes them use more of their mind. A civilized scholar might consider himself brilliant because he can understand more about one subject than most people. All he has really done is addicted himself to one subject, which takes little brainpower. Any idiot can use civilized educational methods and become addicted to one or more kinds of knowledge. This addiction does not allow the whole mind to be used, but is an unnatural distortion of the mind’s abilities.
Stories in a civilized culture may have been adapted from more primitive cultures. Western culture has adapted many stories from the ancient Greeks, who are said to have told beautiful stories. The ancient Greeks were not technologically advanced. If their culture were still here today, most scholars would probably consider them primitive. The ancient Greeks adopted many of their ideas from other cultures, some of which were quite primitive. The Greeks also held ideas from their own more primitive past. I do not think civilization invented any beautiful images, but civilization did teach mankind new forms of ugliness.
Practices of the Native Americans such as scalp collecting were introduced to them by civilized people, who paid money for scalps. Actually, it was civilized people who did most of the scalping for money. The governments wanted Indian land so they paid for Indian scalps. Scalp collecting repulsed many Native Americans. Progress can corrupt a culture and make it evil, such as the civilized need for more land, which guided the government to collect scalps. Primitive people do not have that kind of civilized need unless a civilization has corrupted them. In most first contacts between primitive and civilized people the primitive people are peaceful. Usually, civilization starts teaching them new forms of violence the minute they meet them. Most primitive people think civilized people are crazy; they are right. Many of them have visited civilization and turned back to a primitive life. Few primitive people accept civilization by their own free will. Civilization is forced on people.
Perhaps insane people who were affected by civilization committed most of the cases of actual human sacrifices. The Englishman, Captain Cook, tells a famous story about human sacrifice. The Tahitian king ordered a human sacrifice before a war. Many scholars consider the society in Cook’s story typical of uncivilized people. The Truth is that we do not know enough about this culture to say what really happened. Pehaps the king wanted the sacrifice for political reasons. Perhaps their culture was ordered in a way that the ritual helped to reinforce the king’s power over his subjects. Perhaps most Tahitian people did not like the sacrifice, but did not know how to stop it. I think the Tahitians had less technology than the English, but there political system was just as civilized. Perhaps there was no murder and the English misunderstood the ritual. Perhaps the whole story is a lie.
Civilized people will blame primitive people for something civilization did. Many people think that the Indians killed off the buffaloes. In fact, it was civilized people who converted the buffaloes’ land to farmland and caused the buffaloes to die off. The Native Americans had hunted the buffalo for thousands of years before civilized people came along. The Plains Indians had a special relationship with the buffalo, which civilized people could not understand.
Some reports of human sacrifice are the result of misunderstanding. The Protestant English settlers in 17th century America mistook initiation ceremonies among the Native Americans for human sacrifices. They even thought that he Native American worshiped a Devil called Okee. Christianity had all ready influenced these Native Americans before the English arrived. Okee was a name for spirit used by Catholic Jesuits missionaries. A mixture of Mediterranean, Native American and African Culture grew in North America before the British colonize the country. Okee worship may have resembled the half Catholic half Pagan religion that we find in many South American countries. The Protestants were not wrong to call Okee the Devil. A myth has no one right story. A misinterpretation of a story is a new story. In fact all religions are made of misinterpretation. The problem is that some people let this misinterpretation cause then to misinterpret real life.
The lies are combined with other lies and become bigger lies. It is interesting to see how civilized thinkers explain why primitive cultures commit human sacrifices. They have no evidence, but still explain what they do not know. They say that primitive people are full of fear, which comes from ignorance, so they use magic to fight this fear and commit human sacrifices. Civilized people invented this lie because of his own fear and ignorance. A civilized person will go into the jungle and feel fear, but a primitive person who has lived all his life in the jungle will feel at home. The Natural person understands Nature and does not fear it. Civilized people have invented a cruel image of Nature. He thinks that primitive man is always struggling to survive. These civilized people fail to realize that the lifestyle of a hunter-gatherer is usually a lot more relaxed than that of civilized people. Hunter-gatherers have no need to fight Nature.
Fear has a way causing people to invent stories that support the fear. Such stories are so ridiculous that anyone who does not have the fear can see through them. Fear and ignorance are what keep civilization together: Fear of people and ignorance of where people belongs. I tend to mistrust most reports of human sacrifice; the evidence is questionable.
To study hunter-gatherer cultures I used information published by reputable academic institutions. I later found out that much of the information about African Bushmen, African Pygmies, South American Natives and New Guinea tribes might have been fabricated by dishonest people. Back in anthropology class I was shown movies which portray primitive people. I later discovered that these movies are almost always made using actors. The movies portray the anthropologist beliefs. This is not science. Science is supposed to discover facts. These facts should not be considered true unless the observations have been tested many times by more than one person.
Anthropologists have a tendency to believe each other and seldom check their facts. Have you ever seen a shrunken head in a museum or textbook? Books might claim that Jivaro Indians, who believed that they were keeping their enemy’s soul and power, made the head. They claim that the Jivaros have a secret method of shrinking heads. Usually, they never check to see if these heads are real. A real shrunken head would not look like that. Actual shrunken sloth or monkey heads are shriveled. Most of the heads in the museums are animal skin stretched across wooden molds. Civilized people made the heads to sell to tourists. The story about souls was probably invented to increase sales, and anthropologists bought it. Perhaps the real Jivaros had nothing to do with this scam. If an anthropologist realizes that the head is a fake, the anthropologist might still insist that long ago the Jivaros really made shrunken heads because the books say they did.
Anthropologists claim to make field studies. Most field studies are made by young graduate students who will say anything to get a Ph.D. Anthropologists usually buy information from a culture with money, weapons, tobacco, and cocaine. People quickly learn to make a profit by inventing the stories the anthropologist expects to hear. If you have money and want to hear a story about human sacrifice, guess what happens?
Anthropology books are full of strange reports that make primitive people seem cruel. While most of these reports could be lies, a few could be true, but I question just how true. A writer may have given a sinister tone to something harmless. He might not mention how often people really practice these cruel practices or how closely anyone follows the tradition. There may be rebels who object to the tradition. There may be reformers who do not practice the tradition. The whole tradition might be a myth that the people invented to remind themselves not to perform such acts. Perhaps primitive people were normal people just like anyone else.
Scholars from England are notorious for writing against primitive religion. Perhaps there is a reason for these writings. England exterminated thousands of cultures all over the world, all in the name of progress. The English caused overpopulation, poverty, and disease. The Nazis were never as insane as the English. Those English scholars, who lived during the British Empire’s mightiest period, considered themselves special. This vision of self-specialness made them feel that they needed to change other cultures, never stopping to consider that the thoughts of other people might also have value. Those cultures are now dead. We can no longer study them to see what the truth might have been.
It is possible that no primitive society survived into the 20th century. All were assimilated by the larger civilization before 1890. 20th century anthropologist who claim to be studying primitive societies are lying.
Sources and related topics
Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden. Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. Published by Ballantine Books, 1978. http://www.carlsagan.com/
Frazer James, The Golden Bough. A Study in Magic and Religion, 1890. http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/frazer/
John Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks. Being the life story of a holy man of the Oglala Sioux, 1932.
Marshall Sahlins, The Original Affluent Society. 1966. http://www.eco-action.org/dt/affluent.html