[Note: This is the fifty-third sample from my rough draft of
a far from finished new book, Wild, Free, & Happy. The Search field on the right side will find
words in the full contents of all rants and reviews. These samples are not freestanding
pieces. They will be easier to
understand if you start with sample 01, and follow the sequence listed HERE —
if you happen to have some free time. If
you prefer audiobooks, Michael Dowd is in the process of reading and recording
my book HERE.
[Continued from sample
52]
ABRAHAMIC
WEB
Mesopotamian cultures preserved many traditional stories from
long, long ago. The tales began as oral
traditions, and quite a few were later inscribed on clay tablets, many of which
are still readable. These tablets date
as far back as 3500 B.C. Much later, around
586 B.C., Hebrew people were living in exile in Babylon. Most scholars agree that the writing of the
Torah began in Babylon, a project to create a lasting record of older
traditions. The Torah contains the five
books of Moses. In the Bible, these five
books are called Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
In Genesis, a lad named Abraham appeared. Abdullah Öcalan wrote that Abraham has been
celebrated as the founding father of monotheistic religion in three scriptures,
first in the Torah, then the Bible, and later the Qur’an. Abraham was the patriarch of Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam — which is why these three are known as Abrahamic
religions. All three provide a stage for
characters including Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Noah, and Moses. All three believe in angels, judgment day,
heaven for the good folks, and hell for everyone else. All of their prophets were male.
It’s interesting to note that some of the values, ideas, and
themes in ancient Sumerian legends have left their fingerprints on stories in
Abrahamic scriptures. These seem to be
an indication of the Mesopotamian web influencing the Abrahamic cultures, which
then spread the ideas to distant realms.
Today, some of these traditions are known to more than a billion people. Let’s take a quick peek at how they compare,
and pay a few visits to other points of interest.
Creation
A few pages back, I mentioned a Babylonian creation myth, in
which Marduk killed the goddess Tiamat, created the world with her body, and
then created humans. Over the span of
several thousand years, numerous Mesopotamian societies created a wide variety
of stories, and Marduk makes guest appearances in many. Some say he was the son of Enki.
Older than the Babylonian story was a Sumerian creation story
that starred the god Enki, and the goddess Ninmah. Once upon a time, the gods and goddesses were
feeling overworked, so they decided to invent servants. While preparing to create humans, they got
into the mood for spiritual work by drinking “overmuch” and becoming roaring
drunk. Consequently, because our
creators were totally sloshed, every human has at least one serious defect. (Now the world makes perfect sense!)
Over the years, reputable researchers have worked hard to
decipher characters that were etched on clay tablets thousands of years ago, in
a long extinct dialect. Their
translations present us with a sanitized version of this drunken creation story
that was safe to share with innocent children.
They tell us that the gods created humans from “clay.” Öcalan, writing in the comfort of his luxurious
prison cell, enjoyed the freedom to sidestep a scholarly obligation to disguise
embarrassing ancient raunchiness. He
wrote, “It does not take much interpretative skill to realize that the
narrative suggests that these servants were created from the feces of the
gods.” Holy shit! Walking turds!
Let us now turn our attention to the Abrahamic version of the
creation story. In Genesis, humans were
created in the Garden of Eden, a wilderness paradise. Adam was made first, and then Eve was made
from his rib. Humans were the creator’s
masterpiece, made in his image. The
first two humans had everything they needed — food, water, clean air, a perfect
ecosystem, and a hot date.
They could remain in paradise as long as they obeyed just one
simple rule — don’t eat apples from one forbidden tree, or you will be severely
punished. There were many other trees in
the garden, and it was perfectly OK to eat as much of their fruit as you
wished. Of course, just 14 short verses
after the stern warning, they chose to break the one and only rule.
The creator was infuriated.
He tossed them some leather clothes, and threw them out of
paradise. Their punishment for
disobeying divine instructions was to till the ground from which they came —
condemned to spend the rest of their lives chained to the backbreaking drudgery
of farming (Genesis 3:1-24). Eve was gullible
and dim, as was Adam.
The Qur’an also tells a version of creation that includes
Adam, Eve, forbidden fruit, and nudity.
Humans may be the only animals that are embarrassed by their
nakedness. Like the Sumerian story, the
first humans were created from clay (soil from the earth).
So, both the Sumerian and Abrahamic creation stories imply
that humans are less than brilliant. Both
also introduce the existence of a cosmic hierarchy. Deities are all-powerful, immortal, and often
short tempered. Gods are our masters, and
good humans always obey our masters. Complex
societies can work more smoothly when obedience is believed to be virtuous, and
the mobs behave in an orderly manner. Wild,
free, and happy societies had no masters or hierarchies.
Flood
In the Sumerian story of the great flood, the booze-headed
gods had become thoroughly sick of humans.
There were way too many of them, and they were now making so much noise
that the gods couldn’t sleep at night.
So, the way to cleanse the land of these noxious primate pests was to
unleash a great flood and drown them all.
At this point, the god Enki told the king of Sumer, Ziusudra,
to build a large barge, gather up his family, and specimens of the various
animal species, and spare them from the coming floods. So he did.
Then, it rained, and rained, and rained, generating a great flood that
lasted seven days. The world got much
quieter, and the gods slept much better.
Ziusudra made an offering to Enki, and then his family got to work
repopulating the Earth.
Floods were serious bad juju in Sumer, because the normal
season for flooding in the Tigris Euphrates watershed corresponded to the time
when wheat and barley crops were normally ripe.
If the un-harvested grain was suddenly washed away, hunger times followed,
and gravediggers would work overtime. Myths
provided an explanation for why the gods sometimes punished them (humans are
annoying).
In the remarkably similar Abrahamic flood story, the god
Yahweh instructed Noah to build an ark.
God was thoroughly sick of humans, and regretted creating them. He saw humans as being thoroughly wicked —
every thought that crossed their minds was evil. They were hopeless, a mistake (Genesis 6:5-7). God told Noah to build an ark and load it
with critters. Then it rained for forty
days and forty nights, and the mountains were covered. The flood lasted 150 days. Every nonaquatic critter drowned. The creator was happy again.
Unfortunately, the small group of surviving humans who
stepped off of the ark were the same inherently flawed critters who had boarded
it, and would now proceed to repopulate the Earth. God sighed, and then took pity on his
imperfect evil-loving boo-boos. “I will
not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of
man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more everything
living, as I have done.” (Genesis
8:21) In Islam, Noah is also celebrated
as a great prophet. The Qur’an presents
a similar version of the flood story, a tale of immoral unbelievers who were
drowned for their wrongs.
Myths seem to indicate how ideas traveled via ancient webs. In Greece, river floods were almost unknown,
but their myths still included flood stories, likely reflecting a Mesopotamian
influence. In one tale, Zeus got furiously
pissed off at the sins of humankind, and decided it was flood time. Prometheus discovered the plan, and told his
son Deucalion to build an ark or chest.
Floods arrived, and Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha (Pandora’s daughter)
floated for nine days and nights, until they safely landed on Mount
Othrys. They recreate humans by throwing
stones behind their back, from which people are born.
In the Norse story of Ragnarök, the humanlike gods subdued
the four forces of nature. Of course,
nature violently broke loose, and gave the arrogant control freak gods their
bloody just rewards. The whole world
burned, and was then was submerged by floods.
Earth was cleansed, healed, and renewed.
Greek myths also mention that, from time to time, fires destroyed the
world.
When you toss a stone into still water, ripples fan out in expanding
circles. The apocalyptic culture of
ancient Mesopotamia can seem to be a splash that rippled around the world, disturbing
the very long era of kinder and gentler cultures that preceded it.
Herder
vs. Farmer
Jared Diamond
wrote that Mesopotamia was unusual because it was home to a number of plant and
animal species that were suitable for domestication. Early hunter-gatherers were delighted to
discover abundant wild foods. They
ceased being nomads, eventually gobbled up too much of the abundance, and began
fooling around with domestication.
The friction between farmers and herders is very old. Farmers clustered along the floodplains of
waterways. Crops were habitual heavy
drinkers and, in lucky times, they could produce generous harvests of nutrient-rich
grains and pulses (peas, lentils, etc.).
Farming was hard work. It chained
you to a piece of land, where the food stored in your granary could provide an
irresistible temptation to nomadic raiders, violent parasites.
Floodplains were primo real estate for both farmers and
herders. Herders managed livestock that
had a serious addiction to grass and water.
In the eyes of livestock, a lush field of wheat and barley was a
paradise of yummy grass. Was it the
farmer’s job to protect his fields, or the herder’s job to keep his critters in
the hills? Herding was an attractive choice
for people disinterested in backbreaking drudgery, folks who preferred the
freedom of nomadic living.
Myths preserve the enduring friction between farmers and
herders. Sumerians told a story about
the lovely goddess Inanna, who was courted by Dumuzid (a herder), and Enkimdu
(a farmer). She chose the herder, the
more prudent choice.
Much later, this story is echoed in the Abrahamic tradition,
by the story Cain (farmer) and Abel (herder).
God did not favor Cain’s offering, but gladly accepted Abel’s. This hurt Cain’s feelings, so he murdered his
brother, which did not amuse God. Cain
was banished, wandered away, and built the city of Enoch.
In both stories, the farmer appears inferior. The Sumerian and Abrahamic traditions were strongly
influenced by the culture of nomadic pastoralism. For example: “Neither shall ye build house,
nor sow seed, nor plant vineyard, nor have any: but all your days ye shall
dwell in tents; that ye may live many days in the land where ye be
strangers.” (Jeremiah 35:7)
Bruce Chatwin wrote, “The prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos,
and Hosea were nomadic revivalists who howled abuse at the decadence of
civilization. By sinking roots in the
land, by laying house to house and field to field, by turning the Temple into a
sculpture gallery, the people had turned from their God.”
Chatwin also mentioned that the name Cain means metal-smith,
and that in several languages the words for “violence” and “subjugation” are
linked to the discovery of metal, and the malevolent arts of technology. Warfare became much bloodier. The pages of the Old Testament document the
violent deaths of up to several million people, and the destruction of many
cities. For example:
“And so it was, that in the seventh day the battle was
joined: and the children of Israel slew of the Syrians an hundred thousand
footmen in one day.” (Kings 1, 20:29) “But
the Syrians fled before Israel; and David slew of the Syrians seven thousand
men which fought in chariots, and forty thousand footmen, and killed Shophach
the captain of the host.” (Chronicles 1, 19:18)
Jared Diamond discussed God’s instructions to Hebrew
warriors, regarding the proper treatment of heathens. When an ordinary city you are attacking does
not surrender, besiege it, kill every male, enslave the women, children, and
cattle, and take what you want. On the
other hand, when attacking cities that worship false gods, like the Hittites,
Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, “thou shalt save
alive nothing that breatheth.” (Deuteronomy 20:10-18) Diamond noted that Joshua faithfully
slaughtered every person in over 400 cities.
METAPHYSICAL
WHIRLWINDS
Wild cultures were local and simple, and their notions of the
cosmos, if any, were quite different from the religions of civilization. With the emergence of farming and herding, populations
grew, ecosystems got pounded, and bloody conflicts became more numerous and
destructive. Religions developed a number
of new and unusual mutations. Old
fashioned traditions of respect and reverence for creation often got hurled
overboard. Civilization was focused on
growth, wealth, status seeking, dominance, and other quirky kinks.
Multiply
and Subdue
By the time that the Abrahamic scriptures had been written
down, the notion of human supremacy was well established in the Fertile
Crescent. Indeed, the human saga is a
long story of our cleverness, our tireless expansion into every land, and the
tumultuous “progress” we unleashed.
A classic example of this mindset appears in Genesis. Immediately after creating Adam and Eve, the
first instructions that God gave them were: “Be fruitful, and multiply, and
replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea,
and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the
earth.” (Genesis 1:28)
Humans were made in God’s image, the world was made for
humans, and only humans matter (no mention of limits or foresight). Our holy mission was to multiply, subdue, and
dominate. The descendants of Adam and
Eve have displayed exceptional skill at achieving these objectives. Unintended consequences now include the climate
crisis, surging extinctions, soaring population, pollution, deforestation, and
on and on.
Biblical scholars have reported that Earth was created
between 4000 B.C. and 3000 B.C., some calculating specifically 3137 B.C., but scientists
have some doubts. Scholars who study
historic demographic trends estimate that in that era, humankind had a
population between 7 to 14 million.
Almost all of the planet still looked a lot like an ecological paradise. Water in the Mississippi, Rhine, and Thames
was safe to drink. The Irish rainforest
was full of stags, wolves, and boars.
Writing is a fantastically powerful technology, for both
illuminating and casting spells. If
there was a deep cave somewhere in which God was unable to read our every
thought, some might be tempted to question whether divine instructions given to
a world of 14 million are still wise and appropriate in a world zooming toward
8 billion. In the twenty-first century,
maybe contraceptives are not tools of the devil. But that cave does not exist. Never mind!
Just kidding!
Linear
Time
Control freak societies can get obsessive-compulsive about
time, measuring it in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years,
centuries, millennia. I am writing at
4:08 PM PST on Sunday, January 17, A.D. 2021.
This moment is unique in the life of the universe, like a fingerprint,
or a DNA sequence. Many were just born,
many just died, and Big Mama Nature received more kicks.
Wild folks had a softer and gentler perception of time. Time was the daily passage of the sun across
the sky, and the monthly phases of the moon.
Time was the perpetual cycle of winter, spring, summer, and fall. It was the zig and zag of wet seasons and dry
seasons, of cold ones and hot ones, of serenity and frightening storms. For these people, time was circular, a wheel
that never stops turning. It keeps spinning
and spinning, and it is real and alive and good.
In a number of Neolithic societies, like those in Mesopotamia,
something extremely weird happens — the notion of linear time emerges. It is not circular. Linear time is like a drag strip for tire-burning
hot rods, a one-way sprint from the starting line (creation) to the finish line
(apocalypse), from paradise to wasteland, from womb to worms. It is a cosmic (comic?) soap opera in which the
spotlights remain focused on the rise and fall of an odd and amusing species of
primates — as if we are the one and only thing in the universe that matters. Nothing came before us, and nothing shall
follow us. How weird!
Paul Shepard said that
folks living in Neolithic societies couldn’t help but notice that their way of
life was wobbly, sloppy, and turbulent.
He wrote, “Living amidst collapsing ecosystems, agrarians accept a
religion of arbitrary gods, catastrophic punishments by flood, pestilence,
famine, and drought in an apocalyptic theology.” Folks could see that the surrounding region
was dotted with the ruins of past glory, remnants of the eternal two-step of overshoot,
and its faithful companion, collapse.
Populations sometimes grew faster than Big Mama Nature could limit
the swarms. When the flood plains
reached full occupancy, settlement expanded into forests, and up
hillsides. Hungry herds of hooved
locusts chewed away the vegetation, exposing the naked soil, which blew away
and washed away. Rainfall and snowmelt rapidly
ran off of stripped slopes.
Consequently, catastrophic floods were common, as were landslides. Irrigation systems eventually made the fields
so salty that nothing can grow in them. A
satellite flying over Mesopotamia now sees THIS.
The McNeills commented
on the expanding shoreline along the Persian Gulf, into which the Tigris and
Euphrates emptied. Sumerian cities that
were once located on the coast, or close to it, are today up to 100 miles (161
km) inland from the shore. Former
islands are now mainland, far from the coast.
Massive erosion was a perfectly normal consequence of upstream
deforestation, overgrazing, and agriculture.
George Perkins Marsh,
in his 1864 book, described his visits to the ruins of many classic
civilizations, and (correctly) worried that America was on the same path. He wrote that where the Roman Empire once
reigned, more than half of their lands today (1860s) are either deserted,
desolate, or at least greatly reduced in both productiveness and
population. Vast forests are gone, much
soil has been lost, springs have dried up, famous rivers have shrunk to humble
brooklets, smaller rivers have dried up or have become seasonal, entrances to
navigable streams are blocked by sandbars, former harbors are now distant from
the sea, and large areas of shallow sea and fertile lowland are now foul
smelling unhealthy swamps.
The ancient Greeks saw history as a long and tragic saga of human
decline. Hesiod writes of the Golden
Age: “They lived like gods, free from worry and fatigue; old age did not
afflict them; they rejoiced in continual festivity.” This was followed by the Silver Age, a
matriarchal era of agriculture, when men obeyed their mothers. This was followed by the Bronze Age, a
patriarchal era of war. “Their pitiless
hearts were as hard as steel; their might was untamable, their arms
invincible.” This was followed by the
Iron Age, a time “when men respect neither their vows, nor justice, nor
virtue.”
Today, we live in the Overshoot Age, when billions of people spend
their lives in the crazy lane, and nothing seems to really matter. Do redwoods matter, or whales, or polar
bears, or ravens, or children? Is
anything sacred? Hello? Is anybody home?
Holy
Lands
Wild cultures felt a sense of sacred oneness with their
ancestral homeland. It was a
relationship of profound reverence and respect.
Their creation stories do not include the notion of being forcibly
evicted from paradise for naughty behavior.
Something like paradise was their birthplace and permanent address, the
home of their ancestors, and the generations yet to be born. A Karuk man once took me to a bluff, and
pointed down to a bend in the Klamath River where the Karuk people were first brought
into existence, long, long ago.
Modern Americans are two-legged tumbleweeds that have blown
in from countless distant places. We
frequently move every few years. Many tumbleweeds
have little or no knowledge of their ancestral homelands. Many never develop a spiritual connection to
any place. For them, nature is typically
nothing more than a meaningless static backdrop along the highway, stuff they
zoom past during their daily travels.
Paul Shepard noted
that this was a big shift away from older cultures, in which folks felt a
profound spiritual connection to the land where they lived. His wife Florence Shepard
said it like this, “At the heart of our identity is a fundamentally wild being,
one who finds in the whole of wild nature all that is true and beautiful in
this world.” By the time wild children
reach puberty, they have developed a healthy connection to place. They have a profound sense of belonging that
most modern tumbleweeds cannot begin to imagine, and will never experience.
Vine Deloria was a
Yankton Sioux who had immense respect for their traditional culture, because it
had deep roots in place, and a healthy sense of coherence. Settlers were ridiculously incoherent. A missionary would tell them they were devil
worshippers, convert them to the one true faith, and then a year later the next
missionary would inform them that the first one was a demonic fire hose of lies
and deceptions. All the black robes read
the same book, but none agreed on what it meant.
In 1945, a farmer named Mohammed Ali found an ancient jar
near Nag Hammadi in Egypt. Among the
contents of this jar was a book containing the Gospel of Thomas. This gospel of Jesus’ life had never been
edited, corrected, clarified, or blessed by the official Holy Roman Church. In chapter 113 of the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus
is talking about the nature of heaven — God’s kingdom. He said that it was not an event that would
occur in the future. Here is what he
said: “The kingdom of God is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see
it.” In other words, heaven is where
your feet are standing. Wherever you
stand is sacred ground.
Moralizing
Society
Harvey Whitehouse wrote about how deities
changed with the rise of civilizations.
Complex societies tend to promote the rise of gods that are
all-powerful, all-seeing, and tireless moralizers — deities that reward the
virtuous, and spank the naughty. Folks
tend to be more motivated by the fear of punishment, rather than the desire for
rewards. Strict morals can also be
useful for getting ethnically diverse groups to march to the same drum, without
getting uppity.
The
objective here was to encourage beneficial behavior, because a disempowered, obedient,
and orderly mob was a productive and profitable mob. Elites do not enjoy the presence of rebels
and rabble-rousers. But in a big
community, troublesome folks can often become invisible within the vast
anonymous crowds. In theory, all-seeing moralizing
gods are personal deities. They always
know exactly what you (and everyone else) are doing and thinking.
In
simple societies, the local spirits were less likely to become morality
police. There was no cultural diversity
to generate friction, everyone shared the same worldview. Folks in small groups lived in fishbowls —
everyone was well aware of what everyone else was doing. There were no secrets. Folks were inclined to behave mindfully. Misbehavior could lead to friendly nudges, a
damaged reputation, an ass whooping, or ostracism.
John Trudell, a Santee Sioux activist,
bitterly detested the colonization of the Americas. Traditionally, tribal people were raised in a
culture of spiritual reality, which emphasized a profound respect and reverence
for the family of life. Their guiding
star was responsibility. Settlers, on
the other hand, were far less interested in notions of responsibility. Preachers blasted tribal folks with intensely
toxic moralizing. A primary objective
was to make people feel powerless, to convince them that they’re bad, sinful,
evil from birth — to paralyze them with guilt and shame, to strip away their
self-respect.
Vine Deloria said that a tribal person
“does not live in a tribe, the tribe lives in him.” Their sense of identity was rooted in “we,”
not “me.” Self-centeredness was a
spiritual abnormality. Everyone had
powerful bonds to the land, the clan, and their family. I am an only child, and my good buddy Jim was
one of seven children. I envy their
powerful lifelong bonds, and their ongoing mutual support. This is the mode in which social primates
evolved to live.
Robert
Anton Wilson noted that living within a tribe, and benefitting from mutual
support, was vital for survival. Being
punished by banishment or exile was like being thrown overboard in the high
seas — an extremely brutal and terrifying punishment that was only chosen for
hopelessly impossible buttheads. Execution
would have been more merciful. The
benefits of mutual support really encouraged conformity to time-proven tribal
norms.
And
this, dear reader, is why hierarchical societies, like industrial civilization,
are wonderlands of craziness. The air is
constantly hissing with the voices of sorcerers. Thou shalt compete (not cooperate). Thou shalt hoard (not share). Thou shalt always strive to become a heroic
example of personal success and extravagant excess. Fun fact: “Thou shalt” appears exactly 500
times in the King James Bible.
Individual
Salvation
A few pages back, we learned that the Sumerian gods could be
sloppy drunks. They created humans so flawed
that the only solution was to exterminate them with a great flood. The Genesis story echoes this. When the flood subsided, Noah’s surviving
kinfolk were still just as flawed as the countless humans who were deliberately
drowned. A rational person could wonder
why all-knowing, all-powerful creators kept flubbing up when creating humans,
but that might be heresy. Let’s not go
there. Reason and religion usually sleep
in separate beds.
It’s not heresy to perceive the obvious. These Neolithic cultures clearly taught that the
humans were inherently flawed. In the
Christian tradition, every newborn is evil until baptized. Once baptized, living in strict obedience to
divine instructions is not mandatory.
The world is filled with temptations, and we all have the freedom to be
naughty or nice. Nice folks are
obedient, and their reward is salvation, the heavenly ticket to eternal
paradise. Death is when the good times
begin.
With regard to salvation, everyone is equal, from
billionaires to ditch diggers, women, and slaves. Everyone has the option of seeking the path
to a wonderful afterlife. Nobody is
worthless. This is very cool, because if
you were born a slave, that was God’s will, not a cruel misfortune. So, with this understanding, you can happily shovel
shit for a few decades, and then go to paradise for eternity. Yippee!
Belief in salvation can be so powerful that it overrides
survival instincts. Michael
Dowd wrote, “In group-to-group conflicts, any culture that offers the
promise of an afterlife to those who heroically martyr themselves will likely
triumph over an army of atheists who have the rational belief that death marks
the absolute end of individual existence.”
Humans are social critters, not stray cats. We are most comfortable when we are among
small intimate groups of family and friends, where everyone is equal, and we
care for each other. With regard to
individual salvation, the opposite is true.
When it’s time to meet the divine for your final exam, you are
completely on your own. I may achieve
salvation, while everyone I love and respect does not (or vice versa).
Beyond flawed humans, the entire planet is flawed. In the Christian sphere, they believe that
the world is the realm of Satan, a place of evil. For them, Earth is something like a cheap motel
room where we get an opportunity to spend some time demonstrating our
worthiness for salvation (or the toasty alternative). It’s just an audition. Of course, this implies that the living
ecosystem does not deserve respect and reverence. It’s just a funky roadside flophouse with
stained sheets with cigarette burns, a cheap place for a short stay. It’s OK to smash it up (or flood it).
[Continued on sample 54]
