Why So Sick?
"The task of our generation, I have no doubt, is one of metaphysical reconstruction"
-E.F. Schumacher
A Short Story
It seems that a few passengers here on Spaceship Earth recently began thinking that the whole ship was made just for them. They think "all these insects and ibex, oceans and orangutans, are under OUR control and unimportant to the functioning of the ship." This hubris grows like cancer until the illusion of "owning and controlling" the ship seems self-evident and justified. Although small signs -- like broken parts and ugly walls -- sprouted up now and then, they were only seen by the sensitive types who weren't heavily invested in the illusion...and no-one listens to them. However they continued to grow and grow, eventually causing bigger systems to decay and fall apart, pushing the ship into shaky turbulence. Soon the passengers start to realize how their owning and controlling delusions have put the whole ship in jeopardy. The sensitive ones are becoming heard.
Every sickness has its roots, with the “s” being emphatically stressed. Some roots go deeper into explaining the malfunctioning of Sickness than others, and it's an open question as to just how deep it can go. I will be using an arbitrary time-period referred to by a few authors as a useful marker in trying to unfold the historical birth of the CULTumor (culture-tumor) that has led to this frail condition.
A Plausible Background
The “fall out” of an environmental shift from a fertile-lush landscape to a barren-desert landscape provides the conditions from which the CULTumor grows. Around 4000 BCE, the Saharasian region, an area of land encompassing Northern Africa and Asia, begins drying into a hyper-arid region that lacks rainfall and fecundity of life. It's interesting to note that that the year 4004BCE is, according to fundamentalist Christians, when the world was created; although this seems to be false,
it fits perfectly with the start of the Armored Patrist World that
exoteric Christianity espouses. Anyway, around this time Kurgan nomads begin dominating new areas in Old Europe & India, introducing a new social dynamic that emerged as a way to cope with the profound environmental changes.
Armored Patrism/Dominator Culture emerges on the world stage. This dynamic stratifies the biological sexes into strictly defined rules and roles, introduces painful infant trauma & sexual mutilation techniques, inferiorizes women, institutes strict patriachal hierarchies, re-orients marriage towards compulsive monogamy, re-fashions religion into a MaleGod Oriented & Ascetic-PleasureHating enterprise, creates & reveres Warfare Art, and transitions from Technologies of Production (pottery, ornaments, & hunting tools) to Technologies of Destruction (weapons, fortifications, and slavery). Prior to this 4000BCE date, the archeological & historical record show that many cultures were of an Unarmored Matrist nature, a social dynamic based upon partnership rather than domination. Although these cultures were matrifocal in nature they don’t seem to stress the type of sexual hierarchy seen in later Armored Patrist cultures, rather they foster an egalitarian linking between the sexes.
Armored Patrism/Dominator Culture emerges on the world stage. This dynamic stratifies the biological sexes into strictly defined rules and roles, introduces painful infant trauma & sexual mutilation techniques, inferiorizes women, institutes strict patriachal hierarchies, re-orients marriage towards compulsive monogamy, re-fashions religion into a MaleGod Oriented & Ascetic-PleasureHating enterprise, creates & reveres Warfare Art, and transitions from Technologies of Production (pottery, ornaments, & hunting tools) to Technologies of Destruction (weapons, fortifications, and slavery). Prior to this 4000BCE date, the archeological & historical record show that many cultures were of an Unarmored Matrist nature, a social dynamic based upon partnership rather than domination. Although these cultures were matrifocal in nature they don’t seem to stress the type of sexual hierarchy seen in later Armored Patrist cultures, rather they foster an egalitarian linking between the sexes.
This period designates the birth of the CULTumor and the successive millenia foster its growth. A major period of growth occurs around 600BCE, when the dominant participatory mind, operating in a nonself-reflective manner, morphs into the detached-witnessing mind, operating in a self-reflective manner. This alteration in the functioning of human psychology leads to the rise of the Axial Age contemplative traditions, from Buddhism in India to Socratic methods in Greece. These new traditions seem to be an attempt to re-connect with the Felt Presence of Divinity that was a natural state of being in the earlier Unarmored Matrist cultures. The methods used to attain this experience were often Patrist Ascender --- ascetic, pleasurehating, antisexual, and This-World-Denying.
In the quest to reach Higher States of Consciousness, practictioners often denied the pleasures of this world to gain admittance to some “other world” distinct from direct experience. Conservative sects everywhere, from Christianity to Buddhism, carry this philosophy out to violent extremes; a fissure between self and Nature becomes more and more concrete, leading to actions that harm Nature, posit a split between Culture and Nature, and lead to the development of the “detached” scientific mind that tends to reduce nature to a simple machine devoid of consciousness. This new mode of being fosters the development of the Narcissistic Age of Politics, where we see an obsession with ruler’s deifying themselves & constructing elaborate statues to stand as testaments to their greatness.
The birth and early development of CULTumor encompasses a 4500 year period, from 4000BCE until 500CE. The death of Hypatia, the brilliant pagan woman scholar, by Christian Zealots in 415CE marks a fitting end to a period that saw a major shift in socio-political and spiritual trends for humanity.
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