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Eric Grinnell's avatar

Thank you, Robin.

I have long observed this same phenomenon, which makes sense because it really does exist. In a very unscientific and cursory way, I decided that it is an artifact of the “city state” era of human development, and the impact it had on our biological and social evolution.

City states were hard and cruel and difficult. The people who lived that way faced death constantly, and the only reason that this way of life persisted for thousands of years is, all the alternatives were even worse until better ways of living became available.

Most city states had similar social structures. Ruling class. Scribe class. Priest class. Military class. (With many variations on a common theme.) This way of life, along with a very small population sample yielded an almost eugenic effect.

The scribes kept track of crops, yields, water, what was necessary to survive. They reported to the ruling class. The priests, after conferring with the ruling class, informed the populace at large how “god” wanted them to act and address the problem. The people then obediently complied with gods will —- and those who didn’t do so we’re unceremoniously (or ceremoniously) introduced to the military caste, with the end result being that these persons were removed from the gene pool, by death or banishment.

Repeat this process for thousand of years, and you end up with a species descended from beings who are predisposed to submission to gods will — and who need that gods will in their life to feel fulfilled and happy. Those who did not have this disposition were bred out of the gene pool millennia ago.

Fast forward thousands of years, and enter the current cultural, largely secular, era where —at least to many people- God has been killed. (See Nietzsche). They have intellectually removed god from their identity and their value system… but they still have a god shaped hole in their brain, and a need to fill it. They fill it with various things. How fulfilled people are by what they fill this hole with (including if they fill it with the traditional god of their ancestors) is entirely dependent on their own unique combination of intellectual, emotional, environmental, and experiential traits.

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Lion Goodman's avatar

You mentioned the extreme view of “the one thing” as sacred and the view of “nothing is sacred” but did not mention the other view that “everything is sacred,” which is not a holefilling exercise but rather a recognition of the miraculous and unlikely nature of life and the universe in an if itself.

Most native peoples had some version of this view which was not naive but well developed and experienced for thousands of years before city states and up to the present. Before organized religions or the idea of organized religions .

From the psychological perspective, the hole is caused by the lack of healthy attachment and the insecurity caused by that lack, so that we are always seeking what we missed in infancy.

In many spiritual (not religious) traditions, the hole is seen as the initial separation from God/Oneness when we incarnate into a body and experience amnesia about who we actually are, and our long painful journey to that original oneness. Which parallels the original biological/psychological wound of separation from the Mother.

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