Was Romance The Proto-Sacred?
Ending a bit over a year ago, I spent a year studying the sacred, landing on an extended version of Durkheim’s story: groups bind together by uniquely seeing certain things outside themselves as special. My extension was to apply construal level theory, to suggest that we tend to see the sacred from afar, even when it is near, to more see it together.
When did humans invent the sacred, and how? It was probably a cultural innovation, as are most unique human features, built out of something more ancient. But what?
I notice that mating is far older than the sacred, and that romance seems to have many features in common with the sacred, so much so that we are tempted to call it a kind of the sacred. Even so, romance also seems unusually different, compared to other sacred things. Which leads me to suspect that the sacred was built by modifying romance.
What romance has in common with the sacred: A group is bound together by seeing something very special, something they can see much better than can others. Something hard to pin down, but that induces strong feelings, and makes the whole universe seem different: more alive and meaningful. This something is valued, sacrificed for, set apart, idealized, to be felt more than calculated, and often especially accessible in totems like love letters.
How romance differs: Only two people are bound instead of arbitrarily large groups, their bond doesn’t last as long in this mode, their love is less clearly something outside themselves, it is seen less abstractly, and its feelings are more passionate and less reverential. The sacred seems to be created from romance in substantial part via added abstraction and distance. Confirmed by noticing that the love of those who sustain feelings when apart for long periods, seems more sacred like.
And that’s my hypothesis; what do you think?
I'd say maternal love preceeds even romance as a proto-sacred phenomenon. My mind goes (naturally) to the biochemical origins of romance, but obviously there's more than just neurotransmitters at play. The interesting thing about maternal love is how fused it is with the mundane. It's also unidealized and integrated rather than set apart, yet it is indeed considered sacred. This makes me think that it's earlier than romantic love. If sacredness is emergent, I imagine it would emerge from everydayness more gradually than the fully formed version you outline in the Seeds of Science piece. Fun to think about. Thanks.
I like the idea that the sacred comes from rituals around mating. But I suspect that "romance" is not the oldest form.
If you look at other primates, like chimps or gorilllas or baboons, they often have this "alpha male" structure around mating. The other males and females respect the alpha male, you go to the alpha male for protection, you give him sexual priority, you defer to his decisions for things like should the tribe move to other locations. There's something reinforcing all of these social rules. Perhaps these seem like "sacred rules" to the primates. And perhaps in our own evolutionary history the concept of "sacred" began as this sort of alpha male structure. A lot of religions have some sort of king-of-the-gods-as-alpha-male setup to them, too.
That's my hypothesis, based on a modification of your hypothesis here, that "following the alpha male group structure" was the original "sacred".