Process - Part 4

I understand your description of evolutionary experiments “differing from one another only in degree and not in kind” such as the various stages of horse evolution from a miniature version to the horse of today – clearly not different in kind, but certainly different in degree, from mini to magnum if you will.  But, can you elaborate on what you said about them attaining their differences only through active interrelationships?

The point I was driving at there has to do with living communities of organisms and how their dynamic interactions produced evolutionary changes that further differentiated organisms from each other.  Fast forwarding to human relationships, you might consider the collaborative nature of human enterprises and how our differing strengths and weaknesses gain expression through those interactions.  By relating to, associating with, or referring to others, we’re able to differentiate and distinguish ourselves as individuals.  

Whereas in isolation?

Whereas in isolation, it really doesn’t matter what the individual’s strengths or weaknesses are does it?  If they’re kept locked away where no one can see, then what do they contribute to the party?  Plus, if they are sequestered away like some lonely organism at an evolutionary dead end, there’ll be no procreation and no continuation of that gene pool – and that’s no fun.  

Alright, that helps.  Then you said, something about the arrival of humans representing a “species with an open future.”  What do you mean by that?

Well, as I say, this mutant possessed options and alternatives.  Those possibilities were available by virtue of our unique minds.  The distinction being the inevitable future that all living things share compared to the “open” future that humans were and are capable of constructing for ourselves.

Thank you, would you care to continue?

Indeed.  Let’s see, we’d been asking questions…

“And the answers they gave themselves depended on where they grew up, what their lives were like, and what their special needs were.

“Where the earth was rich and gave forth its fruits in abundance, answers related to a primordial Earth Mother with large soft breast who had begun it all and was sustaining it all through a round of regular seasons, all 28 days long or multiples thereof.

 “But where the earth was harsh and dry and yielded not easily to their touch, and had to be poked and prodded hard to yield anything at all, they sought answers in the sky.  They became sharp, rigid, and direct like a phallus and they related to a primordial Father who was a pretty stern fellow and who did a lot of punishing.

“But wherever they lived and whatever the gender of their god, humans discovered that they had two things in common with others of their kind:  their feelings of being terribly alone and alienated from the mysterious powers around them, from even their closest friends, and from themselves.

“And even worse:  a gut fear of their own ambiguity - so kind and gentle on one hand and so cruel and brutal on the other.  Being unable to live with this contradiction, regardless of the environments where they lived, they chose to divide themselves into parts and attribute the causes of those contradictory feelings to powers beyond themselves…beyond their own consciousness…to scapegoats out there somewhere.

“Because they felt inferior to the other creatures in so many ways, they decided to make themselves superior in some way.  So, they told themselves that they were created ‘special’ by something SUPER SPECIAL that lived way out there beyond the horizon.

“Their enormous potential for Good was shortened and called “God” (or the REALLY SPECIAL GOOD).  And they gave it a gender, a dwelling place, and a nature composed of the best they knew or could imagine in themselves.

“And they did the same with their enormous potential for evil.  They lengthened it, because it seemed sometimes the stronger force in them, and called it “Devil” (or the REALLY SPECIAL BAD), and gave this too a gender and a dwelling place and a nature composed of the worst they knew or could imagine in themselves.”

OK, sorry – time out for a minute Professor.  Umm, I’ve never heard that the word “god” is derived from the word good, or devil from evil.

Fair enough, grant me poetic license again.  You’re correct – I don’t think you’ll find etymologists tracing the word “god” back to the same root as “good.”  If anything, it’s vice versa.  Nor will you find obvious connections between “evil” and “devil.”  The point of this word exercise is not the literal connection of the words, but the act of creating these entities to help us deal with this internal conflict.

I understand, thank you.  Sorry for the interruption.

“And they attempted for the first time to live with one another, and thus began their super confusion.

“And they sat down

And stood up

And prostrated themselves for being composed by the Devil

And praised themselves for being composed by God

And domesticated animals

And masturbated

And cried

And built

And farted

And made charms and temples and rituals and priests and priestesses

And mutilated their flesh

And stood on one leg

And designed elaborate rituals

And belched

And stood on the other leg

And made love

And made love again because it was very good

And then decided something that very good had to be very bad

And worried about that

And made art

And stuck a finger in their ear

And composed music

And scratched their asses

And killed millions of their kind who were not so “special” as they

And tried to live caught on hooks between their good side and their bad side

And found it very difficult to please their good side while appeasing their bad side

So they composed many stories to explain why they were so “special” and felt so rotten about it.

“Although the stories were charming, many of them were too simple.  But they were the best they could do with the mysteries given the circumstances.  And, since any explanation is better than none, they told their children, and they told theirs, and so on, and so on, until all these stories became HISTORICAL AND ETERNAL TRUTHS and GENUINE FACTS and they were written down in very small handwriting in very heavy books and surrounded by cult and dances and rituals and symbols and buildings and hierarchies and politics and TRADITION and everyone knows that you never break with TRADITION so they were stuck with it.

“As people matured in experience, they knew their stories needed to be interpreted and corrected and that there were better explanations for the mysteries perplexing them, but they were afraid to investigate them because such investigation wasn’t considered polite by the majority and certainly was not approved by the watchdogs of TRADITION.

 “So it was that carrying their burden of ambivalence, ambiguity, and contradiction, and in possession of a pretty fair bagful of charming stories which failed increasingly to answer the miserable questions they had been posing; humanity stumbled over their philosophers and prophets and tried to use logic and reason to understand that which isn’t logical or reasonable.  Some of those philosophers and prophets looked around and refused to see things the way everyone else did, and that’s the best way there is to get into trouble.