Archive for Thoughts

SCARED TO OBEDIENCE

February 14, 2007 · Filed under Environment, Life, Paganism, Religion, Society, Spirituality, Thoughts

When we look at society today we can see that morality has gone out of style. In some areas, this is good, allowing a diversity of lifestyle, but in others, it is bad. For instance, where is the moral requirement, today, towards fighting criminal urges?

One possible reason for this decline in morality is said to be the decline of religious belief. But is it as simple as that? Can belief in a God-force really temper your urges? Most likely not, but a social spin-off of religion can.

Today, when a person breaks the law, he is breaking man’s law. He is transgressing a set of rules devised by people to allow for an ordered society. If the transgressor doesn’t feel he belongs to that society, the ‘law’ allows no element to persuade him to be good.

Religion understood this. Hence, in the Ten Commandments we have laws, not made by man, but by God. This is more fundamental. Within the belief system, God had power over you whether you liked it or not.

The result of this was that you could not get away with transgressing God’s rules. Indeed, He was a fearful God, and the punishment for breaking His rules was Divine Retribution.

This was awesome, and didn’t just stop with life. The retribution would carry on after death, for you would answer to God for your life. And if He decided it hadn’t been very good, then it was down to eternal torment.

Intriguingly, this form of Divine punishment was not the sole property of Monotheistic religions. Consider the Hindu’s Karma. Here, if you did wrong, then you would answer for your life in the form your next incarnation took.

Hindu society even had an entire caste system to categorise everyone according to birth. This assisted Karma by showing that, in society, your next life had better be good, or you’d be stuck in a lower caste for eternity.

We can see here that religion has always had a social off-shoot in a supernatural form of punishment. As civilization began to emerge we can argue that the system was required to keep societies coordinated. But it seems that the supernatural retribution idea is much older.

Tribal societies had their own moral rules in the totem, or taboo. But rather than being aimed at society, as such, the totem was a decree from the natural world, demanding that mankind respect the environment.

Punishment for disobeying the totem was total. For in not looking after nature, your food would decline, and in those days that meant starvation and possible extinction.

The first morality was, it seems, even more fundamental that Divine Retribution. But the important lesson here is that the first rules imposed on man were imposed by nature itself. In today’s world of global warming and pollution, this is wisdom from the ancients we should heed.

© Anthony North, Feb 2007

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THE FIRST SPIRITS

February 9, 2007 · Filed under Environment, Life, Paganism, Psychology, Religion, Society, Spirituality, Thoughts

One of the first known religions was animism. Known to be practiced in most – if not all – ‘primitive’ tribes, it was based on the idea that, running parallel to the physical world, was a world of spirits.

These spirits were reflections of the physical world. Hence, every animal, river, mountain, and even storm, had a supernatural element. Today we dismiss this belief as superstition.

We now know better. The world is purely physical, with the supernatural a quaint little anomaly born from unintelligent people. But is this really the case?

I would agree that the ‘supernatural’ cannot be proved, and in a rational world, it must be discounted. But if we place psychology on this ancient tribal belief, it is not so easy to discount.

For instance, it is well known that suggestion can cause the person to hallucinate forms that he expects to see. In a less rational society, it is all too easy to see how the belief materialized, with the proverbial witch doctor suggesting entities to his tribe. Yet in one sense, we can see this as more than mere superstition.

Such beliefs tied the members of the tribe to each other, giving them culture and direction. We could do with a bit of that today in a modern, fragmented society. The idea that animism bonded the tribe together as a society can be extended. Most of the ‘spirits’ they believed in were inherently connected to nature. Indeed, they worshipped natural forms.

Such a belief system tied the tribe directly to their environment. In later, known, tribal forms, we can see this connection in action. Indeed, it continues in eastern practices such as Feng Shui, which is all about harmonizing our habitats to the pulses of nature.

Again, we could do with some of this attitude to tackle our own environmental problems. These belief systems came to an end with the rise of Monotheism, which led, in Europe, to Christianity. Animism based belief in the local, which split loyalty away from Christianity, which was universal, or Catholic.

To do so, ancient tribal practices became known as ‘evil’, and the work of the Devil. The practices themselves – or, at least, advances of them – survive in the Occult and Witchcraft, where the incorrect belief in making a pact with the Devil is a remembrance of the pact a tribe made with nature.

Bearing in mind the obvious psychological ‘demons’ that can arise if an amateur attempts such practices, it is worth remembering that the ancients had a ‘supernatural’ system that bonded man to his society, and that society to the environment.

It makes you wonder who is the most stupid – them, or us?

© Anthony North, Feb 2007

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