Polytheism, Karma, and Monotheism

It seems clear that man's first impulses toward the supernatural had to do with natural phenomena like rain. "As a child, my mother gave me water, so maybe there's an unseen mother in charge of providing water to the world." This establishes a "rain god".

But these gods weren't like we think of, because they were never assumed to have an interest in us, we would just try to influence them to give us stuff anyway.

People had of course developed social identity, and people were expected to act in a certain way. If you broke a rule, you could expect that a tribal elder would catch you and punish you to reinforce the importance of following rules for the group. Similarly, people need things from other people, and we developed socially to take interest in the needs of others and provide for them if we could.

If someone fell you would help them up, to ensure that if you fell, someone else would help you up.

Then came the invention of more advanced supernatural ideas like karma. Suddenly it didn't matter if another person saw you do good or bad, because these behaviors were now being tracked by a supernatural awareness. Reincarnation came with this, not just to assuage the fear of final death, but to give consequences to the karma you caused by your own actions. Even today millions deliberately do good for others not simply for anyone's immediate benefit, or because you want people to help you, but so that your karmic record will bring you benefits in the next incarnation.

Karma released people from the ultimate necessity of monitoring others or caring for others. People still followed genetically ingrained practices of social interaction and responsibility, but it was no longer ultimately necessary. This idea also helped society because fewer people would break rules because they thought no one would see them, karma sees all.

Finally, the startling invention of monotheism. The word itself can be misleading, because it makes you think it's just about sticking to the single, canonical, authoriatative god, but it's mor than that. Monotheism combines the idea of karma, the all-knowing record of your actions, with the idea of a god that ultimately has a personal interest in each individual.

The rain god didn't know you or care about you; karma records what you do but doesn't really care about you as a person, it's an accounting mechanism. But God, the monotheistic ideal, knows everything and cares.

As people start to move around and break apart socially, this idea becomes important, because people are evolved to have a need to know someone cares for them, that if they fall, even if no person is around, God will help them up.

It's still a social imperative to help people, but now we can release our responsibility to others to God's care.

All this gave a strong boost to the primacy of the individual: you were considered separately by God with His karmic memory. You weren't really responsible for anyone else and they weren't to you either.

This causes a great psychological schism: people are evolved to expect care from other people, but now religion told us not to look to people, but to God. But God is not materially apparent, and He won't really help us up from a fall. What if you find yourself alone, needing help with problems?

Trust in God. He loves you individually, cares about you, and gives you credit, which reassures you that your life is worthwhile. Society is essentially released from its obligation to its members.

Of course, evolution, a material process of this world that predates any belief system, has embedded in us certain social requirements which we can't completely turn away from. Following these imperatives also has the benefit of concentrating power of one person over another.

Monotheism is so important because it reassures us that no matter what we can't be alone, we can't be abandoned, we can't lack for help or purpose, these things are all inherent in our individual universal relationship with a personal, caring God.

This leads to us to modern cultures where we can forget about the sick, the disabled, the elderly, on a personal level. The worldly obligation to care for them materially is passed to the higher political level.

In ancient culture an old person would never be left alone to fend for themselves, they would be taken care of by the same people they always knew. People they knew would always be there, because no one would be allowed to separate, because doing so was anti-survival.

Now, an old person can be put in a home or an apartment and left, with the rest of society chipping in to pay someone to provide them food, and essentially leave their personal and emotional needs to God.

Although this is becoming a norm in the western world, people still sense that this is actually horrible, and they spawn groups, ironically often through the very religious structures that encouraged the abandonment of people to God, to care for people on a personal level.

But as culture has moved on, this has become weak and ineffectual. The fact seems to be that people ARE more isolated and abandoned than ever before. A very conspicuous example can be found in the problem of mental disorder.

In very recent history people who have fallen into a mental disability have been allowed to isolate themselves with the assistance of financial support. But inherent to mental disability is the inability to determine solutions to problems, especially of a social nature. It's theoretically possible for us to give a mentally disabled person a million dollars which they would then spend on a boat and float out to sea with no food.

Our culture has become essentially anti-human. In more cohesive social systems, no one would ever have given large resources to a disabled person and expected that person to make appropriate decisions alone. That person wouldn't ever have faced the possibility of being alone in the first place.

People with cognitive or emotional disorders are now expected to do for themselves exactly what they are incapable of. Even worse, the increasing separation and social isolation of people from a group actually tends to worsen or even induce emotional disorders.

For most of our species' existence we have reserved isolation for the extreme punishment of uncontrollably anti-social people, think solitary confinement. Now our model of society has expanded to accept social isolation for everybody.

For all our scientific innovation, our society has taken a giant step backward. The toll it is taking is already horrendous and it's going to get much worse. God help us, each and every one.

If You Think You Have Problems, You Do

That's all.

Depression and the Perfect Life

I've faced some daunting challenges in my life. Some people would just shake them off. Others fail for much less.

After a lifetime of slogging through my difficulties along with everyone else, I hit a "perfect storm" of stress. Suddenly it was like everything looked the same but was totally different. My responses became helplessly infantile: "No! I won't! I don't have to, I can't, and I won't!"

This leads inevitably to what I call "Cascading Catastrophic Depression", or CCD because I hate typing. As you struggle in the quicksand your life has become, you just sink deeper. You do stuff that makes it worse. Inwardly you practically go deaf from screaming at yourself, "just stop it!" over and over.

If you pick at it it might never heal, but if you leave it alone it may kill you. You try to ignore it, it gets worse. You try to treat it but that serves partly to emphasize your personal calamity--making it worse!

Go? Stay? Do? Don't? Obsessing about depression is one of its least tolerable symptoms. But analysis is key to solving any problem. To arrest your thinking is to preclude finding a solution. Or maybe not.

Every day I create a new "model" to test, to see if it will imply anything useful. Today's Special: the Perfect Life.

Like I said, I was used to slogging through it for years. I was more functional, but I didn't like it. When I hit "CCD", my functionality collapsed, eventually taking a giant portion of my life with it.

Then it occurred to me: this is so awful, I'm never going back to a compromised life again. When I can see a Perfect Life, I'll jump back in. Until then, I'm staying right here. Because I feel that if I jump back in to a compromised life, I will never escape it.

I'll leave the discovery of that irony for the pleasure of the reader.