Why monotheism? What did monotheism offer that the previous religions did not? What made the development of monotheism necessary in some places, but completely optional in others?

First, a quick run down on the development of religion as it parallels developments in civilization.

First, always, is animism. To the animist, all that happens is the work of spirits, ghosts, and other entities, and all things have their own spirit, their own animus. This is the base human religion, and a product of the highly develop social intelligence of our species, which relates best to that which has a social presence, in other words, has thoughts, feelings, and a personality. In short, something that is a person, even if it not necessary human at all. And so when humanity lives in small villages and lives very close to nature, and is still primarily a hunter/gatherer, the shortest route to an answer for any question about the world is, basically, “a spirit did it”. A world entirely run by socially present entities is a quite reassuring thing to our social primate minds. We can relate to it, understand it, feel we can negotiate it much like we negotiate the social world of our mundane human lives.

But this only holds true up to a certain level of development. If your tribe of animistic primitives (anywhere in the world, any time in history) comes to the point where they master agriculture and/or things like the buffalo jump and animal husbandry, they will go from being hunters and gatherers to being herdsmen and farmers, and that means a more complex society, with individual property, fences, boundaries, and the beginnings of bureaucracy and specialization.

And so it becomes harder and harder for the people to relate to a world of somewhat vaguely defined spiritual beings, and they start to see the world as still the product of the wills of individual entities, but these entities now become specialists as well, with specific roles and jobs. This one is the god of the moon. This one is the goddess of the hunt. And so forth.

Thus, animism, in time, evolves into pantheonic polytheism. Like the world it reflects, the power structure of the spiritual realm becomes the domain of one big powerful family, who bicker and fight just like your own extended family. They all have their specialties, and they all require appeasement and negotiation… again, just like dealing with your own extended family.

This works quite well between the dawn of farming and herding, and the rise of the city-state. Once the rise of the Bronze Age gives rise to true cities, with all the demands of the social fabric to withstand crowded and complex urban conditions, polytheism begins to be too complex.

Complicating the matter is the tendency of these city-states to align with one god or goddess more than the others. Usually, this is a result of a combination of the intense infighting amongst the various priests of various gods and goddesses, and the luck of the draw. We were celebrating Demeter when we won over those other assholes? DEMETER IS AWESOME!

The real problem occurs when city-states begin conquering one another. If City A that worships God A wins over City B that worships God B, the only possible explanation is that God A just defeated God B, and God B has to go. Usually, this happens via God A simply absorbing the duties and part of the aspect of God B.

This is how you get things like “God A is the god of war, herring fishermen, pottery, and erotic topiary. ”

So in the transition from animism to polytheism, the multitude of spirits become the local gods of cities, and as the city-states are conquered into consolidating, the number of gods shrinks, and their powers and responsibilities grow correspondingly.

From this, it would seem that the road to monotheism is well paved and that cultural momentum alone will take you there. After all, eventually, one city state will conquer all the others, declare that their god is not just victorious but the others are all now dead/unreal/gone poof. What else can happen, right?

But that’s where the question comes in, because monotheism sprang into existence in some places, and in other places, they instead developed an overarching religion which encompassed the previous world of polytheistic gods and animistic spirits and mysticism without the need for one single god to win over all the rest and get all the power, all the glory, and banish all the others to the darkness of being either turned into demons or simply said to have never been real in the first place.

So, why monotheism? Is it simply the result of a more warlike, winner takes all kind of culture? Is it the pressure of tightly packed cities which requires a simplification of the celestial hierarchy to parallel the simplification of the city-states into nations and empires with a single autocratic leader? Is it simply the result of the mingling of different societies over the generation under the steady agitation of trade and commerce until it all becomes one homogeneous cosmopolitan culture?

I’m not sure, but the question fascinates me. It could be nothing but random chance. But I don’t think so. There has to be a reason why all three of the major monotheisms of the world (Islam, Christianity, and Judaism) all come from the same small area of the Middle East. There has to be something about that time in that place which blazed monotheism into existence.

And perhaps even more importantly, there had to be a reason why they held on, and spread. There must be something appealing about them that gave them an edge over polytheism in some places.

In the next article in this series, I will speculate as to these reasons.

Cats are so much fun.

Not sure if there will be a full article today…. exterminator’s coming, going to be AFK for six hours at least. We’ll see what time I get back to the apartment.

Yes, it’s back! I have a bunch of cleaning to do today, and no particularly compelling ideas for a column today, so I figured what the heck, let’s go back to the wild, wacky, wonderful world of science for inspiration.

First off, we have this interesting little item about a village of dwarves living in the Andes who might hold a clue to a cure for cancer.

No, not with their ancient dwarf magic. Turns out, this small population of dwarfs hardly every get cancer or diabetes, and coincidentally, they also all have the form of dwarfism that stems from a lack of human growth hormone. The theory, then, is that possible human growth hormone and cancer are somehow linked, and suppressing human growth hormone in full adults might just keep cancer from happening at all.

The idea passes the initial common sense and plausibility tests. Cancer is defined as a particular form of out of control growth in human tissues, so the idea of inhibiting it via growth hormone regulation makes a kind of sense, at least to this armchair scientist.

But an isolated popular of 100 is a poor basis for so broad a theoretical leap, and there are so many potential factors involved with cancer and its genesis that it’s nearly impossible to control for them all. So while this seems interesting, I will wait and see if this theoretical model can be backed up with lab work.

A lot of interesting and promising and plausible theories simply fail to pan out in reality. All the world of science can do is track down every lead, like detectives.

Next, scientists want to plant micro-worms in your body.

No, wait, come back! Turns out, these “micro-worms” are actually nanotech tubes that could perform a whole number of useful functions in the human body, like providing real time monitoring of various health status issues, or delivering medication over a long term.

But if ever a technology needed a new name, it’s “micro-worms”. Sure, it’s catchy and probably even descriptive, but nobody wants worms in their body unless they’re a bird looking for lunch. Just the idea of them putting anything with “worm” in its name into my body makes me squirm with discomfort.

And I am a potential client! One of the possible applications for this technology would be to provide that fabulous tech of the future, the “diabetic’s tattoo”, a technology by which an area of skin on the diabetic’s body would have tiny colored nanoparticles embedded in its blood vessels. These nanoparticles would be shaped so that they reacted to blood sugar, and voila, you have an area of skin which reacts visibly and harmlessly to blood sugar and provides an instant visual reading of the diabetic’s current blood sugar level. The more of the color, the higher the blood sugar count.

I would love that. No blood, no testing, just look at my blood sugar magic tattoo and I would get a good idea of how I was doing. Right now, because my diabetes is not too severe, I can get away with hardly ever testing and mostly relying on my own internal sense of how charged my batteries are to give me the cues I need. But I would rather know, and so it would be awesome to be able to just look at my arm and say “Woops, too high… better have the salad!” or “whoa, too low… I need COMPLEX CARBS NOW. ”

But why did they have to call them “worms”?

I mean, the only thing worse than having worms in your body would be if you had some huge alien creature growing out of your spine.

WARNING, link contains a tail of medical horror and entertaining grossness.

So this fellow named Josh Abken (an alien sounding name if I ever heard one!) was having chronic back pain. So he went to the doc, figuring he had a pulled muscle or something.

Turns out, it was a HUGE FREAKING TUMOUR that was so big it was pushing his other organs out of shape. It was, in fact, close to straight up killing him.

But that’s not the freaky part. The freaky part is that it was :

A soccer-ball size “alien” tumor that had become as solid as a rock and even had growing tentacles.

IT HAD FREAKING TENTACLES. That’s where I would start seriously freaking out.

But to his massive credit, Josh Abken did not freak out. Instead, he and his family did what any family would do if they found out their pater familias had a massive tentacled tumour in his back : they named it.

In fact, they named it “Gill” and had “Kill Gill” T-shirts made in the style of Kill Bill posters.

This family is obviously way above average in the field of being completely awesome.

Luckily, thoracic surgeon Costanzo Di Perna was able to remove it before it killed poor Josh. Doctors say that thing had to be growing in there for at least a decade.

I have to admit, the sociopathic mad scientist in me really, really wants to know what would have happened to that thing if it somehow had been left to grow for another decade.

Presumably, it would kill its host. But if it didn’t… say, some mad scientist was able to transfer it to a supportive medium…. say, a big bell jar full of evil-looking liquid… and just let it grow and evolve, would it eventually have grown into a full alien, leading inevitably to the bloody death of the scientist and a really awkward reunion with the human it considers to be its “father”?

Probably not. But it’s fun to think about. I picture it as looking like the exposed-brain guy from the Star Wars Cantina scene, but speaking with an incongruously innocent and all-American teenage boy voice.

“Gosh, Dad, aren’t you glad to see me? After all…. I used to be part of you! Sorry about the cat, by the way. The moment I realized it was yours, I disgorged it. It’s fine, just a little damp. Eventually it will get over the smell and clean itself. ”

When we last discussed creativity, the focus was on the difference between the creative mind and the ordering mind and how the creative mindset eschews structure and barriers in favour of openness to making mental connections, and how the ordering mindset does just the opposite.

This time, I’d like to focus in on one particular aspect of this openness : being open to surprises coming from your own mind. Being open, in other words, to inspiration.

A creative person must be open to inspiration. That sounds obvious, but being open to inspiration involves a great deal more that just keeping an open mind or not consciously rejecting inspiration. It is my belief that maintaining openness to inspiration requires a fundamental structuring of the psyche around creativity that has an effect on every aspect of the mind and personality.

To begin with, we need to take a look at what, exactly, creativity is as a subjective experience of the mind. Roughly defined, it is the sudden bursting into consciousness of the results of a deep subconscious process of searching for connections or solutions to problems. This requires a characteristic inner stillness, a zone of withdrawal from the immediate, sensory world into the inner world, and most importantly, a key opening of the gates between the conscious and the subconscious minds to allow the creative spark of imagination to jump that gap and turn a subconscious notion into a conscious idea.

This stillness, this inner reserve, requires the creative individual to reserve a portion of their consciousness for creativity. This accounts for the oft observed connection between creativity and introversion. If all your mental horsepower is tied up in the immediate, the sensory, the broadly interpersonal, there is little room left for the contemplation and inner correlation that is the basis for creativity. You are therefore more likely the find high levels of creativity in people who are somewhat withdrawn and reserved. They are not necessarily anti-social. They simply don’t have the same sort of mental resources to devote to the here and now, and must make different choices based on that lack.

To a highly ordered and ordering mind, however, this stillness is anathema. On the surface, it seems like mere idleness, or worse, daydreaming. Why sit around “doing nothing”, thinks the ordering mind, when there are so many things that need doing in the immediate sensory word? It seems insane to sit and wait for some mysterious force known as “inspiration” when you could be dealing with real, concrete, known things and reaping tangible rewards.

But even worse, to the ordering mindset, than the idea of the sort of apparent idleness that the creative mind requires is the sudden intrusion of unwilled thought into the conscious mind. This is the sort of randomness and chaos that the ordering mind intensely fears and, indeed, is deeply structured to prevent. The sort of sudden illumination or inspiration that gives a creative person great joy and motivation would leave a highly ordered person confused, shaken, and frantically attempting to reconstruct the deep inner fortress of order and predictability upon which they rely.

So in many ways, the ordered mind precludes creativity. The kind of uncertainties required for the proper creative mindset are actively sought out and eliminated by the ordering mind.

That’s not to say that ordering people are somehow crippled, inferior, or defective. They simply have different cognitive priorities, and therefore, different strengths. What they lack in creativity they make up for in effectiveness. Creative people’s dislike of order and detachment from the here and now often leaves them poorer than average at the day to day business of life, and the sort of inner stillness required by the creative and/or contemplative mindset too often leads to a physical stillness as well. That cool still place in the mind can becoming an inner refuge from external realities, an escape, and such a refuge can becoming a crippling addiction which cripples the creative person’s ability to handle the real world.

Again, it’s all about where your internal cognitive priorities are set. And, of course, moderation and balance.

And of course, I am talking about theoretical pure cases. Nobody is purely creative or one hundred percent ordering. But most of us come down more on one side or another.

The creative and ordered types just need to understand one another better. The ordered people have to understand that there’s some good reasons why the creative types seem incapable of dealing with daily life, and the creatives need to understand the ordered types drive for order as coming not from mere power tripping but a deep emotional desire for safety and peace.

Over the last few weeks, I have been developing a theory as to the psychology of political affiliation, and today, I finally feel confident enough in it to commit it to blogspace. Please forgive me if this theory is a little wet behind the ears, it’s still a newborn.

For those of us with a keen interest in both psychology and politics, one of the eternally recurring questions is the simple question of the origin of political beliefs. What makes one person a liberal, and another a conservative? There are a lot of potential answers, and it is quite easy to fall into moralistic judgment and say “Well it’s easy. Some people are good, and others are evil. ” But serious thinkers and armchair psychologists cannot possibly be satisfied by such a simplistic reduction. What really makes one person lean to the left when another leans to the right?

I don’t claim to have a single definitive answer, but I think, in my ponderings, I may have unearthed a useful axis along which to examine the question.

It all comes down to which is more difficult to tolerate for the individual : uncertainty, or cognitive dissonance.

From this point of view, a liberal is someone who finds the internal conflict of cognitive dissonance to be far more unpleasant than any sense of ambiguity or doubt about the true nature of things. Hence, a liberal tolerates doubt but rigorously pursues the elimination of cognitive dissonance by trying to form a single, coherent, internally and externally consistent picture of the world and how it works.

A conservative, on the other hand, finds ambiguity, uncertainty, and doubt to be far more painful and frightening than cognitive dissonance. Because of this, they are willing to tolerate a great deal of cognitive dissonance in order to create a world view free of the doubt and uncertainty and perplexing complexity that they cannot tolerate. Their world-view need not be particularly consistent or congruent either with itself or with objective reality, as long as it fulfills the deep need for certainty.

Liberal versus conservative, then, is really a battle between two thinking styles, or rather, two different cognitive priorities. Liberals maximize consistency and minimize dissonance. Conservatives, the opposite.

This view, I think, helps to shed some light on the age-old observation that people tend to be more liberal when they are younger and more conservative as they grow older.

When we are young, we are in the phase of our lives when we are still trying to figure out what this world is all about, what is really going on, and what it all means. Our minds retain the flexibility of youth as well as its vigor, and we have not made a great deal of commitments, either to ourselves or to the world. as to the nature of things or the ways of the world. Most importantly, we have, for the most part, not made any substantial investments of time, energy, or wealth based on our views, and therefore the pressure to cling to the philosophies in which we have invested is absent.

As we age, however, things change. The progress from single adult to spouse to parent leaves us with a great deal more in the immediate world to concentrate on, and the increased drain of day to day life on our faculties coupled with the inevitable decline in vigour and mental flexibility that comes with age, leaves little room in people’s minds for philosophical meanderings. When there is so much to do in the course of the day, you have to make up your mind about certain things and simply go with it, come what may, and over time this leads to both the aforementioned increased investment in one worldview or another, and a lack of patience with the sorts of ambiguities a more philosophically inclined mind embraces.

Eventually, the fog of age grows thick enough in the minds of the aging to create significant pressure to reduce and strengthen the world view even further. Previously acceptable levels of ambiguity become intolerable because the more confused and frightened people grow as their faculties dim, the stronger the need for absolute rigidity and certainty in the remaining things they can still understand.

Thus, over the course of their lives, a person moves from a child’s simple, black and white, largely unexamined world view to the troubling turbulence of their teen years, when the child that was wars with the adult that will be, into a certain equilibrium as a young adult, then into the middle years of declining energies and flexibility, into the long dark tunnel of old age, where the emotional need for certainty far outstrips any need for philosophical clarity and the mind retreats back into the simplistic black and white view it remembers from its innocent youth.

I make no claims as to this theory’s completeness or comprehensibility. I only offer it as another angle from which to examine the question, and hence derive a better picture of the whole.

OK, I’m going to try to address this topic again, and I will do my level best to stay calm about this subject and not lose my shit and fly way off the handle like I did last time.

One my my more persnickety and painful pet peeves has to do with people treat mathematics like it is some kind of obscure and arcane thing that they have no chance of possibly understanding, leaving them to make important life decisions based on gut feeling or similarly unreliable methods instead of using the far simpler and safer method of just doing the math.

Now, I am not some math loving Asperger’s patient who like numbers better than people and wishes everyone was more like him. I am not that particular flavour of nerd. I can take math or leave it. I got good marks in math in school, but not appreciably better than the rest of my courses. Math is just OK by me.

Nor am I talking about advanced algebra or calculus or some other blackboard-covering mind-denting level of the science of numbers, values, and relationships. I hit the wall at college level calculus like a lot of people did, and so anything I know, I learned in the regular school system. I am not, for a moment, saying that everyone should strive to be the next Stephen Hawking or Rene Descartes.

No, all I am talking about is the math you learned in elementary school. Add, subtract, multiply, divide. If you made it to junior high, you already know all this math. And thanks to the invention of the calculator, you don’t even have to actually do the math yourself. You just have to know what it means.

But a lot of people seem to treat math like a childhood disease : something you had to go through when you were a kid and are now incredibly glad they will never, ever, ever have to experience it again. (Sadly, a lot of people treat reading the same way, more’s the pity. )

And if math was truly an obscure and largely useless subject that had no bearing whatsoever on people’s day to day lives, that would be fine. History, for instance, is a subject which is very important to society as a whole (history is memory and to fail to learn from the mistakes of the past is to be doomed to repeat them), but in the context of the average person’s daily life, whether or not they remember the year in which the Diet of Worms occurred is not going to have much of an impact unless they are playing Trivial Pursuit. (It’s 1521, by the way. Thanks, Wikipedia!)

But math is considerably more important to day to day life, and for one tiny little reason : MONEY. The world of money is the world of numbers, and those who are not comfortable with dealing with the basics of the world of numbers (math, in other words) are naked and vulnerable when the wolves of superior numeracy who control the world of money with their math skills are looking for sheep to shear. Or worse.

In fact, the entire world is now in financial crisis, with millions suffering worldwide on every level of society, because a small group of extremely rich number nerds came up with a mathematical model so complicated and abstruse that they fooled a lot of other very rich people into buying the financial instruments based on these mathematical models under the sheer faith that these mathemagicians had someone invented a way to make financial risk disappear while maintaining a high return on investment. And by the time they realized their mistake, they had convinced the economy that this was real money, and when they eventually ran out of suckers to spend their real money on fake magic money, trillions of dollars disappeared from the world economy in a flash.

So we can’t pretend math is not important. It’s the heart and soul of money, especially in this day and age when our life savings are just digits on a computer screen. And yet so many people are intimidated by the world of numbers. Why is that?

Frankly, I don’t really know. It might have something to do with some people simply being temperamentally biased towards qualitative thinking over quantitative thinking, and hence the precise and definitive (but strictly limited) world of mathematics seems incomprehensible to them, even at such a basic level as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

And we know it’s not a matter of ability, because again, we all can do these things. We all learned basic math in elementary school. It’s not like we lack basic numeracy.

It’s more, I think, a matter of being comfortable with numbers. Of getting over the feeling that when you are dealing with numbers, you are in alien territory and want to get out as soon as possible because you are outside your comfort zone.

If you can stick with it, you will realize that numbers are extremely simple, so simple it’s almost ludicrous, and once you realize that, you will lose your fear and be able to push numbers around and use them like the simple tools they are.

If enough of us can do that, we can crack the code behind which all these financial world jackals do their dirty business, drag them out into the light, and hold them accountable for their crimes.

If not, we will all remain in the dark about what is really going on, and be at the mercy of the predator who stalk their prey in the darkness of public ignorance.