“Civilization is Sterilization!”

– Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!”
― George Bernard Shaw

Nobody owns anything in our society. We’re all just a really bad day, or month, or year away from losing everything. All we really do is go to sleep hoping that the system that makes your position in your company, or profession, the tiniest bit necessary; is still there when you wake up. You might not know that you’re hoping for this. But in the back of their heads, every creature knows who’s the owner of the territory that the troop inhabits. We all know what’s necessary to maintain that territory and how to find our place within it. How? You have to look to the leader. He (or she) is the one who tells you where the predators are. How to spot them. How to hunt. How to gather. How to graze. How to fuck. He (or she) who holds the keys to access these basic biological necessities, controls the masses.

There is a network of control. The one who gives us the needs is that 3-pound gelatinous piece of alien technology floating around in our skulls. The next level is the first tier of leaders, your parents, who have a network of their own. The next is your peer group and their networks. The one who directs all of this is your regional culture. A culture which is formed by all of the living networks. But the foundation, and majority of whatever culture you’re a part of is made up of layers of influence from beyond the grave.

The biological needs are there from endocrine system drives that help regulate our immune system and consequently, our self-preservation. Psychoneuroimmunology is a field of study that has learned an incredible amount about how our brain, or more specifically the decisions we make, the moods we’re in, in some cases even our sanity, are controlled by delicate systems throughout the body. What influences the direction our internal organs drive us towards when seeking the stimulation they require? What tells our brain that our lungs can get more oxygen when hugging; To reach for certain foods when in need of emotional comfort; Or to employ certain tactics in a social interaction to get the endorphins we need from it? It’s our sensory system, of course.

The correlation between morality and sanitary impulses is a great example. The bible’s insights on human nature have always been ahead of their time. But the insight in the phrase “cleanliness is next to Godliness” is scary in its intuitiveness. With various researchers finding that the connected psychological definitions and reactions to both unclean and immoral play a bigger role in our daily lives than we realize. Things like wanting to clean ourselves after experiencing or recounting a shameful act. Having harsher moral judgements when being uncomfortable or bothered by a bad smell. Are only two examples of how our lesser attributed sensory drives overpower and/or influence the others and as a result, direct our conscious decision making. But it’s also a blueprint for those few of us who find that their place in our society is that of a leader of the masses or mass manipulator.

The bible’s obsession with incense and feet washing and oils and cleanliness is almost a conscious effort on the part of the authors to communicate a multigenerational lesson on health and to connect it to their authority, or “God’s”. Those who live morally are clean and it’s your job to live morally. And how do you live morally? Through the rules in our books. Rules handed down by God himself. The majority of which subtly deal with either staying physically healthy through dietary and hygenic laws or spitually healthy through “cleansing” the heart, or mind, or spirit, or soul, etc. Verses like, “cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit”; “wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds”; and “by the washing with water through the word…”, pepper the entirety of the bible to make cleanliness and morality almost synonimous. A brilliant way of conditioning the mind. The benefits of cleanliness and healthy living are universal. You connect God’s authority to something universally benefitial, God becomes universally benefitial. And as most of you can imagine, a daily benefitial practise, like eating, or sleeping, or breathing, becomes a foundational aspect of our reality.

In the last part of this series, we covered what strategies a tribal leader might employ to communicate an abstract idea or influence others while handicapped with a primitive language. Mainly, they connected their directives to people’s biological necessities. Do A in order to get more of B.

Sometime between 21,000 and 24,000 years ago, we built a wall. It wasn’t a monument. And it wasn’t built on some holy site. The oldest human built structure ever found is a wall at the mouth of a cave near the small town of Kalabaka in Thessaly, Greece. The society that built this wall had lived in or around that cave through generations of deadly winters. Struggling to keep fires alive as the demonic wind slithered through the cave. Aside from the impressiveness of this technological leap, it also marks another instance of territorial isolation possibly fostering innovation. This type of innovation has it’s limitations, as we can only innovate so much through necessity. Ideas involving things independant of necessities take an outside perspective. Someone oblivious or indifferent to the qualms of the society they’re in.

The wall was made of clay and uncut lime stone. Inside the cave is evidence of ceramic experimentation. Their isolation may have resulted in them finding new ways to use the fire that was so critical to their survival. Sitting around forming wet clay into cylindrical shapes, someone probably asked themselves “what happens if I hold this over the fire?”, and did it. Playing with it’s adhesiveness. But this is during the calm periods. During 60 degree summers. When the snow melted and the bottom of the lake was full of wet clay. We were seasonal animals. Like every other animal, our bodies knew the bad times were coming. Where we make the mistake is believing that it’s our consciousness and its conception of time that makes us aware of the changing seasons. It’s the sensory system. Absorbing up millions of god-knows-what in the atmosphere as we pick up a peppermint mocha at the starbucks drive-thru.

Around 40,000 years ago, homosapiens on the island of Tasmania were using fire to alter their landscapes by burning down forest. This turned dense vegetation into open grassland. This practice somehow spread throughout Northern Africa and Europe. Whether there were roaming tribes that transferred information between those that practised sedentism, or the latter came by the practice independantly, this was an exercise that also demanded seasonal awareness and would enforce our cyclical nature. A pattern of existence built around a certain time of the year that we can prepare for.

During the Last Glaciel Maximum, near the Meteora mountains back in Thessaly, the winters were the manifestation of death itself. With all the tragedy and gore of the worst and most recent accounts of any town going through a winter without electronic heaters or access to conventional tools for cutting wood or lighting a fire. The cyclical trauma percipitated a need, and the periods of rest fostered a creativity. This was our nature and connected us through the generations of our bloodline’s existence. To all living things in our surroundings.

As this preparation became a foundational part of our reality, we began to deify the things we were preparing for. We connected mythos of characters with an authoritarian nature. Probably because of how imperative the preparation for these seasonal events are. And also to ease the absorbtion of the information. Making the information absolutely necessary to heed under threat of divine consequences. By now most with even a passing interest religious studies know that almost all important religious dates have always been adoptions and adaptations of ancient seasonal markers. This continuum makes sure that these cyclical practices, already existent in the society’s programming, becomes a foundational part of the individual’s reality through the authority of the new religion. Pretty soon the health of the mind, the body, and social relationships, through the recognition of, and participation in, important individual and seasonal ceremonies; are all only possible through the authority and blessing of your God.

To those who might think they get the gist of my argument, the argument isn’t just that we’ve lost some connection to nature. It’s more that the transition to this new psychological state that our society lives in, in which we atomized time and made it a foundational structure of every facet of our lives has resulted in unintended psychological consequences. We have become schizophrenic en masse, through this programming. Operating on a utilitarian civility and oblivious to the inhumanity in our hearts. And this mentality might have blessed us with our lightspeed travel through all of the developments and collective achievements. But it is why we seem to be racing towards another era of collective violence. Why we have so many unhappy people. So many, so desperate, that choose to be homeless, or end their lives rather than live out of whack in this reality. At the end of the day, this is just a theory. You are welcomed to find the flaws. To critizise the ignorance or naivety. I even welcome the pedantic, as I want to learn and get better.

In the next part of this series, I’ll give my closing arguments in this case of the broken society. Thank you for reading.