The individual members of the
dominant species on this planet require a nine month gestation period after
which time they are utterly helpless and dependent on the mother (or the parents
combined) for a period of anywhere between six and sixteen years depending on
the culture concerned. No other member of the animal kingdom has been so
coddled, preened, embraced, looked after and cared for, patiently indulged and
affectionately treated then a human child and likewise no other animal once
mature is capable of looking out into the world with an even remotely comparable
& intrinsically social driven empathic lens.
'Survival of the fittest' is a term which embraces a multitudinous range of species- specific beneficial adaptions and within the group of primates from which we have evolved none have been more important than those which have promoted intra group co-operation and cohesion; our 'rise to power' has been predicated almost entirely on our capacity to communicate complex messages to one another concerning our individual wants and needs, and nothing else other than a rich multi-layered communicative system could sustain the level of co-operation required to satisfy those needs collectively, thus as we were - it has bound us together and made of us the world's most formidable fighting force (and species destroyer) but it has also ensured throughout our development the steady accumulation of a revolutionary surplus component; the elaboration of abstract ideals (fairness, justice, rights, equality) - which are periodically tapped into to achieve consensus viewpoints amidst the overthrow of crumbling absolutist-type monarchies or tyrannous state governments and consequently, also enshrined, (and venerated) as part of our legal codes, indelibly stitched into the fabric of 'who we are'.
To discount ethics is to miss the point of evolution entirely, we wouldn't be what we are today, still less be capable of communicating an opinion on it, were it not from the onset embedded as a rudder in our primitive mammalian brains. Of course, we weren't always aware of our origins, of how much social investment was required to finally lift us from the quagmire of 'tooth and claw' individualism and, given too much to the realms of abstract speculation some presupposed as evidential the existence of variegated races, of hierarchies of fitness and adaptibility, and this chimed well for a time with a pre-existent colonial order whose imperial servants wrestled to suppress the evident, that their domestically asserted criteria of rights & entitlements were logically universal, not magically rendered inapplicable when applied to the natives whose domains they had usurped - an assumption torn asunder during and after WWII when the most egregious example of such thinking were pounded into the ground (Nazism) and international bodies established which re-asserted (theoretically & aspirationally) the universality of human rights.
The social sphere by it's nature will attempt to harness and divert the raw animal forces of which we are composed. It's a pretty intricate matrix of relations into which we are all born. The domestication of the id is reasonably supposed to occur around four years of age and there is little disagreement about what is happening here; oedipalisation is broadly defined as a self-conscious acceptance of social norms - and in homo there is a greater extended period of instinctually driven behaviour, a much longer developmental path towards the 'period of maturity' in which comparable mammals attain competence in their habitus.
I can actually pinpoint to the minute my own accession to the social sphere, i.e the Symbolic domain - I woke in a sweat (age four) with the stunning (and unforgettable) realisation that picking the family cat up by the tail and swinging it about furiously like a set of Mexican bolas before letting it go crashing into the nearest wall, (which apparently I was in the habit of doing quite regularly) was - unacceptable. I remember distinctly thinking "the cat feels pain like I do, what the hell have I done?" With this, I leapt from my bed and sought out our little kitty to give him a plate of cool milk - well he was in hiding - and all the push push pussy in the world couldn't get him to come out from his cubby hole. For a solid hour I begged, cajoled and placated - desperate for the assurance that our moggy could forgive my heinous crimes. When he did emerge, ever so cautious (and eying me with that trepidation as though I could become a devil incarnate) he somehow assured himself - against his better instincts I'm sure, that I was no longer a danger, and dipped his tongue gingerly into the bowl of báinne.
Joy uncontained. I had been forgiven.
All of this naturally preceded any notions I had of religion, God etc. Morality grew organically entirely out of my own milieu; my recognition that other creatures suffered as I do - a complex understanding to arrive at. So I think religion - with all it's codes, morals, strictures and taboos - emerges entirely from our own recognition of mortality but this recognition consists of the awareness that we are all separate and distinct beings, all perishable and vulnerable and all seeking to negotiate ourselves through the world's space with this fundamental mutual acknowledgement.
It follows then that though I agree with the classical sequence; animism - polytheism - monotheism ("soul", "gods", "god"), the 'religious complex' does not derive from an 'inability to handle' mortality or it's attendant anxieties but issues instead from a set of strategies that has conquered and transcended them.
In fact, I see the earliest religious forms, animism etc. emerging to occupy those available temporal spaces wherein there is a possibility (freed from the natural rhythms of the group) that this common bond can be formally acknowledged - a dignified locus is then set aside; certain times, places, events may become a trigger; but the effect is always to produce the consensus of their being a higher morality - the issue of verifiability in this context is immaterial. If you look at the chorus in Sophoclean drama you will see that faith in this type of morality is already being crushed - but it's there to begin with, for sure.
Christianity is extraordinarily rich in emotive archetypes and symbolism; I see no great mystery in it's longevity but whether it's the finest expression of the animist impulse I'm not too sure. However, given it itself has emerged from our innate propensity for ethical thinking, it cannot be viewed as the necessary prerequisite for morality.
'Survival of the fittest' is a term which embraces a multitudinous range of species- specific beneficial adaptions and within the group of primates from which we have evolved none have been more important than those which have promoted intra group co-operation and cohesion; our 'rise to power' has been predicated almost entirely on our capacity to communicate complex messages to one another concerning our individual wants and needs, and nothing else other than a rich multi-layered communicative system could sustain the level of co-operation required to satisfy those needs collectively, thus as we were - it has bound us together and made of us the world's most formidable fighting force (and species destroyer) but it has also ensured throughout our development the steady accumulation of a revolutionary surplus component; the elaboration of abstract ideals (fairness, justice, rights, equality) - which are periodically tapped into to achieve consensus viewpoints amidst the overthrow of crumbling absolutist-type monarchies or tyrannous state governments and consequently, also enshrined, (and venerated) as part of our legal codes, indelibly stitched into the fabric of 'who we are'.
To discount ethics is to miss the point of evolution entirely, we wouldn't be what we are today, still less be capable of communicating an opinion on it, were it not from the onset embedded as a rudder in our primitive mammalian brains. Of course, we weren't always aware of our origins, of how much social investment was required to finally lift us from the quagmire of 'tooth and claw' individualism and, given too much to the realms of abstract speculation some presupposed as evidential the existence of variegated races, of hierarchies of fitness and adaptibility, and this chimed well for a time with a pre-existent colonial order whose imperial servants wrestled to suppress the evident, that their domestically asserted criteria of rights & entitlements were logically universal, not magically rendered inapplicable when applied to the natives whose domains they had usurped - an assumption torn asunder during and after WWII when the most egregious example of such thinking were pounded into the ground (Nazism) and international bodies established which re-asserted (theoretically & aspirationally) the universality of human rights.
The social sphere by it's nature will attempt to harness and divert the raw animal forces of which we are composed. It's a pretty intricate matrix of relations into which we are all born. The domestication of the id is reasonably supposed to occur around four years of age and there is little disagreement about what is happening here; oedipalisation is broadly defined as a self-conscious acceptance of social norms - and in homo there is a greater extended period of instinctually driven behaviour, a much longer developmental path towards the 'period of maturity' in which comparable mammals attain competence in their habitus.
I can actually pinpoint to the minute my own accession to the social sphere, i.e the Symbolic domain - I woke in a sweat (age four) with the stunning (and unforgettable) realisation that picking the family cat up by the tail and swinging it about furiously like a set of Mexican bolas before letting it go crashing into the nearest wall, (which apparently I was in the habit of doing quite regularly) was - unacceptable. I remember distinctly thinking "the cat feels pain like I do, what the hell have I done?" With this, I leapt from my bed and sought out our little kitty to give him a plate of cool milk - well he was in hiding - and all the push push pussy in the world couldn't get him to come out from his cubby hole. For a solid hour I begged, cajoled and placated - desperate for the assurance that our moggy could forgive my heinous crimes. When he did emerge, ever so cautious (and eying me with that trepidation as though I could become a devil incarnate) he somehow assured himself - against his better instincts I'm sure, that I was no longer a danger, and dipped his tongue gingerly into the bowl of báinne.
Joy uncontained. I had been forgiven.
All of this naturally preceded any notions I had of religion, God etc. Morality grew organically entirely out of my own milieu; my recognition that other creatures suffered as I do - a complex understanding to arrive at. So I think religion - with all it's codes, morals, strictures and taboos - emerges entirely from our own recognition of mortality but this recognition consists of the awareness that we are all separate and distinct beings, all perishable and vulnerable and all seeking to negotiate ourselves through the world's space with this fundamental mutual acknowledgement.
It follows then that though I agree with the classical sequence; animism - polytheism - monotheism ("soul", "gods", "god"), the 'religious complex' does not derive from an 'inability to handle' mortality or it's attendant anxieties but issues instead from a set of strategies that has conquered and transcended them.
In fact, I see the earliest religious forms, animism etc. emerging to occupy those available temporal spaces wherein there is a possibility (freed from the natural rhythms of the group) that this common bond can be formally acknowledged - a dignified locus is then set aside; certain times, places, events may become a trigger; but the effect is always to produce the consensus of their being a higher morality - the issue of verifiability in this context is immaterial. If you look at the chorus in Sophoclean drama you will see that faith in this type of morality is already being crushed - but it's there to begin with, for sure.
Christianity is extraordinarily rich in emotive archetypes and symbolism; I see no great mystery in it's longevity but whether it's the finest expression of the animist impulse I'm not too sure. However, given it itself has emerged from our innate propensity for ethical thinking, it cannot be viewed as the necessary prerequisite for morality.
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