Megaliths and Mutual Measures

I’ve been thinking about megalithic structures - mostly structures in the Middle East. Many of which have unfortunately been destroyed. Thankfully not Petra or Baalbek. What is it that enabled stone age people to build something like that? Baalbek was inhabited before 5,000 BCE. The largest blocks weigh one thousand six hundred and fifty tons. Even Gobekli Tepe was abandoned even earlier, back around 10,000 BCE. It wasn’t built then, it was abandoned. At that time, cuneiform didn’t even exist. There weren’t even copper tools. We probably don’t have the faith to unite to build something like that today in our modern, secular, capitalist environment.
​
Faith does seem to be an inspiration for these massive structures. Most structures from the Great Pyramid to the ancient Indian temples had a religious purpose. Even Petra was the original pilgrimage site for some progenitors of the Islamic faith. The Cathedrals, which I offer as the most beautiful architecture of the European culture, are buildings of pure faith.

Some of you might be screaming about Rome, the Great Wall of China, or various castles around the world. If faith is something that you believe in regardless of evidence, and worship is paid through rituals to an authority external to oneself, then one can worship a secular authority just the same as a spiritual. And authority is not benevolent by prerequisite before it has what feels like an omnipotent impact in one’s life. Paying taxes could be a secular ritual with faith that the taxes are used as we the citizens deem fit.

Perhaps it is the centralization of objectives that allowed for these monuments to be built. Well, that and slavery, in many cases. It’s funny, we value the creations that are spawned from something that even a child would see immediately as an evil. And would be right, even if civilization might not have advanced as rapidly as it did. “Because of its universal distribution the collective psyche, which is still so close to the small child, perceives not only the background of the parents, but, ranging further afield, the depths of good and evil in the human soul. The unconscious psyche of the child is truly limitless in extent and of incalculable age.” (Jung, Introduction to Wicke’s “Analyse Der Kinderseele”) It’s interesting to me, how children know good and evil, fair and unfair. Adulthood seems to entail a rationalization of evil in the interest of “the Greater Good.”

In the evolution of faith, honestly it is typically not a benevolent deity to begin with. One first wants to avoid pain and death, and continues to pray for safety from predators, not just a good harvest to avoid famine, or to avoid consequences of a natural disaster. This keeps all the diverse deities alive for now. “Religion always begins with fear, and the religion of savages may directly be defined as ‘the fear of evil and the various efforts made to escape evil.’ Though the fear of evil in the religions of civilized nations plays no longer so prominent a part, we yet learn through historical investigations that at an early stage of their development almost all worship was paid to the powers of evil, who were regarded with special awe and reverence.” (Paul Carus, The History of the Devil, pg 14) Gods and demons were incredibly interlinked throughout humanities existence, as can be witnessed in witch burnings as well as the evolution of ancient deities like Baal, El, Jupiter, and Aten. Always the protection and advancement of one’s personal tribe was deemed good, even and occasionally especially at the expense of neighboring powers.

The Pharaoh of Egypt was meant to preserve divine will on Earth (maat), which worked out well for him and his priests. This focused will of the people who followed maat is almost certainly a contributory factor in the construction of things like the Pyramid at Giza. I’m slightly amazed at how this loyalty persisted through changing dynasties like Narmer or the Hyksos invasions. But perhaps the ancient faiths had a more honest understanding of human nature than some modern ones. “Still, no matter what form the gods of Egypt took, they were, like the gods of Mesopotamia, always described in human terms, with human impulses, human desires, and human instincts. Even when the gods were portrayed as animals in Egyptian art and literature, they were still given human traits and behavior; they were still depicted as taking part in human activities. They ate, drank, and slept like humans. They argued with each other and fought over petty jealousies. They had family problems. They displayed good and bad moods. They could be all knowing or just plain stupid.” (Reza Aslan, God: A Human History, pg 80) If your authority truly has a boot on your neck, do you have time to struggle or is another sunrise and a cup of fermented barley worth the indignity presented by the slave driver? It’s far easier to accept the authority that exists than dream and reach for a new one. Especially if an omnipotent and omnipresent force may crush you if you try.

Theoretically the whole idea of rulership and loyalty is that it is supposed to inspire a sense of responsibility toward those who are governed. This was the case with kings and queens, with the Emperors of times past, and certainly with representatives today. These authorities in exchange with that loyalty provide protection and various services as deemed appropriate. Those provided in recent decades are more robust than in centuries past, courtesy of the exponential growth of various rights. Thank the Leviathan for such blessings. “How came this creation so magically woven that nothing can do me mischief but myself, – that an invisible fence surrounds my being which screens me from all harm that I will to resist? If I will stand upright, the creation cannot bend me. But if I violate myself, if I commit a crime, the lightning loiters by the speed of retribution, and every act is not hereafter but instantaneously rewarded according to its quality. Virtue is the adopting of this dictate of the universal mind by the individual will. Character is the habit of this obedience, and Religion is the accompanying emotion, the emotion of reverence which the presence of the universal mind ever excites in the individual.” (Emerson, The Sovereignty of Ethics) Sometimes the wait time for police or bureaucracy can put a damper on this religion. Imagine the paperwork that would be required for a Great Wall of China or Coliseum today!

Clearly there are more benefits to working together than separate. Cathedrals certainly weren’t built by a single person. Most homes aren’t built by people of a single skillset. We share and work together to build anything long lasting, not just megalithic monuments. “By the conjunction of forces our power is augmented; by the partition of employments our ability increases; and by mutual succor we are less exposed to fortune and accidents. It is by this additional force, ability, and security, that society becomes advantageous.” (David Hume, Treatsie of Human Nature, Book III, Part II, Section II) Finding the means to make society willingly unite is a trick politicians have been working at since Athenians and Spartans were throwing spears at each other.

Often it takes an enemy to get people to unite, but that’s cynical and Machiavellian. It pits the species against itself, which doesn’t seem like a valuable direction for any species that wants to thrive. Cannot the urge to life be a uniting force just as much as the urge to death? Restricting people to insiders or outsiders seems a way to create strife and conflict, not to unite. “Totem, tribal, racial, and aggressively missionizing cults represent only partial solutions of the psychological problem of subduing hate by love; they only partially initiate. Ego is not annihilated in them; rather, it is enlarged; instead of thinking only of himself, the individual becomes dedicated to the whole of his society. The rest of the world meanwhile (that is to say, by far the greater portion of mankind) is left outside the sphere of his sympathy and protection because outside the sphere of the protection of his god. And there takes place, then, that dramatic divorce of the two principles of love and hate which the pages of history so bountifully illustrate. Instead of cleaning his own heart the zealot tries to clear the world. The laws of the City of God are applied only to his in-group (tribe, church, nation, class, or what not) while the fire of a perpetual holy war is hurled (with good conscience, and indeed a sense of pious service) against whatever uncircumcised, barbarian, heathen, ‘native,’ or alien people happens to occupy the position of neighbor.” (Campbell, The Hero with 1000 Faces, pg 156) Yet, what happens to the resources of the City of God run out sustaining the rest of the world within the well meaning sphere of sympathy of protection? Sometimes tribal, societal, or familial loyalties have material restrictions that supersede the spiritual. One hopes the spiritual are not entirely lost in that hierarchy.

Hierarchies come into being for a purpose. A skill is valued and leads to the benefit of all community members. This could be skill in hunting, firemaking, or delegation and negotiation. As with all growth and creation of a society, the primary focus is on the survival of that group. David Hume noted that centuries ago when he was considering the relationship between human society and human nature. “For besides that nothing is more essential to public interest than the preservation of public liberty, it is evident that if such a mixed government be once supposed to be established, every part of member of the constitution must have a right of self-defense and of maintaining its ancient bounds against the encroachment of every other authority. As matter would have been created in vain, were it deprived of a power of resistance, without which no part of it could preserve a distinct existence, and the whole might be crowded up into a single point; so it is a gross absurdity to suppose in any government a right without a remedy, or allow that the supreme power is shared with the people without allowing that it is lawful for them to defend their share against every invader.” (David Hume, Treatsie of Human Nature, Book III, Part II, Section X) There is always a balance between liberty and society. Anarchy appears to reign on one hand, with mob rule enforced (following the root meaning of that word) upon the community they find themselves in. And on the other, such suffocating oppression that famine and prison for thought-crime exists. And all societies require basic rules to function with anything approximating justice. When broken, citizens have faith that consequences will be met out. “We have now run over the three fundamental laws of nature, that of the stability of possession, of its transference by consent and of the performance of promises. It is on the strict observance of those three laws that the peace and security of human society entirely depend; nor is there any possibility of establishing a good correspondence among men, where these are neglected. Society is absolutely necessary for the well-being of men; and these are as necessary to the support of society.” (David Hume, Treatsie of Human Nature, Book III, Part II, Section VI) The Ubaidians developed clay tablets for bookkeeping debts before they irrigating the Tigris and Euphrates or build weapons of obsidian. Debts and property are the foundation of society.
Without Gods to trust deliverance of Karma in the afterlife, known injustice is difficult to stomach today. When there is one rule of law for the average citizen, and a way to post bail and help an understanding to be reached, the symbol of justice is tarnished. “There can be no question: the psychological dangers trough which earlier generations were guided by the symbols and spiritual exercises of their mythological and religious inheritance, we today (in so far as we are unbeliever, or, if believers, in so far as our inherited beliefs fair to represent the real problems of contemporary life) must face alone, or, at best, with only tentative, impromptu, and often not very effective guidance. This is our problem as modern, ‘enlightened’ individuals, for whom all gods and devils have been rationalized out of existence.” (Campbell, The Hero with 1000 Faces, pg 104)

One way to look at this conundrum is with fear or sorrow. Or instead it could be an opportunity to make oneself into one who has fulfilled one’s potential in the here and now. Things in the past that detrimentally affect your present could be considered in economics as “sunk costs.” They already have been paid, you can’t bemoan your fate. What is your potential from today, what could be done better to make your society function for the well-being of your community? “By virtue of its indefinite extension the unconscious might be compared to the sea, while consciousness is like an island rising out of its midst. This comparison, however, must not be pushed too far; for the relation of conscious to unconscious is essentially different from that of an island to the sea. It is not in any sense a stable relationship, but a ceaseless welling-up, a constant shifting of content; for, like the conscious, the unconscious is never at rest, never stagnant. It lives and works in a state of perpetual interaction with the conscious.” (Jung, Child Development and Education) Jung seems to believe that symbols can be changed, which can change the way we behave in life with each other. Certainly all of the aspects have a light and dark aspect. A Dark Father figure, and Light Mother figure. The Trickster can be either Satan or Prometheus. As sometimes I hear, there is no dawn without dusk.