Humans have shown that any ritual will do, so long as the intrigue is complex enough to serve the purposes of the elite - and simple enough for the herd to follow.
Complex social structures are thrown overboard and replaced with outward signs of compliance, performed to drum beats and chants.
It would be understandable, if humans only ever lived at the level of ritual, body tattoos and tribal war but humans have shown they can rise to great heights in art, architecture, literature, music and thought. Periodically, however, they must perform a ritual cleansing. Damn the most beautiful metaphysical creation of the mind's eye: smash it all.
Medicine is the tool. Specifically the medicine man. He is called upon to lead the sacrifice that brings the whole cultural edifice crashing down.
Science is only ever a mode of inquiry and rarely masquerades as a set of beliefs that underpins society, though it does seem to have happened with the elevation of Trofim Lysenko in the USSR. This functional-not-philosophical role is the scientist's burden and here writhes the age-old debate between the sciences and the arts. Ego always perverts this debate - as if the scientist and master of the humanities must justify their honour.
Of course, we are only capable of 'greatness' by our own measure. We can only work within our own spheres of awareness - we can all claim that by the tokens of what we know, we have simply strived to do the best we can.
It is the scientist, even so, who is called upon to open the doors to the Brave New World. It is arts and culture that is the first target: the ideas, ways of living, the humanity of the old order. Arts that lifts society to its greatest heights, to simplify of course, and science that unleashes the power to reduce society to its most basic functions.
Only look and you will see that society collapses at points when humans willingly replace rational, empirical, ethical science with ritual. Divining and alchemy, medicine and potions, blood letting and drilling heads to let out spirits - what are they but the science of the time? At certain points the science is changed to suit the purposes of ritual.
Religion has little to do with it, and everything. Though some of the greatest scientists and thinkers came out of religion, science was and remains the highest tool by which we can pursue practical knowledge. The science of war is the highest tool by which we can wreak destruction. That is everything it represents - everything and all.
I beg your indulgence while I go off on a short tangent in search of an insight.
Science for much of history has been part of the politico-religious state. Then from time to time, science is set up in opposition to the old order. Then once again co-opted. The greatest lie spread by schools is that society and progress is uniformly linear, each generation living longer, knowledge expanding ever wider and deeper, as if humanity is chanting in unison with children: "every day, in every way, I am getting better and better".
There must be some broader version of geology's uniformitarianism at play in academia: a doctrine that things have unfolded in the past much as they are unfolding now, only better.
Academia is distorted to uphold the needs of the current State Power: evidence of previous civilizations brought down by catastrophe is methodically hidden and destroyed - by the Regulated Academic Thought System, by preventing the cross fertilization of ideas, railroading would-be thinkers into partitioned discs of permitted thought.
So pernicious is this academic service of the current order that, once you see it, there is no problem recognizing how it distorts the political system; how it is used to subvert the political order.
Suddenly this gets interrupted by demand for creative destruction; for a Great Leap Forward. As if there is a permanent tension between the desire for uniformitarianism and catastrophe.
Why use science to bring down society? Why don't we set up a new counter culture before we tear down the old? Debate the values of our current society - against that with which we intend to replace it. Because science is a short cut to delegitimizing the old. It is simply quicker and faster to pop a pill, tell the oldies they can't see what we see - and make the elixir the cup we pass that determines whether you are one of us.
It is quicker to classify everyone by race and say categories J, C or M don't count any more - their opinions don't matter - than to debate Judeo-Christian life in the context of other Abrahamic value systems. Hell, just cancel him already.
We can use "new" information to tear down their achievements - burning paintings and books, destroying buildings, tearing up constitutions, censoring free thought and cancelling thinkers.
The medicine man's ritual purges follow a similar routine: silence those who would use what intelligence they have to question the madness around them.
They... we... are remnants of the old society that had built ways of seeing, ways of thinking, ways of doing that - for a time - were our best attempt at running society.
See the medicine man waving his arms, casting charms and chanting. Whipping the people into fear, then outrage and violence. Purge, purge, purge the old ways, kill the old thinkers, pass the cup, take the tincture, taste of the fruit.
"Just one sip, ladies and gentlemen, of this magical elixir and you will be - I guarantee you - protect by my special recipe against the evil spirits around you.
Oh, believe, these spirits aim to do you harm: to breathe their evil breath upon you; to mix spit and slime and smear it on your doorknob... so that the very air you breathe is poisoned with some novi... some new... invisible toxin."
Toxin. Tocsin. Not for nothing do these words sound alike. That is how the medicine man makes you clamour for his magical potion that always offers, in every iteration, the same properties: for the good, to make them immune; for the evil, to make them invisible so they may pass among you spreading their stuff.
Patter. Pattern. Always the same.
"You've got the lurgy, you've got the lurgy. You're it... Teacher, teacher, he's trying to touch me.
"Don't be stupid, child. It's not real. Now go back to the classroom."
Complex social structures are thrown overboard and replaced with outward signs of compliance, performed to drum beats and chants.
It would be understandable, if humans only ever lived at the level of ritual, body tattoos and tribal war but humans have shown they can rise to great heights in art, architecture, literature, music and thought. Periodically, however, they must perform a ritual cleansing. Damn the most beautiful metaphysical creation of the mind's eye: smash it all.
Medicine is the tool. Specifically the medicine man. He is called upon to lead the sacrifice that brings the whole cultural edifice crashing down.
Science is only ever a mode of inquiry and rarely masquerades as a set of beliefs that underpins society, though it does seem to have happened with the elevation of Trofim Lysenko in the USSR. This functional-not-philosophical role is the scientist's burden and here writhes the age-old debate between the sciences and the arts. Ego always perverts this debate - as if the scientist and master of the humanities must justify their honour.
Of course, we are only capable of 'greatness' by our own measure. We can only work within our own spheres of awareness - we can all claim that by the tokens of what we know, we have simply strived to do the best we can.
It is the scientist, even so, who is called upon to open the doors to the Brave New World. It is arts and culture that is the first target: the ideas, ways of living, the humanity of the old order. Arts that lifts society to its greatest heights, to simplify of course, and science that unleashes the power to reduce society to its most basic functions.
Only look and you will see that society collapses at points when humans willingly replace rational, empirical, ethical science with ritual. Divining and alchemy, medicine and potions, blood letting and drilling heads to let out spirits - what are they but the science of the time? At certain points the science is changed to suit the purposes of ritual.
Religion has little to do with it, and everything. Though some of the greatest scientists and thinkers came out of religion, science was and remains the highest tool by which we can pursue practical knowledge. The science of war is the highest tool by which we can wreak destruction. That is everything it represents - everything and all.
I beg your indulgence while I go off on a short tangent in search of an insight.
Science for much of history has been part of the politico-religious state. Then from time to time, science is set up in opposition to the old order. Then once again co-opted. The greatest lie spread by schools is that society and progress is uniformly linear, each generation living longer, knowledge expanding ever wider and deeper, as if humanity is chanting in unison with children: "every day, in every way, I am getting better and better".
There must be some broader version of geology's uniformitarianism at play in academia: a doctrine that things have unfolded in the past much as they are unfolding now, only better.
Academia is distorted to uphold the needs of the current State Power: evidence of previous civilizations brought down by catastrophe is methodically hidden and destroyed - by the Regulated Academic Thought System, by preventing the cross fertilization of ideas, railroading would-be thinkers into partitioned discs of permitted thought.
So pernicious is this academic service of the current order that, once you see it, there is no problem recognizing how it distorts the political system; how it is used to subvert the political order.
Suddenly this gets interrupted by demand for creative destruction; for a Great Leap Forward. As if there is a permanent tension between the desire for uniformitarianism and catastrophe.
Why use science to bring down society? Why don't we set up a new counter culture before we tear down the old? Debate the values of our current society - against that with which we intend to replace it. Because science is a short cut to delegitimizing the old. It is simply quicker and faster to pop a pill, tell the oldies they can't see what we see - and make the elixir the cup we pass that determines whether you are one of us.
It is quicker to classify everyone by race and say categories J, C or M don't count any more - their opinions don't matter - than to debate Judeo-Christian life in the context of other Abrahamic value systems. Hell, just cancel him already.
We can use "new" information to tear down their achievements - burning paintings and books, destroying buildings, tearing up constitutions, censoring free thought and cancelling thinkers.
The medicine man's ritual purges follow a similar routine: silence those who would use what intelligence they have to question the madness around them.
They... we... are remnants of the old society that had built ways of seeing, ways of thinking, ways of doing that - for a time - were our best attempt at running society.
See the medicine man waving his arms, casting charms and chanting. Whipping the people into fear, then outrage and violence. Purge, purge, purge the old ways, kill the old thinkers, pass the cup, take the tincture, taste of the fruit.
"Just one sip, ladies and gentlemen, of this magical elixir and you will be - I guarantee you - protect by my special recipe against the evil spirits around you.
Oh, believe, these spirits aim to do you harm: to breathe their evil breath upon you; to mix spit and slime and smear it on your doorknob... so that the very air you breathe is poisoned with some novi... some new... invisible toxin."
Toxin. Tocsin. Not for nothing do these words sound alike. That is how the medicine man makes you clamour for his magical potion that always offers, in every iteration, the same properties: for the good, to make them immune; for the evil, to make them invisible so they may pass among you spreading their stuff.
Patter. Pattern. Always the same.
"You've got the lurgy, you've got the lurgy. You're it... Teacher, teacher, he's trying to touch me.
"Don't be stupid, child. It's not real. Now go back to the classroom."
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