Video - Prehistoric figurations of Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca
metahistory | Both myth and science seem to agree on an ontology in which the universe is catastrophically transformative, from the supernova to the binary star to the Cretaceous Extinction. If science is telling us the truth, then myth has not been lying to us about the war in heaven — William Irwin Thompson, Imaginary Landscape
To create society within the setting of a natural habitat raises many complex issues regarding how human needs may conflict with the environment or harmonize with it. Stories of an original paradisical state or Golden Age may be more than mere fantasies about the mysterious past of humanity. These myths encode the belief that humankind lived without conflict when it was totally immersed in the bond with Sacred Nature. (Basic Reading: Memories and Visions of Paradise)
When it departs from that bond, everything changes.
In the arch of metahistory, the left-hand side represents the long passage from evolutionary roots in prehistory to the recorded origins of civilization. Long before the first evidence of historical origins — for instance, the earliest traces of the first Dynasty in Egypt, dated to around 3400 BCE — the human species had been engaged in defining itself as distinct from nature, forming settlements and societies, introducing culture. The “struggle for survival” involves conflict with nature, but socialization introduces other kinds of conflict. The complexities of power-sharing and the differentiation of individuals according to their capacities present many occasions for strife and confusion. The necessity of leadership in any social order introduces the possibility of conflict over who will assume that role. Conflicts that arise within society are initially assessed and resolved by trial and error, but gradually a sense of order emerges, rules and norms of behavior are established, and society becomes (ideally) a self-regulating organism. This development reflects the theme of Moral Design whose position across the arch is complementary to Eternal Conflict.
Eternal Conflict may be inherent to the cosmos at large, but is it endemic to human nature?
The origin of violent and destructive behavior in the human species has been widely debated through the ages. Renegade psychologist Wilhelm Reich (Suggested Reading) proposed a theory that has recently been upgraded by James DeMeo. According to Reich, “character armoring” is a form of blocked behavior that reverses the life-force (which he called orgone), thus producing a drive toward death and destruction. DeMeo attributes armoring to traumatic stress that occurred in the Old World around 4000 BC due to severe changes in climate. His theory is comprehensively argued in Saharasia, an historical application of Reichian theory that covers 6 millennia of human experience. Like Reich, DeMeo refutes the argument that violence is a tragic flaw innate to homo sapiens. In his view, climatic trauma and territorial loss are enough to provoke intrahuman conflict on a vast scale. [See www.orgonelab.org]
For years, historians assumed that warfare was the primary motive behind civilization, but recent discoveries at the “mother city” of Caral in Peru challenge that theory. (SIDEBAR on Caral). We know precious little about how prehistorical civilized societies managed conflict, but it is fairly certain that War Gods did not appear until full-blown civilization arrived. Hence warfare may not have been so much the catalyst for civilization as a consequence of it. If homo sapiens is truly a social animal, social order could have emerged without the need for violent force to control and subdue human energies. Once it was established, however, stability and continuity might well have become problematic. War and strife could have arisen over the transfer of power consolidated in the social order. This development is reflected in the origin myths of many cultures, stories of war and strife among the Gods or between Gods and humans. The founders of nations are often twins who compete to the death: Horus and Set in Egypt, Romulus and Remus in Italy. Even the creation of the world often begins with a scenario of warring twins. Twinning is a universal mytheme applied in countless instances to describe Eternal Conflict.
In Greek mythology battles between generations of Gods were recorded in the poetic cosmogony of Hesiod: Celestial Gods versus Titans versus Olympians. The script suggests that conflict is generational, a belief restated in the Old Testament in the notion that the sins of the parents are visited on the children. The shift from an earlier generation to a later one exemplifies the transfer of power. The shift is constant, and so the conflict it introduces will be perpetual although the nature of the conflict will change as the generations evolve.
What modern science understands to be opposing principles in nature, such as gravitation and centrifugal force, was commonly represented in ancient myth by battling gods, such as Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca in MesoAmerican traditions. The traits of these warring deities were often complex, because they simultaneously reflected both forces operating both in nature and in the human psyche. (Aztec Codex)
To create society within the setting of a natural habitat raises many complex issues regarding how human needs may conflict with the environment or harmonize with it. Stories of an original paradisical state or Golden Age may be more than mere fantasies about the mysterious past of humanity. These myths encode the belief that humankind lived without conflict when it was totally immersed in the bond with Sacred Nature. (Basic Reading: Memories and Visions of Paradise)
When it departs from that bond, everything changes.
In the arch of metahistory, the left-hand side represents the long passage from evolutionary roots in prehistory to the recorded origins of civilization. Long before the first evidence of historical origins — for instance, the earliest traces of the first Dynasty in Egypt, dated to around 3400 BCE — the human species had been engaged in defining itself as distinct from nature, forming settlements and societies, introducing culture. The “struggle for survival” involves conflict with nature, but socialization introduces other kinds of conflict. The complexities of power-sharing and the differentiation of individuals according to their capacities present many occasions for strife and confusion. The necessity of leadership in any social order introduces the possibility of conflict over who will assume that role. Conflicts that arise within society are initially assessed and resolved by trial and error, but gradually a sense of order emerges, rules and norms of behavior are established, and society becomes (ideally) a self-regulating organism. This development reflects the theme of Moral Design whose position across the arch is complementary to Eternal Conflict.
Eternal Conflict may be inherent to the cosmos at large, but is it endemic to human nature?
The origin of violent and destructive behavior in the human species has been widely debated through the ages. Renegade psychologist Wilhelm Reich (Suggested Reading) proposed a theory that has recently been upgraded by James DeMeo. According to Reich, “character armoring” is a form of blocked behavior that reverses the life-force (which he called orgone), thus producing a drive toward death and destruction. DeMeo attributes armoring to traumatic stress that occurred in the Old World around 4000 BC due to severe changes in climate. His theory is comprehensively argued in Saharasia, an historical application of Reichian theory that covers 6 millennia of human experience. Like Reich, DeMeo refutes the argument that violence is a tragic flaw innate to homo sapiens. In his view, climatic trauma and territorial loss are enough to provoke intrahuman conflict on a vast scale. [See www.orgonelab.org]
For years, historians assumed that warfare was the primary motive behind civilization, but recent discoveries at the “mother city” of Caral in Peru challenge that theory. (SIDEBAR on Caral). We know precious little about how prehistorical civilized societies managed conflict, but it is fairly certain that War Gods did not appear until full-blown civilization arrived. Hence warfare may not have been so much the catalyst for civilization as a consequence of it. If homo sapiens is truly a social animal, social order could have emerged without the need for violent force to control and subdue human energies. Once it was established, however, stability and continuity might well have become problematic. War and strife could have arisen over the transfer of power consolidated in the social order. This development is reflected in the origin myths of many cultures, stories of war and strife among the Gods or between Gods and humans. The founders of nations are often twins who compete to the death: Horus and Set in Egypt, Romulus and Remus in Italy. Even the creation of the world often begins with a scenario of warring twins. Twinning is a universal mytheme applied in countless instances to describe Eternal Conflict.
In Greek mythology battles between generations of Gods were recorded in the poetic cosmogony of Hesiod: Celestial Gods versus Titans versus Olympians. The script suggests that conflict is generational, a belief restated in the Old Testament in the notion that the sins of the parents are visited on the children. The shift from an earlier generation to a later one exemplifies the transfer of power. The shift is constant, and so the conflict it introduces will be perpetual although the nature of the conflict will change as the generations evolve.
What modern science understands to be opposing principles in nature, such as gravitation and centrifugal force, was commonly represented in ancient myth by battling gods, such as Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca in MesoAmerican traditions. The traits of these warring deities were often complex, because they simultaneously reflected both forces operating both in nature and in the human psyche. (Aztec Codex)
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