#Leonard Shlain

[queenboudicaa]

Many inventive theories attempt to explain why ovulatory signals disappeared in the human line, but none of them, in my opinion, propose an advantage so sterling that it offsets the abandonment of the premier genereplicating method used by millions of species over millions of years—females signaling males their sexual readiness at the same moment they are ovulating.

The few species of primates that do not ostensibly signal ovulation are distant from the human line on the evolutionary primate-branching bush. A few other species' females also do not appear to advertise their ovulation—for example, some birds, such as mallards—but the problem of knowing for sure is exacerbated by the fact that human observers can't ask the males of these species whether or not they are aware of the females' ovulation.

Among the more ingenious explanations for why sexual signaling disappeared in humans is the one proposed by anthropologist Nancy Burley. Women lost the ability to monitor their ovulatory moment, according to Burley because those who grasped the connection between sex and pregnancy realized that pain, possible death, and taxing demands were also part of the deal.

A woman so enlightened, Burley theorizes, might prudently decide to abstain from sex . Celibates do not leave offspring. Selection pressure would, therefore, favor those women who were unaware of their ovulation.

Primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hardy proposes that infantile murder coaxed human cryptic ovulation into being in a theory known as the “many fathers.”

Having carefully documented the horrifying fact that male primates some¬ times killed infants, Hardy posits that the loss of external signs of ovulation ultimately protected newborns by keeping all parties guessing concerning the issue of paternity especially males. Unsure whether an infant was due to his copulatory efforts, a male would be less inclined to kill it.

Hardy worked primarily with hanuman langurs, but other studies, including Jane Goodall's chimpanzees in the wild and Alison Jolly's ring-tailed lemurs, have confirmed that males commit infanticide in these species. To date, thirty-five species of primates have been identified in which strange males kill infants.

Social scientists Margo Wilson and Martin Daly found suggestive evidence that this abhorrent practice exists among humans. Surveying crime statistics, they noted that when an adult male murders a child he is sixty-five times more likely to be a stepfather or live-in boyfriend than the child's biological father.

Though I have great respect and admiration for Hardy's work, I wonder whether her theory is the whole story If infanticide was so great a threat to the continuation of affected primate species, why did only the human line adopt the evolutionary strategy of cryptic ovulation to solve the problem?

Chimpanzees, for whom infanticide is a serious problem, have not evolved anything resembling cryptic ovulation. Bonobo males have never been observed to engage in killing infants, yet bonobo female primates come closest to mimicking the human female's reproductive model of loss of estrus and increased sexual receptivity.

The observation that strange males do the killing is in keeping with evolutionary theory. Alpha maledom often does not last very long. A strange male who achieves dominance must make hay while the sun shines. By killing the sucklings of his new group, he can precipitate estrus among the distressed mothers and thus increase his chances of spreading his genes.

Among human populations, it has been a common strategy of conquering armies, after beheading the losing side's warriors, to turn their attention to killing the infants who the conquerors know were fathered by those warriors. This slaughter of the innocents has been amply recorded at different times in disparate locales throughout history. Cryptic ovulation has rarely protected infants of the conquered women from being killed by strangers.

If keeping the male uncertain concerning paternity increases the life span of children, what would be the advantage to the female of remaining in the dark on such a vital issue as her own ovulation?

Another question: The male primates that engage in the practice of infanticide do not seem to care one fig about the offspring they do sire. Since the majority of infanticide is carried out by recently arrived males that are strangers to the group, it would be safe to assume that these animals are equipped with an instinct to kill the infant of any strange female.

Hardy's theory rests on the assumption that a male primate is capable of making the causal connection between sex and birth, either instinctually or consciously. There is minimal scientific evidence to indicate that this quantum leap in logic has occurred in the mind of another species besides a human.

Another problem: Since knowing when a female ovulates is critical to a male's fitness, why did not the human male develop a compensatory counteradaptation to detect the female's ovaries' subterfuge?

Many other theories abound. Donald Symons suggests women use their year-round sexual receptivity to seduce philanderers in exchange for gifts . L. Benshoof and Randy Thornhill propose that cryptic ovulation allows a woman to mate by stealth with a superior man without alerting her husband.

Though the theories outlined above may have been contributing factors in reprogramming Gyna sapiens ’reproductive cycle, they do not seem to offer sturdy enough reasons to explain the origin of such drastic changes in her life strategy.

The rarity of concealed ovulation among the other three million sexually reproducing species suggests that cryptic ovulation is not a mainline solution to any of the problems posed by the various theories.

The primary consequence of cryptic ovulation—the need for increased sexual contact to coincide with ovulation's propitious moment—would appear to be highly disadvantageous, evolutionarily speaking.

In the cold calculus of energy conservation, copulation is both dangerous and a very expensive metabolic activity An ancestral couple in flagrante delicto would have been very vulnerable to a predator. Sex consumes time, calories, resources, and mental effort that might better be used for survival. With a few notable exceptions, other creatures expend minimal time and energy copulating. The mating act of most birds and mammals can be measured in seconds.

The human investment, in terms of time spent thinking about sex, planning, wooing, and actually engaging in the act, exceeds that of any other creature. After their strenuous coitus, humans generally require a longer recovery interval than any other animal.

Additionally without a visible or olfactory lodestar, men and women have found it necessary to engage in frequent, capricious copulations throughout the year to increase the likelihood of pregnancy.

The uncertainty of conception, both for those who yearn for it and those who don't, has been among men's and women's most consistent causes of stress, anguish, and anxiety down through the generations.

Evolutionary processes do not care whether an organism is happy or not. Nevertheless, stress tends to diminish an organism's fitness.

Nonestral females of other species, with rare exception, do not appear to begrudge the attentions estral females receive from excited males. When Gyna sapiens lost estrus and gained the ability to engage in sex anytime throughout the year (if she so desired), the nettlesome problem of sexual jealousy among women reared its ugly head.

The green-eyed monster consumes a staggering waste of spirit and is virtually unknown among other species.

Cryptic ovulation and year-round sexual receptivity also greatly increased the amount and degree of jealousy among many men.

Societies have had to construct draconian legal, social, religious, and cultural barriers to regulate members' sexual competition and minimize the outbreak of violence. Duels, dogmas, eunuchs, taboos, so-called honor killings, chastity belts, and female genital mutilation are just a few of the rituals and devices that attest to the difficulty men have had in dealing with women's robust sexual capability.

Desmond Morris in his book The Naked Ape makes the argument that humans are the first species to elevate sex to the status of a recreational activity’ Morris speculates, “The vast bulk of copulation in our species is obvi¬ ously concerned, not with producing offspring, but with cementing the pair bond by providing mutual rewards for the sexual partners ."

According to this argument, endorsed by many others besides Morris, we are Homo ludens (the Playful Ape) and we have liberated sex from the depths of the Minotaurean labyrinth! in the brain's primitive limbic system of instinctual drives.

By elevating sex to the brain's higher, neocortical planes, according to these authors, we have created a new kind of sex. Proponents argue that the pleasure we so derive and the love that enhances the deep human commitments more than offsets any of the disadvantages of drastic changes in sexual programming.

[cinader]

S2E10 Women of the Berkeley Revolution & Ancient Times

Martha Cinader speaks with Joan Gelfand, author of Outside Voices, A Memoir of the Berkeley Revolution, about her participation in second wave feminism in the 1970's and what's happening now. In the second part of the hour we listen to an archival intervi

S2E10 Women of the Berkeley Revolution & Ancient Times L&BH-S2E10 [link to transcript] SHOW NOTES S2E10March 27, 2024Martha Cinader speaks with Joan Gelfand, author of Outside Voices, A Memoir of the Berkeley Revolution, about her participation in second wave feminism in the 1970’s and what’s happening now. In the second part of the hour we listen to an archival interview with the late Dr.…

[usunezukoinezu]

''Visionary artists, able to discern what the rest of us still cannot, embrace and announce through their art the principles emanating from this “spiritus mundi.” ''

-Leonard Shlain, Art & Physics

[cleverwordsandotherstuffilike]

"The human brain remains among the last few stubborn redoubts to yield its secrets to the experimental method. During the period that scientists expanded the horizons of astronomy, balanced the valences of chemistry, and determined the forces of physics, the crowning glory of Homo sapiens and its most enigmatic emanation, human consciousness, resisted the scientific model’s persistent searching.

The brain accounts for only 2 percent of the body’s volume, yet consumes 20 percent of the body’s energy. A pearly gray, gelatinous, three-pound universe, this exceptional organ can map parsecs and plot the whereabouts of distant galaxies measured in quintillions of light-years. The brain accomplishes this magic trick without ever having to leave its ensorcelled ovoid cranial shell. From minuscule-wattage electrical currents crisscrossing and ricocheting within its walls, the brain can reconstruct a detailed diorama of how it imagines the Earth appeared four billion years ago. It can generate poetry so achingly beautiful that readers weep, hatred so intense that otherwise rational people revel in the torture of others, and love so oceanic that entwined lovers lose the boundaries of their physical beings."

Leonard Shlain

[architeuthis3]

“Writing veils the appearance of language; it is not a guise for language but a disguise.” - Leonard Shlain, "The Alphabet Vs. the Goddess from the ruins of a fallen language. 11''x14''. graphite on paper. Adam Sturch

[hushpuppy5-blog]

"The computer's processes have unwittingly advanced the cause of women and images, even though these aspects of computer operation have nothing to do with the computer's content, which is the manipulation of information. The world of cyberspace is a computer-generated extension of the human mind into another dimension. The computer has carried human communication across a threshold as significant as writing, and cyberspaces's reliance on electromagnetism and photographic reproduction will only lead to further adjustments in consciousness that favor a feminine worldview. Irrespective of content, the processes used to maneuver in cyberspace are essentially right hemispheric. The World Wide Web and the Internet are both metaphors redolent of feminine connotations."

-The Alphabet Versus the Goddess by Leonard Shlain

A pretty interesting read. It analyzes the advancement in literacy throughout time and some of its pros and cons. It also brings up how we have become predominantly left brained due to the (often forced) use of our right hands, and how this has promoted linear thinking. It may not be a common practice anymore, but I've heard stories of educators hitting left-handed kids with rulers until they learned to write with their right hand. It's a strange thing to enforce, and it really makes one think...

The advancement in technology has a dark side, but the author suggests that some good will emerge in a new "Golden Age" where both right and left brain thinking reach some sort of equilibrium with the use of the internet. This is also interesting since I've been seeing parents, educators, and whoever else talking about the decline in reading amongst children. I'm starting to wonder if there will be a larger shift from text and back to image. Picture books/graphic novels seem to be grasping the attention of adults and children alike more and more throughout the years (if they weren't already). This is an observation of the English language, of course, since there are places that utilize symbols and characters in their writing.

[ray-moo]

Even if Eve wasn't technically banned from eating from the tree, she knew Adam was banned and she still gave him some to eat. It doesn't say 'Adam took from the tree', it says 'Eve gave Adam some' (Genesis 3:6)

It's generally understood that it's not literally eating the fruit that was bad but sin that is bad. If Adam told Eve not to eat the fruit out of jealousy, that would have been sin and they would still have gotten kicked out of the Garden of Eden. It doesn't say 'You can do anything you want except eat from the Tree', it says 'You can eat anything you want except from the Tree'.

Adam is evil, that's why he got kicked out of the garden with Eve.

Eve isn't the only one punished either, nor is her punishment the most severe. Let's not forget that working is hard because of Adam's curse, and it's also Adam's consequences from where we inherit death (Genesis 3:19).

The fact that God waits until Adam to tell Adam that to dust he shall return implies that the death is part of Adam's punishment. This leads credence to the idea that Adam is the one getting punished for eating the fruit. The only lines in Eve's curse are the ones about childbirth and submission.

And the snake gets cursed to get it's head stomped in by Jesus which is honestly a worse punishment than childbirth if you ask me.

Also the idea that Cain's punishment is worse than Eve's is pretty funny. Cain gets divested of his livelihood and the only way of subsistence he knows, gets driven from his family, and God doesn't grant Cain any privileges. Murder even of murderers is a sin. There's also the argument that Cain didn't know Abel would die since Abel is the first person to ever die.

The notion at all that female disobedience is a worse sin than male murder is dismissed entirely if you read the rest of the Mosaic Law. Since if a man murders another man, they're executed (Exodus 21:20, Leviticus 24:17,21). If a woman disobeys a man ... well that's not mentioned in the law as a sin at all.

Also what is Leonard Shlain even talking about, the Seven Deadly Sins aren't even listed in the New Testament. You know, the New Testament who's theme is that all sins are equally as bad and equally as forgiveable?

While curiosity and desire for knowledge are good, not all curiosity and not all desire for knowledge is good. For example, if you wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone you wouldn't be justified in doing so. So Eve doesn't get away with saying 'Oh I just wanted to know'. There's some interpretations of Adam and Eve not really being sinless but rather in a state of animal grace where since they didn't know right from wrong, they aren't held accountable for right and wrong they committed either.

And this is only regarding the most literal reading of Genesis possible, and not getting into the more esoteric stuff.

Y'know Instead of the trees being literal trees and the snake being a literal talking snake.

friendly reminder that the Abrahamic God never actually said that Eve couldn’t eat from the Tree of Knowledge, he only told Adam not to eat from it (Gen 2:17). perhaps the entire reason the tree was in the garden in the first place was so that Eve could eat from it & become wise (why else would it be in the garden if no one could eat from it??) but Adam couldn’t be trusted with that wisdom, so when Adam ate from it, that’s when all hell broke loose. yes, Eve eventually found out about the command (that’s why she told the serpent “God said not to eat from it”), but who’s to say that Adam didn’t tell her not to eat from the tree bc he was jealous????? also a friendly reminder that Eve didn’t “deceive” Adam, he was deceived by the snake. Adam was literally standing right there when the snake starting talking to Eve (Gen 3:6: he was “with her”). so it’s either he was also deceived by the snake, or Adam is evil, because he allowed Eve to eat from the tree & didn’t stop her from doing it.

no. seriously. take a look at Genesis.

[infjtarot]

Hanged Man. Weiser Waite Smith Tarot

A man hangs upside down, either from a tree or from a post. He is suspended with a rope tied around his ankle. His legs are positioned with one knee straight and the other knee bent, to create a shape resembling an upside-down and inverted number four. His expression remains serene and his body language relaxed. Along with the Chariot, this is one of the most complex cards in the Major Arcana. Sometimes the Hanged Man suggests that you need your world to go topsy-turvy before you can get a really good look at it. But the card also asks for contemplation over action; detachment over involvement. It’s a time to reflect and accumulate information. It falls at number twelve in the series. RECOMMENDED MATERIALS The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, book by Leonard Shlain D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths, book by Ingri and Edgar d’Aulaire The “Oh my God, my whole marriage has been a lie” fireside chapter of The Portrait of a Lady, book by Henry James Jessa Crispin

[bildungsromanx]

Books read in 2022

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell

The Houseguest: And Other Stories by Amparo Dávila

House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday

All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks

Wild Dog Dreaming: Love and Extinction Book by Deborah Bird Rose

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

Either/Or by Elif Batuman

Stray: Human-Animal Ethics in the Anthropocene by Barbara Creed

The Stranger by Albert Camus

The Plague by Albert Camus

Habilis by Alyssa Quinn

Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes by Frans de Waal

Nadja by André Breton

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow

The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning by Maggie Nelson

Art & Physics by Leonard Shlain

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut

Demian by Hermann Hesse

The Wall by Marlen Haushofer

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

[queenboudicaa]

Though the exact birthdate of our species remains uncertain, the scenario that a single woman birthed the modern human species is on firmer scientific grounds thanks to the reliability of the new science of molecular biology. Laboratory tests performed on mitochondrial DNA can accurately measure the genetic variation that exists between members of a species and the differences existing among species.

Scientists can then construct "molecular clocks" and calculate how long ago a particular species split away from its precursor. Molecular biology has proved to be the great Rosetta Stone of evolutionary changes. The existence of an African Eve is extremely likely because the genetic material of all humans alive today is eerily similar.

The genes of chimpanzee communities inhabiting ranges only a few thousand yards apart have more genetic diversity than those of humans separated by oceans. Despite the dramatic differences in the skin pigmentation, eye color, body shapes, and hair types of people from disparate regions of the world, all humans are genetically homogeneous to an extraordinary degree. In fact, there is less than 0.1 percent difference between the gene structure of any one human and another.

This suggests that each of us is a not-so-distant descendant of one fairly recent ancestral female. Since we have not had time to diverge very far genetically our species' birthdate can be calculated backward in tens of thousands of years, instead of millions.

Some dire factor, condition, or event adversely affected the species that lived in the area around present-day Lake Victoria, leading to a population bottleneck. Let us call it Factor X. But what was X? What environmental challenge could have been the catalyst for the radiation of a new species?

The geologic and archeological record is relatively silent. Variations in the local climate did occur, but none seems harsh enough to prompt our origin. Scientists have not identified sudden discontinuities in the area's flora or fauna. And yet some extreme condition must have occurred, for African Eve to burst forth like Athena fully formed from the brow of Zeus. Though there are many competing scientific theories, none has managed to gain sufficient support to explain the bottleneck fully.

I propose that the "bottleneck" through which our unfortunate immediate ancestors squeezed was actually a real bottleneck.

Scientists scouring the landscape in search of an external Factor X may have been looking in the wrong place. The precipitating event that pushed a local population of hominids toward the edge of extinction was neither a climate change, a geological force, the arrival of predators or disappearance of prey nor a shift in the availability of food resources. It was an internal, anatomical one.

The unyielding walls of the birth canal, like the alignment of Scylla and Charybdist produced the bottleneck that shaped all subsequent hominid evolution.

The death of the Unknown Mother and her unlucky baby and the subsequent dying off of increasingly large numbers of hominid mothers and their newborns, was the stressful Factor X that precipitated the Homo sapiens line.

[catsniffer420]

Sometimes when viewing art i think abt late surgeon Dr Leonard Shlain’s commentary on how artists synthesise societal ideas that arent yet lucid/described by science, or the general public (Art & Physics, published 1991). Almost without even meaning to. Artists observe laws about nature and reality before they hve concrete descriptions. Even the wave/particle nature of light was predicted by an oil painter who made a point of softening the edges of shadows in paintings.

This artwork above, combining cartoon style with realism elements makes me think abt how Virtual Reality and technology is entering our daily lives. Half real half digital. Half real half pixels and lights. Idk.

Vanessa Smith — Black Spot (oil and acrylic on canvas, 2022)

[antiquitiesandlabyrinths]

The Impact of Religion and the Mother Goddess on Human Culture

Notes: This essay is compiled from a number of sources ranging from books, university publications, youtube videos, and museum articles. This essay is also not just about Egypt, like the rest of this blog is––it concerns early civilizations ranging from Britains to Harappans.

+

As we all know, religion inhabits much of our daily life in modern times, and even more so in ancient times. The origins of our existence have been explained many times over with many different ideas––how these ideas are presented to the world and the common man influences the actions of the people and government who follow that religion.

The oldest religions in the world tend to worship a Mother Goddess––a feminine figure that represents the ability to create life which, for a while, was confined entirely to the efforts of women and the miracle of childbirth. We know very little about these people beyond what the archaeological record can tell, as there is no written language for pre-history hominids who created the first works of art; women, with full hips and breasts, carved into wood and stone. What we do know about them is that they had forms of empathy––healed femur bones from old, preserved skeletons reveal that people healed from grievous injuries that, in many other species, would mark death. Jaws, hunched in like the pursed lips of old men, were also found without their teeth, but still living to an impressive age of around 80. Someone had to physically chew this person's food, and they did, for what could've been decades. This shows that same pattern; a tribe that fed, clothed, and took care of someone who otherwise would not have survived on their own.

All of this points not only to intelligence in early hominids, but also a form of empathy that some people even today lack in our society––a society that doesn't worship a Mother Goddess, whose origins in humanity are entirely different from the beliefs of the first humans.

The Sumerian civilization is among the oldest, including the four civilizations birthed in cradles of humanity––the Harappan civilization along the Indus Valley river, Mesopotamian culture along the Euphrates––or the fertile crescent––, as well as Egypt along the Nile and the rivers in China. This topic of Sumerian religion, the changes it went through, and the effect that had on its' people, are discussed in great detail in the book 'The Alphabet Versus the Goddess' by Leonard Shlain, but I will attempt to summarize the religious history of Sumeria and Mesopotamia.

When the first towns and cities began to prop up around the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, the people who lived there worshipped a wide pantheon of Gods like many of the other first civilizations. Their creation myth involves the work of a primeval mother Goddess named Namma, who created humanity. These people who lived under this creation myth, this belief that they were created out of nothing and out of love, allowed for times of relative peace, as well as a rapid growth in art, structure, and other such refinements of city life. Later on, however, this idea was obstructed by a rising Babylonian culture coming into the fertile crescent. These people believed in a much more gruesome birth of humanity, and is a strikingly, and horrifying, difference from the myths of early Sumerians.

The Babylonian creation myth was written or told as a way of confirming Marduk as the main God of the world. This story is called Enuma Elish, and acted as a way to legitimize Marduk replacing Enlil, the previous God King. The telling of it occurred during the Kassite inhabitation of Babylon.

Tiamat, the Goddess of the Sea (salty water) mated with her husband Apsu, a God who represented fresh water. From this several Gods emerged in couplets. Most were boisterous and loud, as young children are, producing so much noise that Apsu was incensed to destroy them. He was stopped soon by his wife, Tiamat, who urged him to exhibit more patience; a request he did not heed. Their sons soon heard of this danger and, in fear of death, called upon the god Ea to help them. Ea was an incredibly resourceful God, and put the angered Apsu to sleep with a spell. They killed the sleeping God and stole his vizier, Mummu. After this, Ea birthed his own child with his consort, Damkina. This is the origin of Marduk.

Marduk was the tallest and the mightiest of all the Gods, who held power to control the four winds, a power given by the God Anu. Anu told him to let the winds whirl; it created a storm that picked up dust from the earth, the winds roaring loud enough to antagonize the usually patient Tiamat. Other Gods faced this same irritation and urged Tiamat to take action––to slay down the God, Marduk.

Another telling of this story has a slightly different timeline, that tells a significantly different story––instead of Ea and lesser Gods killing Apsu, Apsu is killed by Marduk, which directs Tiamat's anger more reasonably to Marduk.

When she comes to face Marduk on the battlefield, she has with her eleven monsters created by the Mother Goddess for this quest. While Ea tries to find a way to end this confrontation with magic spells, he is eventually told that it isn't exactly possible, and thus Marduk puts forth an offer that the other Gods take. He will face the Goddess Tiamat, and if he should win, he would be the King of all Gods. This battle is long and difficult, but eventually Marduk does win in a horrifying way. He blows massive gusts of wind down Tiamat's mouth, swelling her stomach and abdomen so massively she appears to be a woman in the final stages of pregnancy. While she is thoroughly and painfully stretched with Marduk's wind, he slays her with an arrow down her gullet, killing a woman who had the image of the feminine creation of life, an ending violently estranged from the myth of a mother Goddess creating things by her own magic, and not the death of others.

Once Tiamat is slain, her corpse is large, and Marduk puts it to use. He stretches her skin out to become the sky. Her pierced eyes, heavy with tears, are the origins of the Euphrates and the Tigris, flooded with her crying. Her tail is made into the Milky Way. Her split head, torn by the heavy club of Marduk, is used to make the mountains, and her body created the earth. He pricked her breasts in many places for the tributaries of the rivers. From her blood Marduk creates humans in a disturbingly dark way, a stark difference––humans made by magic, versus humans made by the murder of a Goddess mirroring the image of a pregnant woman.

As God-King, Marduk received complaints from lesser Gods that they had to toil on the earth themselves to create their own tributes, taken care of by worshippers. To remedy this, Marduk decides to create humans. He singled out Tiamat's favorite son, Kingu, who ruled with her after her husband's death, and accused him of instigating Tiamat's rage. He placed all blame on this one God, freeing everyone else of the blame but Kingu. Marduk then ordered his father, Ea, to knead the flesh and blood of Kingu's executed form, this sacrifice, molding it like clay in his hands. After the images of many humans were created, Marduk sentenced them to toil on Tiamat's corpse for all their lives in order to create offerings and worship for the Gods.

This violent origin creates a culture indebted to its' gods, forever attempting to repent from the sins of their past, the gruesomeness of their creation, to make up for Kingu's sacrifice. Compared to the simple origins of the mother Goddess Nammu, the people who worshipped her in Sumer didn't have this responsibility––they were created of love. But Babylonians lived forever attempting to make up for their own creations, a theme that is reflected clearly in Christianity. A savior, and worshippers forever trying to repent for their own existence.

This story also reflects the growth of monetary gain in a society. For example, the Indus Valley civilization on the Indus river had no such array of Gods that required tributes so often like that. It is hard to say what exactly the people of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro truly believed in, as we have yet to decipher their written language, but archaeological evidence shows no presence of temples for Gods in any of the cities. Instead, the cities are laid out in a straight, clearly preplanned manner that allowed wind to channel through the streets like air conditioning. There were no ways for these city-states to hold immense power over the people, as there was no reason that would excuse the abuse put upon lower-class citizens; there were no violent 'Gods' to which such offerings were necessary, meaning the class system most likely worked in a very different way to that of Babylonia, who had massive temples. The creation and building of these temples fuelled the Mesopotamian economy greatly, as money that was collected in taxes was actually put to use, not stored up and saved like what can happen in a capitalistic society. It's the difference between a city built for its' people or a city built for its' gods, and, in extension, the god-Kings that ruled on earth. Something interesting to note as well, is that the Indus Valley civilization didn't have any weapons or mass wars––as far as we know––in its' history from 5,000 BC to 1500 BC. There could be other reasons for this, but I believe it may have something to do with the feminine cult religion and the absence of temples.

There is a similar theme in Egyptian culture, surprisingly. Egypt is known as an ancient civilization that had forward-thinking rights for women and men, including divorce proceedings and the ability to hold a job and property. Like Sumer, its original creation myth dealt mainly with the creative, coming-together of powerful forces; this time two women, something that very rarely happens in religion. There are no male Gods that inspire or order the two Goddesses––they act alone, and of their own volition. This tale is one of the oldest creation myths we've found yet in Egypt, dating all the way back to the Early Dynastic Period of the Old Kingdom.

Nekhbet was the Goddess of Upper Egypt, a vulture Goddess (whose imagery and meaning we will discuss later). Wadjet was the serpent Goddess of Lower Egypt. These two Goddesses were primordial deities, existing before the creation of earth. They emerged from the waters of chaos, which was thought to be all that the world was back then, bringing with them land and air, and eventually the loving creations of humans. Like cobras that twist around each other into a double helix, the Egyptians were intrinsically entwined with the Nile, an image that is reflected even in modern times, with the symbol of two entwined snakes being the symbol for healing, often displayed in hospitals, and the formation of DNA in its ladder-like structure.

It may seem a little strange that the two Goddesses who created the earth––in this Divine Feminine mythology––are represented by a cobra and a vulture, but in Egyptian society, that was simply what they were.

In hieroglyphics, vultures denote a woman. They are in the spelling of mother, of daughter, of wife, and of Goddesses. In fact, the word mother is written the exact same way as vulture. These birds appeared to have foresight to the Egyptians as well––they circled their prey before a meal was assured, remarking a sort of prophecy. They also denoted a divine manifestation of death, an important trait to share with the goddess Nekhbet, who carried exceptional power.

The snake was also a feminine symbol, though strangely explained by the Egyptians, whose ideas on life differ greatly from the modern, more monotheistic view (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism). The sinuous like movements of its' 'step' mimicked the swaying of a woman's hips in a dance, evocative and nubile, and her movements in the throes of passion mimicked a similar serpentine state. Snakes resembled the meandering shapes of rivers, the roots of trees and plants, and the umbilical cord of mammalians. They live deep within the earth, making their home within the Great Mother, and they appeared to live forever, shedding their skin whenever renewal was required. This specifically was a trait revered by Egyptians, who had a great love and zest for life, and wished to live forever. Renewal connected snakes to the Nile's inundation and the sun's revival every morning after its' death the night before. Hieroglyphs come into play with snakes, as well––the hieroglyphs for serpent are the same as the hieroglyphs for Goddess.

It can be difficult to say how exactly this myth was thought of during the Old Kingdom. This is an incredibly old myth, and by the time writing started to really take hold of the country, the myth was replaced with a new, more masculine one. While it wasn't as violent as the Babylonian creation myth, it contained an incredible amount of masculine energy. Female goddesses faded from the light as a particular two Gods shot up in popularity––Amun and Ra, or Amun-Re (there are many different spellings, including Atum, Re, Aten, etc.).

There is an incredibly theory put forth in the previously mentioned book "The Alphabet Versus the Goddess" that inspired me to truly think about the connection between religion and society, as well as the impact of writing on the ideas of feminine and masculine energies within that society. Leonard Shlain, the author of the book, posits that "... any written method of communication skews society toward masculine vales."

The new, masculine myth that took the place of the Goddesses Nekhbet and Wadjet was a little more simple––Atum stood on a mound of earth, surrounded by the primordial sea. Atum masturbated, and from his seed sprouted the Ennead––nine deities making up a family of powerful Gods and Goddesses. This story was found to have its origins nearly 1500 years after the myth of Nekhbet and Wadjet.

So how did this change in mythology reflect in society?

Again, it is hard to say. In the Old Kingdom, Pharaohs tended to their people, and their was a feudal-type system ruled by an all-powerful King. Art flourished in the time, and even today many people claim that the art of Egypt peaked in the Old/Middle Kingdom and fizzled out during the New Kingdom. Another notable change is after the invasion of the Hyksos––and an occupation that lasted only a little over a century, one that was despised heavily––Egypt began to take on a new sort of mindset. Pharaohs now went out beyond the borders of Egypt, even up into Canaan and completing quests of great magnitude, erecting monuments in honor of their victory. Such behavior is found more in violent, masculine-powered societies than anywhere else.

Viking and Medieval UK faced this same problem––women were hardly considered people during this age, unable to own their own land or divorce. This was a masculine honoring society, praising the violence of colonizing and shunning empathy. There was a need within the people to 'spread their greatness' to others, but in reality, the greatness was nothing more than violence; a theme also seen in the Avatar: The Last Airbender, as the Fire nation brainwashed its' child citizens to believe the Fire Nation had a right to the rest of the world. I'm afraid I have little else to say on the topic of Europe because that is not my area of study, but the similarities are easy to draw.

Our society today is, despite our best efforts, a masculine-drawn society. Our God is chiefly referred to as 'He' and representation in our media for women is scant beyond superficial characters, as men, who rule most of the business in the world, can have trouble seeing women as something more than a pretty, talking toy. This, of course, isn't universal, but it is incredibly common and would be more so if women weren't trying to make a stand. Like Babylonians, Christians are born with innate guilt, attempting to make up and repent for the sacrifice of their savior, another masculine form of a deity. Like Atum-worshipping Egyptians, our world was created alone at the hands of an all powerful male God.

But, unlike Sumerians, we never had a Mother Goddess. Unlike the earliest myths of Egypt, the world was not birthed at the hands of a fertile woman. And, unlike early Egypt, we are not happy. Our 'life after death' is somewhere unlike Earth, somewhere that is perfect, unlike earth. But for Egyptians? Life after death was earth, just another form of it, and life in that afterlife was just the same as life during life. Whether or not that has anything to do with our method of governing, our economy, or our massive differences in religion––there is no evidence. It is a simple outlook on life that is only translated in holy texts and the remains of dead people, and dead people very rarely talk.

Like most things, religion isn't contained to a Sunday every week or to Muslim prayer mats every day––such things spread into our food, our way of life, our infrastructure, how we respect and treat each other, and how we treat the Earth. I believe it is important to remember that the oldest Gods are things seen every day––the water, the earth, the sky, the sun, and the stars. These are what influenced the first humans, the first beings to care for one another in old age, to heal what was thought to be forever broken, and to take up the mantle of kindness for each other without the threat of a violent God condemning them. Many modern people base their ethics on the threat of punishment from God(s), in which case we can all learn from atheists, who continue to do good without threat, simply because they believe it is right to help others, just as our ancestors did.

[lookingformyperfectsandwich]

“It is A.D. 476. The theater is plunged into darkness. Despite the blackout, the observer is aware of movement on stage. Props are being shifted about; the unmistakable sounds of human grunts and whispers suggest considerable activity. The intermission lasts five hundred years. When the lights come up again, the stage is completely rearranged. Gone are the elegant architrave and soaring cupola. Roads and aqueducts have fallen into ruin. Cramped, semi-isolated cities and towns have replaced the sweep of Roman hegemony. Commerce is all but nonexistent. Travel has become exceedingly dangerous; bandits roam the countryside. There has been a near-total breakdown of civil authority. Everyone appears dirty and everything seems grimy. The characters no longer speak Latin or Greek. Instead, a polyglot of immature vernaculars impinges on the ear. The dramatis personae are dressed in costumes of red, black, and brown. The Church has become the dominant institution and reserves black - like the ink of its vellum books - for itself. Red is for the nobility, who rule their petty fiefdoms that checkerboard the land. The vast mass of drab serfs who labor for a meager living wear brown shapeless shifts. They depend on the warrior aristocracy to protect their lives in this world and the clerics to save their souls in the next, and to each of these benefactors/oppressors, the serfs must tithe a hefty portion of their modest yield.

Leonard Shlain, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image

[cleverwordsandotherstuffilike]

"The human brain remains among the last few stubborn redoubts to yield its secrets to the experimental method. During the period that scientists expanded the horizons of astronomy, balanced the valences of chemistry, and determined the forces of physics, the crowning glory of Homo sapiens and its most enigmatic emanation, human consciousness, resisted the scientific model’s persistent searching. The brain accounts for only 2 percent of the body’s volume, yet consumes 20 percent of the body’s energy. A pearly gray, gelatinous, three-pound universe, this exceptional organ can map parsecs and plot the whereabouts of distant galaxies measured in quintillions of light-years. The brain accomplishes this magic trick without ever having to leave its ensorcelled ovoid cranial shell. From minuscule-wattage electrical currents crisscrossing and ricocheting within its walls, the brain can reconstruct a detailed diorama of how it imagines the Earth appeared four billion years ago. It can generate poetry so achingly beautiful that readers weep, hatred so intense that otherwise rational people revel in the torture of others, and love so oceanic that entwined lovers lose the boundaries of their physical beings."

Leonard Shlain

[collegeburnoutsuperstar]

Shelf-Confidence BPC | Feb. 5 | Spell Your Name

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

Heartsong by T.J. Klune

The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

The Iliad of Homer

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Ben Winters

The Tortilla Curtain by T. Coraghessan Boyle

The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Art & Physics by Leonard Shlain

[averagezillenial]

Western Education & Its Shortcomings: The Environment

I’m currently sitting at Penn’s Fisher Fine Art’s library, sitting in the present moment for a bit before embarking on my trek to study for finals. I had been reading over an article I was assigned for class: “Without the Forest: Educational Projects for Indigenous communities” By: Dinny Risri Aletheiani (2021) which discusses modern-day efforts to attempt to drive the Orang Rimba tribes (belonging to Indonesia) out of the forest, and away from their traditional migratory patterns, with the intent that they would become sedentary and partake in modern, westernized Indonesian culture.

I felt as if this article focused heavily on the surface dynamic: drawing indigenous people out of their native land so that same land can be capitalized upon for the production of crops (specifically palm oil in this article (Aletheiani, 2021)), and the oral knowledge traditionally passed down through indigenous cultures erased through forcibly having these people learn to speak a new language and partake in new and unfamiliar cultural norms. However, this article did not talk about the indigenous experience with the land as much as I had hoped. I for one am not indigenous, however I do appreciate the history and knowledge that indigenous authors share about ties to the land, and how land and environment shapes culture and community. Aletheiani’s article draws concerns to the unsustainable practices of capitalism, and how harmful westernization can be to communities, the land, and cultures– yet I felt that she could go a bit deeper as to what connections capitalism is truly affecting.

I then looked up another article in order to help me digest this one, and I found Seana M. McGovern’s “Reclaiming Education: Knowledge Practices and Indigenous Communities” (2000) which examines indigenous communities all across the globe, and explores and articulates their connection to the land. McGovern states that “forms of knowledge require an understanding of the contexts in which they have developed” (524) therefore, attempting to force western knowledge upon people who do not live in a western framework proves to be difficult and cause a dissonance. Furthermore, western knowledge is mass-produced and one size fits all: one learning experience, one curriculum, one correct answer. Again, this knowledge is only valuable given certain frameworks. If we were to take this education outside of western society and culture, it would not get us very far. However, indigenous knowledge “reflects the dynamic way in which the residents of an area have come to understand themselves in relationship to their natural environment and how they organize that folk knowledge of flora and fauna, cultural beliefs, and history to enhance their lives” (McGovern 524). Indigenous knowledge emphasizes the land, environment, one’s place in the world, and how all of these things come together. How the people are able to take care of the land and understand the environment, so the land and environment can take care of the people; this knowledge is symbiotic, not unilateral.

Given every single person on this earth lives in an environment, indigenous knowledge is arguably more applicable to many different frameworks of knowledge than western, academic, knowledge is. How are we able to take care of ourselves in a way that also takes care of the world around us, and keep a record of this knowledge that we can share. These readings reminded me of a piece I had read during Junior year of college: “The Making of a Marginal Farm” By: Wendell Berry where he discusses the process he underwent turning former industrialized agricultural land back to its natural flourishing pre-colonized state. Aletheiani had commented that “reading and writing are foreign practices for Orang Rimba” (340) which also reminded of a book I found at my favorite bookstore in Chicago, Myopic Books, called “The Alphabet versus the Goddess” By: Leonard Shlain which mentions how, when the alphabet was invented there began to be a shift to more left-brain thinking, and away from right-brain thinking; therefore, ushering in a shift to more analytical, male-dominant, capitalistic, western practices, and away from art, creativity, and the feminine essence– like female deities (hence the title being “The Alphabet versus The Goddess”). Overall, these readings all re-emphasized how capitalism is deeply-seated in the world around us, and how it has even taken people out of nature, and normalized the human experience as existing post-nature, in order for it to exploit natural and vital resources that it is our human job to take care of.

I plan to build off of this post by exploring these aforementioned pieces in my next post, and continue to build off of each post with something I learn hope to dedicate this blog to something I learn, and can share, everyday about indigenous knowledge and practices that allow us to understand the shortcomings of western education, the harm it has caused, and ways in which we can participate in decolonizing information, knowledge, and education. I hope to explore new and different ways of learning, while also revisiting articles and written pieces I have read before that accentuate and support the information I happen to stumble upon. I hope for this blog to educate both myself and anyone who comes across it, and to serve as a nexus of resources for understanding indigenous practices alongside ways to decolonize education and practices within our daily lives.

Pieces I hope to explore next time:

Deloria

American Earth

Alphabet Vs. The Goddess