The Paleolithic Paradigm takes us one step further in the nature/nurture debate. Certainly a certain percentage of our behaviors are biologically based. However, culture has the power to override much in genetic commands. The Amish exemplify this, no matter how much "we" qualify them as "quaint". Painting with a wide post-modern paint brush, Stocker takes on a journey through four cultures to show how different people can be. He offers the analogy: our genetic structure is the framework of any house. How we cover and decorate that frame is often the product of ancient traditions. However, we are all products of the same cognitive processes, thus explaining why we take ideas put into our heads as children to the grave whether we accept them, reject them, or alter them. It is this commonality the author examines. Accordingly, he wants to know, if we understand our cognition processes, can we change out behavior at will?
The Paleolithic Paradigm
By Terry StockerAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2009 Terry Stocker
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4490-2291-4Contents
1. WILL THE TRUE RELIGIOUS RITUAL PLEASE BE REVEALED?.....................52. SELLING DREAMS.........................................................173. WHEN IS TRUTH?.........................................................264. JARGON:................................................................725. ANOTHER APPROACH.......................................................926. STAR-SPANGLED EYES.....................................................1107. AMISH..................................................................1778. TEQUILA................................................................1889. UNIQUE IN ALL THE WORLD................................................23210. IS THERE REALLY A MAN IN THE MOON?....................................29411. LOOSE TALK............................................................31112. MR. GALILEI...........................................................33113. WHY ME?...............................................................34614. A NEW TAKE............................................................35615. UFOs AND BLACK HOLES..................................................36916. SO PALEOLITHIC!.......................................................37917. MUTANT IMAGES.........................................................43618. GETTING READY TO DIE..................................................45219. BUYING A DREAM........................................................49620. THE BIOLOGY OF ORDER..................................................510POSTSCRIPT................................................................546
Chapter One
WILL THE TRUE RELIGIOUS RITUAL PLEASE BE REVEALED? Our innocence and faith were no more productive than his lust or despair. The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison
A multiplicity of Americas dots our mental landscapes. One America believes in abortion; another abhors it-to the point of killing abortion doctors. Spanish is the first language in another U.S.A. that is growing rapidly these days and is sure to rearrange visions of future U.S.A.s. (Keep your eyes on that word: future.) Native Americans live out their lives on reservations because they were put there by a more powerful not-so-native America. Yet, the latter gleefully boast their bedazzlement of 4th-of-July firework celebrations for "freedom." Some individuals characterize the U.S.A. as a great melting pot; others depict it as a salad bowl composed of discrete entities, each composed of well-defined boundaries. Indeed, if you have been to Korea Town in L.A., your appreciation for the "land of the free" should be enhanced. (Mine was, and I could read the signs.) But, you don't have to go to Korea Town to know that well-defined boundaries are sometimes an American reality. One can read about this in Kwang Chung Kim's Koreans in the Hood: Conflict with African Americans. (Keep your eye on that word, "conflict;" it is going to be with us to the final pages.) In the LA riots of 1992, Afro-Americans quickly understood boundary maintenance when armed Koreans stood atop their buildings to stop the pillaging. (Type "L.A. Riots" at www. youtube.com, and watch.) Yet, you don't have to wander to or read about L.A. to encounter well-defined boundaries; they are probably right in your hometown if you believe in the marriage gap.
Repeating the point, a multiplicity of Americas can be conjured up, and for this reason, according to Gary Althen, if you ask certain Americans, "... to tell you something about 'American culture,' they may be unable to answer, and they may even deny that there is an `American culture.'" As testimony, if you walk into neighborhoods throughout America and ask about "the truth" and "the future," both concepts will soon become a huge assortment of plurals.
In the following pages, we will wander through America's religious panorama, which is undoubtedly the most complex mosaic of beliefs about truths on afterlife (and communicating with it) anywhere on the planet. One truth all believers seem to have in common is that there is a deity or deities or spirits that can be communicated with via rituals. A recent book to be recommended for viewing America's religious vista, and political ideology, through the eyes of others is A Place at the Multicultural Table: The Development of an American Hinduism by Prema A. Kurien, an Indian Christian.
Adding to the mix, between 2006 and 2008 a plethora of books on atheism beckoned would-be buyers to question our ultimate existence with a more rational stance, grounded in logic and new scientific data. (Not to mention the updating of The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief.) From this, radio and television producers eagerly provided auditory and visual stimulation of rabbis and priests debating atheists-each beginning from a stance that precludes the other's ideological premises. But one thing is certain, the collective consciousness is moving away from long-ago, deeply entrenched religious ideologies. For example, long ago, Christians used to fast. That was a time when Christianity had an every day reality, with monasteries and monks highly visible on the physical panorama connecting the masses to a similar lifestyle of Jesus and his disciples. But fasting dropped away, and motorized transportation swept us away from those individuals riding burros. The monasteries and monks diminished, relegated to an antiquated lifestyle.
Changes in medical theory helped the collective consciousness shift to a more rational/scientific understanding of how the body operates. Medicine was no longer linked to religion. Then about 100 years ago, the pace picked up, with the likes of Bertrand Russell publishing Why I Am Not a Christian in 1927. That would be expanded and re-presented in 1957 as Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. I was a mere 7 years old then, but I would hear about the book only when attending university. No one in my small Ohio town spoke of it, if indeed they knew about it. In keeping with good capitalism, the book was reissued in 2008 by Barlow Press to join the other atheistic texts nudging our collective consciousness to think seriously about what we believe.
However, keenly perceptual individuals, akin to Jonathan Haidt, demonstrate that atheism is not all it is cracked up to be, but it is doubtful that more than just a few dedicated philosophical-type individuals will be reading his words. Some details will be considered later in this book.
I am not an atheist. Yet, I do not believe any goddess or god is in any way concerned with human affairs, in part because of having witnessed too many unanswered prayers. Up will jump the "all-knowing" Christian to lecture about how God works in mysterious ways. Amen to that! Those not of Christian orientation sometimes inquire, "If God's ways are so mysterious, how could we know God really exists?" Others, myself among them, ask why would a god want to be mysterious or act in mysterious ways? Of course, the religious clergy immediately informs us that science and religion are two different endeavors. Amen to that!
Still, when sufficient data is presented, I can accept that some deity might be concerned with the morality of human dealings, but please, someone, anyone, answer this question: How and why does anyone believe that she or he has some ritualistic way of communicating with God, to the exclusion of others' rituals? Many Muslims, if not most, think God favors their prayers over Christian prayers, and I know sufficient Protestants who feel that Catholic rituals and beliefs are folly. Every religion is advocating that it maintains the true way, with its rituals a guaranteed pipeline to some deity, who if petitioned correctly will intervene in human affairs.
My anthropological specialty is studying religions through time and across space. I have researched religions that no longer exist, which were filled with more rituals than the current-day Christian can imagine. In the Aztec world, ritual seemingly never stopped. One can look at Fray Diego Duran's Book of the Gods and Rites and the Ancient Calendar, which was written in the 1500s. (Well in fact, Christianity used to have many more rituals, including fasting, a topic that fascinates me. Visualize an American president fasting for a moral cause to guide the American populace. That does not jibe too well with the capitalistic-expansion concepts held dear by the great majority of American politicians.)
Human minds project religious rituals outward, all springing from a hope that "we" can somehow control our lives by "magical" words and behaviors based on the epistemological basis that something "out there in the great beyond" cares about us. And if it is talked to properly it will reward us with, for lack of a better term: favors. But for one example, I personally heard many Christian prayers petitioning God for an America victory in a war in a far-away land, Vietnam. Carried to any logical conclusion, one should assume that the Vietnamese were more pleasing in God's sight considering they won the war, and this assumption will be detailed later.
Where do ritualistic beliefs come from? All religious rituals, I contend, can be traced back to the Paleolithic Period, about 100,000 years ago, with solid archeological evidence at 70,000 years before us. That, my dear reader, is a long time ago. Maybe by looking at rituals within this time perspective, some individuals will re-evaluate the idea that we can really communicate with any deity.
Anthropologists, by "creed," are supposed to avoid judging "others." Any anthropologist might diplomatically suspend emotional opinions in writing, but all anthropologists are human, and as such, we, like all humans, are defined by others: good, bad or indifferent. A quick assessment can be this: if one were to judge religions with frequency of prayer as an index, Islam seemingly is a better religion than Christianity. I do think that is the case, but this is not the book in which to attempt an extended defense of that idea. Besides, I lump Christians and Muslims (along with their Jewish religious cousins) as one type (as in typology) of those who I feel are misguided and controlled by select elites. Those leaders, in order maintain their status, and income, manipulate others with religious mumbo jumbo about their ritualistic behaviors being the ones that some deity will favor.
Speaking of elites, we should give major consideration to American politics and its seemingly unending God connections. Susan Posner penned thoughts on it from the Republican's side with God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters (2008). Amy Sullivan dissects the Democratic point-of-view with The Party Faithful (2008). One might read Garry Wills' Head and Heart: American Christianities (2007), detailing the fact that some founding fathers were Deists, believing in a higher being that had no interest in human affairs.
Why just one higher being? It seems to be an ego-thing, as in people projecting themselves onto the matter, as if each person is presuming to be the God. Watch ministers "working;" they seem to be the shepherd, just one, taking care of the flock. Personally, I don't believe in a higher being, but possibly beings. I think the splendor of the universe would take a group effort. But when the time comes and God manifests itself (him or her) as the only one (for which sound arguments can be made); I can accept it. The point hereafter is not one god vs. many; it's whether any god(s) is listening to our earthly plaintiff cries (ritual) and accordingly alters earthly existence, like sending rain.
What should be of more primary interest is that historians (if not the "common people") should be asking: How is it that America went from individuals like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine to politicians, including presidents, who talk with God? I do not put forth an answer, but a preeminent goal is to show that religion and politics have become so entwined in America that the national political topography is almost more about religion than politics. In fact, discerning readers should consume D. Michael Lindsay's Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite.
My main concern is not about religions or the existences of deities, but whether humans can effectively communicate with their deities. The main thrust of The Paleolithic Paradigm is to get people to give up Paleolithic religious rituals. There is absolutely no proof that rituals, including prayer, are communicating with anything.
Extending out from religion, we must ask: What causes anyone to believe that he or she believes the truth, about any topic, while everyone else presumably does not? To answer such a question, we must determine first, how the mind works (cognition); then second, what the mind in any particular case might believe (ethnography). Although, if scientists can determine how the mind works, we might one day be able to control for what is believed, referring here to certain human emotions and actions such as greed and war, both of which somehow fall within the domain of religions.
In high school, way back in 1962, I began to ponder: How is it that some 22 churches dot my small village's terrain (Bradford, Ohio) and everyone feels that he attends the right one and that others are, if ever so slightly, misguided? The divide between Bradford's Protestants and the Catholics was real, very real (oh, not like Ireland). And then I would hear parents talk politics, but no one would declare who they voted for, including my parents-not even to me! But, people would say, "That is between me and God." Well, as just mentioned, that was back in the 60s and times have changed, though I know some individuals who still will not tell you who they voted for. People don't talk much about what they pray for, either.
Being trite, times have changed; some of us see the world differently, in particular those of us who grew up with the idea that communists were (are?) inherently evil. And some of us, who read, also rendered Islam as a curious religion basically confined to history books about Medieval Europe's conflicts with the Middle East.
Regarding malevolent communists, Vietnam has done nothing evil since defeating America. Uh ... that is a pretty general statement; at least we can say, they have not attacked another country. However, the great Christian America ... that's a different story. Of course, according to many of them, they have the only true God who keeps sanctioning their blood-lust. It is a somewhat common fact that George Bush, Jr. claims to have been directed by God to invade the Islamic country of Iraq. God apparently told him this in the ritualistic communication of prayer. Certainly, Americans were more accepting of his actions because the ultimate truth, for many, is to be told by God. The bottom-line question: Is America's involvement in Iraq a mere extension of the Crusades? Evidence mounts to support that contention.
However, any discerning individual must realize that Bush, Jr. is not the only American president to claim communication with God to invade other countries, a topic explored later. Second, picture the deity (if it is just one) who created "our" universe, which staggers the imagination of those who study it, taking time out of the 14-billion-year process to "talk" to some earthling. Really? Well ... maybe a president of the United States. As one friend informed me, over and over, "Religious ritual is so cool."
Thousands of religious rituals are enacted in the world on a daily basis, and each one usually comes with a belief that only the rituals of the believer can commune with God. My concern is determining what cognitive processes underlie all beliefs in ritual. A quick preview of the cognitive process is presented so you are not held in suspense. Humans, reminiscent of all animals, require order. So, any child, in order to avoid chaos, will grasp the first order set before it. Part and parcel of that order is "the fact" that it is the "real order" and that all other "orders" are incorrect. And from this stems camaraderie, hatred, kinship, and wars, just to list a few categories of human behavior; and we should not forget: religion. Children are told of religious precepts almost from the time they are old enough to converse, and that is because they will question death. To tell a child, "We don't know about the great beyond." is bordering on chaos. If, however, according to all religious doctrines, we do "know" what happens upon death, then we should be able to communicate with the other side. I, for one, as a child, along with many others, was taught to pray, and the words went something like this, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep; and if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." We can deal with impacts of such thoughts later, but for the present it is only important to know that I have rejected more than just one truth that was pumped into my incubating mind. Actually, that is probably not the right adjective, because my mind is still incubating, and I want to share what I think is the main cognitive causes for religious rituals that communicate with something out there.
My agenda is pretty much as follows. We can never really understand ourselves without looking at others. Margaret Mead provoked Americans (mostly females-who read more than men) to look at themselves by showing them how Samoans grew up. What a great subtitle she had, in 1928: Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization. (The fact that some of her findings came under fire is for another time.)
My efforts are to take any reader, especially Americans, Mexicans and Koreans, on a mental journey of differences, and also to demonstrate how many people, even entire cultures, have certain commonalities, one being religious rituals. (Those three cultures will be detailed because I know them the best.) Furthermore, most cultures have shared future concerns of, at least, commerce and military logistics. Isn't it strange that those two cultural components seem foremost? Certain individuals of a Marxist bent are probably saying, "We told you so!"
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Paleolithic Paradigmby Terry Stocker Copyright © 2009 by Terry Stocker. Excerpted by permission.
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