Origins of Western Morality

 


Good and evil, right and wrong, are ideas existing only in the minds of humans. They are closely associated with religious teachings, which in turn were developed and promulgated by ruling elites.

Where and when did it all begin?

There are many preconditions for intergenerational social regulation but they probably include the written word and some level of literacy. At least some of the population must be able to write down and modify the rules, and at least some must be able to read them. And if not everyone can read, those who can need a mechanism for imparting the message to those that cannot.

A schedule of community meetings requires an understanding of time, and gatherings of disparate people require an understanding of place. All this is easier to accomplish if at least some portion of the community is settled.

And a precondition for settlement is either a very abundant and stable natural source of local food, or at least some form of herding or cultivation. In other words Agriculture. Perhaps it all began with agriculture.

Or did it? Did the founding agriculturalists define good and evil as we understand the terms today, or did they create the preconditions for them to be defined by someone else? And if our concepts of good and evil were defined by someone else, who were they, where did they come from, and what sort of people were they?

I believe the philosophy and culture of the first agriculturalists was mostly pushed aside and replaced by the philosophy and culture of another group of people, and I believe this second group of people were not actually very nice. Indeed I believe that if those same people were roaming around the streets today, most judges and jurists would define them as evil, and since they laid the foundations of our belief system, our belief system is fundamentally flawed. It is full of contradictions and inconsistencies, and it does not form a sound foundation either for sustainable prosperity and or for prolonged personal happiness.

In order to justify this conjecture, I shall take a walk through pre-history, looking for clues about the belief systems of the people who lived in the neolithic era, as humankind made the transition from nomadic hunter gatherers through settled agriculturalists, to colonising warriors.

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