The Nomadic Alternative – Page 34

Of men; It allows us a backbone of moral ideas we know to be correct, and also a latitude to tolerate divergencies from the given theme, since we cannot reconstruct the society in which these ideas were valid.

The faculty of language introduced into the earliest human hunting societies a new dimension unknown among the animals – that of balance or equipoise. The primaeval blueprint presumes a contract of equivalent partners. In turn this precludes a lop-sided hierarchy of dominance or any form of direct rule, other than that imposed by the opinion and traditions of all. Language makes possible exchanges of ‘blood’, gifts, territory and cultural acquisitions – all on the basis of strict equivalence. Diplomacy subverts the use of force. Refusal to enter into diplomatic relations with other creatures known to be men is both a declaration of war and a reversion to animality. But the duration and effectiveness of the contract demands the intelligent forbearance of all parties. Its most important clause states clearly “The World is Ideal“. It is incapable of improvement. Future generations must receive it as it was.

Metaphoric expression is the vehicle of innate ideas. But the brain does not jettison these ideas out at random. It patterns them and programmes them into coherent sequential messages which surface in the human consciousness as myths. Myths are human instincts verbalized. An exploring child creates its own universe by first answering the question “Where am I?” and then by attaching itself to its fellows who collectively answer the question “Who are we?”

Similarly the most elementary substratum of myth concerns the Creation of the Universe itself and the doings of the earliest men in it, thus reinforcing human identity by answering the question “Where and who are we?” Even the most archaic and simple societies assume the existence of a shadowy presence Out-There, who by an act of will had once propelled all things in motion.

This belief in an omniscient High God once deluded historians into thinking that the simplest savages were monotheists and provoked