12 ms·

Complex societies precede moralizing gods throughout world history

91 points by richardhod 8y ago

richardhod 8y ago
Paywall, but there's a good abstract. I hope someone has a workaround. In the meanwhile, here's a couple of blogs with a little more description. https://www.archaeology.wiki/blog/2019/03/28/complex-societies-precede-moralizing-gods-throughout-world-history/ https://www.archaeology.wiki/blog/2019/03/28/complex-societi... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190320141116.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190320141116.h...
- dang 8y ago
  Since that summary appears to contain more information than the abstract, I've changed the url above from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1043-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1043-4. Thanks!
didgeoridoo 8y ago
Quickly scanned through the references and didn’t see one interesting perspective: Julian Jaynes’ theory of the “breakdown of the bicameral mind” in response to increasing societal complexity. His idea is that the voices of “gods” in premodern societies were literal command hallucinations experienced by members of these societies, in the place of having self-identified conscious thought. In a way, he argues, premodern peoples could be considered to be “not conscious”, as they had no inner locus to consider or contradict the voices they heard. This contrasts with the “conscious” experience, in which we personally identify with a sort of homunculus inside our heads that is watching and judging its surroundings. Jaynes argues that societal upheaval and complexity led to changes (maybe cultural, maybe biological) that caused the “voices” to disappear, becoming absorbed into a new “conscious” stream of self-identified thought. From the perspective of societies experiencing this change, their inner gods would have been thought to have gone silent, leading to greater identification with (and societal organizing need for) externalized, idolized god figures.
- thatoneuser 8y ago
  So basically while the conscious mind was evolving, people originally took that mind to be an external voice? Is it not totally automatic that people can control their conscious mind?
  - homungulous 8y ago
    Well, consider maybe that it has to do with a couple of factors, not just learning, but opportunities to learn, as artificial environments (homes) become more refined, and there's more opportunity to contemplate upon abstractions. Not only that, but capacity to contemplate, that is to say, relative intellect has likely been augmented by our capacity to self domesticate within such environs. On the on hand, you have the mirror test for self awareness. But it's tough to construct a comparable structured assessment for self awareness that measures up to the mirror test for self awareness. On the one hand, operating mirrors is an acquired skill. Sentient beings need exposure to a mirror for some time, before they learn to reconcile how to use it for self examination. But without a mirror, other stand-ins, like shadows, masks and palm prints start to reveal an awareness of identity. So we can look to those sorts of artifacts to resolve whether a remote indigenous society has begun to self recognize, in general, for all neary all healthy adult members at large. But, also consider our evolutionary effect on how smart dogs are. Dogs are pretty smart, in possession of emotion, highly attentive to mood, cooperative, and recognize their own identity according to name. They recognize their own scent, and prioritize that factor of self above their appearance in mirrors, which they eventually learn is not another dog. They also dream, which probably means some dogs have vivid internal processes, even if they don't have an internal monologue. Human societies have writing though, and it's probably writing that leads to complex societies, and of course, writing enables artifacts that record oral traditions, and eventually theology and mythology. Really, though, look at it this way. Oral traditions are about entertaining an audience, but eventually, the written word descends into virtue signalling, as intellectuals paint each other into corners. Ever get caught by the wrong person with a diary entry that spills your guts, telling all about what you think of everyone? How many times did you make that mistake? That's what this reveals. That the intelligensia gains a collective recognition that failure to moralize is a form of checkmate in the court of public opinion, and virtue signaling in text is the race toward a limit (race to the top, race to the bottom, whatever). Intellectuals start to notice how blackmail works, and stop writing about the evil deeds they (may or may not) understand.
growlix 8y ago
Link to PDF: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19462452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19462452
josquindesprez 8y ago
It's important to take this with a grain of salt. Looking at the fit of the model itself, it seems to be a bit overconfident/overfit to the current configuration of society: https://twitter.com/babeheim/status/1108737930804293632 https://twitter.com/babeheim/status/1108737930804293632
- jerf 8y ago
  That seems a pretty devastating critique. The model is so confident it takes hardly any concrete data points that don't match to disprove it. (Note I'm speaking math in that sentence, not English.)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
eruci 8y ago
In the beginning there is no God.
classicsnoot 8y ago
I haven't read the paper yet, but the headline/summary keeps getting bandied about reddit, imgur, facebook, and twitter. The implication seems to be that because complex society formed without complex religion(s), said religions are superfluous and maybe even unnecessary or deleterious to said society. I may be reading the implication incorrectly. If I am not, then I'm quite puzzled by this line of inference. If complex society formed prior to complex religion, and the only complex societies still around* today hold, or used to hold until very recently, a complex religion as a core element of societal identity, would the implication be that complex religion is an evolved trait of successful complex societies? *Around of their own volition, not relegated to reservation regions or whose cultural pelt is being worn by its vanquisher.
- boomboomsubban 8y ago
  You're moving the argument too far. As complex societies developed without a moralizing god, religion is not necessary for morality. You can't use this to then say religion is unnecessary, as nobody has said morality is the only reason for religion. Even today, many religious people will say that atheists are incapable of having morals. This is evidence showing that claim is ridiculous, not an attack on religion.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - andrewflnr 8y ago
    It could be that moralizing religion is not essential to the emergence of morality, but is essential to its long-term survival. For example, maybe morality and religion imply each other, and it just happens that most societies discover morality first (on practical grounds) and follow through with the other consequences in order to keep it.
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    Atheists can certainly act morally, and many do. But I would say that atheists don't have a basis for having morals. dictionary.com says that morals have to do with "right conduct". But in atheism, there is nothing with the authority to give you a definition of "right". There's nothing absolute in the way that, say, the Christian God is absolute, except the universe, and the universe doesn't tell you what right conduct is. (I mean, there are the laws of physics, but that doesn't really help.) So the atheist usually takes something non-absolute and makes it an absolute - society, or the human race, say. The choice is probably whatever corresponds most closely to the atheist's innate sense of moral right and wrong. And that gives that particular atheist a basis for morals within their own thinking. But "I chose this standard because it matches my sense of what's right, and then I think my conduct is right if it matches the standard" is, essentially, "I do what I decide is right". It's something weaker than what I think of as morals.
Geee 8y ago
Most Eastern belief systems don't have moralizing gods. So, there are multiple ways how societies can virtualize authority.
- hliyan 8y ago
  This is correct. However, these belief systems do have a concept of good and bad karma. It may be thought of as an authority that is not personified.
MockObject 8y ago
> “Our results suggest that collective identities are more important to facilitate cooperation in societies than religious beliefs,” says Harvey Whitehouse. Then it's pretty awkward that the West is engaged in a long program to critique and dismantle its collective identity.
- FakeComments 8y ago
  The deconstruction of an American identity into fragmented identitarian politics by socialists has been devastating to the world, and particularly American well-being. This poster is right.
  - MockObject 8y ago
    All the silent downvotes. The deconstruction of Western identity has borrowed Fight Club's first rule.
  - photojosh 8y ago
    > ... by socialists ... No, it's done by Americans who don't fit the previous definition of "American identity". Picture the "ideal American" and see who that excludes; and you'll have an idea of who these people are.
    - FakeComments 8y ago
      Historically, those groups melted into a shared American identity — that’s one of the things the US is historically famous for. Irish, Italians, and the “not white enough” Europeans; Chinese, Japanese, and Asian groups; recent African migrants, etc. Every one of these groups integrated and thrived over time, without stalling out the process, because they joined a shared American culture focused on merit and cultural fusion via open debate. Starting with identitarian politics in the 60s that process has stalled, to the point it’s become non-functional in modern times, with antipodal ideas like “cultural appropriation”. This coincides with the infiltration of academia by Soviets, and the rise of many social movements using Soviet psyop mantras. “It was always this way!” is lazy rhetoric, and afactual: there’s been a change in American cultural values over the past 20, 50, and 100 years — and we should talk about that, because they’re changes that impact our well-being.
rjf72 8y ago
Why is it not self evident that cooperation is driven by self interested paired with intelligence? Animal A sees animal B in its territory. This tends to result in an immediate battle where both animals expose themselves to risk of death. Higher intelligence would instead tell you 'hey if I cooperate with this guy, not only can we both keep all this land - but we can go take over the land owned by animal C'. There's plenty of evidence of this happening in animals with greater levels of intelligence. For instance chimps tend to join up into groups and then go engage in war with other groups. But they, in turn, lack that intelligence to go even one step further. The same logic of '2 individuals can go kill 1 individual and take their land' leads to 'two groups can join up to go kill one group and take their land.' Presumably some outlier will eventually manage to start realizing this at which point you're well on your way to to the evolution of another highly intelligent species spreading themselves all over the place. I also think there's even evidence of this in society today. When social order collapses, for instance due to a natural disaster, we turn to some pretty nasty behavior quite quickly even when it's in no way necessary. This seems to suggest cooperation, in and of itself, is not innate - but rather something else drives that cooperation. We can even see it in higher order systems. Corruption is a regular part of all societies at all levels. And that is people simply determining that they can get more by working outside the interests of society than working within it. It's quite easy to see how the same intelligence can drive both corruption and cooperation. Once again, self interest driven by intelligence enabling an accurate assessment of probable outcomes. Do I work just for myself, or do I work with this guy? --- One argument against this are simple creatures that possess no semblance of higher order thinking, yet cooperate. Examples would include most types of ants. But I think there are too many differences to start considering these sorts of species. They tend to be extremely short lived and have extremely minimal needs relative to the quantity of resources out there -- that's unlike anything we can imagine. Imagine if a single banana could feed thousands of chimps for days. That rather reduces any motivation or incentive for competition. Well, except for when your thousands of other familiars run into a group of thousands of unfamiliars - which does happen and can lead to 'ant wars'.
- pessimizer 8y ago
  > When social order collapses, for instance due to a natural disaster, we turn to some pretty nasty behavior quite quickly even when it's in no way necessary. Only in misanthropist fiction and television shows. When social order collapses in real life previously equal people organize, cooperate, and protect the weak. That being said, if there's some extreme social stratification in the group already, and there was previously a wider authority explicitly restraining the more powerful group from completely enslaving the weak group, of course that would change if the wider authority were eliminated. During the flooding of New Orleans, the footage exemplifying "nasty behavior" broadcast on television were generally starving people looting grocery stores, cold, wet people foraging for clothing, blankets and bedding, or at the worst (and rarest) impoverished people looking for things they might be able to sell. The really scary thing was how police, both alone and as hastily-assembled white citizens' councils, started looting the town and threatening and killing flood survivors with impunity, and how the media cheered them on with a narrative of "nasty behavior." Almost the entire source of nasty behavior in the case of that disaster was from people who were completely secure - the New Orleans police, police in nearby towns, and the national media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Hurricane_Katrina_in_New_Orleans#Civil_disturbances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Hurricane_Katrina_i... > Civil disturbances in post-Hurricane Katrina were consistent with all existing research on disaster sociology, which concludes that “[post-disaster] widespread looting [is] a myth”,[51] and were vastly overstated by the media, ultimately fueling a climate of suspicion and paranoia which greatly hampered rescue efforts and further worsened the conditions of the survivors.[52] > Some initial reports of mass chaos, particularly in stories about the Superdome, were later found to be exaggerated or rumor.[53] In the Superdome for example, the New Orleans sex crimes unit investigated every report of rape or atrocity and found only two verifiable incidents, both of sexual assault. The department head told reporters, "I think it was an urban myth. Any time you put 25,000 people under one roof, with no running water, no electricity and no information, stories get told." Based on these reports, government officials expected hundreds of dead to be found in the Superdome, but instead found only six dead: four natural deaths, one drug overdose, and one suicide.[43][54] In a case of reported sniper fire, the "sniper" turned out to be the relief valve of a gas tank popping every few minutes.[53] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danziger_Bridge_shootings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danziger_Bridge_shootings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Henry_Glover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Henry_Glover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretna,_Louisiana#Hurricane_Katrina_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretna,_Louisiana#Hurricane_Ka...
jkingsbery 8y ago
I haven't read the paper yet, but this idea shouldn't be terribly surprising. Augustine of Hippo did a pretty thorough analysis at least of the Greco-Roman gods in the early 400s and wrote about how pagan gods generally aren't moralizing, and how the punishments or favors they give often have little to do with how moral a particular person is and the behavior of the Greco-Roman gods is also not an example worth following. One of the arguments that he and others made in favor of Christianity is that in our faith, the religious and moral come together, and that this was a mostly novel concept at the time.
- leftyted 8y ago
  Greco-Roman gods absolutely punished immoral behavior. It's just that "what is moral" has changed a lot over time. For example, the classical Greek period was a time when pederasty and war were considered perfectly moral. It's often pointed out that pre-Christian morality seems to differ considerably from post-Christian morality. Also, Ancient Greece/Rome definitely count as "complex societites".
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    I think the OP's point is crudely valid. Greek gods basically wanted you to pray and appease them, more or less. Jesus and the Buddha wanted you to be a fundamentally better person, moreover, they were themselves enshrined in a metaphysical spirituality. I always found it odd that Greek philosophers spoke of 'spirit' and 'soul' but that seemed for them to be a completely separate domain from Zeus et. al. Here's chapter 1 of 'Plato's Republic' [1] Talk of 'soul' and 'appeasing the just/unjust god's' seem to be a different kind of subject material, whereas in most modern religions they are inherently related. I often wonder if there's a populist bent to that: a 'soul' is an abstract, intellectual concept, removed from our daily lives. It'd be hard to get the plebes even to pay attention to such haughty ideas. But give them some Gods and Goddesses warring at each other's throats, tales of jealousy, death, intrigue ... now there's something they can buy into. [1] http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.2.i.html http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.2.i.html
    - 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

91 points by richardhod 8y ago

Paywall, but there's a good abstract. I hope someone has a workaround. In the meanwhile, here's a couple of blogs with a little more description. https://www.archaeology.wiki/blog/2019/03/28/complex-societies-precede-moralizing-gods-throughout-world-history/ https://www.archaeology.wiki/blog/2019/03/28/complex-societi... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190320141116.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190320141116.h...

dang 8y ago
Since that summary appears to contain more information than the abstract, I've changed the url above from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1043-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1043-4. Thanks!

didgeoridoo 8y ago

Quickly scanned through the references and didn’t see one interesting perspective: Julian Jaynes’ theory of the “breakdown of the bicameral mind” in response to increasing societal complexity. His idea is that the voices of “gods” in premodern societies were literal command hallucinations experienced by members of these societies, in the place of having self-identified conscious thought. In a way, he argues, premodern peoples could be considered to be “not conscious”, as they had no inner locus to consider or contradict the voices they heard. This contrasts with the “conscious” experience, in which we personally identify with a sort of homunculus inside our heads that is watching and judging its surroundings. Jaynes argues that societal upheaval and complexity led to changes (maybe cultural, maybe biological) that caused the “voices” to disappear, becoming absorbed into a new “conscious” stream of self-identified thought. From the perspective of societies experiencing this change, their inner gods would have been thought to have gone silent, leading to greater identification with (and societal organizing need for) externalized, idolized god figures.

thatoneuser 8y ago
So basically while the conscious mind was evolving, people originally took that mind to be an external voice? Is it not totally automatic that people can control their conscious mind?
- homungulous 8y ago
  Well, consider maybe that it has to do with a couple of factors, not just learning, but opportunities to learn, as artificial environments (homes) become more refined, and there's more opportunity to contemplate upon abstractions. Not only that, but capacity to contemplate, that is to say, relative intellect has likely been augmented by our capacity to self domesticate within such environs. On the on hand, you have the mirror test for self awareness. But it's tough to construct a comparable structured assessment for self awareness that measures up to the mirror test for self awareness. On the one hand, operating mirrors is an acquired skill. Sentient beings need exposure to a mirror for some time, before they learn to reconcile how to use it for self examination. But without a mirror, other stand-ins, like shadows, masks and palm prints start to reveal an awareness of identity. So we can look to those sorts of artifacts to resolve whether a remote indigenous society has begun to self recognize, in general, for all neary all healthy adult members at large. But, also consider our evolutionary effect on how smart dogs are. Dogs are pretty smart, in possession of emotion, highly attentive to mood, cooperative, and recognize their own identity according to name. They recognize their own scent, and prioritize that factor of self above their appearance in mirrors, which they eventually learn is not another dog. They also dream, which probably means some dogs have vivid internal processes, even if they don't have an internal monologue. Human societies have writing though, and it's probably writing that leads to complex societies, and of course, writing enables artifacts that record oral traditions, and eventually theology and mythology. Really, though, look at it this way. Oral traditions are about entertaining an audience, but eventually, the written word descends into virtue signalling, as intellectuals paint each other into corners. Ever get caught by the wrong person with a diary entry that spills your guts, telling all about what you think of everyone? How many times did you make that mistake? That's what this reveals. That the intelligensia gains a collective recognition that failure to moralize is a form of checkmate in the court of public opinion, and virtue signaling in text is the race toward a limit (race to the top, race to the bottom, whatever). Intellectuals start to notice how blackmail works, and stop writing about the evil deeds they (may or may not) understand.

growlix 8y ago

Link to PDF: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19462452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19462452

josquindesprez 8y ago

It's important to take this with a grain of salt. Looking at the fit of the model itself, it seems to be a bit overconfident/overfit to the current configuration of society: https://twitter.com/babeheim/status/1108737930804293632 https://twitter.com/babeheim/status/1108737930804293632

jerf 8y ago
That seems a pretty devastating critique. The model is so confident it takes hardly any concrete data points that don't match to disprove it. (Note I'm speaking math in that sentence, not English.)
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

eruci 8y ago

In the beginning there is no God.

classicsnoot 8y ago

I haven't read the paper yet, but the headline/summary keeps getting bandied about reddit, imgur, facebook, and twitter. The implication seems to be that because complex society formed without complex religion(s), said religions are superfluous and maybe even unnecessary or deleterious to said society. I may be reading the implication incorrectly. If I am not, then I'm quite puzzled by this line of inference. If complex society formed prior to complex religion, and the only complex societies still around* today hold, or used to hold until very recently, a complex religion as a core element of societal identity, would the implication be that complex religion is an evolved trait of successful complex societies? *Around of their own volition, not relegated to reservation regions or whose cultural pelt is being worn by its vanquisher.

boomboomsubban 8y ago
You're moving the argument too far. As complex societies developed without a moralizing god, religion is not necessary for morality. You can't use this to then say religion is unnecessary, as nobody has said morality is the only reason for religion. Even today, many religious people will say that atheists are incapable of having morals. This is evidence showing that claim is ridiculous, not an attack on religion.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- andrewflnr 8y ago
  It could be that moralizing religion is not essential to the emergence of morality, but is essential to its long-term survival. For example, maybe morality and religion imply each other, and it just happens that most societies discover morality first (on practical grounds) and follow through with the other consequences in order to keep it.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  Atheists can certainly act morally, and many do. But I would say that atheists don't have a basis for having morals. dictionary.com says that morals have to do with "right conduct". But in atheism, there is nothing with the authority to give you a definition of "right". There's nothing absolute in the way that, say, the Christian God is absolute, except the universe, and the universe doesn't tell you what right conduct is. (I mean, there are the laws of physics, but that doesn't really help.) So the atheist usually takes something non-absolute and makes it an absolute - society, or the human race, say. The choice is probably whatever corresponds most closely to the atheist's innate sense of moral right and wrong. And that gives that particular atheist a basis for morals within their own thinking. But "I chose this standard because it matches my sense of what's right, and then I think my conduct is right if it matches the standard" is, essentially, "I do what I decide is right". It's something weaker than what I think of as morals.

Geee 8y ago

Most Eastern belief systems don't have moralizing gods. So, there are multiple ways how societies can virtualize authority.

hliyan 8y ago
This is correct. However, these belief systems do have a concept of good and bad karma. It may be thought of as an authority that is not personified.

MockObject 8y ago

> “Our results suggest that collective identities are more important to facilitate cooperation in societies than religious beliefs,” says Harvey Whitehouse. Then it's pretty awkward that the West is engaged in a long program to critique and dismantle its collective identity.

FakeComments 8y ago
The deconstruction of an American identity into fragmented identitarian politics by socialists has been devastating to the world, and particularly American well-being. This poster is right.
- MockObject 8y ago
  All the silent downvotes. The deconstruction of Western identity has borrowed Fight Club's first rule.
- photojosh 8y ago
  > ... by socialists ... No, it's done by Americans who don't fit the previous definition of "American identity". Picture the "ideal American" and see who that excludes; and you'll have an idea of who these people are.
  - FakeComments 8y ago
    Historically, those groups melted into a shared American identity — that’s one of the things the US is historically famous for. Irish, Italians, and the “not white enough” Europeans; Chinese, Japanese, and Asian groups; recent African migrants, etc. Every one of these groups integrated and thrived over time, without stalling out the process, because they joined a shared American culture focused on merit and cultural fusion via open debate. Starting with identitarian politics in the 60s that process has stalled, to the point it’s become non-functional in modern times, with antipodal ideas like “cultural appropriation”. This coincides with the infiltration of academia by Soviets, and the rise of many social movements using Soviet psyop mantras. “It was always this way!” is lazy rhetoric, and afactual: there’s been a change in American cultural values over the past 20, 50, and 100 years — and we should talk about that, because they’re changes that impact our well-being.

rjf72 8y ago

Why is it not self evident that cooperation is driven by self interested paired with intelligence? Animal A sees animal B in its territory. This tends to result in an immediate battle where both animals expose themselves to risk of death. Higher intelligence would instead tell you 'hey if I cooperate with this guy, not only can we both keep all this land - but we can go take over the land owned by animal C'. There's plenty of evidence of this happening in animals with greater levels of intelligence. For instance chimps tend to join up into groups and then go engage in war with other groups. But they, in turn, lack that intelligence to go even one step further. The same logic of '2 individuals can go kill 1 individual and take their land' leads to 'two groups can join up to go kill one group and take their land.' Presumably some outlier will eventually manage to start realizing this at which point you're well on your way to to the evolution of another highly intelligent species spreading themselves all over the place. I also think there's even evidence of this in society today. When social order collapses, for instance due to a natural disaster, we turn to some pretty nasty behavior quite quickly even when it's in no way necessary. This seems to suggest cooperation, in and of itself, is not innate - but rather something else drives that cooperation. We can even see it in higher order systems. Corruption is a regular part of all societies at all levels. And that is people simply determining that they can get more by working outside the interests of society than working within it. It's quite easy to see how the same intelligence can drive both corruption and cooperation. Once again, self interest driven by intelligence enabling an accurate assessment of probable outcomes. Do I work just for myself, or do I work with this guy? --- One argument against this are simple creatures that possess no semblance of higher order thinking, yet cooperate. Examples would include most types of ants. But I think there are too many differences to start considering these sorts of species. They tend to be extremely short lived and have extremely minimal needs relative to the quantity of resources out there -- that's unlike anything we can imagine. Imagine if a single banana could feed thousands of chimps for days. That rather reduces any motivation or incentive for competition. Well, except for when your thousands of other familiars run into a group of thousands of unfamiliars - which does happen and can lead to 'ant wars'.

pessimizer 8y ago
> When social order collapses, for instance due to a natural disaster, we turn to some pretty nasty behavior quite quickly even when it's in no way necessary. Only in misanthropist fiction and television shows. When social order collapses in real life previously equal people organize, cooperate, and protect the weak. That being said, if there's some extreme social stratification in the group already, and there was previously a wider authority explicitly restraining the more powerful group from completely enslaving the weak group, of course that would change if the wider authority were eliminated. During the flooding of New Orleans, the footage exemplifying "nasty behavior" broadcast on television were generally starving people looting grocery stores, cold, wet people foraging for clothing, blankets and bedding, or at the worst (and rarest) impoverished people looking for things they might be able to sell. The really scary thing was how police, both alone and as hastily-assembled white citizens' councils, started looting the town and threatening and killing flood survivors with impunity, and how the media cheered them on with a narrative of "nasty behavior." Almost the entire source of nasty behavior in the case of that disaster was from people who were completely secure - the New Orleans police, police in nearby towns, and the national media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Hurricane_Katrina_in_New_Orleans#Civil_disturbances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Hurricane_Katrina_i... > Civil disturbances in post-Hurricane Katrina were consistent with all existing research on disaster sociology, which concludes that “[post-disaster] widespread looting [is] a myth”,[51] and were vastly overstated by the media, ultimately fueling a climate of suspicion and paranoia which greatly hampered rescue efforts and further worsened the conditions of the survivors.[52] > Some initial reports of mass chaos, particularly in stories about the Superdome, were later found to be exaggerated or rumor.[53] In the Superdome for example, the New Orleans sex crimes unit investigated every report of rape or atrocity and found only two verifiable incidents, both of sexual assault. The department head told reporters, "I think it was an urban myth. Any time you put 25,000 people under one roof, with no running water, no electricity and no information, stories get told." Based on these reports, government officials expected hundreds of dead to be found in the Superdome, but instead found only six dead: four natural deaths, one drug overdose, and one suicide.[43][54] In a case of reported sniper fire, the "sniper" turned out to be the relief valve of a gas tank popping every few minutes.[53] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danziger_Bridge_shootings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danziger_Bridge_shootings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Henry_Glover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Henry_Glover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretna,_Louisiana#Hurricane_Katrina_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretna,_Louisiana#Hurricane_Ka...

jkingsbery 8y ago

I haven't read the paper yet, but this idea shouldn't be terribly surprising. Augustine of Hippo did a pretty thorough analysis at least of the Greco-Roman gods in the early 400s and wrote about how pagan gods generally aren't moralizing, and how the punishments or favors they give often have little to do with how moral a particular person is and the behavior of the Greco-Roman gods is also not an example worth following. One of the arguments that he and others made in favor of Christianity is that in our faith, the religious and moral come together, and that this was a mostly novel concept at the time.

leftyted 8y ago
Greco-Roman gods absolutely punished immoral behavior. It's just that "what is moral" has changed a lot over time. For example, the classical Greek period was a time when pederasty and war were considered perfectly moral. It's often pointed out that pre-Christian morality seems to differ considerably from post-Christian morality. Also, Ancient Greece/Rome definitely count as "complex societites".
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  I think the OP's point is crudely valid. Greek gods basically wanted you to pray and appease them, more or less. Jesus and the Buddha wanted you to be a fundamentally better person, moreover, they were themselves enshrined in a metaphysical spirituality. I always found it odd that Greek philosophers spoke of 'spirit' and 'soul' but that seemed for them to be a completely separate domain from Zeus et. al. Here's chapter 1 of 'Plato's Republic' [1] Talk of 'soul' and 'appeasing the just/unjust god's' seem to be a different kind of subject material, whereas in most modern religions they are inherently related. I often wonder if there's a populist bent to that: a 'soul' is an abstract, intellectual concept, removed from our daily lives. It'd be hard to get the plebes even to pay attention to such haughty ideas. But give them some Gods and Goddesses warring at each other's throats, tales of jealousy, death, intrigue ... now there's something they can buy into. [1] http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.2.i.html http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.2.i.html
  - 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

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