An Essay on Violence, Tradition and Modernity

1 An Essay on Violence, Tradition and Modernity Rafael Leyre March 2007 [email protected] 2 Contents Contents............................................................................................2 Preface...............................................................................................5 Introduction.......................................................................................7 Humans cause their own suffering as an insane matter of course. 7 The brain that must find a cure for the tumour is itself affected by the tumour....................................................................................11 The human animal...........................................................................16 Appearance and meaning............................................................16 The invention of mind and the death of matter.............................20 To exist is to inhabit an environment............................................26 The power of our mind is not its capacity for truth, but its capacity for hope........................................................................................30 The seeds of famine........................................................................34 The more food production is accelerated, the more shortage prevails.........................................................................................34 Forced labour made abundant offspring a blessing......................34 Not a single agricultural revolution, but a global demographic flood .....................................................................................................37 Exhaustion, migration and the struggle for resources...................43 The inventive power of man and the limits of growth....................46 Landscapes are the only transcendent experience we will ever have..............................................................................................52 Evolution and innovations.............................................................55 The hundred-years horizon of culture and the labyrinth of change .....................................................................................................55 Innovations, David Landes and the myth of Western superiority..57 A general theory of innovations...................................................61 Triggers of scientific revolutions and progress.............................64 Civilizations.....................................................................................66 Grounds and groundworks of civilizations....................................66 The drive to expand and the enslavement of savages.................68 Emergence of clerkdom: temples, monasteries, academies .......70 From the Arabian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.........................72 3 Ideology...........................................................................................73 The fuel of violence......................................................................73 Language evolved together with ideology....................................73 Cosmologies, king lists and myths................................................74 Burners of books..........................................................................77 Natural religion or natural atheism................................................79 The legend of the fat goddess......................................................84 Forefathers and the religions of fear.............................................86 The invention of afterlife...............................................................90 Submission of women and children..............................................93 Forced labour turned women and children into economical assets .....................................................................................................93 Bride price and dowry...................................................................94 Religion and prostitution, war and rape........................................95 Children: an easy workforce, an easy sexual commodity.............96 Slavery.............................................................................................98 Commonness of slavery...............................................................98 Commonness of slave revolts......................................................99 Christianity and slavery..............................................................101 Slavery in the twenty first century...............................................102 Cultural violence...........................................................................104 When shortage is endemic, violence becomes cultural..............104 Tradition of violence...................................................................104 Executions, carnivals, masses...................................................105 Animals: betrayed companions, ravaged machines...................107 Sociobiology: a comedy of errors with a smirk...........................107 Cultural violence in the Atlantic civilization.................................110 Hunger refugees.........................................................................111 Human rights..............................................................................112 War.................................................................................................116 Forced labour and war: two aspects of one social system.........116 Just War Doctrine and Judged War Doctrine ............................117 Sociology of war.........................................................................121 Practice of war and practice of peace.........................................126 Modernity.......................................................................................132 Progress is the residue of a multitude of failing histories............132 The difference between progress and civilization.......................133 The difference between progress and democracy......................135 4 The difference between progress and development ..................136 Ancient and recent modernity.....................................................138 India................................................................................................146 A manifold of cultural encounters...............................................146 The oldest Upanishads on the first principle of nature................147 The oldest Upanishads on being, form, ether and atomism.......150 Egypt..............................................................................................153 A river of time.............................................................................153 The seven foundations of life and the conquest of eternity.........154 Scientific progress (medicine, mathematics, chemistry, astronomy) ...................................................................................................156 Babylon..........................................................................................158 Tower of Babel...........................................................................158 Mazdaianism and the classification of creatures........................159 Fusion and diffusion of Indian and Egyptian imageries..............160 Scientific progress (astronomy, history, biology, medicine, algebra) ...................................................................................................160 Greece............................................................................................165 Colonization, warfare and cultural exchange..............................165 Persian influence........................................................................166 Alexander the Great...................................................................168 Fusion and diffusion of Persian, Indian and Egyptian imageries 169 Judaism.........................................................................................171 Why the Bible was written, and who did it..................................171 Wars and war gods of the Iron Age............................................171 Babylon, the promised land and the temple...............................174 Christianity....................................................................................177 Jesus: from nationalist rebel to defector god..............................177 The morals of the Christians the same as those of the heathens ...................................................................................................179 Daily bread versus temple feasts...............................................179 Constantine: in search of a war god equal to enemy magic.......180 Saint Augustine: throwing Christians to the lions........................181 The all-mighty Church is the body of the all-mighty God............184 Islam...............................................................................................186 Mecca: a thriving metropolis blessed by three hundred gods.....186 The powerful tradition of fratricide..............................................187 5 The splendour of progress and the shame of tradition...............188 Europe............................................................................................191 From the Trojan war to the End Of Times..................................191 Córdoba: Europe’s first great border crossing............................191 Roger Bacon, the devil and the saints........................................193 Jan Van Eyck

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