Today I wrote a two-line poem which made me recall a forgotten two-line poem that I learned in history class over fifty years ago. Mine addresses the "problem" of religion and refers to a time when there was no such problem. The other one addresses the problem of human hierarchy and refers to a time when there were no elites. These two related issues are the subject of this article.
THE HIERARCHY POEM
Jersey City, 1960. I was fourteen years old and a student at Dickenson High School, a large school in which there were some African-Americans, but the vast majority of students never came in contact with them. None, as I recall, were in the college preparatory program; they were all consigned by the color of their skin to vocational training. I am pleased those days are over!
Mr. Weiss, my ninth grade history teacher, was a rather stuffy old man who always wore a suit and tie; not terribly strict, but terribly humorless. (Whom I just referred to as an "old man" was at the time about twenty years younger than I am now!) For our homework assignment--we were reviewing world history-- we were to write a little essay on a sentence or two Mr. Weiss provided. Our teacher went around the room with a goldfish bowl filled with little folded pieces of paper. As we selected our topics--all were different--some of us looked miserable, some of us looked indifferent, some of us look pleased.
I was miserable. I became immediately jealous of one of my classmates, George, whose assignment was to answer the question,"What happened in 1945?" (Hard to imagine but the end of World War ll occurred less than fifteen years prior to my history class of January 1960--closer to us in time then than the second-term election of Bill Clinton is to us now! For my classmates and me, however, that time span contained our entire lives.) George wasn't the brightest bulb in the class; even George, I thought, wouldn't have to sweat over the right answer to that question.
I was already sweating about my topic. I was to write "a one to two page essay on lined paper" about this:
When Eve sowed and Adam spanned,
Who was then the gentleman?
What on earth did it mean? I hadn't a clue. I was too shy to ask the teacher. Members of my working-class family, none of whom had graduated from high school, were of no help. I don't know how I figured it out, but I did. An ordinary guy who said please and thank you was one definition of "gentleman," I realized; someone to whom everyone had to say please and thank you was another..
I remember writing "cavemen had no kings." The rich, I wrote, think they're better than everyone else here, just as the kings thought they were better than everyone else there. The poem possibly originated at a time in history, I speculated, when a rising merchant class in England began to seriously question traditional authority. In true American fashion, I concluded that nobility comes from within. (I don't remember the exact grade I got, but I passed.)
THE GOD POEM
When only bacteria spanned sea and sod,
Where was then the living God?
Gets you to think, no?
HOW ARE THESE TWO POEMS RELATED?
Before the agricultural transformation of human culture, which occurred during the neolithic period approximately ten thousand years ago, there were no strict hierarchical divisions. Members of hunter-gatherer groups had different functions, but these were not inherited and were fluid and limited; everybody had to cooperate as best they could in order to survive Along with farming came surpluses and a new ordering of society. Agriculture brought major technological advances, but there is always a price to be paid for everything. For instance, since people lived close together, communicable diseases soared--Life expectancy declined. Civilization flourished. For the first time, some people became very rich, while others became very poor. .A proto-gentry arose that claimed exclusive ownership of land; a proto-priestly class arose to mythologize the division of labor and wealth as something divinely decreed. In short, organized religion and royalty did not arise from God, but from wheat.
Belief in God--I should say, gods--, antedates the development of agriculture, of course. I think the modern philosopher Dennett was on the right track when he wrote that the concept of a god first arose when consciousness developed enough for people to imagine that Somebody Unseen was yelling at them--today we call this phenomenon thunder.
Many thousands of years later, despite science, most people still ascribe to a very anthropomorphic, religious worldview. According to it, the world was created by a cosmic King. Human beings did not evolve from primitive life forms but were created once upon a time by Royal Fiat. Although many generations of humans have (supposedly) passed since the time of Adam and Eve, this entire span of time is nothing compared to the nearly fourteen billion years that have passed since the Big Bang--Many fundamentalists, for instance, insist that the Earth is only 6,000 years or so old. No wonder so many religious people oppose evolution--the traditional religious worldview is very human in scale, very cozy, very comforting. And, of course, completely false!
There was no "God" problem before there was an "I" problem--both self and deity are constructs of consciousness. Just as the first poem refers to a time when there were no kings, mine refers to a time when there was no King. --And what a difference in scale! The first poem refers to thousands of years of humanity that antedate strict hierarchical division; mine refers to a time of over three billion years when all life on Earth was composed exclusively of unicellular, I-less organisms.
The first poem advocates democracy by deconstructing unquestioned divisions of power; the second poem advocates democracy by humbling an arrogant race that imagines a God who has put it at the center of everything. This God supposedly intervenes in natural and in human history. Before humans evolved, however, there is not the slightest evidence of divine intervention, and the interventions after humans evolved have turned out to be myths. Gods and human beings should be more humble! Billions of years of no life came before us. Billions of years of exclusively unicellular life came before us. Millions of years of fish, dinosaurs, insects and birds came before us. Human beings now share the planet with other forms of life. It's about time we stop waging war on nature like arrogant pharaohs! Pigs, worms and elephants deserve respect, too!
Don't get me wrong, I am not an absolute reductionist. Consciousness is at present inexplicable, perhaps irreducible, and will most likely remain so. I do, however, think that both the usual concept of God and the usual concept of self--two heads on the same mythical neck--can and should be transcended. The humbling result is Silence--a Silence that is; a Silence that does; a wise Silence that loves. Just what--who are you? You need.
THE HIERARCHY POEM
Jersey City, 1960. I was fourteen years old and a student at Dickenson High School, a large school in which there were some African-Americans, but the vast majority of students never came in contact with them. None, as I recall, were in the college preparatory program; they were all consigned by the color of their skin to vocational training. I am pleased those days are over!
Mr. Weiss, my ninth grade history teacher, was a rather stuffy old man who always wore a suit and tie; not terribly strict, but terribly humorless. (Whom I just referred to as an "old man" was at the time about twenty years younger than I am now!) For our homework assignment--we were reviewing world history-- we were to write a little essay on a sentence or two Mr. Weiss provided. Our teacher went around the room with a goldfish bowl filled with little folded pieces of paper. As we selected our topics--all were different--some of us looked miserable, some of us looked indifferent, some of us look pleased.
I was miserable. I became immediately jealous of one of my classmates, George, whose assignment was to answer the question,"What happened in 1945?" (Hard to imagine but the end of World War ll occurred less than fifteen years prior to my history class of January 1960--closer to us in time then than the second-term election of Bill Clinton is to us now! For my classmates and me, however, that time span contained our entire lives.) George wasn't the brightest bulb in the class; even George, I thought, wouldn't have to sweat over the right answer to that question.
I was already sweating about my topic. I was to write "a one to two page essay on lined paper" about this:
When Eve sowed and Adam spanned,
Who was then the gentleman?
What on earth did it mean? I hadn't a clue. I was too shy to ask the teacher. Members of my working-class family, none of whom had graduated from high school, were of no help. I don't know how I figured it out, but I did. An ordinary guy who said please and thank you was one definition of "gentleman," I realized; someone to whom everyone had to say please and thank you was another..
I remember writing "cavemen had no kings." The rich, I wrote, think they're better than everyone else here, just as the kings thought they were better than everyone else there. The poem possibly originated at a time in history, I speculated, when a rising merchant class in England began to seriously question traditional authority. In true American fashion, I concluded that nobility comes from within. (I don't remember the exact grade I got, but I passed.)
THE GOD POEM
When only bacteria spanned sea and sod,
Where was then the living God?
Gets you to think, no?
HOW ARE THESE TWO POEMS RELATED?
Before the agricultural transformation of human culture, which occurred during the neolithic period approximately ten thousand years ago, there were no strict hierarchical divisions. Members of hunter-gatherer groups had different functions, but these were not inherited and were fluid and limited; everybody had to cooperate as best they could in order to survive Along with farming came surpluses and a new ordering of society. Agriculture brought major technological advances, but there is always a price to be paid for everything. For instance, since people lived close together, communicable diseases soared--Life expectancy declined. Civilization flourished. For the first time, some people became very rich, while others became very poor. .A proto-gentry arose that claimed exclusive ownership of land; a proto-priestly class arose to mythologize the division of labor and wealth as something divinely decreed. In short, organized religion and royalty did not arise from God, but from wheat.
Belief in God--I should say, gods--, antedates the development of agriculture, of course. I think the modern philosopher Dennett was on the right track when he wrote that the concept of a god first arose when consciousness developed enough for people to imagine that Somebody Unseen was yelling at them--today we call this phenomenon thunder.
Many thousands of years later, despite science, most people still ascribe to a very anthropomorphic, religious worldview. According to it, the world was created by a cosmic King. Human beings did not evolve from primitive life forms but were created once upon a time by Royal Fiat. Although many generations of humans have (supposedly) passed since the time of Adam and Eve, this entire span of time is nothing compared to the nearly fourteen billion years that have passed since the Big Bang--Many fundamentalists, for instance, insist that the Earth is only 6,000 years or so old. No wonder so many religious people oppose evolution--the traditional religious worldview is very human in scale, very cozy, very comforting. And, of course, completely false!
There was no "God" problem before there was an "I" problem--both self and deity are constructs of consciousness. Just as the first poem refers to a time when there were no kings, mine refers to a time when there was no King. --And what a difference in scale! The first poem refers to thousands of years of humanity that antedate strict hierarchical division; mine refers to a time of over three billion years when all life on Earth was composed exclusively of unicellular, I-less organisms.
The first poem advocates democracy by deconstructing unquestioned divisions of power; the second poem advocates democracy by humbling an arrogant race that imagines a God who has put it at the center of everything. This God supposedly intervenes in natural and in human history. Before humans evolved, however, there is not the slightest evidence of divine intervention, and the interventions after humans evolved have turned out to be myths. Gods and human beings should be more humble! Billions of years of no life came before us. Billions of years of exclusively unicellular life came before us. Millions of years of fish, dinosaurs, insects and birds came before us. Human beings now share the planet with other forms of life. It's about time we stop waging war on nature like arrogant pharaohs! Pigs, worms and elephants deserve respect, too!
Don't get me wrong, I am not an absolute reductionist. Consciousness is at present inexplicable, perhaps irreducible, and will most likely remain so. I do, however, think that both the usual concept of God and the usual concept of self--two heads on the same mythical neck--can and should be transcended. The humbling result is Silence--a Silence that is; a Silence that does; a wise Silence that loves. Just what--who are you? You need.
