Get outside the city, and there are plenty of old timers who kick around the 'crazy' stories.
Back in the day, the gods came down to man. The visit forever distracted and transformed man. They had, thousands of years ago, the technology now being formed. Man has striven to re-create this vision ever sense. The act of creation and the feeling of power drives him.
Whether man is building the things the gods once used or whether man is tying to build the gods or whether man is trying to transform himself into a god--it is a new chase of the hunt, to borrow Moraline's metaphor of the hunter-gatherer.
Hesiod, one of these old timers, knew of the gods. He used to sing of them before he could write. Everyone used to sing of them. They were enormous, immortal, never suffered.
What, now, is the difference between the caribou-spirit-god and the immortal, powerful creature from far away (who was a god when he arrived, and perhaps is the god driving man's current transformation)?
This is the best kind of exploration. This is great. We "informed" folks lose track of our connection with the gods. The old timers don't have these problems.
ReplyDeleteOutside Plato's ideal city there are the poets and gods. There is singing and dancing. There are families and small communities. There is art and love and gifts and the earth and sky and gods and men live in harmony.
ReplyDeleteInside the city, the politicians and philosophers and scientists and corporate men refer to those outside the city as barbarians and losers. Primitives, who have yet to become rational individuals and to see the error of their ways.
"She will beg, she will plead, she will argue with her logic"--The Byrds, 'Wasn't Born To Follow'